I laugh. “Let’s celebrate by having you look at my break room layouts as discussed.”
“Let’s just peek,” she says, continuing to pull me away from the food. “I guarantee you own nothing but Hanes for Women, and once you stop lusting after your boss and agree to sleep with Stuart, you’ll realize what truly mattered today.”
“I’m not lusting after my boss.” My crush on him is so wrong and pointless that it should be true, if nothing else. “If you want to shop, that’s fine, but be fast because I’m starving, and I do need you to look at my layouts.”
“I’ll look at them afterward. But seriously—only you could work with a million single dudes and pick the married one.”
“I thought we agreed I was going to hold out for your future son Damien to rock my world. Did I misunderstand?”
She narrows her eyes. “I’m going to have a hard time naming you as his godmother if you keep making that joke.”
We arrive in the lingerie department, where—surrounded by satin and lace and bras too sheer to be functional—I’m completely out of my depth. I was too young for lingerie when I met Jeremy, too innocent, and I was too busy for lingerie soon after that, with newborn twins taking up every free second.
Molly shoves a black lace thing at me that appears to be more straps than fabric. “Go try that on,” she demands.
I roll my eyes before I spin to the mirror and hold it up against me. “I don’t even know what this thing is. What’s with all the straps?”
“Oh my God, it’s like you’re still thirteen years old,” she says, looking at a teddy. “It’s called a merry widow and those are garter straps. It’s how you hold up your stockings. How do you not know this?”
“Maybe because people stopped needing to have their stockings held up just after World War Two,” I reply, turning back toward her. “I don’t wear—” My words die off mid-sentence. Because not ten feet from Molly is Caleb, looking every bit as wide-eyed as I am. “Caleb,” I gasp. I clutch the merry widow more tightly against me, as if that will somehow make it disappear.
“That’s some interesting shopping you’re doing.” His voice has dropped an octave, and his gaze falls to my chest.
Heat climbs up my neck and I press a hand to my cheek to stop it. His eyes follow, grazing over my skin in a way I swear I can feel. “It’s not…my friend was—” I frantically glance around me, but Molly is nowhere to be found.
Goddammit, Molly.
“What are you doing in here?” he asks.
I raise a brow. “I’m a female in a store’s lingerie section. I’m not the outlier. What are you doing here? And if you don’t have a plausible explanation, I’ll just assume it’s your sex doll’s birthday.”
His mouth twitches. “Kimberly’s birthday isn’t until January. I’m getting something for my mom.”
“What an interesting relationship you two must have.” I turn to the rack of lingerie. “What’s her size?”
He slaps a hand over his face. “She wants a robe, but thanks for putting that seriously uncomfortable image in my head.” His eyes revert back to the black thing I’m still holding. “Shopping for the big date? If you’re wearing that, he’s not going to settle for second base.”
I sigh. “If I’m wearing this, I’m the one who won’t be settling for second base.”
He runs a thumb over his lower lip, his nostrils flaring as if he’s scented prey, his eyes liquid under the store’s fluorescent lights. “So what exactly are you after when that’s on?”
There’s a trickle of delight in my chest. I don’t wear lingerie like this, and I don’t have the money for it even if I did, but suddenly I’m seeing myself through Caleb’s eyes: as a woman who might wear a merry widow on a date. As a woman who might go in with some demands of her own. I grin. “Use your imagination.”
He winces. “I am. That’s the problem.” There’s a rasp in the words, something low and dark and tinged with yearning.
He walks away, broad-shouldered and glorious in that perfectly tailored suit, his words on replay in my head.
I am. That’s the problem.
Those words—the rasp as he uttered them—pulse brightly inside me, deep in my core, so sharp it’s almost painful.
Molly reappears, looking at his retreating form in the distance and then me with pure glee. “Oh my God. I take back everything I ever said about him being a creepy weirdo who’s obsessed with his ex. Seduce him immediately. I want you to walk straight into his office, bend over his desk, and beg.”