He didn’t turn around when I walked in, though I was sure he heard me coming down the stairs. Sure he felt my presence the same way I felt the heat radiating off him in my direction.
He was going to make me be the one to break the Morning After ice.
Okay. No big deal.
“Hi,” I said, feeling my cheeks redden for no reason other than I was in the same room with Donovan Kincaid.
Slowly, in his own time, he turned around. He narrowed his eyes as he looked me over. With a frown, he crossed over to a cabinet and pulled out a coffee mug. “I don’t recall setting a shirt out for you.” He handed me the cup.
I smiled, sure he was teasing, but quickly sobered when he didn’t return it.
“I was cold,” I said in my defense. Now that it was daylight, he could want me gone as soon as possible. “I’ll change into my dress after I shower, if you don’t mind.”
Or did he want me naked?
I held my breath waiting for a clue.
“I suppose I don’t mind.” His tone was neutral, though, and didn’t give me anything to go on.
I went to the coffee pot and poured myself a cup, trying to ignore the knot in my stomach and the tightness of my chest. The air between us was charged, but it felt like razors when I inhaled, I was so unsure of what we were. What would happen next.
Usually, I took my coffee with both cream and sweetener, but I didn’t want to push his hospitality so I spooned some sugar from the bowl and stepped away from the counter.
Donovan was waiting for me with creamer from the fridge. “It’s plain. It’s all I have.”
Goose bumps rode down my skin.
“Thanks. Plain is great.” I held my cup out and let him pour some in, wondering if I’d ever told him that I usually drank my coffee with hazelnut or if he’d just guessed.
“I had a protein bar for breakfast myself. But I can get you anything. There’s toast. Or fruit. Or eggs.” He opened the refrigerator and reached inside.
“I usually just have—” I stopped abruptly as he handed me an individual-sized cup of Greek yogurt.
“Or yogurt,” he said.
“Yogurt,” I said at the same time. “Thanks.”
“Spoons are in the drawer behind you.”
I didn’t move. Guessing that I took flavored creamer was one thing. My choice of breakfast food was another. “How did you—?”
“You eat your breakfast at the office most mornings.” Reaching over, he removed the foil lid on the yogurt. “Same thing every day.” He pulled on a lower cabinet handle and a recycling can emerged. He tossed the foil inside and shut it.
“You are perceptive.” I hadn’t even realized he’d ever seen me eating my breakfast. I was obviously the one who wasn’t perceptive.
“I said I was.” Since I hadn’t moved to get a spoon, he reached around me to grab one and stuck it in my yogurt cup for me.
“You’re also cocky.” This time when I grinned up at him, his eyes twinkled as though grinning back, even though his lips remained straight and even.
I stared at those lips, wanting them. He was already so near, his hand resting on the counter behind me, and who cared that I had yogurt in one hand and coffee in another? I only needed my mouth to reach up for a kiss.
I took a step in toward him, but he blinked and abruptly backed up.
“Look.” He scratched the back of his neck, evading my eyes. “I have some work I need to attend to.”
…and there it was. The brush-off.
Disappointment fell through me like an elevator with cut cables.
“I’ll take a quick shower and get out of your hair.” At least he’d been more polite about the way he’d asked for space this time. He’d made progress there. It just hurt that he still needed space.
I set my mug and untouched yogurt on the counter and, with my back to him, babbled on awkwardly. “I have stuff to do today anyway. I have to review the ROI on the social media campaigns for last month, and I’m behind on my opportunity analysis reports. I should really get started as soon as possible if I expect to put a dent in those.”
“No need to rush out. At least finish your coffee first.” His inflection portrayed nothing but poise.
I nodded and took a sip from my mug. He’d turned back to his tablet, so I could watch him as he drank his own coffee and flipped through the pages of the online Wall Street Journal. As though today was life as usual. As though everything was normal. Was this really still no big deal to him? Were we really in just a physical relationship? Did last night mean nothing more than every other time we’d been together?
After several heavy minutes of silence, he turned his head slightly in my direction. “Weston still has you doing the long-form OARs?”
He wanted to talk about work then. Fine.
“Yes. They’re time-consuming and the bane of my existence.” I hated the several-page analysis that Weston required monthly for every account that I worked, but I’d do a million of them if it meant the uneasiness between Donovan and me would disappear. “If they were helpful, that would be one thing, but mostly they just reiterate information from month to month.”
He nodded once. “Agreed. When you report to me, I’ll reduce the requirement to semi-annually.” He flipped another page on his tablet.
My brow furrowed and alarm bells rang in my ears. “I’m going to report to you?”
With his back still to me, he explained. “We have lax fraternization rules, but even so, you can’t report to Weston once you’re dating him.”
I almost dropped my coffee mug. “You’re kidding, right?”
He turned to face me. “No, I’m not,” he said gruffly.
Of course he wasn’t kidding. Donovan wasn’t the type to kid and everything about his tone and body language said he was serious.
“Weston and I discussed it before you started working for Reach. We decided to wait until you were officially dating to make the assignment transfer, but it will be necessary.”
I set my mug down and ran my hand across my forehead. “Wait…what?”
“When you start seeing Weston,” he said slowly, patronizingly, “you will report to me instead of him.”
There was something familiar about this. When I’d first arrived, Donovan had joked about me reporting to someone else, but the conversation had gotten dismissed. This was what it was about. They’d made arrangements in case Weston and I decided to see each other seriously.
God, that was a lifetime ago.
And Donovan thought it was still a possible scenario?
“No,” I said, shaking my head emphatically, which was suddenly pounding as heavily as my heart. “No.”
“No?” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the island behind him.
“No!” I was vehement this time. “Never mind that we’d have serious conflicts with you as my supervisor.” Okay, sometimes I found his power games hot, but that wasn’t the point. “I am not dating Weston.”
“Not now, you’re not. This is after he’s annulled his marriage that we’re talking about.”
I threw my hands up. “I am not dating Weston! Not now. Not ever. How can you even think that I would…?” I trailed off, realizing that I might have never fully clarified this.