She laughed, but thrilled inside—against her better judgment—at the use of his. She wasn’t his woman. She had no plans on being his woman. But she was his woman for another fourteen days. Happily.

“I just would never have thought you were that type of guy.”

“You didn’t think I wanted to have you in my lap, either. But yet I did,” he said, stopping to bring their clasped hands to his mouth for a quick kiss as they passed a florist, the front of the shop teeming with flowers in bright orange and yellows—late summer shades. “How else am I surprising you?”

How else?

In so many ways. He was not what she would have expected from the first night, or from what she suspected people saw on the surface—his gorgeous chiseled good looks, his sharp well-dressed style, his cool blue eyes, both warm and distant at the same damn time.

He had more contradictions than she’d ever have suspected, and she was someone who trafficked in contradictions. Who was accustomed to them. Who had come to expect them. But Jack was tender and sweet when he could have been removed; he was removed when he could have been calloused; he was self-protective when he could have been cruel.

“Well?” he asked, prompting her as they darted past a group of teenage girls hanging onto each other and their phones outside a yogurt shop. The girls clearly weren’t going to move. And Jack clearly wanted her opinion. “How am I different than what you expected?”

She parted her lips to speak, her natural instinct, her professional desire to speak the truth plainly kicking in. “You’re sweeter, kinder, and more affectionate than I would have thought, given why you were in my office,” she said, looking him square in the eyes.

He stopped in his tracks, forcing her to stop too. “You didn’t think I could be affectionate?”

“Well,” she said as if the answer were obvious.

“I so can,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her waist, and tugged her close, dropping his forehead to hers. They stood in the middle of the crowded sidewalk. Men and women in suits and clickety-clack heels with determined looks on their faces, rushing to catch trains and buses and cabs home, were forced to walk around them. “With the right woman . . .” he said and brushed his lips ever so gently against hers so that all thoughts tumbled out of her skull, leaving her with nothing but feelings. The fresh bloom of feelings for this man.

“Who’s the right woman?” she asked when he pulled away.

“You,” he whispered, in a voice that was clear and direct.

And cut straight through the walls. He couldn’t possibly be suggesting there was more to them? Could he? They were nighttime. They were deadlines. They were the city after hours. They weren’t more. They weren’t a couple. Whatever affection he felt for her was clearly borne of sex. So she turned the conversation in that much less frightening direction as they resumed their walk uptown.