And he didn’t even know it.

I waited a good five minutes, deciding that Reece would’ve gotten a drink from Nick by then. Pushing off the door, I tucked the strand of hair behind my ear and opened it.

“Criminy!” I shrieked, stumbling back into the stockroom.

Reece stood there, hands braced against the door frame, his chin dipped low and jaw hard. He did not look happy. “Are you done hiding?”

“I . . . I wasn’t hiding. N-­not at all.” Heat flooded my cheeks. “I was doing stock.”

“Uh-­huh.”

“I was!”

He arched a brow.

“Whatever. I need to get back out there, so can you kindly remove—­”

“No.”

My mouth dropped open. “No?”

He straightened, but instead of backing off, he stalked forward, catching the door on the way in. The bicep in his right arm flexed as he slammed it shut. “You and I need to talk.”

Oh dear. “Buddy, there’s nothing we need to talk about.”

Reece kept coming toward me, and I was moving backward before I even knew what I was doing. I bumped into a shelf. Bottles rattled behind me, and then he was right in front of me, so close that when I inhaled, I could practically taste the crisp, fresh scent of his cologne.

Two hands landed on the shelf on each side of my shoulders and then he managed to lean in even further. His warm breath danced across my cheek. A fine shiver curled its way down my spine. Whoa. Girlie parts engaged, locked, and ready for takeoff.

I was so going to hit myself later.

“I’ve let this go on between us for far too long,” he said, and his stare snared my wide-­eyed gaze. The blue . . . dang, it was cobalt—­a blue that was hard to mix and capture with watercolors.

My tongue felt heavy. He hadn’t been this close since that night with all that whiskey. “Nothing is going on between us.”

“Bullshit, Roxy. You’ve been avoiding me for months.”

“Nuh-­uh,” I said, and yeah, that was lame-­sounding, but his mouth was right there, and I remembered clearly what his mouth felt like against mine. A wonderful combination of firm and soft, and I also recalled how strong he was. How he’d lifted me right off the floor and . . .

And I really needed to stop thinking about that right now.

“Eleven months,” he said, voice deeper. “Eleven months, two weeks and three days. That’s exactly how long you’ve been avoiding me.”

Holy crap, did he just count that out to me? Because he was totally right. That was exactly how long I’d been steering clear of him, in between the moments I’d told him to screw off.

“We’re going to talk about the last time you and I had a decent conversation.”

Oh no, we were so not going to talk about that.

He dipped his head, and his voice was right in my ear. When he spoke, my fingers tightened on the edge of the shelf I was hanging onto. “Yeah, babe, we’re going to talk about the night you drove me back to my place.”