they said it would be.”
Now iAm was rubbing his head like it hurt. Then he muttered something under his breath and looked across that desk. When he didn’t say anything, she felt as though he were trying to speak with his eyes. There was no chance to ask questions, however. The outside door opened behind Therese and—
As a blast of arctic winter air shot into the corridor, she couldn’t keep the smile off her face. And forget about the flush that went through her body.
Trez was bigger, better, sexier, smarter, fitter, handsomer—every -er you could tack on to every adjective that had ever been used to describe a male of worth. Even though she had seen him a mere eighteen hours ago, the absence had gone further than making her heart grow fonder. It had turned him into a living, breathing fantasy.
And on his side? He smiled back at her. And smiled. And smiled.
Okay, she really needed to get another burner phone. So they could talk to each other during the day. She had wondered whether he had tried to call her—but then remembered he had been with her when she’d discovered her cell was gone—
“Allow me to break into this moment,” iAm said sharply.
She and Trez snapped to attention as if a drill sergeant had threatened them with dead lifts for insubordination.
“Why didn’t you tell me what had gone down at the club?” iAm demanded. Except then he put up a hand. “Wait, don’t answer that. I’m just glad she’s okay.”
“I wasn’t in any real danger,” Therese said.
Hell, there had at least been three feet between the muzzle of that gun and her face. Maybe four. No problem.
iAm sat forward and pulled a folder across the desk. Opening it, his finger went down the form she had filled out when she had first been hired.
“You never gave us your emergency contact information.” He tapped one of the vacancies she had left. “I’ve got to know who to get in touch with if something happens to you here at work. If you’re injured in an accident. If you don’t come in at all.”
Therese opened her mouth. Closed it.
“Me,” Trez said. “Call me.”
She glanced in his direction. She had been so struck by his presence, she hadn’t even noticed what he was wearing. But damn… the male turned a white silk shirt and a set of fine black slacks into a masterpiece. Did he never wear a coat, though?
As she worried about him catching a cold that turned into pneumonia that put him on life support, Therese pulled back from the tailspin a little. It was impossible not to notice how far she had evolved in such a short time. Just twenty-four hours before, she had been all now-is-not-a-good-time-for-a-relationship and do-things-on-my-own. Now? She was totally about this male, that rare sexual connection they shared rocketing her forward on a timeline of intimacy so fast she probably should be wearing a neck brace from the whiplash.
But she couldn’t argue with how she felt.
Nor did she want to.
She had been rootless, and suddenly was no longer. And the change felt too good to argue with.
“Yes,” she murmured as she stared at her boss’s brother. “If you could get in touch with Trez, that would be great.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
You want to talk about fried-egg pissed? Trez thought.
Behind that desk of his, iAm was so angry, you could have cracked a yolk on his forehead, and gone scrambled with no problem at all.
Trez looked over at Selena—no, he told himself, he had to remember to refer to her as Therese, at least in public. “Would you excuse us for a second?”
“Yes, sure,” she said. “Of course.”
Clearly, she had picked up on the vibe. Then again, you had to have a completely different definition of a-okay, hunky-dory to miss what was doing with iAm.
“I’ll just go get my tables ready,” she murmured before hightailing it past Trez.
“I’ll come find you before I go to work,” he said.
As she glanced over her shoulder, her smile was like sunlight, and given the long winter he had been in—and he was not thinking in terms of the calendar—he soaked the warm up like he’d been frostbitten all over his body.
After she disappeared around the corner, he shut the door to his brother’s office and leaned back against it. “So what’s the problem.”
iAm closed the folder without adding anything to the form he’d stuck his forefinger to like a dart. “What are you doing. Seriously.”
“Well, at the moment, I’m holding this