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Sterling shifted closer and squeezed her hand. He was taking too long to answer, freaking her out. “It’s not nothing. That’s not what my silence meant. I’m not always the best with words in situations like this, so I wanted to really think before I just tossed out an answer. If this was nothing, I could have given you a quick and easy answer. This feels like … more. I just can’t seem to find how to say what I’m feeling.”
Reese smiled at this. “Aren’t you a songwriter? I feel like you should be pretty great with words.”
“Well, those words are when I’m alone in a room without the pressure of a beautiful woman looking at me with her amazing eyes. And it also sometimes takes me hours or days to complete a song. This is way more intense.”
“You think I’m beautiful?” she asked, her smile wide.
“Have I not already told you? I need to work on that. Reese, you are beautiful.”
She giggled, a light blush covering her cheeks. “I have to say that I did not expect this side of you. You’re being sweet and vulnerable and a little goofy. I like it.”
“Someone told me that being vulnerable is a good quality.”
“It is very, very attractive,” Reese said.
“Good. Maybe in addition to Night and Day Sterling, I’ve got Afternoon Sterling.”
“Romantic Afternoon Sterling,” she corrected. “It has a nice ring to it.”
Sterling knew he still hadn’t answered the question of what was happening between them. He understood why Reese said talking felt a little bit like breaking the spell. Mostly because this felt like a dream. He hadn’t hoped for feelings like this or a woman like Reese. It had seemed out of reach and now that she was in front of him, he did expect the bubble to burst. Maybe that’s part of the reason he was being so open. If it was going to disappear, he wanted to enjoy every moment while he could.
If Reese wanted some kind of promise or more stable sense of their relationship, Sterling didn’t know what he could offer. Not because he was afraid of committing to her, but it had been a really long time since he had one of these conversations. He felt lost. Should he ask her to be his girlfriend? That sounded so hokey and juvenile. He wanted something more, but it was way too soon for him to be thinking beyond that. Wasn’t it?
When he still didn’t say anything, Reese spoke again. Her tone was softer, all the teasing gone. “I’m sorry for being forward if you aren’t ready to talk about it. I thought maybe I could just go with the flow on this trip, but I feel like I’m going to end up with my heart smashed if I keep going along, not sure where I’m going.”
Sterling flipped her arm over and began to move his finger up and down her pulse at her wrist, tracing over the henna tattoo.
“When I first met you,” Sterling said, “you were this scary stalker girl. You smelled like a bar and you embarrassed me teasing about marriage.”
She groaned. “Not again! I’m never going to live this down.”
“Let me finish. The more time I’ve spent with you, the more I’ve been impressed by you. Your kindness, your smarts, and, as already mentioned, your beauty. The more I know you, the more I want to know you.”
Reese kept pressing. “As friends? Or someone you hired to work for you?”
Sterling shook his head. Still his fingers moved on her wrist, now down over her palm, tracing the lines in her hand as though by feel, since his eyes were intensely locked on hers. “No. To both.”
“I don’t go around kissing guys just because they’re handsome and charismatic,” Reese said.
“You think I’m handsome and charismatic?”
This earned him another smile. “I’m not giving your ego any more ammo. Look, I really don’t want to overstep or to push you into committing to something. Promise. I just want to be careful. I feel like I could really fall for you. Or am falling for you. And it needs to slow down. If you aren’t feeling the same way, I guess I want to know right now. So I can decide if it’s worth it to put myself out there more than I have.”
“I’m not playing games,” Sterling said. “I’m sorry if I’m not saying enough. I am not good at these kinds of conversations. And it’s been a very long time since I’ve been in a relationship. At least, not a fake relationship.”
Reese groaned and put her free hand over her face. “Oh, no—Morgan.”
“What?” Sterling said.
“Do you really not know how she feels about you?”
Sterling sighed and looked down at where his fingers linked through hers. “I suspected, but hoped not. When I hired her, she insisted that there was nothing and we would be totally professional. I had been getting signals that maybe it wasn’t true, but was not about to bring it up.”
“My job is tied into this as well. If Kevin finds out something is happening between us, he’ll fire me. And if the public finds out that we’re dating, it will make those baby-daddy rumors look true. It will look like you broke your childhood sweetheart’s heart. You’ll seem like a total womanizer.”
“Let’s not worry about Morgan and Kevin and the public right now. Let’s just think about you and me. If it was just you and me, what would you say about being my … girlfriend?”
Sterling’s cheeks flushed a little because he realized that “girlfriend” was not the word he wanted to say. He didn’t know exactly what word because “wife” sounded way too big—although strangely alluring—and “girlfriend” sounded way too small for the building feelings that had erupted in the last day since they started on this trip. Had they really only left this morning? People joked about “tour time” and how being on tour was like being in an alternate universe where time passed at a different pace. Sterling believed it.
