He laughs. God, the rich, decadent sound flows over me, and just when he leans in, he pauses. The breath that sings his hesitation passes through my parted lips and dances across the tip of my tongue. I inhale, breathing him in, expecting, waiting, for the touch.

It doesn’t come.

All that comes is a light laugh, and the cluck of resignation as he pushes away. He shakes his head. His shoulders are tight as he walks away and into the restaurant.

Do I follow?

Do I stand here?

You know what? I’m gonna stand here. Because my whole body is freakin’ trembling and I don’t think I can move anyway.

Jesus. Fuck. Christ. Asshole. I don’t think this will work at all.

Carter storms back through the door, my purse in one hand and the portfolio in the other. “Your notepad with my requests are inside your purse.” He hands them to me, and I hook the purse over my arm, then tuck the portfolio against my chest. His fingers burn through the fabric of my blouse as he touches my back and guides me toward the door. With his hand clutching the doorknob, he turns to me, barely inching the door opens. “Fuck, Bee,” he hisses out, stepping back and rubbing his hand through his hair. It messes up the usually perfectly styled locks, and I have to fight my smile. “Please do a really bad job in your design. I might just go crazy if you’re around all day.”

One of my eyebrows quirks upward. Do a bad job? Is he kidding me? I don’t want this contract any more than he wants to give me it, but I’m not going to flunk it the way I flunked Geography in high school.

For the record, Milwaukee is not a cocktail.

I brush his hand from the doorknob then grasp it with my own. The door is weighty, but I pull it open with one tug and take a step out onto the bustling, sunny sidewalk, and then turn. Our eyes meet as the sun warms my skin. “Oh… Carter. Don’t hope I’ll do a bad job… You need to hope someone else does better.”

Chapter Four

“I’m going to kill you.”

Charley rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. I made you go on a date—not take a ride on his disco stick.”

A small noise like a strangled scream escapes me. “I hate myself.”

“No you don’t. You just hate your inner slut.”

“No, no. I like her. She stops me being too uptight. I just hate that outside Bee doesn’t argue with her.”

My best friend picks up a canvas picture of a flower. “I suppose. You do need your inner slut when you work with your mom. Especially your mom. No offence,” she adds quickly, putting the canvas back on the shelf and glancing at me. “I love her, but damn.”

“No kidding,” I mutter, finding a gorgeous black-framed photo of the New York skyline. I take a picture of it with my phone and note down the price.

Mom just about lost her shit when I finally got back to the office. So what if I took a detour to Starbucks, to book a manicure, and had my cab driver drive around a couple of blocks a few times? I needed to breathe. I needed to take every bit of Carter Hughes’ essence left inside me and let it go before going back and talking about him again.

Needless to say, after thirty minutes of grilling about the meeting, another thirty with her asking me why my office still looks like a tornado traveled through it with whiplash, and two hours of her flitting between clients and asking poor Carlos for everything but his first born and testicles.

Mom’s difficult, for sure. But she means well in all she does… Even if she does those things in a way that errs on the side of mean.

“She doesn’t know, does she?” Charley asks, pointing to a clear glass vase filled with shiny black stones. Black and white fake flowers are sprouting from the top, and I snap a picture, if only so she doesn’t get offended. I’m dying to get hold of her apartment and take her shopping. “Earth to Bee.”

“Know what?” I ask, feigning innocence.

“That you made like a football in the end zone and scored with your prospective client.”

I roll my eyes. Sheesh. Can no one say ‘had sex with’ these days? “No, my mother does not know, and neither will she find out.”

I can’t imagine the hell that will rain down upon me if she ever found out. It’s actually terrifying to consider it.

“You can’t really think that.”

I run my hand over the back of a leather bucket chair. Charley gives me a thumbs up. “I do, okay? She can’t find out. She’d probably force me to sell my share of the business to her and write me out of her will. It doesn’t matter if I get the contract or not. If she finds out, she’s going to think that if I get it, it’ll be because we… you know.”

“Horizontal tangoed.”

“Yeah. That. And if I don’t get it, she’ll think it’ll be because we… well.”

“Did the wall-waltz.”

“Oh my God. Just say sex!” I snap, finding black leather dining chairs that match the bucket chairs. They come in charcoal too, so I add those to my list of potential items for the restaurant.

“Fine. You sexed each other so hard you can’t even be in the same room,” Charley summarizes, picking up one of the black mats on the table. “Accurate?”

“I… yeah. Shut up.”

“And now you’re going to design the shit out of his restaurant and hope that someone else does it better.”

“I… yeah.”

“Why? Why not just screw it up deliberately or do such a basic design that there’ll be no way he can pick you?”

“Because…” I sigh, turning to face her. “I don’t want to do that. It’s not honest. I don’t want to work for him, but I don’t want someone to see bad designs and think they could be my best work. Plus Mom will know. She knows I don’t half-ass anything, even if I only have three days to do it.”

Charlie blows out a long breath and pauses. Her eyes cut to me, but she averts her gaze as she picks up a candle holder then puts it back down again.

“What?”

“This could be the most obvious question ever,” she hedges, “But why not just refuse on the basis that the time frame is too short? The other designers will have had more notice than you. Why did you only get three days?”

“Scheduling? I don’t know. It was Mom’s appointment, remember.”

“Was it?”

“Charley, he said so. I don’t think Carter Hughes has to stoop that low just to see a woman again. He didn’t even look like he particularly wanted me there.” Well, he wanted me there. He made that very clear—just not in the way I should have been there.

“Just sleep with him again. Get it over and done with then refuse on the basis of your irresistible personal relationship.”

“Irresistible personal relationship? Really? You think I should walk up to a sexy as sin, rich as hell, successful man and tell him I can’t work for him because he’s irresistible, right after he’s told me the numerous ways he wants me naked and against him?” My eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s see how long that conversation lasts.”

“Jesus. You’re bitchy when you need sex.”

“I’m bitchy all the time. I just like you enough to not voice it all the time.”

“Oh, I’m honored.” She snorts, but flashes me a grin anyway. “Do you have enough stuff here? I’m starving. Like my stomach is about to nibble its way through my gut hungry.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine. Let’s get food.”

***

Sometimes having a best friend who’s the ice to your fire isn’t a good thing. Sure, she’s generally more reserved and quieter than me and usually holds me back before I blow, but it also means that she thinks before she acts. I tend to act and then regret. As evidenced by this past weekend.

I barely slept a wink last night after considering her idea about the appointment.

Did he actually book it before we met? Mom never said if it was a late booking or not. Then again, she was more concerned with my office than anything else. But she did also call ahead… Someone had to have gotten that message and passed it on to him, right?