Page 11 of There's Pumpkin About You
“Is this your attempt at buttering me up so I’ll say yes to working with you?”
“What? Nooo!” I laugh awkwardly as I drag out the “no” until it is embarrassingly obvious that I mean “yes”.
His head tilts, waves falling into his eyes and kissing the end of his nose. “Why the hell are you talking like that?”
I take a seat in front of his desk.
“Never mind. Anyway… since we’re on the subject… any news on whether or not you want to do up the barn?”
He fixes me with this look and there’s something about it that unsettles me. Previously, he’s never really looked at me… he watches me, like an impossible math equation and it concerns me that this one look has the capacity to capture all of my attention in an instant. He analyzes every one of my movements—every flick of my eyebrow, each time I allow my mouth to lift in a smirk meant to rile, and he seems to pay particular attention to my lips any time that I lift my cup to my mouth to taste the sweet and bitter blend of my coffee.
It’s one of those stares which you aren’t quite sure if it’s done out of interest or out of disgust.
He sips his coffee once more, eyes glued to mine. “I’m still undecided.”
“What’s holding you back?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“I don’t trust you.” When he is met with no response, herolls the shoulder of his injured arm and continues. “Whenlooking for a business partner, one should typically look for more than a pretty face and a confusing personality. So far you’ve done nothing to prove you’re anything more than that.”
He speaks as if the knowledge of my apparent beauty is something he came to terms with long ago, but that can be anxiously dissected by my own brain later.
I clear my throat. “I am a lot more than that,” I say uncertainly, mainly because I’m not sure that I am. My breakup with Adam mixed in with the painfully quiet period for the business has really taken its toll on my confidence. I know I’m all over the place sometimes—shy one minute, outspoken the next—and that is down to my forever fluctuating belief in myself and my ability to be the confident woman I once was. It’s the reason why I’m so afraid of committing to anyone else. Why my head and my heart have both been on strike, allowing me to easily sit in my dark pit of self-pity and occasional pessimism.
Then again… I stayed with a man like Adam for so long so how confident can I truly have been?
“Prove it,” Gus leers, the tiniest hint of a smirk tugging at the corners of his pink lips.
“What would you like me to do, Gus, show you I’m not going to jump off the bridge just because my friends did it?”
He stands from his chair and the room shrinks as broad shoulders and a tall figure take over the small office space. He stalks towards me; his movements composed but tense. My breath shallows and for a brief, pathetic moment, I believe myself to be the object of the desires of a man I’ve just met and not the reason for his frustration.
It looks natural on him—this level of confidence that others have to spend decades begging for. Every speck of dust, every atom in the air follows him and so does my gaze.
When there is nothing more than a single step between us, I jump up from the chair. My stance seems pathetic in comparison given that I reach no higher than his chest. I’m small, even with my knee-high heeled boots, and I want to shrink at the intensity of his towering form.
The chair behind me blocks me from creating some distance between us as he swallows it up. He takes that final step until one breath in is enough to have my breasts flush against him.
His hard gaze narrows at something on my face. Whatever it is, he looks both intrigued and annoyed by it.
“Less than one percent,” he mumbles gruffly.
“What?” I whisper, so enchanted by the atmosphere that I don’t want to interrupt it.
Thick, dark eyebrows dip. “There’s a less than one percent chance of you having this beauty spot in this specific place. Did you know that?”
I open my mouth to respond, but suddenly he reaches out to gently trace a finger across it, cutting off both my words and my air supply. I snap my mouth shut as he runs his finger along the spot that holds all of his attention.
“Hey, guys, I’m making a run to the bakery, do you want any—” Bash’s words are cut off mid-sentence by the sight of Gus’s hand stuck in the air and me scrambling away from him, grateful that there is now something that separates Gus’s intensity from my shy temperament. “Am I interrupting something?”
“No!” I all but yell, my voice breaking. I clear my throat and try again. “No, no. Nothing at all. I was just going. Gusneeds more time and I really should be going anyway so I can sort out some stuff at home since I’ll be coming and going from here for a while.”
“You’re staying in town?” Gus asks in a low voice, arm still stuck in the air.
I avoid eye contact as I answer. “No, I just make the drive down each morning.”
