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curling up a
little at the nape of his neck. It made her want to reach over and smooth it
down.
    She wanted to caress away the
tension in his body.
    Her breath hitched as she
processed the wave of both lust and affection, and then she shook her head
firmly to shake it away. “Nick?” she asked, trying to keep the impatience out
of her voice.
    He was sipping his coffee and
looking at his phone as he turned around. “What?”
    She took the phone out of his
hand to make him look at her. “Talk to me.”
    He sighed and rolled his
eyes. “It’s too early for this conversation, Jenn. I’m just tired. Don’t you
have to get to work? I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to waste time this
morning, since you started work so early.”
    “I didn’t start work…” She
trailed off, trying to figure out what he was talking about. She’d kept her
resolution to only work between six and six almost every day for the last three
weeks—partly because Nick was serious about not giving her a massage if she
lingered in the office even a minute too late.
    “I heard you on the phone in
there,” he said thickly, nodding toward the wall that divided the main room
from the workout room. “At four-fifty-five.”
    She blinked. And then she
finally realized what was going on. She burst into laughter—more relief than
amusement. “Are you all pissy about my starting work too early? Is that what’s happening
here?”
    He narrowed his eyes. “I’m
not pissy. But I don’t think it’s anything to laugh about. You’ve been doing a
lot better this past month, now that you’re not working yourself into a
heart-attack.”
    She had been doing better.
She hadn’t been getting nearly so many headaches. She sometimes wondered if it
was the distraction that sex with Nick had provided as much as not staying at
work so long every day, but either way she’d been feeling a lot better. She
reached out to rub his shoulder. “I wasn’t working this morning.”
    “Yes, you were. I’m not deaf,
you know. I heard you on the phone.”
    “I wasn’t on the phone. I was
just talking through a conversation I need to have later today.” She gave him a
little smile. “I was talking out loud. I didn’t think anyone would hear me.”
    “You were…” There was a
question in his eyes that was really very sweet.
    “I wasn’t on the phone. I was
just thinking out loud. That’s allowed, isn’t it?”
    His face relaxed as he
realized she hadn’t been cheating on their deal. His lips even turned up in a
tiny smile. “I don’t know. It seems pretty close to working.”
    “I wasn’t working. I was
thinking.”
    “Out loud. You were
practicing. That’s definitely in a gray area.”
    She was washed in a warm wave
of feeling at the expression in his eyes. “So I don’t get a massage this
evening?”
    “I’ll think about it.”
    When she realized she was
smiling like a dope, she cleared her throat and turned away to finish making
her smoothie. Nick turned back to his coffee.
    After she’d finished whirling
the blender, she said casually, “Don’t forget we have dinner tonight with that
buyer and his wife.”
    “I know. I’ve got it in my
schedule. What’s he like?”
    “I’ve only talked to him on
the phone, but he sounds like he’s pretty conservative.”
    “Okay. Then I’ll put on my
strong, upstanding husband hat for the dinner tonight.”
    Jenn laughed at the way his
eyebrows twitched and reached over to touch his chest. Then she realized what
she was doing and dropped her hand immediately. Screwing on the top to her
insulated cup, she said, “Well, I better get going. I’ll see you tonight.”
    Nick was drinking his coffee
so he just gave her another grunt.
    ***
    That
evening, Jenn got home at a little after six to discover Nick wasn’t in the
apartment.
    They had to leave at
six-forty-five to meet the other couple at the restaurant by seven, so she was
surprised and worried by his absence. She was about to call when a text