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“I’d be delighted.”
It was a beautiful place—one I’d strongarmed my new supervisor into running for her, with a tighter square footage and more rooftop access, and one of the best views I’d seen so far, a staggering vista looking out over the high-rises of Miami Beach and the water beyond. My supervisor had been upset we were looking at a measly forty-two million, but… they’d live.
And Cameron’s face when we stepped out of the elevator and into the living room suite with its tiered plant walls and massive floor-to-ceiling windows, marble tones balanced by light wood and striking color on black accents—her face was worth all the arguments at the office.
“Not a bad place to wake up and see the sunrise,” I said, gesturing to the crystal accents from the close wall to the hanging light display. “You can imagine the light, the color…”
“But you took me here after sunrise specifically so I’d have to come back to see it at its best.” She ran her finger lightly along a countertop, and I suppressed the shudder down my spine at the sight. “Clever sales tactic.”
“I can’t be too shoddy at sales. Cat’s gotta eat.”
I loved the way she smiled, laughed like a little kid going through the tour—the way she lit up when I showed her some of the nicer features in the place. And no matter how much I tried to rein it in, I couldn’t help wondering what it would look like seeing those things as her girlfriend. As the one she kept closest—being around her on a daily basis.
Ruth was right. The woman changed me. And impossibly, against all reason, I liked the woman Cameron Mercier had turned me into.
She was positively glowing once we ended the tour, standing at the railing—it had turned into a little tradition between the two of us, finishing at the railing, looking out over Miami—and she finished her coffee before she turned to me.
“I like it,” she said. I stood up straighter.
“That’s a different tone than usual. Are we on serious consideration now?”
“Hm.” Her smile turned into something a little more distant as she turned to the horizon. “There’s a big reason I can’t sign quite yet.”
“And that is…?”
“What do you think?” She stretched her arms out, speaking casually. “I’d have to stop having tours with you.”
My throat tightened, but I just smiled at her. “Ah. That is a struggle. Then you’d have to just invite me over to your ritzy new home instead, and who knows what might happen then…”
Her eyes flared as she looked me over. “That’s not normally how a real estate agent operates, is it?”
“I seem to recall something about looking for a very low-skilled private chef?”
She gave me that smile again—that one I only ever saw in private moments between us, that one where it felt like she was looking at the best thing she’d ever seen. “Someone to open some cans for me, yes. It’s quite a tempting proposition…”
“Is that what tomorrow evening is, by chance? A canned food tour?”
She laughed, reaching out and tapping a finger to my lips. It left an electric charge tingling at the point of contact. “I told you not to try figuring out what it is. And now my canned tuna surprise is wasted.”
“Well, that’s a shame. I won’t try to guess what the other cans are, then.”
She winked, and honestly? It kind of left me breathless. “Just be a good girl and let me surprise you.”
“Uh.” So much for managing a smooth response. My face burned, and Cameron laughed, turning away.
“Well then. Shall we wrap it up here?”
Maybe I wasn’t that different from her, because being outmaneuvered by her quick remarks was one hell of a turn-on.
My supervisor was relieved to hear Cameron was seriously considering the place—I left out the details—and eager to hurry it along, a whole line of other clients to get to that they wanted to move me through like an assembly line. I’d kind of forgotten what it was like—Pillar had been similar in its ruthless straight-to-action policy, and Queen Pearl’s delicate, methodical touch of working long-term with a client, prioritizing the connection over the sale, had been a breath of fresh air. Leon was more mass-market, more industrialized—push the clients through to the end result and help fund the development division.
Made me wonder, a little bit, what all of this came down to. What the point of the work was. One of those situations where you started to see through the bullshit and wonder what the point of your job was, other than to keep a roof over your own head. But I was just grateful to have something right now, and praying Leon wouldn’t find some weird, catastrophic failure like the series of burning husks I’d left behind me.
Still, it was clear they weren’t going to give me much longer with Cameron. At some point they’d dismiss her as someone just there to kick tires and get nice tours, and they’d probably throw me out with her. But I wasn’t letting it spoil what was between us right now.
It was a luncheon the next day with Ruth and some of our mutual friends—including our former coworker Marco and his tall, well-built friend Damien who Ruth was all but drooling over for the entire time—when I left early, thanking everyone for the time and excusing myself. Ruth caught me at the door, a smile on her lips.
“Going to catch your girlfriend now?”
