lifted his eyes, and she could see that she’d been right. The look on his face tore her heart into two.
‘I just don’t know if I can trust my judgement any more.’
She could see that the admission had taken a lot from him. And she wished that she could take away the pain that had come with it.
Instead, she bit her lip and said softly, ‘I do use our professional relationship as an excuse.’ She played with a stray thread at the bottom of her jersey. ‘To distance myself from you—yes. And because...’ She sighed, and gave up on the resistance every part of her screamed out when it came to him. ‘Because I don’t want to have feelings for you. I don’t want to open up to you and have you shut me out again.’
Or, worse, have you leave.
But she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
‘Do you...? Have feelings for me?’
She shouldn’t have said anything, she thought immediately, and then saw the sincerity in his eyes. Trust me, they seemed to say, and she spoke as honestly as she could.
‘I don’t know, Blake. I haven’t given myself the chance to entertain even the possibility.’
He nodded. ‘And if I promise to...to be open with you, too. Would you entertain the possibility then?’
Her heart accelerated. ‘Maybe.’
‘Okay.’ He held a hand out to her. ‘Can I take you home?’
She laughed, and nodded. ‘I guess so. I just need to put my shoes on.’
She slipped her left shoe on her foot, and was about to do the same for her right when Blake knelt in front of her.
‘Let me.’
He took the shoe from her hand and fitted it onto her right foot. For one ridiculous moment Callie felt as if she was in a fairy tale. Her Prince Charming was kneeling in front of her, fitting onto her foot the shoe that would make her his princess.
But then he looked at her, and all fairy-tale notions fled from her head. There was a heat in his gaze that made her burn from the place where his hand still lay on her foot right up to the hair follicles on her head. For a moment she wondered what would happen if she pinned him against the wall and continued where they had left off a few nights ago...
She shook her head and he smiled at her. But his smile was a wicked one, as though he knew exactly what her mind had jumped to as he’d slipped her shoe on.
He straightened and held out a hand to her. ‘Shall we?’
She exhaled shakily and took his hand. ‘Yes.’
BLAKE OPENED THE car door for Callie and felt his body tighten when she brushed past him to get in. He supposed he hadn’t recovered from their interactions earlier today. That kiss at the restaurant... Whatever it was that had happened in her office...
He didn’t know what had possessed him to put her shoe on for her, but he was glad that he had. If he hadn’t he wouldn’t have seen the way her eyes had sparked with a desire that matched his. She might not know if she had feelings for him, but she definitely wanted him. And that meant they were on the same page.
He watched as she typed her address into the GPS on his dashboard, and when the voice gave him his first direction he followed it. He glanced over at her, and frowned when he saw that her arms were crossed.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I think so.’ She didn’t look at him.
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, almost immediately, and then she sighed. ‘Everything. I’m just not used to this.’
‘To...us?’
She ran a hand through her hair. ‘To any of it. This is all new territory for me. Worrying about work. About whatever’s going on between the two of us. I don’t know—I guess I just feel...raw.’
Blake forced himself to keep focusing on the road, even though he wanted to pull over and hold her in his arms. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her that everything was going to be okay. Instead he settled for saying the one thing he thought she might need to hear right now.
‘You’re not alone, Callie.’
He took a right and didn’t look at her, even though he knew her eyes were on him.
‘I worry about what’s going on between us, too. But you don’t have to worry about work, okay? Everything is going to be fine.’
He wanted to ask her if he’d made her feel worse—about her worries over them, about the things she had just told him—but he forced himself to wait. She was opening up to him again and he wanted to earn it. So he just said it again.
‘You’re not alone.’
The rest of their trip was quiet. Blake didn’t know what she was thinking about, but her hands now lay on her lap, and he took it as a sign that maybe she didn’t feel so vulnerable any more. He wanted to kick himself for making her feel that way in the first place, but there was nothing he could do about the past. When he’d realised he’d made a mistake about Callie—when he’d realised that the failure of his relationship with Julia had had very little to do with them working together—he had wanted to call her immediately and tell her that he was sorry, that he wanted to make it up to her.
But his words wouldn’t have meant anything at that point, he had reasoned, and so instead he’d tried to show her through his actions. He’d made an effort not to keep up the act of being the boss she expected—the hard, cold act he had clung to in order to keep his professionalism with her. Instead he’d acted as he did with every other employee. Well, perhaps not exactly the same way, but he figured she’d earned some preferential treatment since her standard of work was higher than most he’d encountered.
He’d also enjoyed the way her eyes widened every time he engaged with her without the cold formality that had coloured his interactions with her before.
When his GPS announced that their destination was on the left, Blake pulled up in front of a light-coloured house with a rush of flowers planted in flower beds along the pathway.
‘I’m not sure who to compliment on your garden. You for choosing the flowers, or your gardener for planting them.’
She laughed and unlocked the door. ‘Both, I suppose. Thank you. I’ll pass the message on to Ernesto.’
He frowned. ‘Your gardener’s name is Ernesto?’
‘Yes. He’s from Italy. What are the chances of finding a young, attractive male from another country to do your garden for you?’
He couldn’t quite keep his face neutral when he thought about it, and she took one look at him before bursting out into laughter.
‘I’m
