Page 51 of Trust

He slipped his arms beneath her and lifted her off the mattress. “I think we need a shower.”

“Is that your way of telling me that I stink?”

She was smiling at him, and that was all he cared about. Screw his best friend. Ben would need to learn that his love for Lani was real.

Love. Yep, he wasn’t even freaking out thinking he was in love with her. But he knew she wasn’t ready to hear those words from him. Not yet.

He stopped by the light switch. “Can you get the lights?”

She flipped the switch, and he made his way to the counter. After setting her down, he headed to the shower. He turned it on then faced Lani. Her gaze had been down where his ass was, and he smiled. Her eyes widened.

“Yeah, that always happens when I’m around you.”

“It does not.”

“Eyes up here,” he said, amusement filling his voice.

Her cheeks were stained red when she finally looked up.

“And yes, it does. It has for years. I’d see you, and I’d get hard. Why did you think I’d been avoiding you?”

“Lack of taste?”

He barked out and laughed. “God, that is why I’ll always want you. You give me shit every chance you get. Well, and the fact that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to seduce me.”

“Yeah,” he said, leaning forward, pulling her bottom lip into his mouth just as she had done to his. He let it go. “You deserved to be romanced every moment of your life, Lani.”

And he planned on doing just that for the rest of their lives. He just planned on waiting to inform her because she might freak out and run in the other direction.

“Now,” he said, lifting her off the counter and into his arms, “I think we should see what fun we can get up to in the shower.”

He had spent the better part of the last hour looking for Lani. She seemed to have disappeared. As he hurried down the hall, he knew there would be hell to pay.

“Lose something?”

He stopped in his tracks and glanced at the open doorway. It was the conference room. His partner motioned him in.

“What the hell happened?”

“She’s disappeared.”

A roll of his partner’s eyes told him all he needed to know. “People don’t disappear.”

“Yes, they do.”

The anger on his partner’s face had him worried. “Have you noticed that the movie star disappeared too?”

He rolled his shoulders as irritation slinked down his spine. “No.”

“No? Do you mean that you hadn’t noticed or that they aren’t together?”

“I’m sure they aren’t together. In fact, she hates him.”

“Tsk, tsk. That’s odd that you’re ignoring that they have been seen together since he arrived. We might have a problem.”

“I heard her say more than once that the guy pissed her off.”

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