Page 41 of Tempted To Be Mine

He nodded again, and this time when he smiled, it almost reached his eyes. “No more couch sleepovers. Got it.”

“Thank you.”

“Friends?” He held out his hand across the table.

I took it, shaking once. “Friends.”

I had shaken his hand before. I had touched him before. So why in the hell did it feel like I was holding a live wire?

The word settled between us. Friends. We’d always been friends. We were friends first, which was exactly why this couldn’t become anything else. I’d seen what happened when the lines between personal and professional got blurry. I’d had a front-row seat to other people’s disasters. The fallout was always messy and someone always ended up with less than they started with.

I was not going to be that person. I was not going to be the manager who caught feelings for her client and torched the one professional relationship that actually worked.

“Friends,” I confirmed and released his hand after holding on a second longer than I should have.

“I’ll let you finish your breakfast. I’ll see you out there. Hopefully, it’s warmer.”

I snorted. “Have you seen where we are?”

He grinned. “True.”

The day got going after that. Another location, another clearing in the wilderness, another round of Jeremy looking impossibly handsome while doing things that made no practical sense.

Today’s concept involved him in a tuxedo, standing on the frozen lake with the mountains behind him. The ice had been tested and approved by Bernadette, but I still held my breath every time he took a step.

I settled into my usual spot near the production monitors, laptop open, trying to get some actual work done. Emails had been piling up. A hundred small fires that needed putting out.

But I couldn’t focus.

Every few minutes, my eyes would drift to the lake. To him. He acted like the cold didn’t bother him. He made standing on frozen water in formal wear look like the most natural thing in the world.

And every few minutes, I caught him glancing my way.

At first, I thought I was imagining it. Wishful thinking, maybe. But it kept happening. Between setups, while the crew adjusted lighting or the photographer reviewed shots, Jeremy’s gaze would find me. Just for a second. Just long enough for our eyes to meet across the distance.

I didn’t know what it meant. I tried to focus on my laptop screen. I read the same email three times without retaining a single word.

What was he looking at? Why did he keep looking at me? Was he thinking about this morning too?

I shook my head, forcing my attention back to the contract in front of me. This was ridiculous. I was being ridiculous. Jeremy looked at everyone. It was part of his charm. He made eye contact, he smiled, he made people feel seen. That was just who he was. It didn’t mean anything.

But then why did my heart skip every time our eyes met?

The shooting day dragged on. I managed to respond to a few emails and review the preliminary contract for a cologne campaign that had been in negotiations for weeks. Small victories. But my mind kept wandering.

I watched Jeremy charm the female models between takes. Something twisted in my stomach. That was new. And unwelcome.

I had no right to feel jealous. Jeremy flirted with everyone. But now, after waking up in his arms and feeling that flutter of heat every time I remembered it, watching him turn that charm on someone else felt different.

I needed to get my head on straight.

Jeremy was my client. My professional responsibility. Whatever I’d felt this morning, whatever I was feeling now, I needed to shove it into a box and bury it deep. We had work to do.

I couldn’t afford to let some inconvenient feelings mess that up. I knew that. The rational part of my brain understood it completely. The other part was going to need a little more convincing.

I closed the contract I’d been trying to review without finishing it and opened Jeremy’s January schedule instead. Dates and times and places, things I could focus on.

Across the ice, he turned and found me again.