Page 72 of Boss of the Year

“Morning. Your breakfast is there. I was just getting ready to go to the beach after you leave for your meetings.”

“You look—” He cleared his throat and tried again, managing to tear his eyes from my body. “You look fine.”

The air between us was charged with something I couldn’t name but felt in every nerve ending.

Absently, he took the bottom of his T-shirt and pulled it up to dab some sweat from his brow. I only saw the flash of his abs,covered with a light pelt of dark hair that narrowed to a trail below his waistband, but it was enough to make my mouth dry.

“Thanks,” I whispered. “You look…fine too.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. Just a little.

“Thanks,” he repeated softly. Lucas seemed to shake himself out of the strange trance that had captured us both and moved to the counter where I’d laid out his breakfast. “Coffee? This looks fantastic, by the way.”

“Almost done.” I turned back to finish pouring his cappuccino, then plated the coffee on a bamboo tray with a glass of distilled water. “Your lunch is packed. I put extra protein in the bowl. Robbie said your trainer upped your weights this week.”

Lucas grunted as he reached around me to grab a clean dish towel from the rack beside the sink. The movement made his bicep flex next to my face, a drop of sweat lingering on his skin, and my tongue slipped out as if it might somehow catch that tiny taste.

Salty. He would taste like the sea, combined with some delicious umami flavor.

I shivered.

“I’ll just get your lunch.” In a hurry, I turned to the fridge.

And crashed right into him.

Our bodies collided in the narrow space between the island and the refrigerator. His chest pressed against mine through the thin material of my coverup. Bricked muscles, still hot from exercise, rubbed against my softer body. And his heart—oh God, was that his heart I could feel drumming just above the edge of my top? Or was it mine?

When I looked up, Lucas’s face had turned toward the ceiling, eyes squeezed shut as if he were in pain.

“Sorry,” I breathed, but I didn’t step away.

Neither did he, though his head snapped down at the sound of my voice. His eyes found mine, and all at once, his hands rose to take my shoulders as he backed me two steps and pinned me to the fridge, chest to chest, stomach to stomach, leg to—oh myGod.

Was thathim?

“I’m…going to need a minute here, Marie.”

It was as much a confession as a statement of fact.

Unable to put words together myself, I simply nodded. And then inhaled.

Mistake.

I onlyjuststopped myself from licking him from collarbone to jaw. He smelledthat good.

For a few heartbeats, we remained body to body while he pressed his forehead to the cold metal of the fridge. His breath emitted in labored puffs into my hair.

In a movement so slight I almost thought it didn’t happen, his head rotated so that his mouth grazed the ridge of my ear.

His whole body shuddered.

“Anyone,” he rasped, voice low and shaking, “who has ever said you are invisible…” He took another serrated breath before exhaling slowly. “Has got to be fuckingblind.”

The hands on my shoulders squeezed. My common sense had deserted me completely.

He was overcome.

I was overcome.