Page 40

My breath catches in my lungs. Dread thuds to the bottom of my gut. I’m stuck in a marriage that’s crashed and burned, sleeping alone in the guest bedroom, and now I’ve got the hard-on from hell due to a woman I can’t have. This is insanity.

Me: We’re heading for trouble, aren’t we.

No question in that—just a pure statement of fact.

Jules: Yeah.

Me: I had no business texting you tonight. The blame is on me, Jules. If you want to pretend this conversation never happened, I understand. We’ll never speak of it again.

Jules: It would be the wise thing to do, wouldn’t it?

Me: Probably.

Hell, there’s no “probably” about it. I messed up big time, from the very first message I sent. No, from the instant I gave in yesterday and asked her to go for a walk with me. My phone is utterly still, the absence of her texts tossing me back into unbearable loneliness.

Suck it up, man.

I’m halfway to setting my cell on the nightstand when it vibrates in my palm.

Jules: Goodnight. Maybe I’ll see you in my dreams.

“Goodnight,” I whisper, choosing not to say goodbye via text. If I had my way, we’d never say goodbye at all.

14. Emotional Affair - Jules

Breathless. That’s what I am the instant our eyes lock the following morning. If anyone saw us behind the closed door of his office, they’d only see two colleagues greeting each other for the day. They wouldn’t know how we exchanged little pieces of ourselves last night.

Shoving my nerves down, I set a cup of coffee on his desk for him, and he turns that stunning smile on me like he normally does.

“Thank you,” he says before taking a cautious sip of the hot java. “You have no idea how much I needed this.”

“You’re welcome.”

He always has a seat waiting for me on the other side of his desk. I slide into it, tablet ready in my hands.

“I have a meeting in an hour,” he says, dragging his fingers through his dark hair. “I think it’s a good idea that you come along to learn the way I do things. You might need to step in for me while I’m gone next week.”

Gone in OKC. So close to my hometown but so far away from me.

“Of course. Do you want to go over the agenda now, or should we do that after the meeting?”

“Now’s fine.” He grabs at his tie, and I bite back a grin. He’s already shed his jacket and rolled up his cuffs. By the end of the day, he’ll have that tie removed. For someone who looks so fucking sexy in a business suit, he doesn’t handle the constriction of them well.

I pull up his schedule for the week. It’s packed full of meetings and appointments, but the one this morning is absent from the calendar. “I’m sorry,” I say, stricken with embarrassment. “I must have missed this morning’s—”

“No, Jules. You’re doing great. It’s an emergency meeting with the Board. Apparently, the projections on the expansion plans aren’t good enough for a couple of the members.” He sounds beyond irritated, and I don’t blame him because we worked on those projections for hours last week before his quarterly meeting.

“Is there anything you need me to do to prepare?”

“Compile everything we have on the expansion projects for the quarter. They want more details, we’ll give them more details.” We go over his schedule before I rise to do what he asked, but he halts me as I reach the door.

“Jules?”

His “boss” voice is gone, replaced by the sensual timbre I hear in my dreams. That tone thickens the air with longing, making me grow warm between my thighs. I glance over my shoulder. Seconds pass, and each one feels like a lifetime to the beats of my heart.

“Thank you,” he says, his stormy eyes flickering to my mouth.

Last night, I told him he was irresistible, and that couldn’t be more true than it is now. He’s a collision of casual and authoritative behind that desk. The epitome of sexy-as-fuck. But when he drags his gaze to mine again, the loneliness he usually hides is as clear as the blue sky on the other side of that wall of glass.