Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 97994 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97994 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
I should’ve brought wine—something imported.
Why didn’t I?
Instead, I brought freaking baked goods, making it all the more glaringly obvious I’m not the type of woman he’s dated in the past.
UGH!
I shift the box in my arms, fingers tightening around the edges.
This entire evening was a bad idea. Why did I suggest it? What if Aaron thinks I’m boring? Or childish? Or…
Am I out of my damn mind?
Too late to turn back now.
A soft ding echoes through the elevator when we reach the top floor as the doors quietly slide open.
Wait.
“Huh?”
I’m confused when the doors open because I’m not stepping into a hallway like I’m expecting, I’m stepping into a small lobby. Another room? I glance around and up and down at the brown marble floors and mahogany paneled walls.
There’s even a round center table with a vase of fresh flowers on it.
It looks and smells rich.
“Jeez,” I mutter. “Is this where he lives?”
I take one cautious step out of the elevator.
Then another.
At the end of the room looms a large door and, in the center of it, etched into brushed gold metal, instead of an apartment number:
P
P for Penthouse.
My stomach drops straight through the marble floor.
Oh my god.
I clutch the cookie box tighter to my chest.
“I do not belong here.”
This isn’t a casual hangout location. This is a man with expensive taste and high standards and probably a stock portfolio, who lives in a building so far above my paygrade, I barely know how to behave.
My brother certainly doesn’t live like this. His condo in the sky is more like every bachelor pad you’ve seen in the movies: stark and modern and full of take-out containers. Wet towels on the bathroom floor, even when he knows he’s having company. Pizza boxes on his shiny stone counters that he can never manage to keep clean.
I know with certainty that behind that one massive door labeled P lies the opposite of those things. Lies my Hall Pass. Seriously, how many women get the opportunity to sleep with theirs? Not that I’m here for sex—god no, that’s not me at all. But I am curious, and I did make the pact with Blaire, and if I chicken out now, she’ll kill me.
On the other hand, this is so unlike me.
I do not put the moves on men!
The rubber soles of my sneakers squeak when I slowly turn back toward the elevator, breathing an audible sigh of relief to see that the doors haven’t closed and it hasn’t descended to the lower floors.
“Thank god it’s still here.” I can leave.
My getaway car.
I step back toward it, the tip of my shoe over the threshold of my escape plan when the one door in the room opens. One more step, then another.
“Going somewhere?”
Oh my god.
Every muscle in my body locks.
I don’t turn to face Aaron right away because if I don’t see him, does he see me? Maybe he’ll disappear. Maybe this is a hallucination brought on by anxiety and the overwhelming scent of browned butter and chocolate chips.
“Um…” I pivot slowly.
Aaron Bishop is leaning his big body against the massive penthouse door, looking dangerous and handsome. Barefoot. Navy sweats. Fitted T-shirt that stretches across his broad chest, sleeves pushed up to his elbows.
Shit. Men in sweatpants are my weakness.
He lifts one eyebrow, waiting.
“I forgot something in my car,” I blurt out.
A low chuckle. “Oh? What did you forget?” he asks.
“I—” Think, Juliette, think.
His mouth twitches. “If you’re having second thoughts, I totally get it. We’re good.”
I swallow when he pushes off the doorframe and swaggers toward me, not fully closing the distance, but enough that I can see the faint bruising from a gash on his chin.
“Do I scare you?” he asks, and it’s not cocky.
He looks concerned.
“Not at all.” I gulp. “I’m a bit thrown off by…”
I gesture around the hallway. The mahogany crown molding. The expensive painting hanging next to his door. The fact that he has his own elevator. “This.”
His gaze flicks to the elevator still waiting patiently behind me.
“So, you were going to bolt?”
I give a feeble nod. “Maybe?”
A corner of his mouth tips up into an amused smile. “Juliette. It’s an apartment, not a brothel.” His eyes rake lower, landing on the pink container in my hands. “Are those for me?”
“Yes,” I whisper, embarrassment rippling through my entire body. “I brought baked goods to a man who looks like he busts beer bottles open with his teeth.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners. “You think I don’t want your cookies?”
“I think you probably have lobster and blue crabs in your freezer. And drink aged wine that requires decanting.”
His grin widens and, for several seconds, all I can do is stare at his teeth.
Because it’s not the polite mask of control he’s been wearing since he opened the door; this face is different. Uninhibited. It starts slowly on one side of his mouth, like he’s trying to hold it back, then spreads fully—lifting his cheeks, softening the hard planes of his face.