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I hit send and immediately felt like an idiot. Our next public appearance. Like I was her assistant scheduling calendar items. Like last night had been an appointment that ran long.

I watched the screen, waiting for those three dots to appear. They didn’t.

Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. I tried to go back to work, but my eyes kept drifting to my phone, checking for notifications that never came.

Maybe she was busy. She had her own work to catch up on, her own life to manage. Just because we’d spent the night together didn’t mean she was sitting around waiting for my texts.

Or maybe she was having second thoughts.

The possibility sat heavy in my gut. Darcy was nothing if not strategic. She analyzed everything, weighed every decision against potential outcomes. What if she’d gotten home and decided that sleeping with her fake boyfriend was a complication she didn’t need?

What if she was already building those walls back up?

I forced myself to set the phone face-down on my desk. Staring at it wasn’t going to make her respond faster. And obsessing over a woman who may or may not be interested in anything beyond our business arrangement was exactly the kind of distraction I didn’t need.

I closed up the office and drove back home. I needed to run. I needed fresh air. I changed into my running shorts and tennis shoes and jogged down to the beach. The little voice in the back of my head told me to be careful.

Don’t get caught up with a woman who only needed me for a few short months to achieve her goals. And then she’d toss me to the side.

22

DARCY

Istared at my phone like it was a bomb that might detonate at any moment.

When’s our next public appearance?

That one little, basically innocent message had sent my brain spiraling into overdrive for the past hour. At first, my heart had stuttered and warmth spread through my veins. He was thinking about me. He’d texted first. After the night we’d shared and the morning in his kitchen, he’d actually reached out.

Did I expect a one-night stand? Maybe. Did I want that? No. Yes.

I didn’t know.

It took me about the third reread before I saw the words. Like really saw. They sank in.

Not “When can I see you again?” Not “Last night was amazing.” Not even a simple “I miss you already.”

It was the business arrangement. The thing my father was paying him to do.

The rational part of my brain knew I was probably overthinking this. Beau wasn’t exactly known for his subtlety. If he’d wanted to say something romantic, he would have just said it. The man had no trouble talking dirty and letting me know exactly what he wanted.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? He hadn’t texted anything cute or sexy. It was all very lawyerly.

Yes, we’d had great sex. Mind-blowing sex, if I was being honest with myself. The kind of sex that made me forget my own name and think about tying myself to his bed. But did that mean anything to him beyond a pleasant bonus to our arrangement?

Did I want it to mean something?

I groaned and buried my face in my hands. This was exactly the kind of emotional spiral I’d spent my entire adult life avoiding. Feelings were messy. Unpredictable. They came from emotion and not facts. Facts were solid.

And yet here I was, sitting on my couch in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, unable to respond to a simple text because I couldn’t figure out what I actually wanted. I was reading way too much into it.

The restless energy building in my chest demanded an outlet. I couldn’t just sit here stewing in my own uncertainty. I needed to do something. Anything other than the crash-out I felt coming at me like a runaway freight train.

My eyes landed on a dust bunny peeking out from under my side table. I had a housekeeper that came in once a week but she was in and out in two hours. I wasn’t a slob. I didn’t need a lot. But I tried to remember the last time I did a deep clean. Like a really deep clean. Instead of going out on Saturday nights, I’d put on my old sweats, my favorite 80s rock playlist, and get to work.

I had been working too much and my beautiful home looked neglected. Not dirty but not spotless. I would clean.

I changed into yoga pants and an old t-shirt, tied my hair back, and put on my playlist. I attacked my house with the kind of ferocity usually reserved for operating rooms. My bathroom came first. I scrubbed the tile until it gleamed, organizing the cabinet under the sink, replacing the hand towels with fresh ones. I restocked the little basket I kept next to the tub.