“None taken, sir.” He carefully slips another pin in under Lincoln’s arm.

“I can read it to you.”

“I can’t concentrate on anything right now.” Lincoln nods at his reflection, but his eyes skim over my crossed legs.

“Fine. I’ll wait.” Supervising Lincoln get fitted for a tux might be better than whatever movie Dani and I were going to watch anyway.

Once Bradley is finished, I’m asked for my opinion. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t extra thorough about my inspection. I take the opportunity to straighten and fiddle, particularly around the waistband of his dress pants. I only back off when Lincoln practically growls my name on a whisper and shoots laser beams at me out of his eyes.

The tension between us appears to have ramped up since that almost-kiss in his office. It seems like it’s been forever since that happened, but it’s really only been a few days. The innuendo-laden comments are getting thicker, and if I’m honest, I’m less pissed off about having to change my plans tonight to include Lincoln than I am that he left work today and didn’t tell anyone why.

My feelings are hurt, so I figure I’m within my rights to push him a little as he likes to do to me. However, this is starting to feel more like foreplay than it should, so I give Bradley the thumbs-up, and Lincoln, God bless all that hard labor, strips back down to his tighty-whities.

Sadly, he throws on a pair of baggy gray jogging pants with holes in them and covers all that magic below the waist. One of his ridiculous T-shirts covers his defined chest, but like everything he seems to own, it’s two sizes too small, stretching tight across the expanse of cut muscle.

Once Ulrich and Bradley leave, I suggest we look at the speech.

“Are you ever off duty?” he grumbles.

“We only have a day to make changes, and we were supposed to review everything this afternoon; however, you disappeared. I’m still on duty until I can check it off my list, so the sooner you stop bitching about it, the sooner I can get out of your hair and you can get back to moping.”

Lincoln fires an aggravated glare my way, which I counter with a raised eyebrow.

“I wasn’t moping.”

“Is brooding manlier?”

“Much, thanks. I didn’t bail on the tux fitting this afternoon on purpose, and if my phone hadn’t died, I would’ve called you. I wanted to call you.”

“Is that your version of an apology?”

He runs his tongue across his bottom lip. “I’m sorry I ruined your evening and whatever plans you had with whoever you had them with. I get that you probably can’t wait to get out of here, but I could really use a drink, and I think you should have one too, so I don’t end up consuming an entire bottle of scotch by myself again.”

“You’re really selling that drink with your uplifting apology.” I cross my arms under my chest, which makes my blouse gape. Now that I’m no longer in the heat of the moment, I feel stupid for unbuttoning it in the first place. “What happened this afternoon?”

He squeezes the back of his neck, like there’s a kink in it he can’t get rid of. “Can we deal with the speech for now?”

“Sure, okay.” Now that I’m not focused on how infuriated I was to find him sitting on his couch like he didn’t have a care in the world, I notice he looks exhausted and even sad.

He pours himself a very generous scotch and holds the bottle up. “You interested in this? I have a few bottles of white if that’s more your speed.”

“White might be better if I want to be able to walk out of here.”

“Okay.” He leaves the scotch on the bar and grabs a bottle of white wine from the bar fridge. His ridiculously tight shirt pulls in all the right places as he uncorks the bottle. Everything would be so much easier if he weren’t so nice to look at.

I wonder what it would be like to have access to all that smooth skin. I wonder what it would feel like to have his hands on me, what his mouth tastes like, how soft his lips are, whether his kisses would be sensual or aggressive. I want to know if he’s the kind of man who devours or savors. Or maybe both. I could see both. I bet angry fucking him would be mind-blowing. Maybe I should make him angry again.

“Wren?”

I blink and find Lincoln standing in front of me with the glass of wine. “Thank you,” I croak.

“Are you okay? You’re flushed all of a sudden.” He strokes along my cheek with a single knuckle, and I shiver. “Where’d you go in that head of yours?”

I’m thrown by his sudden shift from combative to concerned, so I brush it off. “Nowhere important. I’m distracted, and it’s been a long day. We should go over the speech.”