by Amelia Wilde
“Oh, I was just—I was just a little absorbed, that’s all.” I laugh, but it sounds awkward, nervous. I haven’t done anything wrong, and still.
Well, I haven’t done anything wrong here. And maybe it wasn’t wrong to stop what was happening between Levi and me. Maybe it wasn’t wrong then, but it sure as hell feels wrong now. This minute, at least. I have no idea how I’ll feel in five minutes, or ten. The world has been knocked off its orbit and I can’t keep up with the shifts in gravity.
I want him. I need him. I hate him. I should never have done anything with Levi in my parents’ house. I was always going to let the heat overwhelm me. This isn’t what I wanted, and it’s everything I wanted.
Shit. How long have I been sitting here, thinking about this…again? Helen is looking at me from the threshold of my office with narrowed eyes. She looks like she’s searching my face for clues.
I clear my throat. “What can I do for you, Helen?”
She pats a hand against her curly silver hair. “I wanted to check in with you on the last batch of submissions. I know there were a lot.” Helen purses her lips. We just ran a contest that ended in May, and more manuscripts than we were expecting entered, the manila envelopes filling bin after heavy plastic bin. I have a team of six interns doing an initial once-over and sorting out the ones who didn’t follow requirements. Then they read the remaining ones and bring me anything that looks promising. I’m working my way through all of those, plus any agented submissions. The manuscripts that come over the transom—not that Drawstring has an actual transom—will have to wait.
“We’ve still got at least four hundred to process.” I swing back to my computer and pull up last night’s email update from the lead intern. Sophie is from the Creative Writing program at NYU and a thousand times more brilliant than some of the bankers and CEOs I’ve met in my life. “The team is handling it well.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Helen has her arms wrapped around her own batch of manuscripts. She handles her own submissions as well. One day, if I’m at this long enough, I’ll have industry contacts like hers—agents that send me the best. If I can stay in this field that long, that is. If things keep going the way they’re going, I won’t have a choice. Even with the recent…family mishaps, I should be able to leverage some of our name recognition into a higher-paying job.
That will only happen if Levi’s auction idea goes down in flames.
For all I know, it might already be a smoldering pile of rubble. I haven’t heard from him since yesterday, when my own choking anxiety about all of this, my own feelings battling it out in my chest, made me dump a pitcher of ice water on the proceedings in my dad’s den.
“Are you—” I look back at Helen, whose face says she doesn’t quite believe me. “I can try to speed things up, if you’d like. I’m sure some of the interns have a few more hours in their schedules they’d be happy to give up.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary—not yet, at least. Just keep me updated. If things get overwhelming, we can bring on more interns. Or Kristin can shift some of her workload around until we announce the contest winners.”
I give her a big smile. “Sounds like a plan.”
Helen winks at me, then turns to go. She’s almost out of sight when she stops and pokes her head back in the doorway. “Oh, and Ruby? There’s—” She laughs a little, as if the situation is almost too strange to put into words. “There’s something for you at the front desk.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I’ll go check it out.”
“Do that.” She laughs again, then moves on down the hallway.
I click out of my email program and stand up from my seat. What the hell could possibly be at the front desk, other than another set of late manuscripts? We already passed the threshold for late arrivals, and if that was what got delivered, why didn’t Helen just bring them to me?
Very strange.
I head out of my office and down the hall. The reception area is on the other side of Drawstring’s floor, so I soak in the sunlight beaming in from outside. I’ve been so lost in thought today, trying to bury myself in work and failing, that it’s three in the afternoon and I’m just now noticing the beautiful day.
The moment I step into the reception area, I see it.
The bouquet is not from the flower cart on the corner. Oh, no. One look, and I’m blushing furiously.
It’s not enormous, but the crystal vase and the white blooms remind me of something I saw in a magazine recently—an arrangement in a Baccarat Harcourt vase. Two steps closer, and I’m certain. That’s exactly what it is. My face burns, and the heat gets stronger when the receptionist, Melanie, sees me standing there with my mouth open.
“It’s not your birthday,” she says with a sly smile. “Ruby, who are these from?”
“I don’t…I don’t know.” I approach on legs that are on the verge of trembling and stare down at the arrangement. But I do know. There’s only one person even tangentially related to my life who could afford—at this moment in time—a bouquet that costs over a thousand dollars. “Is there a card?”
Melanie reaches forward and plucks a white envelope from between the blooms. She hands it over, then steps to my side, looking over my shoulder.
It’s hard to resist the urge to turn away, but I do, opening the envelope like I get this kind of delivery every day.
On the card are a few words in handwriting somewhere between elegance and a scrawl:
No hard feelings.
-L
Chapter 20
Levi
Two days have never felt closer to a lifetime, and the wait as Ruby makes her way from her office to my town car is quickly approaching an eternity.
