If I’m not careful, she’ll convince me there’s a future here. But there isn’t. Not with her. She’ll have her fun and move on. I’m not volunteering to be her pet project, no matter how perfect her body is or how her smile makes me desperate to kiss her.

Chapter Eight

Devin

“No,” I bark at her, knowing I’ll be ignored. It’s been like this all week. She flies around changing shit. Moving shit. Improving shit. I like things the way they are. My way. The only thing that needs changing is her in my space, the smell of her sugary skin begging to be licked.

“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

Now my dick is hard.

Fuck.

I snatch the paint swatches out of her hands and toss them into the trash as I stalk off across the shop. Putting the counter between us, I growl, “I don’t need new paint.”

“For the ninth time, yes we do.” She gestures around the small shop, pointing at our crimson walls.

“I painted last year.”

A mischievous little smirk appears on her full lips, making me think it turns her on to piss me off. “I appreciate that. And while I love the red”—she saunters up to the trash can and plucks the paint samples out of the abyss—“blue is the best color for a small business. Especially one where people already think you’re trying to rip them off.”

“Says who?”

“About a million marketing experts and the few thousand psychologists they paid to figure it out.” She puckers those rosy lips and blows this morning’s coffee grounds off her multi-colored swatches. My dick twitches despite my frustration. Every damn thing this woman does gets under my skin.

“Blue promotes calm, stability and trust.”

“And red?” I can’t keep myself from asking.

“You picked it, didn’t you?” I nod and she nibbles at her bottom lip. “Red means passion, urgency. Hunger,” she says on a ragged breath.

I grab a clipboard off the wall and look over today’s schedule. She giggles from right behind me.

Her phone buzzes for the millionth time today. She lets out a sad sigh, types something out and tucks it back into her pocket. The damn thing is always going off and it never seems to do anything but drive her nuts. I’d tell her to just turn the damn thing off it were any of my business. But it’s not. She can torture herself all she wants.

I’m pretending to scan the list of appointments in front of me when her accusing voice asks, “Why are you still using a handwritten schedule? I’ve already input all the appointments into the new computer system.”

The overpriced thing she talked Rob into buying was set up a few days ago, but I refuse to touch it. I don’t need it. Don’t want it.

“Because I trust my schedule more than some system. Despite it not being blue.”

My skin prickles when she puts a hand on my forearm. My sleeves are pushed up to my elbows, like always, and the skin-to-skin touch distracts me long enough for her to pluck the clipboard out of my hands. She’s running a finger down the list and walking backward.