It was probably my line next, but my brain locked up, and all I could do was hold tighter to Lachlan and wish everyone else would disappear.
Lachlan swayed against me. “But that perfume of yours really wreaks havoc on me in the evening,” he said. “When it’s just a ghost of a fragrance, when I have to work to catch it—that’s when it drives me wild.”
I was a puddle in a dress. A melting pool of awareness and heat. “Lachlan...” That was it. That was my complete sentence. A hundred impressions and feelings, yet words couldn’t capture one of them.
“I like to look at you at night.” His arms tightened around me. “Did you know that?”
Not quite as sexy, but also not a deal-breaker. “Like when I’m sleeping?”
Lachlan’s lips twitched before sliding into a smile. “Like when you’re sitting on the couch before bed. Your eyes are a little tired, that rod straight posture relaxes into the cushion, and you always put your hair up in some wild concoction. You’ve got a novel in your hand, and you’re totally engrossed and in another world. When you read your mouth parts a little.” His finger stroked across my lips. “Your eyes slide across the page, back and forth. I hear you sigh or watch you smile, and I wonder what’s happening in that book that has you so transfixed. But then I realize I’m the one who’s transfixed because I’m staring at you and can’t turn away.”
No man had ever looked at me like this. Like he wanted to pick me up and carry me back upstairs. “Cowboys,” I heard myself say.
“What?”
“My current book is about a cowboy.”
“Is that your thing, Olivia? Cowboys?”
“No.” Right now a video game creator was my thing, and I didn’t know what to do with that. Surely it was the ruse we’d created or the intimacy of the evening. Because Lachlan was not my type. And I was not his. “Work is my thing.” I wanted to cut off the source of this magnetic pull. “Work is my crush, my obsession. It’s what keeps me up at night and occupies all my thoughts.”
“All of them?” The back of Lachlan’s hand trailed a light path from my temple to the curve of my jaw. “I’m calling your bluff on that one.”
Did I dare tell him how I felt? Did I admit it was a powerful, yet undefined feeling that kept me up at night? “Sometimes I think about…”
The way he looked at my mouth was a scandal. “Yes?”
No, I had to stay focused. “The books you see me reading.”
“And?”
That look on his face, an open invitation to something he knew we both wanted. “And carbs,” I lamely told him. “I miss them. I think of them often and wonder if they miss me too.”
Lachlan curled his arm around my shoulders, and his lips whispered against my ear. “Little liar.”
If his mouth moved even one inch south it would graze my neck, and it had to be that one glass of wine I’d drunk because there was no other explanation for hoping Lachlan would do just that. The hand he held on my hip tightened, and as he pulled me so close a good intention couldn’t fit between us, his eyebrow rose in a question.
“I don’t want to like you, Olivia,” Lachlan said.
“Then don’t.” Because I couldn’t take it. It was leading to dangerous territory and giving me thoughts I had no business entertaining. “Please don’t like me.”
“I think it’s too late.”
The dancing stopped.
My heart stopped.
Had it not been for the flash of a camera, I would’ve thought the world had even pressed pause.
“Someone just took a picture of us,” I whispered.
“Then let’s give them some quality content.” Hands now framing my face, Lachlan sealed his lips to mine, cutting off my next PR directive.
Brand management could wait.
Because Lachlan was kissing me again.
In romance novels, kisses were so often described in terms of fireworks and other combustibles. But on immediate contact, Lachlan’s kiss felt like a thousand heart emojis bubbling up in my chest. Warmth, light, and giddy joy—that was the triple geyser of feelings shooting through my system now. So much desire and need, but beyond that a safe kinship that wrapped around my shoulders and whispered to my heart it would be tended well.
