AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re staring,” he says simply.
My face immediately catches fire. “We’re talking,” I excuse. My voice comes out with a bit of a squeak. “Very close together, I might add.”
He pushes my chair back with one foot. I throw my hand to the conference table and catch myself, though the chair was only very gently rolling.
I narrow my eyes.
He smiles.
God, but he’s handsome when he smiles.
“You’ve stared, too,” I remind him softly. I can’t tell if it’s true or if I just hope it’s true. But his gaze drops to his hands, still clasped, and I feel a jolt of electricity up my spine.
“I’ll do better,” he says.
My heart is so loud, it’s like we’re at a club with how hard it is to hear him. “Alright.”
We just sit there. We’re farther apart now—deeply appropriate, a small part of my brain supplies, pleased. The other part, bigger and stronger and hornier, wants to close that space.
If I stretched my foot out, our shoes would brush.
“I would never have—” he stops.
I wince. “I know.”
“I hope that you don’t feel that my… that our… that the… I hope you don’t feel your experience at Donovan and Sons has been compromised.”
It has been. Of course it has been, and of course he knows that.
But…
“No,” I lie. Then, more honestly: “No one knows but us. And you’ve been nothing but appropriate since.”
David searches my face. I know he’s looking for any doubt.
Technically, David and I did nothing wrong—we didn’t know that we worked together, and we certainly didn’t know that he was my boss. If anything, I was the one who should have been on the lookout. Knowing the name of the head boss is a hell of a lot easier than knowing the name of a junior attorney who doesn’t even directly report to the boss yet.
And yet, I know David well enough to know that this is worrying him.
“Truly,” I say, and this time I really do mean it. “I’m not worried about the past.”
David’s expression relaxes. My fingers twitch on my knees, wanting to reach out.
I’mnotworried about the past—but I am very, very worried about the future.
“Great!” David’s voice is bright. “Okay, good chat, Miss James.”
“Glad to help, Mr. Donovan,” I reply, smiling. It’s fake, but I’m hoping he doesn’t know me well enough to tell.
He stands up and, after hesitating for a long moment, offers me a hand.
I shouldn’t take it. Isn’t that what this whole conversation was about? But it’s there, big and warm and tantalizing.
I slip my fingers against his.
It’s a brief interaction: he lifts me up, and I bounce a little on my toes from the momentum, and then he drops my hand.
Brief. Two seconds, at most. But inside of those two seconds, a whole world explodes. A yearning so strong it feels like a calling envelopes me, all the same.
