Elise was officially crushing on Jay.

There was no other explanation for why she was standing in her bedroom trying on her seventh outfit of the morning.

And downing Advils like they were candy when normally, given her current level of pain, she would have called off this afternoon’s meeting.

Nothing was sitting right on her today. She was always bloated before her period, but this was more than that. This was the fact that the pain, when it was this bad, made her…dull.

And she so very much did not want to be dull in front of him.

So, yeah, she could only conclude that she was officially crushing on her client.

Which was dumb for many reasons, foremost among them that she didn’t want a man in her life right now. She was at a critical stage in getting her business off the ground. She was making a go of it independently—both finically and emotionally—for the first time in her life. Jumping into a relationship would compromise that.

Her phone buzzed with Gia’s custom ringtone.

The message was followed by a string of eggplant emojis. Gia was onto her. Still, she wasn’t going to cop to it.

Gia’s job took her all over the world. But clearly their frequent FaceTimes had been enough for Gia to read the situation. She’d no doubt seen right through the way Elise kept casually bringing up Jay. But for some reason, Elise still felt compelled to deflect.

Elise laughed. That was true. Gia…enjoyed company of the male persuasion. A lot.

That was certainly Gia’s method. Elise didn’t judge it, but that just hadn’t ever been her thing.

She was lying about that too, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because to cop to the pain being a solid eight would dampen what was left of her spirits.

And what was left of her spirits really, really wanted to see Jay.

An hour later, poised in the doorway to his office and seeing him bent over his desk, his attention fully absorbed in something as he absently scratched his stubble, those spirits were…stirred. She’d learned that when he focused on things, he focused on them. At her place last week, he had looked at the samples she’d shown him like he was trying to set them on fire with his eyes. Like nothing mattered more than the little square of tile she was proposing.

“Ms. Maxwell is here,” his assistant announced before she shut the door behind Elise.

Jay looked up, and for a moment Elise felt herself the object of that intense concentration. It was like he’d transferred it from his work to her. But then his expression changed, lightened, and a smile transformed his whole face, making those absurdly gorgeous eyes dance.

“Hi,” he said, and it made her shiver.

God, she was crushing so hard, it was pathetic. “Hi.” She tried to stop herself from grinning like an idiot. She did not succeed.

Take that, pain.

Still, as much as she was enjoying this little distraction from the agony in her insides, she needed to clear the air from last week.

“Before we get started, I wanted to say again how sorry I am you had to witness that unfortunate episode with my father.”

He stood and gestured her over to the soon-to-no-longer-be-beige sofa. She winced as she sat. Sometimes when she was in an especially bad stretch, the compression of sitting made things worse.

He’d been aiming for a chair, she thought, but suddenly he was at her side on the sofa. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes.” She pinned on a smile she feared looked as fake as it felt, then busied herself by taking out the samples they’d agreed on. Today’s meeting was about looking at them in the space and making final decisions on what to order.

She could feel his attention, that intense, singular focus she craved from him even as it made her squirm.

“Listen,” he said. “We’re not responsible for our parents. I mentioned my father the other day. And my brother’s father?” She nodded and watched his nostrils flare. “They were abusive assholes. They probably still are, if they’re still alive. But I’m not responsible for their shitty behavior. All I can do is try not to be like them.”

“Oh! Do you have kids?” She was shocked by that. But, really, she knew nothing about him.

“No, no. I just meant in general.” He searched her face. “No kids for me.”

That last bit was said more like it was a grand philosophical proclamation rather than a statement about his current family status.

Jay was looking at her like it was her turn to talk. And it was. He’d shared something pretty personal, talking about his childhood.

“My father wasn’t…abusive,” she said.

“Maybe not physically…” He trailed off like he was filling in the blanks himself.

“He just really did not want me to start this company.” But she was filling in those blanks, too, suddenly. She’d always known her father was a bully. But could his behavior be considered abusive?