I agonized over the flowers all night on Wednesday night, after a silent ride back to the city. Ruby wouldn’t look at me—she quickly focused her attention out the window, and then on the manuscript she pulled out of her bag. The only thing I heard from her at all was her murmured goodbye when she got out at her building.
I desperately wanted to tell her—to try to get through to her—that her hesitancy wasn’t something to be ashamed of.
Things got hot between us, and they got hot fast. I don’t blame her for wanting to slow down. I don’t blame her for feeling conflicted. I’m assuming she feels conflicted, because every other word she says to me reveals as much, but the way her body was responding...
In the end, I settled on the flowers because even if she didn’t want to speak a single word to me as we drove away from her family’s estate, something is different between us. I can’t deny it, and I doubt she can, either.
Whether she wants to deny it is another story altogether.
I heard nothing from her yesterday, though the delivery was confirmed. This morning I sent a single text message asking about her availability for the afternoon. Her only reply? I’m still available.
I flip through inventory on my tablet, forcing myself not to stare at the front door of the building. She wouldn’t be able to see me—the windows of the town car are tinted—but if she’s ambivalent about this...
I can’t help rolling my eyes at myself. Jesus, I’m just as torn as she must be. At least I know I want her. I want her so much—I want to do so much more with her—that it doesn’t matter that she’s technically a client, and screwing clients is bad for business.
The door on the passenger side of the car opens, and I shove the tablet down to the seat next to me.
“Hi, Phillip.” Ruby’s voice is pleasant, but reveals absolutely nothing. She’s standing so close to the car that all I can see are the folds of her flowered sundress until she steps inside, lowering her head to get in. She slides along the seat, scooching toward me just enough to let Phillip close the door behind her.
Every movement is deliberate, controlled. She places her bag onto the seat next to her, between us. She smooths her dress over her lap.
Then she looks up at me, a pink blush spreading across her cheeks.
R
uby bites her lip.
Do not reach down and adjust yourself right now. Don’t fucking do it.
I fold my hands in my lap again. Maybe if I act nonchalant about it, she won’t notice that I’m hard as a rock. Ruby presses her lips together, like she’s having trouble with the simplest greeting in the world.
Phillip climbs into the front seat and takes the first available opening into traffic.
There’s only one thing to do—take this out of her hands.
“Hello, Ruby.”
She lets out the softest breath. “Levi.”
There’s a pause, and we both get up the courage to break it at the same time.
“I wanted to thank you—”
“I hope you didn’t feel—” I break off, grinning at her. “You go first.”
Ruby smiles and drops her shoulders an inch. I didn’t notice the tension in her body when she first stepped into the car, but now that I’ve seen it, it’s impossible not to notice that it seems to be lessening, just a little. “I wanted to thank you for the flowers. They’re beautiful.”
“I’m so glad you liked them. I hope you didn’t feel…” What was I going to say a second ago, when I started talking? “I hope you didn’t feel like they were…putting you on the spot.”
She rolls her eyes, and her smile widens. “The rest of my office was very interested to find out who they were from.”
“Did you tell them?”
“It’s none of their business.”
“You’re terrible.”
Ruby gives me a look. “I never said I wasn’t terrible.”
I have no other choice but to seize the moment. The conversation isn’t at a strained halt, so I go for it. “I’m sorry if you felt…overwhelmed about what happened on Wednesday.”
She drops her gaze to the seat between us, but then her magnificent blue eyes are on mine again, and a jolt of electricity runs from my shoulders to my fingertips. “I felt like an idiot.”
“I feel pretty damn stupid sometimes when a gorgeous woman kisses me.”
“I didn’t feel stupid about kissing you.” Ruby sucks in a breath. “I felt stupid about stopping.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“Because we’re past the point where it makes sense to lie?”
Ruby narrows her eyes. “Did it ever make sense to lie?”
“Not to each other.”
When she understands what I’m saying, a slow smile works its way over her lips. “Oh, so you were in denial about your feelings for me?”
“Yes. That’s exactly it. I didn’t want to admit that I found you so excruciatingly attractive that I threw all business caution to the wind and offered to hold an auction instead of selling you on the original deal.”
“Sounds like you have admitted it.”
“What about you, Ruby? What haven’t you admitted?”
Her face is redder by the second. “I couldn’t hide the way I felt about that dollhouse.” She flicks her eyes toward the ceiling of the car. “The dollhouse, of all things. And when we were on the sofa…” Her voice drops, and she has to clear her throat. “I admitted…”
I move toward her, across the seat, but I don’t touch her. “I’ll never forget it. You told me you didn’t hate me.”
“I didn’t hate the way you…the way you made me feel.”
“Do you hate it now?”
“No.” One whispered word, and all of the turmoil from the past two days slips away. “But Levi…”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know if I can…if I can do this. The auction—you, in my family’s house…” Her hands flutter upward like she might cover her mouth. “You’re the last person I should be talking to about this. You’re the last person I should look to for any kind of…for anything. This should be professional...”
