Page 12 of Rules to Love By

“Marcus.” He knew how to pitch his voice to get attention, and it worked.

Marcus’s head snapped up, his gaze fixing on Eli’s.

“You’re doing great. You just have to keep going.”

A muscle jumped in Marcus’s jaw.

“Don’t hate the learning curve because you have to climb it. You get to ride down the other side once you get there, and trust me…” He dropped his tone, letting it rumble deep in his chest. “That’s a lot more fun.”

And if Marcus thought that sounded like a flirt? Eli wouldn’t be sad about that.

“Now.” He leaned in to keep Marcus’s focus. “Finish up.” He tapped the papers, and then, to keep it from sounding as much like an order as it did, even to him, he added, “I’ll do the dishes. Then we can take it to Dad and see what he says.”

That seemed to satisfy Marcus, because the tension ran out of his jaw and neck and his grip on the pen eased. His gaze followed Eli when he left the table with their dirty dishes.

Eli pretended to ignore him, and after a minute, the scratch of the pen on paper resumed. After another moment more, Marcus was humming again.

Good. Let him parse what had just happened on his own. Eli would much rather he thought it was a college-student-versus-high-school-diploma conflict than guess the truth.

And the truth, Eli reminded himself, was that he wasn’t interested in anything other than getting through this project as quickly as possible. The sooner he got back to his life and the carefully controlled application of his “power voice” on people who expected very specific things from him, the better.

None of them cared about his soft midsection, ambiguous skin tone, or anything else. They wanted his control, and he gave it. He didn’t do random hook-ups anymore. Chance meetings never led anyplace good, especially with guys like Marcus who could blink seductively and have guys falling at his feet in an instant.

He probably shouldn’t have used that tone at all, but if the alternative was to let Marcus spiral, well… He couldn’t let that happen. But he had to be careful. If Marcus seemed to respond favourably to it, that didn’t make it okay. Not if Marcus didn’t realize what was happening.

Silently, Eli cast a glance over his shoulder.

Even sitting at the table, head bent over his work, Marcus exuded unconscious sex appeal, with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, floppy curls hiding half his face, and long legs wrapped together at the ankle under his chair.

Yeah, right.He could tell himself treading carefully was about protecting Marcus. The truth was, someone as beautiful as Marcus wouldn’t have anything to do with someone as utterly average as Eli.

He turned back to the sink and concentrated on cleaning the dishes. He’d almost let Marcus’s sweet, sexy smile and big eyes lull him. He had to get away from the man as soon as possible. He’d put a moratorium on flirting with guys outside his arranged sessions for very good reasons, and nothing about those reasons had changed since Marcus came to town.

CHAPTERTHREE

Marcus kept his head down and his pen moving. If he focused on that, he could almost forget his dumbass mistake.

Although Eli had been super nice about it, that didn’t make it any less embarrassing. He stopped writing for a moment to stare at the back of his hand where it still tingled from Eli’s momentary touch, like he’d set every freckle on fire with the contact.

“Seriously?” he whispered and scraped his nails over the knuckles, then went back to writing. Eli being nice was not going to turn into a thing.

He pursed his lips and turned his attention to the numbers. Doing sums in his head would keep thoughts of Eli’s warm, strong hand on his out of it. Hopefully.

He finished the final calculations as dish water drained from the sink with a sucking gurgle.

“You ready?” Eli asked, focusing on a black-banded watch around his wrist for a protracted moment. “It’s not quite nine, so there’s still time before Dad opens. If you’ve got that all done, I say show him what you have and see what he says.”

“You don’t want to look it over first?”

Eli shrugged. “We talked it all through already, so unless you changed something…?”

“No. It’s all pretty much what we talked about. Well. Except for the little bit about paying myself.”

“And how much did you add?”

Marcus held out the final estimate for him to read.

Eli glanced at the page, then back to Marcus. “Are you happy with that number?”

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