Page 24 of Rush

Linc paced the length of his room and back, the small space doing nothing to help work off his restless energy. Coming to a standstill, he stared at the closed connecting door.

He shouldn’t have kissed her.

He’d let jealousy get the best of him until his caveman instincts had ruled the day, driving him to stake a claim for what it considered his, even when his logical brain tried to tell it to calm the fuck down. But jealousy did funny things to one’s thought process, and he wasn’t immune to the green-eyed monster.

Already on edge from the two yahoos ogling Nora at the studio, the guy at the pool, with his Hollywood good looks and making Nora smile, was the fucking tipping point. The last vestiges of control Linc had over his little brain had shattered, turning all rational thought into a big fucking bowl of hormonal goop.

Maybe if there hadn’t been two incidents in one day he might have been able to control his instincts. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d been thinking about Nora’s lips for far too long. His control had been at an end.

And now that he’d had a taste, it would be damn near impossible to keep a leash on that control.

He wasn’t expecting the door to fly open or what he saw. Nora, standing in the threshold with a hand on her hip, looking like a Valkyrie warrior—strong and fierce and vibrating with anger.

She took a step into the room, partially closing the door at her back. “What the hell was that?”

He took her in. With her beauty feeding the beast that still coursed through his veins, Linc said the only thing he could think of to quickly fix the situation he’d put them in. “A mistake.”

“Which part? The kiss or leaving afterward without a backward glance?”

He sighed, running a hand over his head to buy himself a few seconds to put his thoughts in order. “Both. I should’ve handled it better, but that doesn’t change the fact I was right to leave. I hired you to take care of Sophie. It was wrong for me to have crossed that line. You’re an employee, not to mention, you’re my best friend’s little sister.” He thought about the nannies who had come before and who he’d berated for the very reason he found himself in now and felt like a fucking hypocrite.

He saw her anger slip enough for her hurt to show through and it was like a punch to the gut. “I thought we were friends.”

“We were.Are,” he stressed, “but that’s all we can be.”

Her head jerked in a stiff nod as she reached behind her for the doorknob. “I understand.”

“Nora?”

She stopped halfway through the door, raising her brows. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

Shoulders sagging, she gave him a wisp of a forlorn smile. “Me too.”

****

Linc spent the following two days in hell.

However, not because he’d spent most of that time in disguise in an overcrowded theme park, standing in endless lines while paying inflated prices for crap food.

No, it was all because of one beautiful though frustrating woman.

To say he’d royally fucked things up with Nora was an understatement. Gone was the easy camaraderie they’d once shared and in its place was her mockingly politefriendship. Nora was still angry, and rightly so, but that didn’t change the fact he needed to find a way to fix it. Not just for selfish reasons but also for Sophie. The girl was smart and could sense the tension.

Dreading the conversation but knowing it needed to be done so things could go back to the way they’d been before he’d fucked up, he lightly tapped on the connecting door to their rooms. They were leaving tomorrow morning. He had Nora in his proximity now and if they got back home with their issues still unresolved, it would be far easier for her to escape his grasp.

The door opened and Nora stood before him, fresh from the shower. Hair still wet, her darkened locks framed her scrubbed-clean face and filled the space between them with a tropical scent.

“Yes?” Her overly polite tone and fake smile was something he’d never get used to.

“Can we talk for a minute?” Locking his jaw, he held out an arm, inviting her in.

She stepped through the door, and he nudged it shut, leaving it open a crack to keep an ear out for Sophie who had crashed on their drive home and hadn’t woken even through the undertaking of changing her into PJs and tucking her into bed. After two days of late-night amusement park fun, he wasn’t sure anything short of a solid eight hours would wake her.

Uncomfortable with her just standing in the center of the room, he cleared his throat and said, “Have a seat.”

She bypassed the foot of the bed in favor of a chair and he sat in its mate across the table from her. He’d gone over in his head how to start the conversation and spouted the rehearsed opening, “I know I fucked up and you have every right to be angry, but I’d like to make things right between us.”

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