Page 46 of Lease to Love

I had a clear and reasonable plan to shake her hand, confirm the terms, pick up the cashier's check, and leave this apartment before anything else happened in it.

My eyes dropped instead.

The tattoo caught me first.

A small maple leaf on the inside of her left ankle, fine-lined and slightly faded.

I hadn't known about it.

Years of being in the same rooms as this woman and I hadn't known, because it lived under the skirts and dresses and wide-leg pants. Private and deliberate. The kind of thing you kept until somebody earned it.

Then I noticed the stain on the front of her camisole—orange-red against white, the remnants of whatever she'd been eating before I knocked.

Summer alone in her apartment.

Being human in the specific, unperformed way she wasn't where I could usually see her.

And then I looked at her face.

That was the mistake.

Because right now—bare and unguarded in the Sunday morning light—she was doing something to me that I had spent three years pretending she couldn't.

I looked down at her hand in mine, turned it over, and pressed my lips to her knuckles.

Slow.

My eyes stayed on hers.

Not a quick press. Not punctuation. Something with weight.

Something that knew what it was doing even if I was choosing not to name it.

I felt her breath catch, her fingers tightening in my grip by the smallest amount.

The warmth of her skin registered somewhere behind my sternum like it intended to stay there.

I made myself pull back.

Stood straight.

Fixed my tie, because my hands needed something to do and fixing my tie was professionally defensible.

Summer stood there for a beat, something moving across her face.

Then she rubbed her hands down her thighs in a gesture that was awkward in the specific way of somebody who had suddenly, fully, become aware of what she was wearing.

Or not wearing.

"Um..." She cleared her throat. "Like I said, I didn't know you'd be here this early. I was just—I’d just gotten up, and—Let me get the rent check."

I watched her turn around, scanning the apartment for where she'd left it.

Which gave me an entirely unobstructed view of exactly how much hip and ass those boyshorts were working with.

Goddamn.

The check didn't matter. I'd get it from Erik. I needed to be on the other side of this damn door.