“What does he want you to do instead?”

Jay’s question pulled her from her thoughts, and she huffed a bitter laugh. “Nothing. He wants me to be like my mother, basically. A lady who lunches. A socialite.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she added quickly. Her mom wasn’t a bad person.

“That’s just so not you,” he said with a certainty that thrilled her.

She sometimes struggled with becoming a person who was different than the Elise everyone in her family saw. “It’s funny, because if you were going to pick a stereotypically girly, sort of old-money career to have, you’d pick interior design. It’s not like I’m trying to be a brain surgeon or something.

“What does your brother do?”

“He teaches at a fancy private boys’ school.”

“So your brother is allowed to have a career, and you’re not?”

When he said it like that… “That’s pretty screwed up, isn’t it?”

“Well, look, I won’t presume to know anything about your life, but I can say with a hundred percent confidence that in this regard at least, your father is an idiot if he doesn’t see the boatload of talent you have. Not to mention drive. I see a lot of intergenerational wealth at my job. What I hardly ever see is someone walking away from it to make their own way.”

Heat exploded inside her like he’d flipped a switch on a gas fireplace. She was tempted to brush off the compliments, to downplay what she was doing. But you know what? Screw that. He was right. So, as squirmy and unsettled as it made her, she just said, “Thank you.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Jay’s nostrils were flaring again, like they had when he talked about his father and his brother’s father.

“Of course.”

“When we were texting the other day, you said this job was going to take two more months. Any way we can hurry that up?”

Oh. That wasn’t what she had expected. Was he already tired of working on this project with her?

“Well, we can try to speed things up. We can put a rush on some of the pieces if you like, but a few of them I don’t think we can get any faster. But if time is of essence, we could make some substitutions.”

And there was that weird, intense look again. It was like he could raise her temperature just by looking at her.

“No, that’s okay,” he finally said. “I can wait two months.”

But he said it with a hint of resignation. Like he was tired of working on this project with her.

That was…disappointing.

In the following weeks, Elise continued to be disappointed.

Which was ridiculous.

How could she be disappointed by the fact that Jay was a model client? He was interested and engaged. He deferred to her in most cases but argued just enough to keep things interesting—and when he did push back against her ideas, he made thoughtful points that forced her to further refine her point of view.

He just wasn’t giving her that sexy-intense look anymore. Or holding her cold hands. That spark that had been there between them—the spark she’d thought had been there, but maybe she’d been imagining—had gone out. Well, not on her end. On her end, she pretty much had to walk around with a metaphorical fire extinguisher at all times. But he had stopped giving off the sexy-intense vibes, leaving only the regular-intense vibes. And the dude was intense. A total perfectionist, whether they were talking about the edges of the wallpaper in the bathroom or he was asking Patricia to send something back to someone whose work had not measured up. He was never rude. Quite the opposite, in fact—he was polite. But insistent. He knew what he wanted and he was going to get it.

It was stupidly sexy.

So she had an unrequited crush. She had allowed herself to acknowledge that fact, even if she still wouldn’t admit it to Gia. She’d decided it was harmless as long as it stayed unrequited. The last thing she needed right now was to start depending on a man. She’d had a lifetime of that. She could worry about relationships down to the line, after she’d proven herself. But a little one-sided crushing—what could it hurt?

And with Jay, although the flirty banter had gone, she could honestly say that, in a surprising twist, they had become friends. After she’d confided in him about her father, he’d done the same. It was as if, by sharing those early secrets, they had skipped all the “getting to know you” stuff that usually accompanied new friendships. Now, seven weeks after he’d hired her, they were following sessions to approve the work of tradespeople with lunch around the corner. Or wrapping up a meeting with a quick game of Scrabble. It was awesome—in general and because she’d never had a friend she didn’t have to force to play board games with her.

“What is your opinion about hockey?” he asked at one of their lunches. They were sitting side by side on stools at the counter of an old-school soda-fountain-turned-hipster restaurant.

