Since I Fell For You(10)

Jesus. She hadn’t even needed to touch him to send him straight to the edge of losing his mind. He’d worked for a lot of tough clients, but he had no doubt that Suzanne was going to be his toughest yet. He’d take being screamed at and treated like dirt over trying to corral an impossible attraction any day. What’s more, most clients didn’t ask him questions. Primarily because they didn’t give a crap about him. And that was just fine with him. He wasn’t interested in opening himself up to his clients. Better to keep his past buried deep where it belonged.

But since she was obviously waiting for him to reply, he said, “I make sure to keep in shape so that I can do my job.”

She raised an eyebrow, and even that simple movement was sexy. “Your version of keeping in shape seems different from most people’s. I’ve never seen anyone with muscles like yours.”

Her skin flushed, as if she wasn’t used to saying anything quite so direct. The innocence of her blush didn’t match either the outfit she had on this morning or the way she’d just been looking at him, as though she wanted to eat him up. Suzanne Sullivan was more of a puzzle than he’d thought. A puzzle he was far too interested in solving.

“When do you even get a chance to go to the gym if you’re stuck shadowing your clients all the time?”

“I don’t need a gym to stay in shape. I can do everything I need wherever I am, no weights, no machines, just by using my own body weight for resistance.”

“I’d like to learn how to do that. I’m in my office more often than I’m not. And I usually can’t get away.” She half smiled. “Okay, I probably could get away, but I don’t want to, especially when things start clicking with my code. Which I’m always convinced is going to happen any second if I only keep at it for another five minutes.”

Her half smile shifted into another brilliantly beautiful grin. Though he tried to brace for impact, it didn’t do any good. Every time she looked at him like that, his heart raced as though he’d just sprinted around a track at full speed.

“If there were things I could do to get my heart rate up while I’m waiting for my code to compile or thinking through a bug fix, that would be awesome.”

“I can show you.”

Wait. What the hell was he saying? The last thing he needed to do was offer to get sweaty with her. It was her smile. It messed with his head so much that he couldn’t think straight.

Before he could take it back, she said, “Great!” Her grin turned the sunshine up another notch inside the dirty taxi.

“So your brothers were right when they said you work around the clock?”

At his mention of her brothers, her smile fell away. “I’d appreciate it if you could leave them off our list of discussion topics. I still haven’t forgiven them for their underhanded, low-down, ridiculous—” She stopped, paused, breathed. “Sorry, you were asking about my work schedule. I do work a lot, but it’s because I really love what I do. I love knowing that my digital security software helps people. I always feel like I have a purpose. As long as I have my work, I’m not going to just float away one day, not going to feel lost.”

In his line of work, Roman made sure to pay close attention to absolutely every cue—both from his clients and the strangers around him. He couldn’t miss the passion in Suzanne’s voice when she spoke about her company and about having purpose. Her word choices were interesting as well, considering that he couldn’t imagine her ever floating away or being lost. And yet, those seemed to be concerns for her.

“My brothers are all workaholics too,” she said, temporarily forgetting that she’d banned them from the conversation. “I’m pretty sure we get it from my dad. I’m assuming you know who he is?”

Roman never took on a job without researching his prospective clients. Due to the jobs he’d taken with Alec’s company, he already knew the public information about the Sullivans. “Your father is a famous painter.”

“He was. Until my mom—” She inhaled a breath that shook slightly in her chest. “You’ve been friends with Alec and Harry for long enough that you probably also know what happened to her, don’t you?”

Her brothers didn’t talk much about their past—none of them did, which Roman appreciated, since he didn’t plan on sharing the past he’d put behind him with anyone. But Suzanne’s past wasn’t something that could be hidden, not when her father had once been such a worldwide sensation in his field that he’d ended up on the cover of Time magazine.