“You will not apologize again,” he said. “You shared your motive once. I accepted it. It is behind us and holds no bearing on where we go from here.”

Of all the things he could have said, those were the last words she’d expected. “But you were mad.”

“I was disappointed at the way you disparaged your work. The way you downplay and limit yourself on something that clearly is a passion.”

“No, even before I talked about the quality of the picture, you got a funny look on your face. Like you weren’t sure if you could trust me, or something.”

As fast as his ferocious demeanor had dropped into place, it was gone again. Replaced with that wickedly charming grin that never failed to make her feel like a sixteen-year-old. “Or, perhaps, I was thinking to myself that, if it hadn’t been for your pushy boss, I wouldn’t have found myself sitting next to you this morning.” He pulled her close and pressed a tender kiss to her lips. “Never assume with me, vozlyublennaya. I brood and get too deeply in my head from time to time for my expressions to be a reliable gauge. Trust my actions instead.”

She nodded, the warm lightness mushrooming up from her chest, no doubt making her look like a love-struck goon from his perspective.

“Promise me,” he prodded with an affectionate squeeze to the back of her neck.

“Promise.”

“Good.” He kissed her again, this time letting his mouth linger longer against hers before he lifted his head. “Now, since I’m the one who requires extra effort with my coffee, how about if I pour us each a cup while you gather more of your work for me to appreciate.”

She wrinkled her nose and stood. “Fine. But only if you allow me a certain amount of latitude on moaning and groaning while you look. Call it artistic flair or whatever, but letting people see my work is hard.”

“Fair enough.”

They took their time. Chatted over two cups of coffee and worked their way through all of her portfolios all the way back to high school. When they’d run out of those, he insisted on seeing the raw work from her most recent shoot. She nestled next to him on the sofa with her feet propped on the coffee table as he filed through the digital images one by one. “I think you should try working with Lizzy.”

He said it casually, but there was a bit of a dare behind it as well. A challenge that she’d have likely disregarded entirely at the beginning of the morning, but was hard-pressed to ignore after all the time he’d spent studying her work. “But you saw for yourself—I don’t normally work with people.”

“Not normally, no. But you had candid images throughout, and I think that’s what Lizzy’s after.”

“But this is her career. She won’t want to trust that to me.”

“Trusting family is always wiser than trusting strangers.”

She opened her mouth to answer him, but he cut her off before she could speak. “If you say you’re not family after last night, I’ll have to introduce you to an entirely different form of sexual play that requires me paddling your adorable ass.”