Page 16 of Too Sweet

This makes me laugh. “That tendency of mine gets especially bad when I’m around a woman I like.”

“You like me?” One pretty eyebrow arches.

“I do like you and I want you to kiss me again. But I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

Summer reaches forward and touches a hand to my face.

“You keep assuming I would trade sex for financial backing and that’s really drying up the urge to stick my tongue down your throat,” she says.

At a loss for words, I let out a caveman grunt. I’m so mixed up inside.

Everything is so muddled. I don’t know what I’m doing.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Maybe we should take a breather,” she says.

“I’ll go to my office and find the contract. And then track down Cooper and Harmony.”

“Sure,” she says. “I need to use the restroom, so as soon as I’m done, I’ll find you in your office, and we’ll handle this like professionals.”

Professionals. That’s what we were supposed to be from the beginning. And that’s all we are.

I feel like a complete shithead for assuming she wanted to blur the lines. Clearly, what I overheard her say before was a joke.

They say you can’t put toothpaste back into the tube, but I’m damn well going to try.

“Through the kitchen, down the hall, first door on your right,” I say.

Summer’s smile pierces me through the heart. She’s giving me more grace than I deserve.

As she walks away from me, it feels like she’s disappearing forever.

I go to my office and shut the door.

chapter

six

Summer

Where’d he say the bathroom was?

I move through the kitchen and hit the dark hallway, but did Carter say it was the first door on the right or the left? I can’t find a light switch, so I fumble around in the dark until I find where I’m going.

My head is all over the place, and I can’t even pay attention to simple instructions.

I manage to not pee in a broom closet and eventually find the right door.

The bathroom looks like a bridal suite, with a small sitting room furnished with a gilded pink sofa. There’s Renaissance art on the walls, marble floors, and a lush rug that no sane person would ever use in a restroom. In front of the sofa is a huge tufted pink ottoman decorated with an opulent mirrored tray of crystal butterflies and a bougie $200 candle, a candle that I once drooled over in Neiman Marcus. Procrastinating the need to pee, I grab the candle’s lid and hold it to my nose. Fucking Fabulous. Literally, that’s its name. I’m so out of my depth in this house and never want to leave.

I seriously consider stuffing the candle in my handbag. No. That would be all kinds of wrong. Quickly I use the toilet, wash my hands, and freshen up my lip gloss and hair in the gilded mirror.

Now, to find Harmony. If Carter is drawing up a contract right now, she needs to be there, too.

I leave the bathroom in the dark and slam straight into a wall. But it’s not a wall at all—it’s Carter.

“Oh my gosh, sorry!”

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