Just a Girl - Becky Monson Page 0,76

news staff could come in here soon,” I say as Henry starts kissing a path up my neck and to my jaw. I don’t want this to end, but I also know getting caught kissing my executive producer in the station audio booth would definitely not look good for either of us.

He pulls away, giving me a nod. “We should probably exit at separate times so no one catches us.” He gives a conspiratorial double brow lift.

I smile mischievously and grab him by the shirt, pulling him into me. “Sounds like we just had a clandestine meeting.”

The corner of his mouth quirks upward. He leans in and kisses me softly. “That’s pretty sexy.”

“It is,” I say. “Shall we sneak out and meet each other somewhere for a drink?”

Henry looks away from me, the smile on his face falling slightly. Then his eyes meet mine, that sly grin of his back. “How about you come to my place. I have drinks.”

I let go of his shirt and take a step back, up against the padded wall again. I want to be with Henry, but that feels a little too fast for me. We still have a lot to unravel here, a lot to figure out. I’m not jumping into something headfirst without knowing exactly what all this means, and going back to his place seems to hold a lot of connotation. Plus, I’m not quite ready for him to see me . . . all of me. I still have things to work through here.

He holds his hands out, palms toward me. “To talk. I promise that’s all I had in mind. Well, except I do plan on snogging the hell out of you,” he says, the corner of his mouth pulling up again.

“I think I can agree to those terms,” I say, my lips pulling up as well.

“Do you want to do the honors?” He holds out a hand toward the door.

I take a breath, rubbing the back of my hand over my lips. “Do I look okay?”

“Beautiful,” he says. “Always.”

I open the door and float out of the room.

Chapter 20

Henry: I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes off you.

Me: I like your eyes on me.

I add one of those heart-eyes emojis to my text. It’s the weekly meeting, and he’s at one end of the room, and I’m sitting next to Jerry on the other end holding my phone under the table so wandering eyes can’t see it. I’m also having a hard time keeping the huge smile that wants to spread across my face at bay.

Secret texting is the new sexy.

Henry and I are a thing. Or at least, we’re going to give this thing a try.

“I’d like to give this a go, if you would,” he said last night, as we were snuggled up on his plush dark-leather couch in his high-rise apartment not all that far from mine. He’d also made good on his promise to snog the heck out of me, and I’m pretty sure our lips were meant to be together. My brain was coming up with all sorts of ideas. A destination wedding in Hawaii, extended honeymoon in Europe . . . The two-story craftsman-style house with the blue door was back on.

“I’d definitely like that,” I said, relishing the feeling of his arms around me. I’d dreamed up moments like this in my head for so long, I never thought it would actually happen.

“Okay,” he said, removing his arms and repositioning so he was able to look at me. “We need a few . . . ground rules, I s’pose.”

“Ground rules?”

“Yeah . . . to protect our jobs.” He looked at me with something akin to worry in his eyes. “We can’t let work know,” he said. “Not yet, at least.”

“Okay . . . but secrets like this only last so long.” I understood where Henry was coming from there, I did. Something had happened to him at his last job. But still, a ripple of unease ran through me at the thought of keeping it a secret. “Besides, the dating policy is only being enforced because of you.”

Henry then grabbed my hand with his, rubbing circles with his thumb. The unease dissipated. “I know, I did that. I promise, I’d rather have us out in the open. I’d rather us be real at work and everywhere else, but I . . . everything is new here. I can’t . . . I can’t risk it.”

“So what are we supposed to