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Teela shook her head, but he finally got a genuine smile he hadn’t shocked out of her. “And yet you play the hero. Who knew you had a straw backbone?”
He folded his arms. A muscle-flexing pose. He was shamelessly messing with her now. “You know I’m not made of straw. Where it counts.”
At the blatant inuendo, she rolled her lips together. If this wasn’t a conversation where he was on the back foot, he would’ve leaned over and kissed her.
“You’re made of good things, Haydn, and I adored being intimate with you. I might have adored it a little too much. The whole night was magical. And you coming here like this to explain—”
“Apologize. I apologize for the way I treated you. It was needlessly impersonal, and a total dickhead move.”
She looked at his plan B lunch offering. “I don’t know what to say. It was meant to be a one-time thing. I don’t wear stilettos.”
She was a tough audience.
“You can stay barefoot for all I care. Say that you’ll hang out with me. Show me Sydney. We’ll have fun. I fly out Monday morning. We both go on with our lives. You’re too smart to need a brush-off card. What do you have to lose?”
SEVEN
The smartest decision Teela had ever made was to open her business. She eyed Haydn’s lunch offering as if it was the passport to the land of dumb decisions. Fancy bread and fillings should not be so potent an incentive.
She should’ve put shoes on. She should’ve accepted his apology, shaken his hand and put an end to this complication. It wasn’t smart to agree to spend the weekend with Haydn. There were all kinds of implications—professional, personal.
Physical.
Yes, please.
Emotional.
No, she was over that.
He was no more her fee-paying client now than he was before she let him seduce her with star power, statesmanship and a dry car. He wasn’t trying to lead her on. He had a straightforward proposal.
He’d made her feel good before she let her pride get in the way.
What did she have to lose? Only sleep. Her sanity.
She could wear stilettoes occasionally and not be crippled. She picked up a sandwich. At first bite it was sinfully delicious, and she was all in.
Especially since now he waited patiently, reading on his phone, while she cleared her inbox and dealt with a few issues that would not hold till Monday.
The Sexiest Man Alive, Hollywood’s most bankable star, a guy using his fame and fortune to make the world a better place, walked into her crappy, no security office with lunch, apologized, and cooled his heels without fidgeting while she did mundane tasks.
How is this my life?
He didn’t try to hurry her. He didn’t make sly martyred sighs. He settled in, loafers kicked off, lying full-length on her old leather couch and just hung out, as if he had nothing else more important to do.
She was his more important.
She let a deep breath go. The happy in it got caught in her throat and came out as a cough, making him look over. A checking-in kind of look that truly didn’t help her focus. She’d never been so aware of her fingers on a keyboard. It was typo central and backspace junction, which didn’t make a lot of sense given she knew how he kissed, how he smelled, what kind of smile made his dimple pop, and that he dictated shitty nice knowing you, now piss off to the swamp you came from cards and knew how to give a decent apology when he stuffed up.
He’d given her an orgasm in a private pool not eight hours ago. And she’d given him one right back.
“Pretend I’m not here,” he’d said when he stretched out.
Bloody impossible. “You soak up all the oxygen in the room.”
“I’ll try not to breathe.”
He could be stone cold dead a week and he’d still command attention and it wouldn’t be from the smell.
