“And?” I looked back at him.
“And I’m starting to think I made them too fast.”
I swallowed, confused about what to say next.
A knock sounded. It startled me.
Trisha’s voice calling out that Christopher had a meeting in five minutes. He stood. I stood. We were closer than the office required, close enough to see the different shades of blue in his eyes, deep enough to drown in.
“Don't worry. No one will enter without my permission,” he murmured, leaning close.
He tilted his head down. I didn’t move.
Then he kissed me.
His hand found my jaw and tilted my face up. The kiss was slow. Tender. A sound left his lips, low and quiet, and his other hand found my waist, pulling me closer and I let him because I wanted this. Just as badly.
My hand found his chest. My fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. I kissed him back and the kiss deepened and for a stretch of time I couldn’t measure. The glass-walled office, the forty floors beneath us, the security cameras, and the contract all disappeared.
It was just his mouth on mine, and the warmth between us.
He pulled back. His thumb traced my jaw once, gentle and slow, a gesture so careful it didn’t match anything I knew about Christopher Vale. Then he stepped away and grabbed his jacket from the chair.
“I have a meeting,” he said. His voice was steady but his eyes weren’t.
He left.
I stood in his empty office for a full thirty seconds, touching my lips, heart hammering, trying to reassemble the wall I’d been building betweencontract wifeandsomeone special. The wall had a problem now. A big one. Because there were no cameras in this office. No photographers. No press. No audience.
He’d kissed me with no one watching.
Why?
I took the elevator down on legs that felt like they belonged to somebody else. Trisha was in the lobby, scrolling her phone, leaning against the reception desk.
She looked up, studied my face for two seconds, and grinned.
“So,” she said. “How was lunch?”
“Fine.”
“Uh-huh.” The sound was packed with everything she wasn’t saying and everything she’d already figured out. “Fine. Got it.”
I walked out of the building into the afternoon sun. The Miami heat hit my face but I could hardly think straight, feeling anything. I stood on the sidewalk and told myself, firmly and without an ounce of conviction, that the kiss meantnothing.
But there was no one except us.
No paparazzi to take a picture as proof of his happy married life.
No contract clause that required Christopher Vale to kiss me in his office in an afternoon.
So why did he?
CHAPTER 18
Miley
Christopher didn’t mention the kiss. I didn’t mention it either.
