“What are you doing right now? I can hear you clicking. Tell me you’re not adding more comments to the document.” His tone changed to teasing, and I had to chuckle.
“I’m not. Just clicked on an article that claims it’s the ultimate source for wedding planners.”
“You double as a wedding planner?”
“Only for my family. My brother asked me to oversee the preparations for his,” I explained, bursting with pride. “I can’t wait.”
“You’re a fascinating creature,” he said softly. “See, details like these just make me want to take you out to dinner even more. And ki—"
“Liam!” I interrupted before he finished that word. I was smiling from ear to ear. Could he hear that in my voice? “No talk about dinner or our breakfast or any other activities tomorrow, okay?”
“Activities,” he repeated in an amused tone.
“Yes. I’m not big on rules, but I think it’s sensible to just focus on one thing at a time.”
“I agree. And as you know, I’m all about rules. The problem is I keep wanting to break them when I’m around you.”
Chapter Ten
Tess
The next afternoon, I arrived first at the brownstone, and one of the interns showed me into Liam’s office. He wasn’t inside, though.
Skye came in two minutes later, winking at me. We sat in front of his desk waiting. My nerves were already stretched thin, and this didn’t help. I kept tugging at the hem of my black dress. It must have shrunk in the wash—or maybe I’d been eating too many scones.
The second he entered the room, I felt a shift around me, as if the air charged. I turned around slowly. My heartbeat intensified when our gazes met.
Skye was closer, and he shook her hand first.
“Skye, I’m glad you could make it today.”
“Life with kids is just one surprise after another.”
He extended his hand to me, and I shook it.
“Good to see you again, Tess.” The way he said my name made me even more aware of him. Damn. I refused to react to him this way.
Liam went on. “As I told Tess last time, the contract is open to negotiation, but discussing every line you highlighted wasn’t a productive use of our time. I appreciate that you narrowed down the list of questions.”
“We like to be thorough and wanted to bring everything to your attention,” Skye said.
“The questions we removed, we reviewed with a lawyer, and we’re now fine with those items,” I added.
He nodded. “It’s good to cover your bases.”
“We have a question about your silent partner. What is his involvement?” I asked.
“Zero,” he said immediately. “He’s just that, a silent partner. We pay him, but he isn’t involved at all.”
We began discussing every point after that. Liam had printed a handout for each of us. I took a pen out of my bag, making notes in the margin. Skye did most of the talking until we reached paragraph seventeen. I was carefully avoiding Liam’s eyes, because I wanted to focus fully on this, and I happened to lose track of my thoughts when our gazes crossed.
“It states here you want us to decide on the number of designs we want to develop at the start of every quarter. This is not how we do things,” I said.
He leaned back in his chair, looking between the two of us. “Okay, walk me through your process. I want to know.”
This was encouraging. “We always keep in mind what excited our customers the previous season, as well as what brought in the most sales, and we build on that. But we can’t tell beforehand how many products we want. We may have a general idea, but that often changes. What if we just decide the overall budget together, and you leave the number of designs to us?” I asked.
“That could work.” Those deep blue eyes pinned me without mercy. I became hyperaware of every inch of my body. Not even Skye’s presence seemed to help diffuse the strange