But close isn’t good enough.
Her body pressed against mine isn’t enough to get where we need to go, where I need to go and where she sure as hell needs to go if her behavior is any indication, but I don’t kiss her yet. No, not yet. I wait, every moment a delicious hurt, and feel her tremble in my arms.
“Roman....” Her voice is low and husky.
“Yes?” I breathe her in, the scent of her shampoo, the sunscreen scent on her skin.
“I—I thought you said to fuck the rules.”
“That’s right. That’s what I said. And I’m the boss.” I tighten my hand around her chin another infinitesimal amount. “I decide what happens here. Your feet are on my ground.”
“I know....” She’s hardly breathing, and her pupils are huge and dark.
“It’s just that I haven’t heard you ask,” I murmur into her ear. It’s a hardship, but I resist tugging the pins from her hair and letting it spill down her back. “This, right here? This is the point of no return, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes. I would say that.” Jenny presses herself closer. I didn’t think there was any space left between us, but if there was, it’s gone now.
“I’m a good fucking boss,” I continue. “I want all of my employees to be happy. I want them to be satisfied. I want them to know that they’re in good hands. And above all, I want them to ask for what they want.” My lips are so close to the skin of her neck that there are a few moments of accidental contact. “Ask for what you want, Jenny. If what you want is to keep torturing me, then do it. Walk around the office all day like you can’t tell you’re driving me crazy. Ask me to go in the pool again and pretend it’s only for photos that you’re never going to use.” An expression flashes across her face then, so quickly it’s gone before I can read what it is. “I don’t think you want that. I think you want more than that. But maybe you’re not willing to admit it.”
Her pulse hammers beneath the pad of my thumb. “I never said that.”
“You never said much of anything except get in the pool, Roman. Wear this swimsuit, Roman. Don’t watch me as I dive under the water and then climb out again, Roman.”
“Please.”
It’s one word delivered on an exhale, so soft it could be carried away by the breeze, but we’re so close that it lands on my lips instead.
The first time I kiss Genevieve Starlight, who has transformed herself into the irresistible Jenny London, she tastes like possibility and summer and wine. The first time a tiny moan escapes her throat, I swallow it whole. She parts her lips and lets me in to explore like she’s been waiting her whole life for this. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this, and I didn’t even know it.
Her arms snake up around my neck, holding tight like she’s dangling from the balcony and not standing with her feet firmly planted. I release her jaw but only so I can put my hands back where they’re aching to be—at that sweet curve leading from her waist to her hips. I’ve been seeing it in my dreams ever since that damned yoga class and I know it now. I know that I can double down on being in charge in the office and let go of some control when it comes to her.
Breaking my own rules has never tasted so sweet.
My own lungs betray me, forcing me to come up for air. “God.” It’s the cleanest, clearest breath I’ve ever taken. Jenny leans back in my arms, trusting me not to let her fall. She looks a little dazed. “That should make it easier.”
She wrinkles her nose, confusion intruding on her expression. “Make what easier?”
I lift a hand and press the cuff of my sleeve to my lips. They’re very nearly numb. “Being around the office in such close proximity day in and day out.” I hadn’t realized how much of a toll it was taking, not touching her, until this moment.
Jenny nods, glancing away and back again. “Yeah. Much easier.”
I open my mouth to explain that I don’t mean just the one kiss—I could never mean just the one kiss—when there’s the rattle of a tray behind us.
The waiter leans over the table five feet away, looking studiously down at the silver trays he’s uncovering.
It’s time for the main course.
13
Jenny
I do what anyone would do the first time they get kissed by Roman Bliss on the balcony of the resort’s most exclusive suite in the golden light of June’s finest sunset so far. I sit down across from him at a table intimately set for two and eat the greatest filet mignon of my entire life.
What choice do I have? I’ve crossed over into a fantastical world where something I’ve done has gone according to plan. Wildly according to plan. Not that I fully believe it. Yes, I felt it in his kiss. Yes, it made me want to melt straight through the balcony and spend my final moments as an evaporating glisten on the sand below. All of that seemed so real.
Seemed so real.
I could also be high. Endorphins can have a drug-like effect on the brain, which is why you want to do everything you can to encourage that rush when you meet someone. I researched it extensively when I decided to stop living a disastrous life as Genevieve and reinvented myself.
There’s a complicating factor, too, and that’s the steak itself.
As a lovesick teenager I always thought that if Roman Bliss kissed me, I’d go on a hunger strike so as not to replace the taste of his lips on mine with anything else. As a mostly rational adult, I know better than to turn down an expensive filet that’s been butterflied and cooked to an exquisite medium-well. It’s an island in a delicate pool of peppercorn sauce. One quadrant of the plate is taken up with miniature potatoes cut in half, swimming in the same sauce. It’s all so perfect that I don’t have to add salt.
It’s got to be a survival mechanism, the way I fall so completely in love with the steak. The food itself tugs at my heartstrings, and every bite that hits my tongue is a revelation. I never thought I’d say that about meat, yet here we are. My total focus on the meat and the duet its playing with the sauce—the sauce, oh god, the sauce, can they send some home with me?—is keeping me from overthinking what just happened.
