But now, things had grown solemn quickly.
Her touch at the drive through had sparked a fire down to my toes. The way her fingers wrapped around my forearm reminded me of all the things that kept me up at night. The warmth of her body and the way her voice echoed off the corners of my mind. There were many evenings that were spent wondering how she was and wanting to know if she was okay. There were many lunch breaks spent sifting through employee reports and daily input for the Minnesota branch to make sure she was doing well at her job. So many nights where I’d fallen asleep alone and I woke up thinking she would be next to me.
I knew what she was doing when she touched me, and I had to shrug it off.
She was sexy as hell, just as I’d remembered. The high-waist black pants she was in did wonders for her figure, framing her backside nicely and exposed the deep dip in her waist that gave her the undeniable figure that kept popping up in my dreams. She was wearing this pale yellow blouse along with a Christmas green coat that had a massive collar to keep her neck warm.
And the black heels she was in gave her the perfect boost to her height necessary to put her forehead right at my lips.
I thought about kissing her skin. When her hand reached over for my arm, I’d thought about taking her hand and bringing it to my lips. I’d thought about raising my gaze and leaning forward to find that beautiful little forehead. I’d thought about taking her right there in the backseat of that rental car, reminding her of how beautiful she was to me and how lucky I had been to have met someone who wasn’t willing to give up on me.
Someone who was willing to be just the right amount of annoying to show me how much of a rigid, cold individual I had become.
But I was her boss now. Not only that, I owned the company she worked for. And we had to keep things professional. With Beddingfield striking up his media persistence of my public persona, I couldn’t conduct myself in a way that could be misconstrued should it get out to the media. That was why I’d sworn off all women, not just Abby. I told myself that this year would be filled with nothing but work. Work, meetings, the occasional corporate party to schmooze, and lots of time with my mother. No women, no improprieties, and certainly no sexual relationships with beautiful women named Abby who worked for my company.
But oh, how I’d wanted to call her.
Every time I went to pick up the phone over the past two months, I had to remind myself all I’d worked for. I had to remind myself of the work I had ahead of me and, sometimes, I even had to watch Beddingfield’s interviews that mentioned me, just to get my head back in the game. There were moments where Abby’s memory consumed every single bit of me, and there were moments where I actually considered risking it all just to call her.
Just to get her to my hotel room.
Just to feel her taste upon my tongue again.
But now, things had fallen into an awkward state again. I felt the tension growing in my body as Abby slouched into her chair. She threw her legs onto the dashboard of the car like she was so used to doing, and I found myself growing annoyed. The music in the car seemed louder than it was when I turned it on, so I reached over and turned it off.
I heard a small sigh escape from between Abby’s lips, and I knew what she was thinking.
She was thinking that we were falling back into the same pattern. Into the same people we were when we first met. The comfortable part of this trip was fading quickly, and as we rode over the border into Iowa, there was an uncomfortable tension you could slice with a spoon.
We rode in silence as the skies above our heads began to grow still grayer. I was trying to stay optimistic about this road trip, but I felt my hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. We were going to hit nasty weather much sooner than I’d been anticipating, and I was not looking forward to traveling in it.
“Want to stop for a bathroom break and get some snacks before we get into this weather?” I asked.
I watched Abby shrug, and something inside of me lurched. Maybe I could make a goodwill gesture and turn the music back on or something, but I couldn’t pay attention to that now. If we made one more stop for snacks, drinks, and fuel, we could make it almost the rest of the way to Wichita. We might have to stop thirty minutes outside of the city for more gas, but that was it.
We would make it if we stopped now.
I pulled off onto an exit and drove into the nearest gas station. Abby unbuckled her seat belt and was out of the car before I could even get the engine shut down. Without asking me what I
