Page 31 of Give Me Forever

"I don't really have another choice."

"Yeah, there's always a choice. Most people would just quit."

"That's not an option," I said and left it at that. I couldn't imagine doing anything else. And I also wanted nothing more than to show up my ex-business partner after what she’d done to me. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got, and the more determined I was to succeed.

He flashed me a charming smile. "Look, I talked to my brothers. If you need any sort of help, or business ideas, you can chat with them."

It took me a few seconds to process what he'd said. "You spoke to your brothers about me?"

"Yes. These days, I can't seem to talk to them without mentioning you."

I stretched my legs under the table and accidentally touched his. Goose bumps broke out on my skin as he sucked in a breath. I cleared my throat.How can we still react to each other this way after all these years?

"Why?"

"You know why." He pointed between us. "They predicted this."

"What exactly?" I asked.

"The tension."

I laughed nervously. "Really? So did Alana. I told her she was imagining things."

“That makes two of us. Are we oblivious or what? But we were both wrong, weren't we?" His gaze was trained on me.

I was rooted to my seat. But I couldn’t fall prey to those baby blue eyes.

Don't,I chastised myself.It will not bring anything good. He's probably on the rebound.

I pointed my fork at him after I ate my last mouthful of salad. "No. I know what's happening. We just need time adjusting."

He cocked a brow, and heat pooled between my legs. Holy shit, my body was reacting weirdly. "You flashing those delicious abs around me is not helping the matter," I continued. "It just spurs my imagination, making me wonder what else you're hiding. Not that I have to wonder, of course. I remember."

He tilted his head playfully. "Would it help if you saw me commando?"

"I walked right into that," I murmured. My heart was beating rapidly. This evening couldn't possibly become more tense.

Luckily, he didn't say anything else as he finished his salad. Afterward, I rose to my feet, but he shook his head. "No, you prepared the meal. I'm cleaning up."

"I made salad from a plastic bag. It was already washed. There wasn't much preparation involved."

"Still, I'm cleaning up." He stood from the table, taking everything at once, putting the plates on top of each other and then the salad bowl. As he grabbed the stack, he accidentally brushed my notebook, and it fell on the floor.

"I got it," he said, putting the stack of dishes back on the table. "Well, well. What do we have here?" he said, slowly rising with his eyes glued to a page that fell out of my notebook.

What could he possibly mean?He probably found my to-do list for the week, but that wasn't terribly exciting.

"You still do pro-and-con lists?"

I gasped. In a fraction of a second, my face felt flaming hot.

He flashed me a purely seductive smile. "You already wrote down that it might be hard to resist my... wait, what is the phrase exactly?"

I took the paper and notebook away from him, putting it on my chair. I didn't just need to fan myself; I wanted to pour a bucket of ice on top of my head. My pulse had gone so haywire that I had trouble hearing properly over the pounding in my ears, but I couldn't miss Sam’s voice.

"So, you foresaw some of this trouble even before you moved in?"

He'd called me out on it. No way could I disagree; it was right there in my own handwriting.

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