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Focus.
He signed off the meeting and sat back, careful to angle his body away from hers. It didn’t help. Cameron had always considered his office obscenely large compared to the amount of space he actually needed to do his job. That was before Trish took up residence in it, filling every inch with her sunny presence. He didn’t know how to deal with it, and commanding her to get the hell out wouldn’t solve anything—and would only make him look like an asshole in the process.
Rightly so.
Cameron cleared his throat. “Did you decide on a color for the boardroom?”
Trish blinked those big blue eyes at him. “That’s what you wanted to talk about?”
No, what he wanted to talk about was how she felt about being spread out on his desk so he could kiss her until she was dizzy. Then he’d inch up that tease of a skirt and taste her there, too. Right here. In his office. While they were both on the clock, so to speak.
He was so out of line, it wasn’t fucking funny.
Focusing on work when she was so close he could run his thumb over her full bottom lip was a herculean task, but Cameron didn’t have any other option. He nodded, his voice gruffer than it had right to be. “The ceilings are just as high in there as in the front office, and you’ve already proven you can’t be trusted to follow the instructions on stepladders. Since I doubt you’re going to hire someone to do it, I’ll help you.” There. That was reasonable.
Except her eyes had gone wide and her jaw dropped. “That is the most ridiculous, backhanded compliment I’ve ever heard. I’m not even sure there’s a compliment in there. I am more than capable of doing my job.”
“I never said you weren’t.”
“Actually, you did. Thirty seconds ago.” She shoved to her feet, which put her breasts directly in his line of sight. Cameron jerked his gaze back to her face, but it wasn’t any better for his control. She was gorgeous when she was pissed and trying not to be, her hair moving around like a live thing and her body practically vibrating with repressed fury. She pointed a finger at him, seemed to realize she might be crossing a line and let her hand drop. “Aaron hired me to do this job because he knows I’m capable of handling it. That includes managing painting.” She stalked out the door without another word.
Cameron stared hard at the doorway, walking back through the conversation to figure out where it went wrong. Choosing not to kiss her again was the right call. That, he was sure of. Asking about the boardroom was a reasonable thing to do. Maybe he’d spoken a little harsher than he intended, driven by the need to keep the lust from his tone, but he hadn’t yelled at her. Telling her to accept his help was only reasonable because she’d about broken her damn neck when she’d tried to do the front room herself. It was possible he could have worded it more carefully, but he’d hardly called her inept. He’d been more abrupt in other conversations and she hadn’t reacted so intensely.
Another replay of the conversation and he thought he had the answer. I am more than capable of doing my job. Well, of course she was. Aaron wouldn’t have hired her if she wasn’t, sister or no. Cameron certainly wouldn’t have signed off on it unless she was qualified. She might not be well-balanced when standing on a stepladder, and her college degrees weren’t an exact fit, but she obviously had an eye for creating a welcoming environment, and how she’d handled herself in the meeting just now had only reinforced that hiring her was the right call. She was fucking perfect for the job.
He’d told her that...
Cameron frowned. Shit, he hadn’t told her that, had he? He’d been so focused on the thought that she might pull another stunt like working after hours to finish the front office—and get hurt in the process—that he’d barked at her over it. He frowned harder. He wasn’t wrong about telling her not to paint without him. He knew he wasn’t.
But...maybe he could have approached it differently?
“Fuck,” he breathed. He wasn’t equipped to tiptoe around another person’s feelings. If he was, he’d have been better at the client-facing part of this business. Trish wasn’t a client, though. He couldn’t just end a meeting and cease having to deal with her. She’d be in this office, day in and day out.
He had to apologize.
Cameron played through his options a couple times, but there was really only one reality. If she was pissed, it would make the office unlivable. What was more, it made her a whole lot more likely to go ahead and paint the damn boardroom—and potentially hurt herself—when he wasn’t around. Since he wasn’t a fan of either option, he pushed slowly to his feet and went in search of her.
