right off my face. Should I tell him? Maybe I shouldn’t tell him.
“I think it went well. There were no barnyard invasions, and when I gave my pitch, I was on fire. I was the man. It was some of my best work, if I do say so myself.” He frowns in puzzlement. “The only thing was, Constantine Galatos, our buyer? He was staring at me the whole time and I’m not sure why.”
I grimace. “I think I might know why.”
He looks at me with alarm. “What?”
“You didn’t shower before your presentation?”
“Nah, I was running late, so I just threw on a suit. I mean, I did check myself in the mirror before I got in front of the camera. Why?”
“You, uh…have manure on your forehead. Maybe it fell out of your hair or something, after you’d checked yourself.”
The look on his face. In high school, I would have died to see it. I would have photographed him, printed the picture, stuck it to his locker with Krazy Glue, and shared the picture with all my friends.
Right now, I feel as sick as he does. He spent half the damn day helping me, and this is what he gets.
“Holy. Freaking…” His voice trails off. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows hard. “I just did a hundred-million-dollar pitch meeting with cow shit on my face.”
A hundred million dollars? “If it helps any, it just looks like mud.” He stares at me blankly. “It might be mud,” I say hopefully.
He looks as if he’s about to lose his lunch. “I’m going to take a shower now.” He leaps to his feet and stalks off.
I look down at Aceto and scratch him behind the ear. He lets out a low, happy purr. “I don’t think it helped,” I say.
Chapter Sixteen
SIENNA
When Donovan comes out of the shower wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist, I do my very best not to ogle.
Instead, I call him into the kitchen and gesture at the drinks tray. “Black coffee, also some decaf in case it’s too late in the day for you to drink coffee, and a wheatgrass and bone broth protein shake.” I swallow the urge to throw up as I describe his Smoothie of Barfiness.
“No thanks.” He leans against the counter, steeped in gloom. “I’m too depressed to punish myself right now. I’m more in the mood for Nanny Sue’s cookies.” He sighs heavily. “I can just about smell them.”
I pull open a drawer in the butcher block counter. “And that’s because I made an emergency call to Jamie when you were showering, and she dropped these off.”
I hand him the box of cookies and watch his eyes go wide. He’s a little boy on Christmas morning. It’s a good feeling.
“Milk?” I say.
“Please.”
I hurry and get him a glass.
“You are a princess,” he breathes. He takes a bite of cookie, then a long swig of milk.
“Go on.” I nudge him with my shoulder. “Tell me more.”
“You are gorgeous, thoughtful, and sexy.” He shoves the whole cookie in his mouth and chews. “You’re the besht,” he says, spraying crumbs.
He eats four more cookies and drinks half the glass of milk, then sets it down.
“Of course, I can’t do this every day,” he says regretfully, looking at the cookies.
“You need to give yourself a break,” I tell him. “You’ve always driven yourself so hard. I saw it in high school – you just got more and more intense. You always had to be the top of the class, the best at lacrosse, better than everyone else, but it never seemed to be good enough. The same thing with the running, and your diet. It’s like you’re constantly competing in some contest that you’ll never let yourself win.”
“Well, I… Yeah. You’re not wrong.”
“I’m not saying that you should gorge on chocolate-chip cookies all day long. You’re capable of moderation. It’s just that every time you eat something delicious, or relax a little bit, you beat yourself up for it. If you never let yourself enjoy the rewards of your hard work, what’s life for?”
“God, you’re so smart. How can someone who’s so pretty be so smart? One more,” he says, and grabs another cookie.
Then he looks down at the box. “I’m being a very bad husband.” He holds out a cookie to me.
I take a bite, and the chocolate gooiness melts and caresses my tastebuds like a lover. I moan aloud.
The look in his eyes goes heated. He reaches out and strokes my face. “There