Page 37 of Business Casual
I roll my eyes with a huff. Around and around we go. Charlie and I have been playing chicken with each other since a slow dance beneath the stars. I step backward, over to the reception desk, widening the space between us.
Charlie drags his hands through his hair. “I could help you.”
I don’t glance up from the reclaimed-wood desk I stole from a barn at Lovelight Farms, my attention occupied by a bound leather appointment book, oversized with pale pink pages. The first two weeks of appointments are already full, and that’s a different sort of pressure entirely.
I want to do well. I want to be worth the investment.
“What can you help me with?” I mutter.
“With the business thing…for the harvest festival. You were supposed to split it with Stella, yeah?”
I look up at him, still standing by the wall I painted, his hands in his pockets and an earnest look on his face. Charlie, waiting for me to say something. Charlie, waiting for me to accept the help he so freely offers. Charlie, waiting for me to flirt with him some more or to askfor space. I know he’d accept whatever it is I want from him, and it’s that, I think, that makes my decision for me.
I snap my appointment book closed. I want this itchy, anxious feeling out from beneath my skin. I want to set everything resting on my shoulders aside, just for one night. I want my mind to go somewhere else.
I want to know what his hands feel like on my body. I want to make a selfish choice.
“Yes,” I tell him.
“Yes?”
“I would like your help.”
A bemused smile curls his lips. “Okay.”
“With the business thing and with another thing too.”
He nods, confused. “All right. I’ll help you with whatever you need, Nova. You know that.”
“Good, because I’d like you to walk me home.” I swallow down the butterflies. “And then I’d like for you to stay.”
9
CHARLIE
I don’t knowhow I ended up in Nova’s kitchen with a jar of peanut butter and a bag of marshmallows, but I’m not exactly mad about it. Nova stares at me from the other end of the table with her chin in her hand, a wildly arousing combination of impatience and amusement etched across her face. Her left eyebrow ticks up every time I pull a new marshmallow out of the bag, and I wonder how much I can get away with before she kicks me out of her house.
I like pushing her buttons. She makes the cutest faces when I do.
“Good ’mallows,” I tell her, mouth half full, cheek bulging. It’s not my normal seduction routine, but nothing is normal when it comes to Nova. “Thanks for the snack.”
“You grabbed it yourself,” she drawls, leaning back in her chair. She took off her jacket in the entryway and I can’t stop looking at the slope of her bare shoulder or the inked lines that dance down her skin. Twisted vines. Flowers bursting from in between.
I could spend all night learning the art that decorates her body. I just might.
But she needs to ask me first.
She still hasn’t asked me.
I dip another marshmallow into the peanut butter. Nova sighs.
“Charlie.”
“Hmm?”
She sighs again and I roll my lips against my smile. “What are you doing?”
I pop the marshmallow into my mouth. “Waiting for you to ask me a question.”
