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And then the door swung open.
“I knew it,” Vanessa said, opening the door even further to reveal the remaining members of my family.
I gasped, the shock so strong it propelled me forward.
The images scattered, shifting to phantoms in the darkness until nothing but shadows cast by moonlight remained. I stared around the dark room. My eyes slowly adjusted, the soft streams of twilight lending their aid. This wasn’t my office. It was my bedroom. My lonely, empty bedroom where Hunter Carson was nowhere to be found.
Had it all been a dream? This time it felt so real.
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I had spent ten minutes in a conversation with my first client and had already come close to kissing him. It was safe to say, my first day of work had not gone as smoothly as possible. Though, surprisingly, the other clients on my list were significantly easier to handle when compared to Hunter Carson’s smoldering declaration.
And if I said what I wanted was you?
I ignored the insistent need to curl back up under my sheets and revisit the sweltering dreams from before. They were a reminder.
Playing with fire often resulted in someone getting burned. And while Hunter would recover from the inconvenience of having to look for yet another wife in the process, I would be the one to suffer the consequences. I would lose everything—my lifestyle, my freedom, and my home. All of it gone because I hadn’t had sex in over six months.
That was it. Maybe I needed to have meaningless, mind-blowing sex to get my mind off of Hunter Carson and his gorgeous blue eyes that left me breathless.
Just like now.
What the hell?The sex hadn’t even been real, and I was still panting as if I’d just finished a challenging workout routine.
I didn’t need this distraction. I needed to get Hunter out of my mind. He needed a wife—one I luckily found for him with ease. It wasn’t hard to find someone who fit into his demographic, someone who still harbored romantic notions of finding the perfect match despite the cold, methodical approach my cousins took to matchmaking.
If I found Hunter an excellent candidate and he fell in love with another woman, I could forget him even easier. He certainly wouldn’t pin me up against the door in my office and make sensual pleas about wanting me. I wouldn’t have to try so hard to resist his charms if they were focused on someone else.
The thought of him with another woman brought me little comfort. A small twinge bore its way into my heart, digging deep like a snake wriggling its way into its winter home.
Was I actually jealous? The last thing I wanted was something permanent. A house, a family, anything that tied me down to one place for too long. So why did the thought of Hunter dating and potentially finding his soulmate inspire such sadness and anger?
My phone dinged beside me. A confirmation from the client I’d chosen for Hunter to meet. The woman was definitely interested and available at his earliest convenience. She sounded promising.
Great.
It took me a matter of minutes to arrange a meeting with Hunter to go over the details of his date, and another hour to mentally prepare myself for seeing him again. What did one wear to a meeting with someone they’d just had a sexy dream about? Especially when that meeting was meant to catapult the object of my desire into a lifelong relationship with someone who made him ridiculously happy.
My stomach somersaulted into itself, landing in a sickening ooze that was enough to make me nauseous.
Perfect! Was this how every meeting I had with Hunter going to go?
The sooner I got him married off to someone else, the better off I would be.
* * *
“So...what is she like?”
Hunter asked, staring back at me over the portfolio I’d put together about his next date. He wore another simple, dark t-shirt that clung to his body with the perfect amount of tightness and slack. As if he hadn’t been trying to look as delicious as the forbidden fruit he was.
“She’s a school teacher,” I explained. “Elementary. Great with children and definitely ready to start a family of her own.”
“Any interests?”
I shrugged one shoulder upward, trying to remain as calm and collected as humanly possible without hurling myself across the desk at him. “Starting a family for the most part. What other interests do you want her to have? You didn’t exactly give me much to work with.”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head absently, as if even he wasn’t sure what vision he had in mind for his ideal woman. “We need something else to talk about than the kids. At least for the first part of our relationship. Don’t you think?”
It made sense. A person should be able to interact with the person they plan on spending the rest of their life with on more than a superficial basis. And, he had said he was more interested in connections than anything else.
