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I realized what I’d said a moment too late. But she didn’t laugh again. “I woke up naked, Cassandra, in an out-of-service hotel room. Alone, hungover as hell. But you’d been there. You signed our contract, which makes me think I didn’t completely screw the pooch, and you left me water and painkillers, which was nice.”

“You’re welcome.”

The stiff pleasantries would have been funny, but I was too preoccupied with needing the truth.

“My clothes were laid out, not by me.”

Cassandra sat back in her chair. “Are you happy we didn’t sleep together?”

“What? Of course I’m happy.”

Her face fell. Just for a moment before she put on her mask again.

She waswounded.

“Jesus, Cassandra, it’s not like that.”

“So, youwouldhave been happy we slept together?”

“Goddammit, you are aggravating.” I pushed off the desk. “What exactly do you want me to say? That I’m attracted to you and I wish we’d started off our professional relationship in bed? When I was blackout drunk? What the hell kind of relationship would that be?”

She’d blinked at the attractive part. Or the relationship part. Some distant, fuzzy memory came to me, just out of grasp. But a clearer memory slotted into its place, of yesterday.

That hazy, headachy, hungover feeling had been swirling around me as I’d gotten in the shower. But it wasn’t the headache I was focused on as I turned on the water as hot as I could stand. It was Cassandra. I stood with the hot water beating down on my back, holding my dick in my hand, picturing Cassandra’s face. I’d stroked hard and fast and angry. I’d wanted her—wanted to have slept with Cassandra and wanted to have remembered it.

Fuck. I wiped the memory from my mind before my dick got any more ideas.

I sighed, rubbing my temples. “I shouldn’t have said that part about you being attr—”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she said. She’d softened, her anger abating. “You’re right, it would have been a very bad start.”

But she wasn’t quite looking at me.

Then a horrible thought struck me.

“I didn’t try anything, did I?” Dread ran over me now as quickly as the relief had come a moment ago. That was the only thing that would be worse than us having slept together. Me making an attempt where it was absolutely not wanted.

“Not really.”

“Not really!?”

“You were… receptive to something happening.”

I groaned, placing the heels of my hands in my eyes.

“Blake, listen,” she said, finally taking pity on me. “I made sure nothing happened, okay? I don’t exactly want to be forgotten about the next day.”

I sank into my chair and took a sip of my coffee, which had gone to lukewarm. “Okay.”

Then she picked up a pen and began tapping it on the paper in front of her, then realized what she was doing and put it down again.

She was nervous.

I should have done that thing my dad taught me—that I hated because he’d taught me and it worked—stayed silent, waiting for her to fill in the gaps. But I was tired of waiting. “Cassandra, please. Tell me what did happen. I’m at your fucking mercy.”

“You told me something.”

My stomach dropped, pulse pounding.