hard to keep under wraps. It would be the simplest thing in the world to lean in a little bit, to give him a clear signal that she wanted a repeat of the other night—and more.
He’d kiss her until she forgot her own name, until she wasn’t worried about the future beyond where he’d touch her next. Until she felt the ground steady beneath her feet even as he made her fly. She’d hitch up her skirt and climb into his lap and...
“Trish?”
She blinked, her heart beating too hard. “Sorry, I didn’t hear what you said.”
Cameron reached up to touch the side of her face, gently guiding her to look at the monitor instead of him. “Client just logged on. I’m going to start the meeting.”
The meeting. Right. She swallowed hard. “Great.”
But he didn’t move back. His breath brushed the shell of her ear, drawing a shiver from her. “After the meeting, we’ll...talk.”
Talk? Or talk?
She stared blindly at the monitor, reality sinking its claws into her and digging deep. The attraction she felt for Cameron wasn’t going away—if anything, it was getting worse. Stronger. And if he meant what she thought—hoped, dreaded—he meant about talking, he was getting swept away alongside her.
Oh God, my brother is going to kill me.
Too bad she couldn’t bring herself to care. She’d played it safe for so long and she’d missed her dreams by a mile.
Maybe it was time to throw caution to the wind.
What could possibly go wrong?
CAMERON MANAGED TO get through the final meeting without letting his disdain for the outgoing client show—because he was so damn distracted by Trish’s flowery perfume. No, not perfume. It was too subtle. It was probably lotion or shampoo or something, and the faint scent rose every time she shifted. Her hair brushed his shoulders, and his hands clenched against the need to dig into the thick curls and tilt her head back so he could claim her mouth again.
Focus.
He signed off the meeting and sat back, careful to angle his body away from hers. It didn’t help. Cameron had always considered his office obscenely large compared to the amount of space he actually needed to do his job. That was before Trish took up residence in it, filling every inch with her sunny presence. He didn’t know how to deal with it, and commanding her to get the hell out wouldn’t solve anything—and would only make him look like an asshole in the process.
Rightly so.
Cameron cleared his throat. “Did you decide on a color for the boardroom?”
Trish blinked those big blue eyes at him. “That’s what you wanted to talk about?”
No, what he wanted to talk about was how she felt about being spread out on his desk so he could kiss her until she was dizzy. Then he’d inch up that tease of a skirt and taste her there, too. Right here. In his office. While they were both on the clock, so to speak.
He was so out of line, it wasn’t fucking funny.
Focusing on work when she was so close he could run his thumb over her full bottom lip was a herculean task, but Cameron didn’t have any other option. He nodded, his voice gruffer than it had right to be. “The ceilings are just as high in there as in the front office, and you’ve already proven you can’t be trusted to follow the instructions on stepladders. Since I doubt you’re going to hire someone to do it, I’ll help you.” There. That was reasonable.
Except her eyes had gone wide and her jaw dropped. “That is the most ridiculous, backhanded compliment I’ve ever heard. I’m not even sure there’s a compliment in there. I am more than capable of doing my job.”
“I never said you weren’t.”
“Actually, you did. Thirty seconds ago.” She shoved to her feet, which put her breasts directly in his line of sight. Cameron jerked his gaze back to her face, but it wasn’t any better for his control. She was gorgeous when she was pissed and trying not to be, her hair moving around like a live thing and her body practically vibrating with repressed fury. She pointed a finger at him, seemed to realize she might be crossing a line and let her hand drop. “Aaron hired me to do this job because he knows I’m capable of handling it. That includes managing painting.” She stalked out the door without another word.
Cameron stared hard at the doorway, walking back through the conversation to figure out where it went wrong. Choosing not to kiss her again was the right call. That, he was sure of. Asking about the boardroom was a reasonable thing to do. Maybe he’d spoken a little harsher than he intended, driven by the need to keep the lust from his tone, but he hadn’t yelled at her. Telling her to accept his help was only reasonable because she’d about broken her damn neck when she’d tried to do the front room herself. It was possible he could have worded it more carefully, but he’d hardly called her inept. He’d been more abrupt in other conversations and she hadn’t reacted so intensely.
Another replay of the conversation and he thought he had the answer. I am more than capable of doing my job. Well, of course she was. Aaron wouldn’t have hired her if she wasn’t, sister or no. Cameron certainly wouldn’t have signed off on it unless she was qualified. She might not be well-balanced when standing on a stepladder, and her college degrees weren’t an exact fit, but she obviously had an eye for creating a welcoming environment, and how she’d handled herself in the meeting just now had only reinforced that hiring her was the right call. She was fucking perfect for the job.
He’d told her that...
Cameron frowned. Shit, he hadn’t told her that, had he? He’d been so focused on the thought that she might pull another stunt like working after hours to finish the front office—and get hurt in the process—that he’d barked at her over it. He frowned harder. He wasn’t wrong about telling her not to paint without him. He knew he wasn’t.
But...maybe he could have approached it differently?
“Fuck,” he breathed. He wasn’t equipped to tiptoe around another person’s feelings. If he was, he’d have been better at the client-facing part of this business. Trish wasn’t a client, though. He couldn’t just end a meeting and cease having to deal with her. She’d be in this office, day in and day out.
He had to apologize.
Cameron played through his options a couple times, but there was really only one reality. If she was pissed, it would make the office unlivable. What was more, it made her a whole lot more likely to go ahead and paint the damn boardroom—and potentially hurt herself—when he wasn’t around. Since he wasn’t a fan of either option, he pushed slowly to his feet and went in search of her.
Unsurprisingly, he found her in said boardroom. The chairs around the old table had disappeared somewhere, and she stood on the table, in the process of changing out the overhead light fixture. Cameron froze, not sure if he should rush over to catch her in the event that she fell or that damn light fixture came undone and crashed down on her head.
