Page 95 of Beni

No shame.

Her mom was right.

“It went well, and I have everything I need. I’ll make a mock-up before I go back to work in a couple of days to present to the editor and her team and see what they think, or if they’re willing to expand the idea and let me work on the spread with them.”

“I’m sure the team and the editor will love it,” her father murmured. “And that they’ll accept the pitch for the spread.”

Right.

Thing was … August didn’t even know if she wanted it anymore.

Her parents pulled ahead with a comment to grab her bag. She didn’t mind letting them go to the luggage carousel by themselves. It allowed her to hang back and pull her phone from her pocket. She wasn’t quite ready to spill all the details of her trip—like Beni—to her parents, if only because she still needed to figure out what in the hell she wanted to do with that. Even if the choice seemed clear, that didn’t mean it was easy to make.

Not that her parents would be bothered by the fact she was interested in a guy—quite the opposite, as they were like every parent with an adult child that they wanted to settle down and give them grandbabies to love. It was more the fact that Beni was in Chicago, and that might concern them.

But who knew?

Things to deal with at another time.

Keeping an eye on her parents, whose backs were still turned to her, she first sent a text to Camilla letting her know that she had landed and would call her later in the evening. Then, she switched contacts, and sent one to Beni, too.

Safe and sound in NY, she had wrote.

Beni’s reply was almost instant. NY is damn lucky.

“How did the presentation go?” Beni asked.

On the phone, August found that hearing his voice only made her desire to see him even worse. She swore he kept that smooth, dark tenor at the same level whether he was in bed with her or running on his treadmill. And it made her miss him.

Terribly.

“Really well,” she said, “they’re going to try to work the idea into an upcoming issue after the team goes through it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Congratulations.”

August smiled. “And they offered me a new job … with the editor’s team.”

It was everything she wanted.

The spread pitch had done that.

“Did you accept it?” he asked.

August chewed on her inner cheek. “No. I asked for some time to think about it, actually.”

“And have you?”

“Barely.”

Might as well be honest.

She was still acting as an assistant to the main editor of the magazine, although she had written an article for Bared Brands online magazine since returning two weeks ago. It had been published the day before, and like her other articles that she wrote for them … hit viral status within hours of going live.

That’s how August knew her worth here.