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His voice carries from across the room. “What is?”
“Being this mortified, truly, and yet not wanting to sprint for the elevator.”
That gets a low, rough laugh. “Please don’t run away.”
“I won’t.” I suck in a deep breath. “It was my suggestion we come here, wasn’t it?”
“It was.” He pauses for a long, sobering beat. “Please don’t be embarrassed. It’s just us.”
And that.Thatis why I’m not running. Because I’ve spent more time with this man in the last year than with anyone else. Because I trust the energy behind the way he held my hand, and protected me from Andrew’s sharpest words, even if he doesn’t want to kiss me.
I swallow hard. “You should know something.”
“You can tell me anything.” His voice is closer now. He is closer. Not right behind me, but no longer across the room, and I didn’t hear him move because my pulse was pounding too hard in my ears.
“I overheard him. Andrew. In the stairwell. He suspected you of lying about the fiancée.”
“I was lying.” There’s an edge of fatigue to his voice.
“You probably had a good reason.”
“You trust me too much.”
I gasp. I trust him implicitly. “No. Rufus.” I spin around, my back to the city now. He’s standing in a wide stance, his hands in his pockets, his head dipped just enough I can’t really see his face because of the long shadows. “Why…”
He lifts his head slowly, his eyes hooded but his attention electric. I can’t look away, and from the way his gaze locks on my face, I think—or hope—that maybe he can’t, either. “Why would I say that? Is that what you want to know?”
It’s a slow, leading question.
My pulse grows heavy. “Yes,” I breathe. “I want to know.”
And there’s that wild hope again, roaring back to life.
Whatever Rufus’s reason for me to be wary, I really, really want it to be about blurred lines and a lot more than holding hands.
“I haven’t been a good boss,” he says slowly. “I’ve used your name.”
“My middle name,” I say, because I lost my filter somewhere around the second glass of a very good Bordeaux.
I’ve never had wine ordered by the region before tonight.
I’ve never done a lot of tonight’s firsts.
It’s all made me quite sassy.
He nods. “Your middle name. But that’s not the worst of it.”
“Oh?”
“Clover, I need to confess something.”
“Please do.” That sounds eager.
And a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, but he fights it. Oh, he fights it hard. He cares deeply about doing the right thing by me, which is going to be good in the long run, but it’s making tonight an agonizing fight.
Come on, Mr. Newton Smith. Fess up. Step over to the—
“The truth is, Clover, I’ve had absolutely terrible thoughts about you since you showed up in my office and called me Mr. Newton Smith for the first time.”
