In fact, Vivian might need reminding more than Jules did. She hadn’t been kidding about Jules’s opening up a floodgate. As the day wore on, she grew more and more distracted. Her cheeks were constantly flushed and her voice was rough.

“Is she coming down with something?” Simon asked Jules after lunch with genuine concern in his voice.

A bad case of lust. “Uh…not sure.”

Vivian had a meeting at four, followed by a thirty-minute facial. Jules hurried into her office at three forty-five to give her a folder for the meeting. Once again, Vivian refused to look at her, although Jules was pretty sure she didn’t see the layouts right beneath her nose either. Her ankles were crossed tightly together, as if she were trying to restrain herself from wriggling in her seat.

“God,” Jules breathed before she could stop herself as a sudden rush of heat hit her.

Vivian looked up at once into her face and read what was in Jules’s eyes. Her own eyes glazed.

Jules thought for one wild second that there just might be some merit to closing the office doors and— “Here you go,” she mumbled, shoved the folder into Vivian’s hand, and hightailed it out of there at once.

Five minutes later, Vivian left her office without a passing glance, and Jules didn’t exhale until she’d vanished from sight.

“She’s been in a strange mood today, hasn’t she?” Allie said after Vivian had exited.

Jules managed a smile. “When isn’t she?”

An hour later, Simon arrived in reception. “Well,” he said, “that was a fun meeting. I don’t think she heard a word anybody said. It’s a good thing she doesn’t actually have to talk to her facialist.”

Jules gave him a look of noncommittal sympathy.

Then he said, “Changing the subject, Jules, keep Wednesday night clear. Wednesday is your birthday, right? The sixteenth?”

She nodded.

“I’m taking you out for cocktails.”

“Simon,” she said, genuinely touched, “you don’t have to.”

“No, I do. I need something to look forward to. The Charleston shoot is going to hell.”

“The shoots are always going to hell,” she pointed out. “Then they always turn out okay.”

“Well, yes. But that doesn’t make them less of a pain in the ass in the interim.” He sighed. “The shots along the Battery shouldn’t be a problem. It’s posing a bunch of stick-thin models on schooners and sailboats in the harbor that’s giving me nightmares. Sun glare. Flapping sails. Wind.” He shuddered. “And divas. My God, the divas.”

“Aren’t the models used to that kind of thing, though?”

“I meant the photographers.”

“Oh.”