Page 24 of Jealous Boss

We eat dinner almost every night in his apartment. When my second attempt turns out disastrous, he takes over.

I shouldn’t be so happy he does, butdieu, watching Ethan Villiers chop vegetables and handle a saucepan is fast becoming one of my many favorite things about him.

And when we sit down to eat, every meal is a study in restraint.

His thigh brushes mine beneath the table. My knee knocks his under the counter.

One night I drop a spoon and when I duck to retrieve it, he’s already there—his face inches from mine under the table.

It’s stupidly cliché, but I swear I stop breathing when his hand cups my cheek and his thumb strokes just below my bottom lip like he’s memorizing it.

But then he pulls back.

Every. Time.

By Friday night, I’m raw with wanting.

Strung out on tension and every smoldering look he shoots my way. My skin aches with it. My thoughts are filthy with him.

And when I go downstairs to bed after dinner, I lie in the dark and replay every near-kiss, every touch, every second of his breath on my neck like it’s some kind of exquisite torture.

He called mebaby.

And now I can’t help but wonder…

When is he going to finally break? And when he does…

Will I be ready for what’s coming?

* * *

Ethan

I’m losingmy goddamn mind.

One week. That’s all it’s taken. One week of her soft laugh, her dimpled smiles, the way she eats lunch like it’s a romantic act and not a sandwich.

One week of tracking her movements through the office like some executive-grade creep, waiting for her to glance up at me from the printer, from Maggie’s desk—where she seems to spend a lot of time with my PA—across the conference room, the elevator—anywhere.

I try to hide it but I don’t think I’m doing a good job from Maggie’s mildly exasperated expression.

I’ve ordered Pia to eat her lunch with me the past two days. Overruled partners who tried to reassign her. Told Maggie to lighten her schedule just so she’d have the energy to keep up withmydemands.

Now it’s the weekend.

She only needed to say the wordsneed some essentialsbefore I was volunteering. Again she’d looked surprised.

Then I watched, my breath held and my heart hopeful, as she dimpled up at me. And I melted like the schmuck I was.

So here we are, in the middle of a goddamn shopping trip.

Because I want to see her try on things and come over all flustered when I say they looked good.

I want to watch her touch little lace things with innocent fingers and not realize I’m picturing peeling them off her skin.

We do all of that.

I stand in a place whose name I can’t remember and watch her smear a trail of lipstick, first across the skin between her thumb and forefinger, then once she’d turned it back and forth under the store’s harsh lighting, up to her beautiful mouth.

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