“I took a guess on the steak.” I pause mid-bite to look up at Roman, totally confused. The first thing to catch my eye is his lips. The lips I, Jenny London, was kissing mere moments ago. In the context of the vastness of time, the kiss is still happening.
“A guess that I would eat steak?” This seems like an obvious guess, since my third day on the job Roman sent out for burgers and I ate one in plain sight. I’d venture to guess there are not many people who can appreciate a good burger but not a next-level steak. I shake my head as if this is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. “Of course. Who could turn this down?”
He gives me a smile that’s pure indulgence. “How you like it cooked.”
“You nailed it.”
Roman beams at the praise, and I can’t imagine this is the first time someone has complimented him on one of his decisions. That has to be what his entire life has been about, up to now. “And the rest of the evening?”
My breath catches in my throat. The rest of the evening hasn’t happened yet, but it has been irrevocably altered by the fact that he kissed me. Oh, my god, he kissed me. And before he kissed me he made me tell him that I wanted it. He plays this game so well that I have to remind myself once again that it is a game he’s playing with me and nothing more.
How the gamer becomes the gamee.
I have to say something.
“The rest of the evening...” I take another look around at the room like there’s a secret checklist I’m going over in my mind. “...has been beautiful.”
The waiter steps in to refill our glasses. I’ve downed a glass and a half of red wine despite my true feelings about it. The wine! I’m not high. I’m buzzed. There was the champagne before this, and paired with the kiss...
This is a situation that calls for caution. Even more than the rest of the evening. I’m still on heightened alert for things to escalate, since most of me would, in fact, like
for things to escalate to more kissing.
There’s only one thing standing in the way of that, and it’s what happened after we became aware of the waiter’s presence at our table for two.
Roman detatched from me, though it happened more slowly than I would have expected. I would have expected that he’d jerk away, mortified at being caught doing something like that with something like me, but it was a slow slide of his arm from my waist and he only ended up half a step away. What he didn’t do was throw the waiter out of the room and sweep me up in his arms and take me to the master bedroom. Judging from the bulge in the front of his pants, this wasn’t an easy decision. Still, he’s given no hint that it was a difficult one, except...you know. The bulge.
“Beautiful,” he repeats. In his mouth, the word sounds like a three star review out of five. Fine enough, but no home run.
I force myself to look back into his eyes, even though doing that is like staring into the sun. “Gorgeous,” I offer. Another bite of steak sends my entire mind sinking into the sensations. The peppercorn sauce is perfectly salted. The steak itself has a texture I can only describe as transcendent. And all at once it hits me that I need to take a moment.
I stand up so abruptly that Roman startles, putting his glass down on the table and jumping up after me, genuine concern in his eyes. “Is everyting all right?”
“I have a call—” I cut the words off at the pass. There is no call. How could there be a call if my boss is sitting right here at the table with me? The fact of him is making it hard to get oxygen through my veins to my brain. On top of that, there’s the wine. “Where’s the...” I cast around the suite, aware that I am looking more and more like an idiot by the second. This isn’t a fucking restaurant. The bathroom won’t be hidden down some secret passageway that looks like you might emerge from it with a job as a dishwasher. I know where it is, even. There’s a small hallway, more of an alcove, really, off the main room where we’re seated. The alcove has a single door. That’s where it is.
“The restroom.” It’s not even a complete sentence, but it’s the only answer I have for Romans’ bewildered look. Then I get the hell away from hte table before anything else can happen.
In the bathroom, I lock the door behind me, then test it to make sure it’s in place. My hands tremble on the knob, and they keep trembling when I lean over the sink and peer at myself in the mirror.
“You have gone way off the rails,” I tell that woman, brandishing a finger at my reflection.
It’s true. I came here because I wanted to prove a point. The point was that I’m over the stupid crush I had on Roman Bliss in high school. For the one year we overlapped, I was head over heels for him in a painful, incessant way, and I knew nothing would ever, ever come of it.
But the truth is that I’m not over that crush. It came roaring back to the life the first moment I saw him in the lobby that day. And a worse truth is that Roman Bliss is even more magnetic than he was back then. He sees me now, and I can’t blame him for it. I did this on purpose. All those nights I spent studying fashion and etiquette and how to be sexy—yes, I studied how to be sexy—they paid off.
Not only does he see me, but Roman has grown into a good man. He spends half his life checking in on his brothers and making sure the resort is running well. From what I’ve seen, they consult each other.
I snap my fingers in front of my face. His brother’s aren’t the reason I can hardly draw a breath.
It’s because all of this has been based on some seriously mistaken assumptions and a healthy side of lies.
I thought I had it justified to myself. I really did. But now there’s something else I need to justify: the way I feel about Roman. And then I need to figure out how I’m going to move forward.
A gentle knock sounds at the door. “You okay, Jenny?”
