“I was surprised you didn’t. You never shied away from going toe to toe with me in the office.” He sounded genuinely confused that I hadn’t acted with Chase the same way I did with him. But truth was that with Theo, even when he was at his most forbidding, I’d never felt like it wasn’t safe to tell him what I thought. Even when I knew he wouldn’t like it.

“Chase is looking for any excuse to claim I’m not fit to do this job. I’m not giving him any ammunition by running my mouth. But now that you scared the shit out of him, I assume he’ll be watching his back.”

“He better.” Jesus, that sexy, mildly threatening rumble in his voice. It made my entire lower body turn to water.

“You’ve got something there,” he said, as he lifted one of the linen napkins he’d brought from the kitchen—the man was the poster child for Taurus rising, always prepared—and dabbed the corner of my mouth. That little bit of contact, barely a touch, jolted me. My nipples hardened from the blood rushing to places it ought not go. I bit my lip and his own parted just a bit, a sharp intake of breath lifting his chest. I knew the air couldn’t actually be crackling around us, but I could almost swear that if I lifted my hand thunderbolts would shoot right out of it.

He was so close, those gray eyes sparkling, lit up by something that I’d only gotten glimpses of before, but that now he was finally letting me see. There had been occasions when I’d catch Theo looking at me in a way that felt...not so much intrusive, but maybe startled. Like he didn’t want to be staring but couldn’t quite help it. But since his arrival in Dallas he just let himself linger for long moments. Examining me as if he found the sight absolutely riveting. My lips tingled as he locked his gaze on them. I desperately wanted him to kiss me. I was woman enough to sit with that truth.

I wanted Theo Ganas.

“You never said where the idea for your business came from,” he said, breaking the lust spell.

I circled the edge of my glass as I considered how to say this to him without sounding like an extremely sad nerd.