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She gives me a tentative smile. The memory is in her eyes, the same thing I’m thinking of. Kissing her in the hallway last night.
She walks to the treadmill and yes, she’s wearing her workout tights. The look of her ass in them makes my jaw clench.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
“Yes.” I force my attention back to the weights. Grab one and lie down on the bench, ready for tricep lifts.
The air in the gym feels as weighted as the steel plate I’m holding, thick with possibility. Had she been lying awake last night too? Thinking about the two doors and a hallway that separated us?
I can only stand it for so long. I look over at her running on the treadmill, and I catch her watching me lift. Her cheeks color and her gaze darts down, landing on my chest. I have to divert her before she asks me about the scar.
There are a lot of things I want to do with Cecilia Myers before discussing the car accident.
“Have you heard from your friend?” I ask. “About yesterday?”
She nods, walking quickly on the treadmill. “Nadine’s over the moon. I don’t think she can really believe she sold as many paintings as she did, or how many journalists were there. I mean, neither can I!”
“Good.”
“Thank you for that. I know you pulled some strings.”
I shrug, which is a hard thing to do when you have a twenty-pound weight above your head. Making the calls had been painless, save some idle chitchat it had forced me to engage in.
Not much work at all, I think, watching the smile on her face.
Her voice lowers. “Thanks for last night as well.”
I close my eyes against the tide of need rising inside me. She’d looked up at me with too much knowing, standing there in the hallway outside my grandfather’s office. I’d had to kiss her to get away from it.
But now I can’t get away from the memory.
“Anything to prove a point,” I say.
Her voice turns teasing. “Right. All you wanted was to win.”
“I don’t like being accused of things I haven’t done.” I turn to her, meeting eyes that never looked at me this boldly before I married them. “Trust me, Cecilia. I’mveryaware of all the things I haven’t done since we got married.”
The temperature in the gym rises another degree.
“Well,” she murmurs. She runs a hand over her forehead and pulls her ponytail up higher. She’s in a tank top, the smooth, strong lines of her arms on display. Then she jumps off the treadmill.
“Well?”
“I think I’ll try this machine.”
I sit up on the bench and watch her assault the shoulder press. She’s shoving, not pulling. I put down my weight and cross the space to her. “Like this,” I say, my hands atop hers.
This close, she smells like shampoo. Floral and warm and womanly. “Oh,” she breathes.
“You pull like this… can you feel it between your shoulder blades?”
“Yes. Wow. I have no muscles.”
“Building them will help you sit in front of the computer all day.” I brush her ponytail aside and place my hand on her upper back, right between the wings of her shoulder blades. Hair curls along the delicate skin at her nape. “Right here.”
“I didn’t know that,” she says.
I press a kiss to her neck. The skin is warm and fragrant beneath my mouth. “Now you do.”