“Oh, Ruby.” I draw one finger down the line of jaw. “Professional? Us? I don’t think so.”
Chapter 21
Ruby
I catch his hand in mine, holding his palm against my cheek. I should be peeling it away, pushing him away from me. But even though I want this to be the kind of relationship that starts and ends with the horrible task of scattering my family’s valuables to the ends of the earth, I just can’t do it.
I want his touch too much.
I’ve been craving it.
I need it like a woman in the desert needs a drink of water, and from the energy arcing through Levi’s eyes, he needs it just as much as I do.
“We have to be.” The words are raw in my mouth. “We have to be, at least when it comes to—when it comes to the house. It makes me…” I draw in a ragged breath. “All of it together—you, sorting through everything, the auction—all of it together is just too much. Do you understand?” A desperate note enters my tone at the end of the sentence, and I hate the sound of it. I want to be the kind of woman who can face everything with grace and poise. I’m not that woman now, and I certainly wasn’t her when I broke down over that damn dollhouse.
“I understand.”
I let out a breath that’s caught between relief and disappointment. God, will anything with Levi ever be straightforward? Will it ever be easy to lose myself in the touch that I spend all day wanting, only to feel torn in two about finally getting it?
Levi’s not done speaking.
“When we’re dealing with matters of the estate and the auction, we’ll be professional. You’ll be nothing more than my client.”
He’s giving me what I wanted, and his words are like claws in my heart. How? How?
“But when we’re alone…” His eyes flash, and his hand tenses against my face. I can’t let go, and I can’t let him pull it back. Not that he’s tried. “Tell me I don’t have to stay cool and professional and distant when we’re alone.”
I can hardly breathe. “I would hate it if you did. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it.”
He grins, and my core melts. “You don’t have to know.”
“Do you?”
He moves closer and brings his other hand up to my face, then pulls me gently forward until he can press his lips against mine, a weightless kiss that sends fire rushing through my chest. “Damn right I do. It started the moment I saw you.”
“I didn’t—” He kisses me again, harder, deeper, and when we come up for air I lose the thread of the conversation for a long moment. “I wasn’t doing anything but standing there.”
“You looked lost.”
I pull back a little, giving him a look. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those men who goes after vulnerable women to fix them.”
He laughs out loud, and his voice sends a curl of desire down my spine. “No. I’ve never been interested in damsels in distress.”
“I ended up being in distress. You haven’t forgotten that pathetic phone call, have you? Because—”
“Before you made that phone call, you turned me down. You looked me in the eye, and you told me you were worth more than I was offering. Not—not you, exactly, but your family, their estate. You wouldn’t even accept the offer as a starting point for negotiations—you just dismissed me outright.” Levi laughs again, thinking of it. “It was the sexiest thing that’s happened to me in years. Most women—” His expression goes serious, but there’s still a light dancing in his eyes. “Most women either want my money or want me to think they need my money. You needed it. You wanted nothing to do with it.”
“So as long as I don’t want your money, you’ll want more of me?”
The last of the smile disappears from Levi’s face. “Oh, no. It’s way past that now. I want you aside from all of this. Aside from the auction, aside from money, aside from everything else. I want you. I want the way you’re so...” He drops one hand to the side of my neck, tracing a path downward to the neckline of my dress. “You’re so damn careful to keep your worries locked away, but when we’re together—”
“You see all of them. I can’t hide from you.”
“I can
’t hide from you.” Levi’s tone is deadly serious. “I’ve never once lost control with a client before. I’ve never let it go so far. And I’ve never offered my services for practically nothing, just because I was so captivated by a woman that I couldn’t let her go.”
I laugh, but it’s so full of heat that it’s almost more of a moan. “You were ready to let me go when I turned you down. You turned your back on me. You walked right out.”
“I wanted to run back in.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Now that sly half-smile returns. “Levi Blake, running back into an estate sale to beg a woman for a scrap of her attention? Not likely.”
“Not then, you mean.”
“Not then. Now? I’d run into any room with you in it. I’d beg on my knees for your attention.”
I don’t want to see him on his knees.
That’s the truth that overwhelms everything else roiling in my mind right now. I don’t want to see Levi on his knees. I want to be on mine. I want that same power to hold me in place again, just like it did on the sofa two days ago.
“Don’t beg on your knees.” It’s a plea that’s so soft I’m not sure that he hears it.
But he does hear it.
“Mmm,” he says, nodding just slightly. “No, it’s not for me to beg on my knees, is it?” I shake my head. “It’s for you.”
Oh, my God, what have I gotten myself into? What happens when all of this comes crashing down? What if the guilt grows and grows, despite this wall that we’re building between business and pleasure, and drowns me?
I want answers, but then Levi’s lips are on mine, and he’s pressing me back against the door of the town car, and I am lost, utterly lost, and the answers become meaningless.
Then the car rolls to a stop.
Chapter 22
Levi