It was weird being friends with a guy. Elise’s close friendships had always been with women.

“That’s the one they play on ice, right?” She winked to show she was joking and was gratified when he laughed. Jay was so wickedly intelligent, it made her proud to be able to amuse him.

“Kent has a pair of Leafs tickets for tonight he can’t use.” Kent was the Cohen of Cohen & Smith. “I was going to see if you wanted to come.”

“I would totally go to a Leafs game, depending on what was happening at halftime.”

“There’s no halftime in hockey.”

“Are you going to revoke my Canadian citizenship?” she teased, and she got another chuckle. “So what do they have in hockey?”

“Three periods.”

“So that means there’s two halftimes.” She was kidding there. But not about going. “I’ll totally go to the Leafs game with you.” She really could not imagine anything she’d like to do more, suddenly.

He stared at her for a long time without speaking. For a minute, she thought it was going to turn into one of his sexy-intense stares—oh, how she missed those despite the pep talk she’d just given herself about not relying on a man—but then it dissipated. “Nah. We’d better not.”

Huh?

“It’s really cold in hockey arenas,” he added, and she had the distinct sense that he was reaching for an excuse. Why had he brought it up to begin with if he didn’t want to go with her? Her pride prevented her from pushing him on it, but disappointment lodged sharp in her chest and she was a little relieved when the lunch was over.

They’d taken to texting, too. Later that evening, she got one from him that was simply a picture of an old-school game of Battleship.

She let out a delighted laugh. See? They clicked. As friends. She typed a reply.

Even though she truly did not care about hockey, Elise found herself absurdly glad that Jay hadn’t gone without her.

So much for absurd happiness. Jay hadn’t gone to the game without her, but he was spending the evening with his stunning, legal-genius ex-girlfriend.

In more ways than one.

Elise watched the little dots that indicated he was still typing.

She grinned. There were more dots.

This was a bad idea.

But as Jay climbed the stairs behind Elise—without even trying not to stare at her yoga-pants-encased ass as it swayed—he couldn’t seem to talk any sense into himself.

After that call with his brother, during which Jay had all but decided to put the moves on Elise after the job was done, he had spent seven long weeks being nothing but benignly friendly to her. And along the way, they’d become genuine friends. He loved hanging out with her. She was smart and funny. She possessed a vivacity that felt almost like a drug. Like when he was around her and her vibrant clothes and her Operation: Abandon Beige, he was…honed. Better than he usually was. Smarter. More aware. More alive.

And he was almost there. They were probably a week away from signing off on the whole job. He couldn’t wait one more week?

It was funny. Most people who had resolved to do something difficult weakened when drunk, or when tired. When their defenses were down.

He weakened when faced with vintage two-player board games.

But anyway, it was just Battleship. His self-discipline was legendary. Surely it could hold him in check for a game of Battleship.

It’s just that he hadn’t been over to her place since that first week. Being alone with her in a private space had seemed unwise.

Elise led him into the living room. “Wine?”

“Yes,” he said instantly. Which was also unwise.

“I almost changed before you got here, but I decided we’ve reached the stage in our relationship where I don’t have to look professional,” she called from the kitchen, where he could hear her uncorking a bottle. She reappeared with the bottle and a pair of glasses. When they’d had lunch, she’d been wearing a black dress and canary-yellow tights. Now she was in those skintight yoga pants that had mesmerized him on the stairs and bright orange tank top covered with a royal blue cardigan sweater.

Jesus Christ, she looked amazing. He took a big drink of the wine she handed him. She flopped down on the sofa next to him, and his fingers practically vibrated from want.

She turned her head toward him—just her head as she was still sprawled against the back of the sofa—and grinned. “My father is writing me out of the will.”

He almost choked on his next sip. Her happy expression was so at odds with her pronouncement. “Don’t look so broken up about it.”

