Great. So not reading the comments had been her best decision ever. It had to be bad if Ian was all grumbly bear about it when he had barely spoken to her after one of her worst decisions ever to kiss him after that big goal.

“No comments. Got it.” She looked pointedly at his hand on the door, already planning to sprint for her phone as soon as the door clicked shut because she was a total glutton for punishment. “Thanks.”

He didn’t let go of the door. Instead, he rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, looking everywhere but at her as the tips of his ears got redder with each second. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think he was embarrassed for coming to warn her. But that couldn’t be right.

She pressed her palm against her stomach that was suddenly all sorts of jittery. “Do you want coffee?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

Ian followed her inside, and all of a sudden her normal-size hotel room felt extra small. They were three tiny steps from the bed. Two normal steps to the couch. Four steps to the shower where they could get naked and—

“You gotta promise you won’t read the comments,” Ian said, interrupting her thoughts that had no business going the direction they were.

Doing her best to keep her hands steady, she put a pod in the coffee maker, poured in water, and hit start. “Are they that bad?”

His silence served as confirmation.

How completely awesome. This was just the way she wanted to start a new job. First, she accidentally spills a parentage secret, firebombing a friendship and sending the team into a losing spin cycle, and now she was the team skank. Did it get any better than this? God, she hoped so.

Straightening her shoulders, she lifted her chin and looked at a spot over Ian’s left shoulder, determined to lie her ass off.

“Okay, well, as long as it wasn’t anyone I care about saying it, I guess I’ll live.” She added a sassy chuckle as if absolutely none of this bothered her in the least. “I’ll save reading the comments for when I have peanut butter cake nearby.”

“Make jokes all you want, but thanks to my dad and my choice of careers, the media has made sure I know about other people’s negative opinions of me for as long as I can remember,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes, everything about him focused on her. “You don’t want to let these people inside your head—it can be hard to get them out.”

The way he said it without even a hint of sarcasm or teasing but with absolutely sincere concern hit her right in the chest and sent her pulse into the stratosphere. “Ian Petrov, are you looking out for me?”