“You’re like some kind of half-elf, sneaking up on me like that,” I told him, putting a hand over my chest in an attempt to keep my rapidly beating heart in place.
“Did you just compare me to Legolas? I’m flattered.”
“Unintentionally. I kind of see you as more of an Aragorn.”
He somehow managed to move a little closer. “Even more flattered.”
I was discovering that all kinds of Marcos were dangerous, but damp Marco was particularly concerning.
Then he bent over to pick up the book and put it back on the shelf, given that I was frozen in place. He leaned to put it away, in a spot behind my head.
Which brought our faces and bodies close together. My heart beat double-time in response to his nearness. And after he slid the book back into place, he didn’t move. He stayed where he was, and I found myself mesmerized by his face. That jaw, those full lips, those dark eyes.
We stood there, my glasses fogging up while I tried to stifle my loud breathing so that I wouldn’t sound like a wheezing cow, and I wondered if he felt even a fraction of the attraction I felt for him, then remembered that he didn’t.
Friends only. Nothing more.
We were on a mission. For me to land the man of my dreams.
Whose name I’d completely forgotten for an entire eleven seconds as Marco’s lips parted slightly, and I was so caught up in the soft sound he made and the gentle movement that I couldn’t remember his brother’s name.
“Can I just . . .” His words trailed off as he reached up to take off my glasses, his long fingers on either side of my head gently lifting them up and off my face. I held my breath the entire time.
Please don’t let him say anything about them being fogged up, I prayed to whoever was listening.
“How can you see through these things?” he asked, sounding amused.
“They’re, uh, the only way I can see.”
I could only make out the blurry image of him lifting up the edge of his shirt to clean them, and I cursed the genes that had given me such poor vision that were keeping me from seeing that patch of abs he was currently exposing.
He finished, and instead of handing them back to me, he put them back on my face, so carefully and gently that it surprised me. My skin tingled in response to his nearness, and I fought off the desire to lean my head against his hand.
“Craig!” I practically shouted when it finally came to me. That was the name of the guy I was in love with and the reason I was here. Craig. Craig Kimball.
“What?” Marco asked.
“You brought me here to talk about Craig. I’m assuming.”
His expression shuttered, and he moved away from me. “In a roundabout way.”
It took all of my personal willpower not to grab him by his shirt and pull him back to where he had been just a second ago.
He walked over to his big sectional couch and sat down. He patted the cushion next to him, but I was still feeling jittery from what had felt like an almost-kiss （although I knew it hadn’t been）， so I didn’t join him.
With him finally being out of the shower, it was like I could suddenly pay attention to the rooms around me. “This place is not what I was expecting,” I told him.
“What were you expecting?”
“From you? An army of servants and an overinflated sense of self-worth.”
He put a hand over his chest. “That flattered feeling is gone. You wound me.”
“It’s only a flesh wound,” I said with a smile. “As to what I was expecting from your house? Chrome, steel, glass, and a whole lot of white.” Instead, his condo had an upscale-dorm feeling. The furniture was nice and obviously expensive, but it was like he hadn’t put any thought into design and cared only about his own comfort. There was a treadmill in one corner and in the other . . .
How had I not noticed this when I walked in?
There was a desk with four massive computer monitors, a chair rigged for sound and light, and a computer tower that glowed light blue.
“Marco whatever-your-middle-name-is Kimball, what is this?”
He crossed his arms defensively at my utter delight. “I told you I was a gamer.”
“Uh, no, you told me you sometimes played video games. You did not tell me you had a setup that could program a spaceship launch.” I ran my fingers across the back of his leather chair. Fancy.
“Because it was irrelevant.”
“Right now it seems like the only thing that’s relevant. A man who regularly squires supermodels around town likes video games.”
“The two things are not mutually exclusive,” he said. “And I don’t squire people. I’m not a medieval knight.”
That put an immediate image into my head of him in shining silver armor, and that somehow only made him hotter.
Still in defensive mode, he added, “It’s not that much.”
“Uh, it is. But that’s okay. I know you’re a secret dork at heart.”
He rolled his eyes, and I couldn’t help but laugh at his expression. There didn’t seem to be much to tease Marco about, but this was definitely something I planned on giving him a hard time over.
“It’s Ricci,” he said.
“What is?”
“My middle name,” he clarified.
“Your mother’s maiden name.”
He nodded. That was sweet. “What about you?” he asked.
“Duh, Urban Decay.”
That made him laugh, and the sound gave me inappropriate tingles. I cleared my throat. “Seriously, though, I don’t have one.”
“Really?”
“Some people don’t. We’re not all like you rich people with your six middle names.”
He put his feet up on his coffee table. “I only have the one.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re not as rich as I imagined you would be.”
This seemed to amuse him. “What makes you think I’m not?”
I waved around the room.
His mouth quirked up on one side. “Were you not just mocking me for my expensive gaming system?”
“Any software engineer worth their salt has a setup just like yours. Don’t you have a yacht or something?”
“No. That feels like a waste of money to me. People in my life and my company waste a lot of money.” He let out a ragged sigh. “That’s one of the things I’m going to change at KRT Limited when I become CEO. I’ll start with Minx and make it employee-owned with profit sharing. If everyone’s contributing, everyone should profit. Then I hope to spread it to other divisions.”
“That would be nice. I mean, it would have been if I still worked there. I probably would have had more saved up to start my own company.”
Marco grinned. “You would have blown it all on some expensive piece of lab equipment.”
I shrugged. What could I say? He was right.
He patted the cushion next to him again and this time said, “Have a seat.”
This was making me nervous. I sat down on the couch, but I kept my distance. He gave me that weapons-grade smile of his where he knew he was being hot and charming, and I told myself not to fall for it. My heart softened at that smile, and I couldn’t help but lean my head to one side with a slightly giddy smile in return.
So technically I did fall for it, but in my defense, I tried to prevent it.