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My eyes fell to her full mouth on instinct. “What?”
“How dare a woman raise her voice instead of just acquiescing to your charm,” she hissed, donning a fake, waifish stance.
“I never said that, and you know it.” I glanced at my watch again. “You have a job to do and so do I, and my job is to decide when to open the bar.”
“Two hundred annoyed people sweating through their formal wear and an absent couple make my job hard to do. Maybe you could make both our lives easier.”
“You’re maddening,” I said, shoving a hand in my pocket, then thinking better of it and scrubbing my jaw. “Opening the bar without food is a recipe for disaster. It’s not happening, got it? It’s not your call.” I swiped my hand through the air, trying to hold my ground and make my point.
“I fully respect it’s your role to coordinate the event, but in this case you’re wrong,” she muttered before meeting my eyes, hers filled with a steely resolve. “No one is going to pay attention to the ceremony if they’re dehydrated and agitated.”
Her condescending tone almost made me ignore how the dress covered her soft curves when she stood tall. Almost. “RJ. This may be hard to believe,” I said, keeping my voice level.I am the calm one and she’ll hate that.I patted my chest with both hands. “But I know what I’m doing here.”
“You’re going to have a revolt on your hands.” She stepped forward, crowding me. “You,” she said, raising her hands to push my chest, “are just too pigheaded to listen to a woman.” Her eyes burned into mine.
“I listen to women all the time. Ihappilyfollow directions from women,” I said, injecting a smirk into my tone. “I just don’t listen to condescending, ball-busting, bossy know-it-alls like you.”
She glanced around and gently pushed me close to the wall and even farther away from the guests. “I’m not bossy. I’m right.”
“Maybe. Maybe not, but I don’t care.” We were inches apart, herpalms still resting against my chest, and I hated how much I enjoyed the weight and warmth of her hands. Our gazes locked as if the first one to look away would lose some hidden struggle for dominance. I didn’t care about the bar, and I couldn’t imagine she did, either. This was about winning. We stared in silence as several moments ticked by and a slight breeze shifted the surrounding air. I softened my tone.Shit, what am I even doing?“RJ,” I started, intending to apologize and de-escalate.
Her fingers tightened in my shirt. Her eyes stayed on mine, her expression shifting from annoyed to something else. If she tipped up her chin, even by an inch, our lips would be almost touching. Her palms flattened against my chest almost imperceptibly, her fingers spread over the fabric of my shirt.
“RJ,” I said again, softer, not wanting to make her step back because, my God, the feel of her this close. I wanted to reach for her, to test the feel of her skin under my fingers. Her breath hitched when I took a half step toward her, and her chin tipped up. “Are you waiting for me to touch you?”
Her head whipped up, gaze sharpening like she was coming back from a powerful memory. A memory, it seemed, that was distracting. “No. You need to open the bar,” she said, pressing her palm to me again.
I stiffened at her quick change in demeanor. “I’m not opening the damn—”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. The vibration made us both freeze. With her pressed so tightly, she must have felt it, too.
I caught my breath, and we pulled apart, just enough to meet each other’s eyes. When it buzzed again, the vibration and sound echoed in the closed space. I pulled it from my pocket, only letting my eyes leave RJ’s for a minute. It was a text from the bride. “They’re going to be another fifteen minutes,” I said, my voice scratchy as Itried to pull myself from the haze of that moment, which felt like it should have ended with a kiss.
RJ’s hand loosened in my shirt abruptly and she stepped back, blinking furiously, one traitorous finger touching her lip before falling to her side.
She straightened her dress. Her expression started cooling to the neutral, cold one I’d gotten used to. “I’m going to tell people the wait will be a little longer.” She stepped to the side and walked out of the breezeway, leaving me standing there, dumbfounded and fully aware of how incredible it felt to be that close to RJ.
Chapter 13
RJ
I WAITED FORthe call to connect, looking around the mostly empty coffee shop. I needed caffeine before heading to work on a Sunday morning. After a seventy-hour workweek focused on the case and distracted by thoughts of pressing against Lear, of wanting to kiss him, the caffeine wasn’t just necessary, it was life affirming.
Britta’s face filled the screen, and before she could finish her greeting, I blurted out what I’d needed to share all week. “I almost kissed him.” I touched a fingertip to my lips before I could stop myself.
I pulled my fingers from my face to see Britta’s eyes narrowed. “Almost kissed who?”
I hadn’t stopped thinking about that moment in days, particularly how he’d felt so close to me. I’d imagined him backing me against the wall with an intoxicating blend of hard muscle and soft skin. I bit my lower lip.
“Not the hot dude-bro wedding planner,” she said, eyes still narrowed in examination until they snapped open. “How didthathappen? I thought you hated him.”
I’d asked myself that a thousand times since last Saturday. “I do hate him! We were arguing like normal. He was annoying and not listening to me, but we were so close together, and he smelled sogood, and then I just lost my head and I wanted to kiss him. I was about to kiss this man with two hundred people right there.”
Britta’s grin widened on the small screen of my phone. “So you didn’t kiss, but you were close enough to? That’s hot.”
“It wasn’t hot.” Warmth rose up my chest. “I mean, it was fine,” I said, schooling my expression and trying not to linger on how firm his chest had felt under my palms or how he’d pressed his tongue to the corner of his lip like he’d be good at sex. I clenched my thighs. “Maybe a little better than fine,” I grumbled, still glancing around to make sure no one was nearby.
“A little better than fine?” Britta was in a park somewhere, stretching while talking to me. Her face was flushed and sweaty and she’d probably just finished a run. “It seems odd you’d be in a hurry to tell me about a slightly-more-than-adequate almost-kiss that happened a week ago.”
