Part of her knew she should probably stop talking right then and there, but instead she finished her thought.
“But you’re not a cruel man, so I don’t think it’s that you’re laughing at people. It’s more like…just another way of keeping people at a distance.”
She kept her gaze pinned to the top button of his shirt while she spoke, all too aware that she was just guessing about him but that her guesses revealed as much about her as they did about him. If he was really paying attention. And maybe he wasn’t.
He gently cupped her chin and tipped it up so she met his gaze. “Is that what you think? That I push people away?”
It’s what I do.
But she didn’t say that aloud. Instead, she asked, “Do you?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Yes, I suppose everybody does.”
Suddenly this whole conversation felt way too intimate. Even more intimate than the time they’d spent in bed together because that had been about sex, not emotion. And if there was one thing she was good at, it was separating her physical needs from her emotional needs.
So—though she’d told herself that she wasn’t going to sleep with him again now that he was her boss—she gave into every urge she’d been suppressing for the past twenty-four hours. She threaded her fingers up through his hair, luxuriating in the feel of the thick, long strands. She let herself lean into him. And she inhaled deeply, letting the warm spicy scent of him invade her senses.
His hands clenched on her hips and this time she had no doubt about his intention because he pulled her close to him, rocking his hips against the juncture of her legs. He dipped his head down to her neck and left a trail of kisses along the sensitive skin there.
His breath was hot against her skin as he murmured, “Isn’t this crossing that line you drew in the sand?”
“Yes, damn it.” She wished he hadn’t brought it up, but she couldn’t fault him for it, either. She was the one who’d set the boundary. She couldn’t begrudge him for respecting her wishes, even if he was ignoring her desires.
She gave his waist a quick squeeze, relishing the way his muscles clenched in response to her touch, and then she stepped back.
She smoothed her hands down her sleek tan sweater and gave the hem a tug. “What were we even talking about?”
“Cain-blue eyes,” Griffin said easily, apparently less befuddled than she was.
Right. The Cain eyes.
That was the discussion that had led her astray. And—she now realized—she’d never even really responded to the comment. She’d gone and rambled on and on about the shape of his eyes and the character of his smile, but she’d never really admitted that, yes, he and Dalton had eyes that were exactly the same piercing shade of blue. Not bright sky-blue or deep indigo-blue, but an eerie sort of sea-blue, turquoise almost, pale in the center with a dark ring of contrast.
She knew intimately the shade of Griffin’s eyes—just as she knew their shape. But she was only vaguely aware of what Dalton’s eyes looked like.
“Well,” she said brusquely, “even if we could see her eyes, that would tell us nothing. The girl could have brown eyes and still be Hollister’s daughter.”
“Nah. If she’s Hollister’s daughter, she has blue eyes.”
“You’re just assuming the girl’s mother didn’t have a brown-eye gene to contribute to the pool?”
Griffin waggled his hand in a maybe/maybe not gesture.
“My instinct tells me that whoever she was, the girl’s mother would have had blue eyes. My father definitely had a type. My mother, Cooper’s mother and his other longtime mistress all looked like they could have been sisters.”
It took a second for the full meaning of his words to sink in. When they did, she raised her eyebrows in question and asked, “Seriously?”
He gave a dismissive shrug. “Yeah. He liked waifish blondes. The more fragile-looking the better. And they were all blue-eyed.”
She kept looking at him, waiting for him to pick up on her train of thought. When he didn’t, she gave his shoulder a playful shove. “Not that, idiot. I mean, your father had a long-term mistress and no one thought to question her?”
“Sharlene doesn’t know anything.”
“Sharlene? Why does that name sound familiar?”
“How should I know?”
“Sharlene is a pretty unusual name. You’re not talking about Sharlene Sheppard, are you?”
“She was Sharlene Davonivich then, but yeah. Why?”
“And this was before she married Jack Sheppard, your father’s business rival?” she asked.