If any part of her belief was true—that he’d hired her solely because she was my friend—well, what happened if he and I stopped being friends because I’d lied to him? He would fire Shelby.

Which would be all my fault, so the best way to prevent that from happening was to say nothing to him. It might have been a big deal if we were in a relationship, but we weren’t. Friends could have secrets from each other. And it wasn’t something that could hurt our very platonic friendship, so I was okay.

I could not make direct eye contact with him. It was like staring into the sun.

“Let me pay you for watching him,” he said, and I saw him reaching for his wallet.

“Put your euros away,” I told him. “I don’t want your fake money.” Our relationship was already weird enough, and I was not going to have him paying me on top of everything else. “But I won’t object to being fed.”

“Yep. You definitely sound like you need to get some food in you.” He went to one of his cabinets and pulled out a box of chocolate puff cereal. He walked over and put it down on the table in front of me. “Do you want some milk, too?”

“The same milk you just drank straight from the container? No thanks, Captain Hygiene.” I tore open the plastic and took out a handful of cereal and shoved it into my mouth. My shoulders slumped inward with relief. “I don’t know what I’d do without chocolate.”

“My guess is twenty-five to life.”

I smiled and shook my head at his remark and kept feeding my complaining stomach.

“If you’re okay here, I’m going to take a shower.”

“I’m okay.” I drew in a shaky breath. I was going to tell him that I didn’t really want him to leave and take off his Malec outfit, but I recognized that it was probably for the best since I was feeling so weak-willed anyway. Him leaving the room and not being in that really, um, hot costume would let me calm my nerves. I could fill up on cereal so that I would feel like myself again. Everything would be fine.

Just so long as I didn’t imagine him in the shower.

Oh crap! I was making it worse.

He left the room, whistling to himself, and I realized that I probably should have left. He was home and there was no reason for me to be hanging around. But I hadn’t offered to go and he hadn’t asked me to leave. Friends could hang out together, right?

Plus, I was really hungry.

Magnus was sitting near my feet, giving me pathetic looks.

“Sorry, you can’t have chocolate,” I told him. “Even the processed kind.”