She shrugged. “I was thinking about what you said a while ago, about intergenerational transfer of wealth. I haven’t done anything to earn that money. Hell, he didn’t do anything to earn that money. His grandfather was the guy who made it all—my father just maintains it.”

“That’s how the world works. The rich stay rich.”

“Well, aren’t you a radical accountant?” she teased.

He liked it too much when she teased him, so he bit back a smile and shrugged. What he’d said was true. A lot of his work was about helping rich people make sure their kids stayed rich after they were gone. About protecting assets. Which was why he was so devoted to the firm’s philanthropic efforts.

“Well,” she declared. “I want to earn my money.”

“Good for you.”

“Which isn’t to say I’m not scared shitless.” Her voice had gone kind of shaky, which had the effect of prodding at the same protective instinct inside him that had made him want to punch her father the last time he’d been here. “I’ve always had a safety net, you know?”

“What does your brother have to say about all this?” Elise seemed to have a good relationship with her brother, Andy, but didn’t the guy bear some responsibility here? How could he just sit back and be the recipient of such stunningly inequitable treatment?

She snickered. “He says he’ll give me half of everything when our parents croak.”

Okay, then. Jay lowered his metaphorical weapons. He wasn’t going to have to track down this Andy dude and give him a talking to, after all.

“But whatever. Inheritances are nice, but I’m not sure you should plan your life around them.”

“I wish my clients were as smart as you.”

She bit her lip like she was trying not to smile. “You think I’m smart?”

“I do.”

She looked down, all embarrassed suddenly, and it did something to him. “What?” he said gently, nudging her shoulder with his.

“No one has ever said that to me before.”

Well, that pissed him right off. “What about this gaggle of girlfriends you keep telling me about?”

“Well, yeah, they’re great, but we go so far back, it’s automatic loyalty from them, you know? They’re biased. If you asked them to make a list of my qualities, they’d be all smart, creative, beautiful—”

“That’s true.” Shit. That had just popped out.

She’d been rattling off her list of adjectives in a jokey, self-deprecating way, but when he interrupted her, she stopped talking, and her eyes widened.

He was so mixed up. He wanted to kiss her. Hell, he wanted to bend her over the beige sofa that had been the source of so many jokes. But he also wanted to warm her hands up. And give her father a piece of his mind.

And play Battleship. And Scrabble and Boggle…and everything.

He closed his eyes for a moment, to block her out. He couldn’t think with her right there. He needed to get his addled brain back under control. He needed her not to be so goddamn compelling. He needed her not to—

Kiss him?

Oh, shit.

That’s what he got for closing his eyes against Elise Maxwell.

He was nearly undone when her soft, almost hesitant lips came down on his with a shaky little puff of breath.

He’d been making a list of things he didn’t need, but suddenly those things were mere wisps of memory. They were so small, so insignificant, compared to the need barrelling down on him.

For a few seconds, he kept his eyes closed and allowed it to happen. Made his hands into tight fists by his side and let her lips move over his. Let her hair fall against his face—she was half kneeling over him—a honey curtain that smelled like goddamned lemons.

She was only touching him with her lips, but it was like all the crazy colors of her—of her sofa cushions and her clothing and her—were assaulting him, every part of him all at once. It was too much and not enough at the same time.

Then she sighed a little. Her tongue touched the seam of his lips, and this was going to be it. He had already compromised his principles by being here at all. Now he was going to move beyond compromising them and throw them out the goddamn window. So much for a lifetime of careful discipline. This was how little it took to prove what kind of man he was.

But just as he groaned in surrender, she laid a palm against his cheek. In addition to being too soft for his stubbly face, it was cold. It delivered whatever was the opposite of a burn.

It shocked him back to his senses.

He grabbed it and pulled it down, then gently levered her away from him.

