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“Anything to get me close to you, Button.”
“Your friend,” she said, reaching around to take his arms away from her body as she stepped back. “I’ve never been good at complicated. Simple is all I’ve ever wanted. I want to be friends, to get back to how we were. You being here at my work isn’t simple.”
“Okay.”
“You can’t have dinner with Viva people.”
“Make me a better offer,” he said, surprising her. At least it did until one corner of his mouth ascended. “I cancel on people all the time. I’ll stay away… Though I’d love to have you over for dinner. I got your favorite the other night and it went to waste.”
“My favorite is Chang’s, and they don’t deliver to you.”
He bowed forward to whisper above her ear. “They do for a twenty-thousand-dollar tip.”
His smug teasing tempted a smile to her lips, though she resisted and shoved him back. “You paid twenty thousand dollars for my dinner?” she asked, to which he shrugged like it was nothing. “And you didn’t get laid?” She hissed in a pained breath. “That’s got to sting.”
He laughed. “That’s nothing to what it’ll cost me to have it flown to London or Rome when you’re traveling to visit me there. Maybe I’ll just hire their chef for you.”
She couldn’t restrain her smile anymore. “Man, you are arrogant.”
“How do you think I got where I am?”
“Are you married?” she asked.
Still smirking, his brows rose in question. “Excuse me?”
“Stacey wants to know if you’re married.”
“Not married, but I’m taken,” he said, touching a loose section of her hair at her temple. “Memory never does justice to your beauty.”
“Stop it,” she said, assaulted by bubbles of excited flattery. “I’m at work… Alex.” Her friend. Nothing more. Though holding onto that truth was a struggle as she gazed up into him. “Tell me something no one else knows.”
“You’re the first thing I think of in the morning.”
“Before Venture?”
“Oh, long before then,” he said. “Venture doesn’t come to mind until after we’ve been in the shower.”
“We?” she asked, almost aroused by the thought. “You’re flirting with me, Mr. Gauge.”
“Let me buy you dinner and we’ll flirt some more.”
“I’ll come over tonight if you let me handle dinner.”
“You want to cook?”
Rolling her eyes to their top corners, she raised a shoulder. “Something like that. Will you trust me?”
“Will you come over in your underwear again?”
“If I say no, that implies I won’t be wearing any.”
“One way or the other, suits me.”
“Do you have children?”
He exhaled a laugh. “Children?”
“Stacey wants to know.”
