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“Morning,” he said. “I’m guessing you still need to get dressed.”
“Yeah, sorry. It’ll only take me a minute.” I stepped back to let him inside. “You can have a seat if you’d like.”
I rushed back to my bedroom and threw on some leggings and a soft, stretchy hoodie that hugged my body. By the time I came back out, Harrison was standing in the front room of my apartment, looking at the art on my walls. I took a second to check him out before I came down the hall.
“I’m ready,” I said.
“Off to the spa, then.” He opened the door for me and ushered me out of my apartment.
Once again, a black SUV with darkened windows was idling in front of my building, Cody standing outside wearing sunglasses. He nodded at me and opened the door to the backseat.
“Good morning,” Cody said.
“Morning.” I slid inside, and Harrison got in after me, closing the door.
Ethan was behind the wheel, his hands already on it.
“Good morning, Miss Bailey,” he said. “Buckle up, please.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I wasn’t a child. I was obviously going to wear my seatbelt.
“So you have the spa this morning, then you have the rest of the afternoon to get some work done,” Harrison said. “What do you have to work on?”
Yet another reason why I liked Harrison—he seemed genuinely interested in what I did, and not just because he had to know to protect me.
“I have a lot of content to edit.” I had a full-time editor because I posted so often, but I liked doing it. I was good at it, too, so I still edited some photos and videos every week. “So I’ll probably be sitting in my office, staring at a screen until I get hungry enough to order dinner.”
“Editing video? Or photos?” He was looking at me as much as he could in the relatively small space. He was so huge that he blocked the view out the other window.
“Both.” My cheeks flushed. “I don’t edit my photos too much, because I want to remain authentic. But I touch things up. And I tend to bulk-record videos, so I’ll mostly have to do that. Vlogs and stuff about cooking or fashion.”
My audience was overwhelmingly female, so I doubted he’d be interested. But still, he looked like he was.
“So you’re a burgeoning chef, too.” Harrison’s smile widened toward one side, deepening his right dimple.
“Hardly.” I laughed. “I just like to make healthy recipes, and that’s what my followers want.”
“I see. So you won’t be whipping up a four-course meal for twenty-five guests any time soon?” He slid his finger underneath the band of his watch. His hands were just as big as the rest of him, and that had my thoughts jumping right into the gutter.
My face got even hotter. I was still a virgin by choice. I’d gone to an all-girls boarding school, where I was too shy and, to be honest, awkward to talk to guys from the nearby all-boys school. And during and after college, I was bombarded with male attention to the point where I wanted to take it super slow with the guys I did pick.
I kept my distance from a lot of men, not knowing if they liked me for me or for my family’s money. I’d had one boyfriend, and to his irritation, I didn’t really go past taking my shirt off with him.
Basically, I usually had a lot of self-control. I touched myself from time to time when I was in the mood, but I wasn’t lusting after men’s hands. Now all I could think about was how Harrison’s big hands would feel on my body. Maybe even between my legs.
I pressed my thighs together, then remembered that he’d spoken.
“Oh, definitely not,” I said with a chuckle I hoped wasn’t as awkward as I felt. “And hosting parties isn’t as fun as attending them. I can never have fun if I’m worrying about people being tended to.”
“Good thing you have a lot of parties coming up soon.” Harrison glanced past my head out the window. “And good thing you have this spa day to relax before all the events you have.”
“Yeah. It’s been a while since I’ve been to a masseuse.”
The muscles in my back were tight from Pilates and general tension from everything that had been going on, and my skin wasn’t as glowing as it was before. A lot of my job required regular upkeep—workouts, haircuts, extensive skincare routines, perfect nails, everything. Some of my followers took it upon themselves to shred my pictures to pieces, pointing out every flaw I hadn’t hidden or airbrushed out. I didn’t have thin skin, but I wasn’t impervious to people’s comments.
“It’s definitely relaxing,” he said. My eyebrow went up in question, and his grin widened. “I’ve been to spas before. Mostly when I played football and needed massages to loosen up my muscles. My sisters dragged me along with them, even though the team’s massage therapist was available. I think they just wanted to see me get a pedicure.”
I laughed, trying to imagine this enormous man in a pedicure chair. “There’s nothing wrong with men having well-groomed feet. It was sweet of you to go with them.”