“Oh my God. I’m sorry.” She tried to pull her hand from his, but he held fast. “I misread this. I’m so sorry.” She closed her eyes against him, like he’d done with her a few moments ago, but in his case, it had been to try to stem the tide of lust. She, by contrast, was embarrassed. Mortified, even, he’d venture, given how red her face had turned.

He hated that. So he decided to tell her the truth. It wasn’t like it could make things any more awkward than they currently were.

“No. No, you didn’t misread.”

Those pretty hazel eyes flew open, then they darted down to their still clasped hands.

He could feel his own face heating to match hers as he let go of her hands. “I mean, why else am I at the home of my interior designer on Friday night drinking wine and getting all cozy on the sofa?” He smirked, trying to lighten the bombshell confession he’d made. “The beige sofa?”

She pressed her lips together, doing that thing where she tried to suppress a smile. “Because you wanted to look at my samples?”

He wasn’t sure if she’d meant that as a double entendre or if he just had a dirty mind. Screw it, he was going to go with the dirty version. “I do want to look at your samples. Jesus Christ, Elise, I want to do more than look at them.”

Wary but interested, her eyes moved over his face like she was reading a book. “Why do I sense a but coming?”

He nodded and ran his fingers through his hair. “But you’re working for me. I hired you to do a job.”

“Is this why you keep asking me how long until the project is over?”

“It is.”

She laughed—hard—as she flopped back down next to him on the sofa. “Well…” She stretched the single syllable out like she did sometimes. It drove him mad. “I can report that the Designers and Decorators Association of Canada has an extensive code of ethics, including a section about interacting with clients. It’s all about protecting client information, not agreeing to things you’re not qualified to do, how to handle disputes.” She spread the fingers of one hand and used the pointer finger from the other to tick off the ethics violations as she listed them. When she was done, she lifted both palms into the air and said, triumphantly, “Nowhere does it say anything about…” Her hands came down and sort of fanned the space between them.

“About what?” He knew exactly what she meant, of course, but he wanted to hear what she would say.

“About wanting to jump your clients.” She grinned. “Or about actually jumping them.”

Well, hot damn. “Are you saying you want to jump me?”

“Why is it so easy to be honest with you?”

“I don’t know. I am known for my low bullshit threshold,” he said.

“I’m not usually like this.”

“You mean you don’t usually proposition your employers over Battleship?”

“Okay, you’re not my employer, but we’ll argue about that later.”

He got a little thrill—an actual physical shiver—at the prospect that she was planning to mount a defense against his stance that they couldn’t hook up until they were done working together.

“And, no, I don’t usually proposition anyone, over Battleship or anything else. I’m usually kind of…passive.”

“Says the woman who turned her back on everything that’s been given to her in favor of charting her own path. The woman who marched into my lobby and insulted the hell out of it.”

She nodded. “I think that answers my question about why it’s easy to be honest with you, even though in some ways it feels like that’s unusual for me. Everyone else in my life knows me from way back. You met me just as I was becoming someone else.”

It made sense, but he did take issue with her terminology. “I don’t think you’re becoming someone else. I think you’re just becoming more yourself.”

She smiled. She liked that analysis. “So you’re really not going to…look at my samples?”

He sighed. “Look, I know it sounds overly rigid, but I just think it’s suspect. Maybe I’m not technically your boss, but I hired you. I can fire you. You’re at a delicate point in the life of your business, so I should keep my hands to myself for the time being.”

“That’s very…responsible.”

“I notice you’re not rushing to agree with me.”

“I don’t agree with you.”

He chuckled. “I know, it sounds uptight. I’m known for my low bullshit threshold, as I said, but I also get called uptight a lot. I’ll own that.”

“It doesn’t sound uptight.” She heaved a big sigh. He loved how heavy with disappointment it was. “It sounds…disciplined. Smart.” She rolled her eyes like she was disgusted with her own conclusion. “So what do we do?”

“We sublimate until the job is done.” He opened the Battleship box. “And you get ready to have your armada sunk.”