Page 32 of A Break in Communications

That came out more flirtatious than I intended. Dammit. I wasn’t trying to flirt with Lucy. It just—happened. Too much practice from the party. Still, Lucy took it in stride, relaxing and adjusting her seat. Making herself at home in my car. “So, you see me as a confident, assertive person.”

“Loud and demanding.”

“Six in one hand, one half dozen in the other.”

“So?” I said, turning down the music a little as the slow strums of a romantic ballad came on. Not really what I needed right now, driving through the drifting snowflakes gleaming in the sunrise, the roads quiet around us, but I wasn’t drawing attention to it by changing the station altogether. “You’re not actually answering the question.”

“My type?” she said, casually, which really made it sink in just how I was asking her type. Still, she didn’t make it weird, going on normally. “Honestly, it would probably have to besomeone else work-minded. I’ve scared off too many girls by being too focused on my job.”

“How much time do you actually spend seeing girls?”

She laughed. “Sometimes I’ll do something on the weekends. But it’s been a minute, admittedly. Why, how much time doyouspend dating? I’m sure you have people tripping over themselves to be with you.”

What a humiliating question in the wake of realizing how badly I wanted to date somebody. “All the time. Can’t even get out of my front door without running into beautiful women throwing themselves at me.”

“That’s a generous way to describe me.”

Ugh—I rolled my eyes, but I found myself smiling again, my treacherous face at it again. “So,” I said, deciding to go for it, “how long have you been waiting for your chance to date me, huh?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Preston, darling, it was love at first sight.”

Did that mean it was true or that it wasn’t? Dammit, I was going to kill myself thinking about it at this rate.

She could not be into me. Not actually, not seriously. Not in a million years. I didn’t want to think about the things she might have been thinking about—how much she might have wanted to kiss me at the party, whether she actually meant it when she asked if I wanted company in the shower.

I couldn’t get the damn shower thing out of my mind. Since when did I even have a thing for shower sex? Because I didn’t have a thing for Lucy.

“What are you thinking about?” she laughed, glancing at me, and I pursed my lips, looking straight out at the road.You in the shower with mewould have been a bad answer.

“What to expect from my family,” I lied.

“And it’s making you blush like that?”

Dammit—was I blushing? I hunched my shoulders. “Wondering what embarrassing things Veronica is going to tell you about me next.”

“Something good, I hope. Now, I think it’s my turn to take a guess at your type.”

“Lay it on me,” I said, trying to sound cool, and I lost it when she said,

“Someone who will let you put something in her mouth.”

“Lucy—” I was definitely blushing now. I was going to crash the damn car.

“Anna?”

Ugh—I’d called her Lucy. I needed to start thinking of her as Masters in my head so I’d quit the habit. “I’m never living that down, am I?” I muttered.

“If I said something like that, would you let me live it down?”

I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “You offered to join me in the shower,” I said.

She smiled wider at me. “Been thinking about it?”

How were you not supposed to think about it when the worst person you knew muscled into your home and offered to follow you into the shower? And then… if I thought about how that shower went, I would end up crashing the car.

“I try to think of you as little as possible,” I said.

“I’m heartbroken.”

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