He turned his head away and wiped his fingers on the paper towel. His face was dark now, his expression grim and his mouth twisted.
Her stomach knotted. Why did this feel like grief? She’d extinguished a light in his eyes she’d only caught a few glimpses of. A playfulness, a hopefulness she’d seen in flashes in the barbershop and again in the personal shopper’s suite. The night in the blues club. Monday afternoon, working with Gavin.
Surely, though, she wasn’t his type any more than he was hers. He needed some woman who would find nothing more entertaining than the dark, close atmosphere of a blues club, someone who understood his music and could talk to him about things she didn’t understand—notes and keys and rhythm, art and emotion, soul and depth—a woman like her mother or her sisters.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “It wouldn’t make any sense if I did, anyway.”
That was for goddamned sure. She couldn’t explain the sexual heat she’d felt when he’d stood up for her against Pete or the rush of longing when he’d said I don’t want him to touch you.
Insane, fierce need that had taken over the second he’d touched her. She’d gone to a place beyond herself, where all sense and sanity had been drowned by want.
“But I also don’t see what was so bad about it,” he said.
“It was wrong. You’re my client. And if it got out, it could destroy my career. Image consulting is dog-eat-dog.”
He looked down. “And I’m bad for your image.”
“Letting a client do—that—against my office door with my admin outside, yes, that would be bad for my image.”
He shook his head. “That? That’s what we just did? That? Something so dirty and weird you don’t even have a name for it?”
“What would you call it?”
“Jesus, Haven.”
“Well?”
She wasn’t sure why she was goading him. Maybe there was a tiny part of her that wanted him to fight back, to tell her that what had happened was more than she was admitting. Not only that, but something else, something he had a name for even if she didn’t.
But he didn’t answer. Instead he said, “I’m not going to say anything to anyone. And if you don’t want it to happen again, it won’t.”
What if...
What if I do want it to happen again?
It can’t, said the voice of reason.
“If it happens again...” She said it as much for her own benefit as for his, because she didn’t trust herself any more, not after that. “If it happens again, I’ll have to drop you as a client.”
“No,” he said. “No. God knows, I’d walk away from this whole train wreck if I could, but I can’t. I got new hospital bills this morning. I thought I had everything, but then I got $19,000 more, Hav. Can you believe it? Which means I need your help. So if those are the terms, I get it.”
He stuck out his hand.
For a moment she didn’t understand what he wanted from her. Then she realized he was waiting for her to shake on it. They were making a deal. No more of that, the act with no name that was more than it seemed. All business from this point forward.