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Dr. Croft’s footsteps followed. “You can’t shove food at me and expect me to bend over backwards to give you what you want like everyone else.”
I stopped short and whirled back on her. “I see. Everything’s been given to me on a silver platter—”
“Oh, no, no silver platter foryou.” She poked me in the chest. “You’re aplatinummember.”
I caught her hand against my chest and scowled directly into her eyes. Suddenly I realized how close we were standing. It felt even closer than we’d been on the plane yesterday.
For a long moment, we both froze, her hand still pressed my chest, my hand over hers, suspended in an intimate pose.
That same electrical current seemed to charge between us, surging where our fingers touched. It was the anger, the frustration—but also something else, a magnetic force that I couldn’t break free from.
And I didn’t want to.
I searched her amber brown eyes, close enough now to make out the narrowest band of a green rim. Despite her anger, she stayed here, her gaze locked on mine, breathing in time with me.
Before I could figure out how to make that last, she jerked away like she’d realized she was having a moment with the love child of Mr. Bean and Satan.
I stutter-stepped back, away from her. She shook her head like she was trying to clear it.
Yes. Definitely. I needed to think more clearly too.
Without another word, I strode from the break room.
It seemed like hours from the time I left the break room to when I reached my apartment, vacillating between numb and nauseated. I’d been so wrapped up in trying to make sense of whatever awful thing had just happened—any part of it—that eating all three donuts and half the cold fries on the way home barely registered. I wasn’t sure if a chicken sandwich and four donuts was enough to make me feel as sick as I did—but probably.
“Natalie?” I ventured.
My sister didn’t respond, and for one wild moment, my mind flew to our middle sister. Had something happened? We were always dreading some disaster from her: another arrest, another stint in the hospital. Natalie usually had to bail her out or pick up her poor kids.
But then I heard the shower running in the bathroom. Natalie was here. Nothing was wrong.
She might be a while, so I went to my next best option: Phil. (Phil actually does like to hear about my day. Makes his variegation more pronounced. I tested it.)
“What is the matter with me, Phil?” I asked my houseplant.
Predictably, he didn’t respond aloud. I picked up his pot and settled on my bed, cradling Phil in my lap.
I had no idea what had almost just happened with Davis Hardcastle.
And I wasn’t sure whether I was more upset about the “happened” part—or the “almost” part.
The water in the bathroom shut off, and within another minute or two, the door opened. PJs on and her hair in a towel, Natalie passed my door but backtracked. “Hey, you’re home.” Her eyebrows stitched together. “Hard day?”
“Davis.” It was the most sense I could make at the moment.
“The guy from the plane?” Natalie narrowed her eyes at me. “Everett Hardcastle’s brother?”
“He works at Beaufort.”
“No.” She crossed the room and dropped onto my bed next to me.
“He bought me donuts.”
Her brow furrowed again. “He did?”
I wasn’t making sense, and I knew it. I had to start from the beginning.
So I did: from the moment Davis Hardcastle walked into the conference room. He was handsome enough to stop not only traffic but time, apparently. He had to know the effect he had on women.
