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She froze. “What?”
“What are you wearing?”
Oh. That. She glanced down at the oversize shirt she’d bought on a whim. It had Minnie Mouse on it and, now that she thought about it, it was probably something a child would wear. “You have a problem with Minnie?”
“I have a problem with the fact that you need to eat, and I see you in that and all I want to do is toss the food and have you on the table instead.”
“Oh.” Trish blinked. “Oh.”
Cameron shook his head. “Sit down and eat something.”
For the first time in well over a week, she found herself enjoying his abruptness. Trish sank into her seat and grinned. “Is it that the shirt is large enough to fit three of me that gets you going? Or is it a secret Minnie Mouse fetish?”
He set her fish and chips in front of her and dropped into the seat opposite. “You could wear a paper bag and I’d still want to tear the damn thing off you.” He picked up a french fry. “It’d be easier to get into than most clothes, so there’s something to be said for that.”
“You just made a joke.”
“I do that on occasion.”
“Huh.” Trish took a few bites. That seemed to satisfy him that she was going to eat instead of waste away before his eyes, because Cameron set to his food with a single-minded focus she’d only ever seen in athletes and big dudes. When she’d eaten as much as her stomach could handle for the time being, she sat back and found him watching her. “What?”
“I don’t get it.”
“There’s a legion of things you don’t get.”
He frowned at her, completely undeterred by her attempt at humor. “Aaron is good at making people around him happy, but he’s not a people pleaser in the strictest sense of the word. He has no problem telling me to fuck off when the situation calls for it, and he’s ended more than a few client relationships when things went south. It didn’t tear him up to make that call.”
She saw where this train of thought was going, and almost derailed it. Cameron had made abundantly clear that he wanted sex-them and work-them separate, but here in this suite with her body still aching from the wonderful things he’d done to it, the line had already blurred. She took a sip of bottled water. “There wasn’t a question in there.”
“I’m getting to it.” He sat back, the muscles in his chest rippling in a way that made her clench her hands to keep from reaching for him. Cameron gave her another of those searching looks where it almost seemed like he could read her mind. “I’ve met your parents. They’re decent people, and your older sister runs more traditional than either you or Aaron, but she’s not a basket case.”
“Did you just call me a basket case?”
“So where does the nervous shit come from?” He continued without bothering to answer her question. “You...flicker. I thought you were really sunshine personified, but that’s the shield—or the sword, depending on the situation. What happened that you need walls that strong?”
Good Lord, he wasn’t just making idle conversation. He’d gone straight past polite small talk and right to her heart of hearts. Trish forced herself not to fidget and met his gaze directly. “Why do you want to know?”
That set him back. “What?”
“It’s a pretty simple question.”
Cameron seemed to mull that over with the same intensity he gave everything in life. “I want to know more about you. I don’t understand you.”
It was both an encouraging reason and one that cut her knees right out from beneath her. Curiosity. He was curious about her, like she was a bug he couldn’t quite identify and it would annoy the hell out of him until he had her properly categorized and filed away. Then he’d move on and forget all about her as anything other than a vaguely fond memory.
Isn’t that what you want? This was never supposed to be forever.
That was fine. It was even fair.
But it didn’t mean she had to rip herself open for the sake of his curiosity.
Trish pushed her food away. “If you want to know more about me, you start simple. It’s only the proper way to do things.”
“Simple.” He said the word as if tasting it. “All right. What do you do when you’re not overworking yourself on unpaid time?”
The way he asked the question had her making a mental note to check her direct deposit on payday. She should have known Cameron would be keeping an account of all the time she spent in the office during nonworking hours. Silly of her to think he’d missed it.
Trish almost told him there was nothing simple about that question, but “What do you do for fun?” was about as baseline as first date questions went. This isn’t a first date. This is a first...