I stand up straight and reach for one of the towels in a holder by the sink and pat at my dry face.”Yes,” I say through the towel. “I just had to make a decision.”
14
Roman
“I’m taking over.”
My brothers look at me like I’ve uttered something completely ridiculous and in a foreign language.
I’ve summoned them all here for an early morning meeting. Beau is in a dress shirt and a pair of swim trunks, clutching an oversized coffee and probably still buzzed from whatever event he hosted last night. Charlie is in gym clothes, and he’s only stopped looking at his phone—undoubtedly at the spreadsheets on his phone—because I dove headfirst into the meeting with no preamble. It’s lucky Driver’s in town, because he needs to hear this, too.
Huck, the youngest of us, rubs his hands over his face. “Why am I here again? Are you taking over my senior seminar, because I could really use—”
“I’m not taking over your classes.”
He purses his lips, looking just like our mother. “You made me drive two hours in the middle of the night to tell me that nothing’s going on?” Huck crosses his arms dejectedly over his chest and leans back in his seat. It’s wedged too close to my desk in order to fit everyone into my office.
“Please,” Charlie chimes in. “It was nine o’clock on a Monday night. Don’t act like you’re ever asleep before dawn.”
It’s Huck’s last semester in college, and it will be over in two weeks, so I don’t doubt that Charlie has a point.
“It’s none of your business what time I go to bed, you old woman,” Huck shoots back. “Beau’s up all night, too, and I don’t see you busting his chops.”
Beau laughs out loud. “I’m working. You’re partying.”
“I saw you spike your coffee on the way in.” Huck raises his eyebrows at me when he says it.
“Well, aren’t you just a little detective.” Beau raises his coffee cup in a sarcastic toast that Huck doesn’t see at all. “In my opinion, you should use your detective skills on something that matters, like the whereabouts of our missing brother.”
“Let’s not speculate on Asher’s whereabouts.” I’m getting testy, and it’s not entirely their fault. After the way things went with Jenny last night, I think I’ll be permanently blue-balled. “He couldn’t make it to the meeting this morning.”
“Again, I drove two hours—”
“Shut it, Huck,” Driver says mildly. He’s sitting in the other seat in front of my desk, his feet up on the corner of it, hands resting idly behind his head. “The longer you talk, the longer it takes me to get back on the road.” Driver, true to his name, has taken it upon himself to take the Bliss name out of Ruby Bay and get it plastered on billboards and racecars and any number of other items across the country. He calls himself the Head of Sponsorship and Development, but he’s the only one in his so-called department.
“Glad you brought that up. Because I meant what I said two minutes ago.”
Driver considers the skylight above his head. “You’re going out on the road for me?”
“No.” They always think I’m going to step in and do their jobs for them. Honestly, it might make it easier for me in the long run to do everything myself, but even in my wildest fantasies I can’t do the jobs of six people and have enough time left over to eat and sleep. “I’m implementing a new approval process.”
Beau drops his head back against the wall and groans. “Roman, don’t do this to us.”
“I’m not doing this to you. I’m doing it for you.” I take a deep breath. “Things have been slipping since Dad...” I let my voice trail off. I don’t want to blame the gaps in my management skills on his death. My brothers shift uncomfortably. “...since I took over. If we’re going to keep this place profitable, I need to become more hands-on.”
“More hands-on than you were with your new social media girl last night?”
That brings me up short.
Charlie doesn’t seem to notice that everyone in the office is staring at him. Even Driver has lifted his sunglasses from his eyes. Oblivious Charlie keeps scrolling through his phone, squinting at the screen.
Beau lets out a short ha of a laugh. “Is that all you’re going to give us?”
Charlie looks up at me for the first time, and what he sees on my face makes him clam up. “Yep.”
“I don’t fucking think so,” Huck says. “This is the first interesting thing anyone’s said since I got here.” He turns back to me. “What do you have going on behind closed doors, Roman?”
“None of your damned business.” My skin feels like it’s on fire, like I’ve been caught doing something wrong. Worse than wrong—illegal. Not only that, but Jenny’s office is thirty feet down the hall. If she’s not in there already, she will be soon, and the last thing I’m going to tolerate is a raucous discussion of whatever Charlie thinks he knows about last night. “What happens behind closed doors is—”
“I wouldn’t have called the open balcony of our Emperor Suite closed doors,” Charlie says wryly.
I stare daggers at him. “Are you kidding me right now?”
Beau claps him on the back. “Tell us more. It’s obviously business-related if Jenny—”
At the mention of her name, I slam my hands palms open down onto the surface of the desk. “New agenda item,” I bark into the ringing silence. “Charlie, stop lurking on the fucking beach.” He opens his mouth to protest, then thinks better of it. “The rest of you—you need to run your plans by me first for approval.”
“Does that mean—?”
“Yes, Beau. All of your plans. I need a list of the events for the next month, and anything else you plan to set up around the resort. I had a careful look at Charlie’s financials, and he’s right. We have to find places to trim costs. I’m going to need itemized lists of every outlay you have in mind so I can go line by line—”
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