Page 33 of The Grumpy Billionaire
Great. He’d heard it. Loud and clear.
Reid looked over at me. “Right, Mara?”
Heat exploded through my body, reassembling in my face. No amount of foundation could hide it, and I saw in Reid’s astute gaze that he’d noticed.
“It’s nice that we can be so out in the open about our past relationship,” he continued, his smile adopting a cruel twist. “And it sounds like you’ve filled in Sheldon here on the fullextentof it.”
He sat in the large leather chair at the end of the conference table, reaching for the lavalier mic in front of him as if he did TV interviews every day.
Having absolutely no good response to offer, I stayed silent and took the chair nearest him, turning my body toward him so that when Sheldon filmed over my shoulder, Reid would be facing the camera.
He was free of expression as he sat only a couple of feet away, but as he clipped the lav onto the front of his shirt, I noticed a slight tremor in his fingers. Well, itwashis first television interview.
In spite of my annoyance with him and the whole scenario, something inside me softened slightly. I was used to coaxing nervous people through interviews. I always felt so bad when their voices would quaver or they’d break into a forehead sweat under the lights.
Reid wasn’t sweating, but he had left the mic cord running sloppily down the front of the light-blue button-down shirt he’d worn with his jeans.
That wouldn’t do. Rob would kill me if I conducted this once-in-a-lifetime interview with that distracting black cord so obvious.
I cleared my throat, which had drawn tight the minute Reid entered the room. “Um, if you wouldn’t mind, could you just tuck that cord in…”
I motioned to his buttons. Usually I helped people do this sort of thing. “Um, right there… behind your shirt, so it doesn’t show.”
He looked down at his chest. “Oh, yeah. Sure.”
Fumbling with the cord, he tried to figure out how to arrange it so it was out of sight.
A few more seconds of this, and I turned back to Sheldon, pointing to him then to Reid, silently begging him to do it.
Sheldon shook his head and pointed right back at me, mouthing, “No way.”
I turned back to Reid. He’d managed to get part of the mic cord hidden, but more of it was out than in. I had no choice.
“Here—I’ll help you.”
Rising from my seat, I leaned over the corner of the table toward him.
Now my fingers shook as I undid his top button and tucked the cord behind it, trying desperately to ignore the close proximity of our faces and the heat coming off of his skin.
And he smelled amazing.
Much to my dismay, I recognized the cologne he’d worn in high school, a delicious citrusy scent that had always produced a Pavlovian sexual response in me. On the few occasions I’d crossed paths with a guy wearing it since then, I’d practically run in the opposite direction.
I fastened Reid’s top button and moved down to the next, slipping it out of its slot and pushing the cord behind the soft fabric. As I did so, the backs of my fingers accidentally brushed his chest. I went still at his audible intake of breath.
I wasn’t breathing all that steadily now myself.
“Almost done,” I gasped, snapping back into action, moving down to the next button, my trembling growing more pronounced.
“No hurry,” he murmured, followed by a soft laugh.
Determined not to make eye contact with him at this close range, I kept my eyes trained on Reid’s shirtfront. I had to stay in control of the situation. The last thing I needed was to start remembering other times we’d been this close, the last time I’d undone his buttons.
Great.
Now my mind was flooding with images of the two of us together in various states of undress. My internal temperature rose until he could probably feel the radiant heat from my blushing face.
Finally, I had worked my way down as low on his shirt as I dared to venture.Screw it.Sheldon would just have to frame the shot tight—I wasnotgoing to tuck that mic cord into his pants. I pulled away.
