"I mean… am I allowed to touch you without triggering some kind of emergency response? The last time I made contact with a man in a marketplace, he scrubbed his mouth like I’d poisoned him, pulled out a bottle of sanitizer, and told me to never cross his path again. So I’m just checking the current policy."
The color started at his neck. I watched it climb, slow and gorgeous, past his collar, up the side of his face, all the way to the tips of his ears, turning them a shade of pink I didn’t even know his skin was capable of producing. Jace Hunter was blushing again. Because of me.
"The man you’re describing," he said, and his voice had gone stiff in a way that made his accent twice as British, "doesn’t exist anymore. Things have changed."
I lifted a brow. "He changed? Really?"
He didn’t answer. His hand stayed where it was. Steady. Patient. Offered without pressure, which was maybe the most charming thing about it.
I took his hand.
He took my hand and helped me out of the car. The leather of his glove was warm from his skin underneath, his grip firm and steady. Once I was standing, his fingers didn't pull away all atonce. They slid from mine slowly, as if they were leaving on their own schedule, and by the time the contact broke I'd forgotten how to breathe.
He was already walking toward the entrance like nothing had happened. But his grip had been careful. Measured. Like he'd thought about exactly how much pressure to use before I'd even reached for him.
Maybe for him nothing had happened. Maybe holding someone’s hand for three seconds was a normal thing that people did and I was the one making it into something it wasn’t.
Except I'd seen the tips of his ears go red. You can't fake that.
Inside the showroom was empty.
Every fitting suite, every mirrored corridor, every rail of clothing behind glass scrubbed clean and completely vacant. The air smelled like fabric spray and industrial disinfectant, like the entire place had been sterilized within an inch of its life. Our footsteps echoed off the floors, and there was not another living soul in sight.
"There seems to be no customers today. Is it normal?" I asked.
"I rented the showroom for half a day."
"What?" I almost choked. "H-how much did it cost?"
"About fifty thousand dollars."
I searched his face for any sign he was joking. Found nothing. He’d rented an entire fashion house to avoid sharing air with strangers, and he said it like he was mentioning a coffee order.
I guess this is normal for billionaires.
The store employees stood at careful distances, hands clasped, radiating the energy of people who’d probably received very specific instructions about proximity, volume, and breathing patterns. I was directed toward the suits and told to choose.
I approached the first rack and looked at a price tag and my throat did something involuntary.
I checked the next rack. The numbers got worse.
At the third rack, the figure on the tag could have funded Caleb’s entire engineering degree with enough left over for a car, a vacation, and possibly a small boat.
I turned back to Jace. Whatever was happening on my face must have been spectacular, because he was looking at me with an expression I’d never seen before. His eyes were warm.
The ice was gone, and what remained was something close to amusement, but it was also softer than that. Gentler. Seeing it on his face felt like watching a locked door swing open into a room I hadn’t known existed.
"I may be the most insufferable man you’ve ever met," he said, "but there is no universe in which I allow a woman to spend money on me. It doesn’t matter if it’s a coffee or a suit. It goes against everything in me."
I blinked. Replayed the last hour. The suit negotiation. The drive. The rented fashion house. He never intended to let me pay.
He’d agreed to all of this because I’d asked, and he’d let me believe I was buying.
I’d been outmaneuvered by a man who couldn’t touch a doorknob without gloves. Respectfully, I deserved this.
"You’re infuriating," I said.
A tiny smirk formed at the corner of his lips. "I’ve been told."
