There was silence while Jules processed the tone of Vivian’s voice: soft, questioning, and…hopeful.

It pulled Jules underwater like any siren song. “I think there is,” she managed. “Yeah.”

Vivian’s eyes gleamed with triumph. She graciously kept it out of her voice as she moved to stand directly in front of Jules. Then to Jules’s shock, she reached out and took both of her hands.

Skin on skin. Specifically, Vivian’s skin on Jules’s skin.

Heat swept through Jules’s entire body, and she barely suppressed a whimper, already aching more from touching Vivian’s hands than she had during entire naked nights with Aaron. How could it be possible that Vivian didn’t feel this? That Jules was all alone in feeling this?

Easy. It wasn’t possible.

“You’ll leave Du Jour if it’s too much?” Vivian pressed. There was another question beneath it that Jules heard loud and clear: You’d choose me?

“Yes,” she said. “In a heartbeat.”

Vivian’s eyelashes fluttered only for a second but long enough to betray her relief.

Jules rejoiced in it.

“There’s more than one way to be happy, Julia.” Now Vivian’s gaze was hypnotic, overwhelming, all-encompassing. “Let me show you. Let me make you happy.”

“God,” Jules whispered like a swooning teenager before she could stop herself. It was so embarrassing.

Vivian’s chuckle somehow took the sting out. “Does this call for a drink?”

“You bet it does.” She was still breathless. Vivian had promised to make her happy, like something out of an old movie. This was all nuts, but that had sounded so damn romantic, and Jules was only human.

A few minutes later, they sat at the kitchen island again, Vivian with a bottle of Perrier and Jules with a glass of the same brandy she’d destroyed her dessert with on Christmas. It wasn’t half bad on its own.

“To new beginnings?” Vivian suggested.

“Sounds good to me.” Jules couldn’t keep the silly grin off her face as their glasses clinked. Well, this was going to be one hell of an adventure. “Oh, but just one more thing.”

Vivian paused with her glass at her lips. She sounded rightly suspicious. “What?”

“I’ll never pressure you. I promise.” Jules rested on her elbow against the countertop. “But I reserve the right to look sexy.”

Those elegant eyebrows raised. “Trying to get me to change my mind?”

“Nobody says you have to look.”

Vivian focused on her water glass like it was the most fascinating thing in the whole world. “If it’s office appropriate, how sexy can you be?”

Jules nearly chortled. Challenge accepted. “I’ll figure something out.”

There was no denying it: Vivian Carlisle was blushing again.

Jules smugly took another sip of her brandy, then said, “So what now?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not even nine o’clock yet. What do you want to do?”