No food for her cat. Emma’s stomach growled in sympathy.
She padded over to the giant walk-in closet and opened it. Whoa! Brody’s office closet was amateur hour compared to what was on offer here. Tens of suits, hundreds of shirts, the order mind-boggling. She let her fingers graze the fabrics, absorbed the clear demonstration of wealth. Opening a drawer revealed black socks. Another one showed more, a plethora of evidently professionally laundered socks. Rich people were weird. She chose a shirt, a pale blue number, and shrugged it on, enjoying the decadent thrill that fizzed through her.
His room. His bed. His shirt.
Her gaze snagged on the bedside clock. Eight ten. Crap, late for work. She crashed out of the room and right into a tall, hard-muscled, incredible-smelling obstacle.
“You’re awake,” Brody said, rather obviously.
“I’m late.” Her hands had somehow found their way to his chest—funny how that happens—and lingered there. His hands had somehow found their way to her hips and cupped them firmly.
Hilarious.
“Late for what?”
“You have the Rikerson conference call at nine thirty, and I need to prep for the partners’ meeting at eleven, and—”
“Emma, calm down. It’s eight in the evening.”
Her fuzzy head tried to reconcile that. “I missed work this afternoon. Meetings and—”
“It’s okay. We managed. The world is still spinning on its axis.” He was holding her and smelling delicious, so she questioned the veracity of that statement. Her world was definitely in a full-on tilt to the insane side right now.
“We’re going to sit down and discuss everything and come up with a plan.”
“Mr. Kane…”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Brody. I will sort this out myself. I promise I will be out of your hair tonight. I just need to make a few phone calls.”
“Emma, if I know anything about you, it’s that you have already made every call you possibly could before you got to this point.” His words were stiff with logic. “You’re a ‘leave no stone unturned’ kind of girl. So tell me, who ya gonna call? Debt-busters?”
He was right. There was no one.
“You don’t have to concern yourself,” she said. “My job is to take care of your every need—”
His mouth twitched. Oh, this one was too damn sexy for his own good.
“At the office, perv.” His surprising cheekiness and her just as surprising sassy retort made her laugh. So unexpected was the sound that she cupped her mouth, not quite believing it came from her. She so needed to laugh. Shake loose that hard knot of despair in her chest.
But not yet. It felt indulgent.
“Emma, you will stay here while I work on getting you a place to live.”
“Here?” She looked around, horror replacing her inappropriate giddiness, and something else. An inkling of hope. How did he do that? Make her feel as if her problems were actually surmountable?
“Mr. Ka—Brody—I can’t afford to pay you rent”—as if that were the highest hurdle here and not the living-together-in-sexy-proximity part—“and the kind of places you’d find for me are way out of my price range. All my income has to be used for other commitments.”
“We’ll work something out. Something that doesn’t compromise this damn pride of yours.”
At her ankles, a furry ball of warm kitty-cat burrowed in at her feet. Do it for Kevin, a voice in her head whispered. Probably Kevin.
“Let’s get you something to eat, Emma.”
She sighed her acquiescence, too weary to put up any real resistance. Ten thousand thread count cotton and the promise of food got her every time. “Okay.”
…
Brody had expected her to resist more staunchly, but Emma had clearly decided to humor him for now. He walked ahead of her into the kitchen where he did the only thing he knew how to do in his kitchen with confidence: press the start button on the Keurig.
She sat at the kitchen island, her bare legs dangling like spears of temptation from beneath the tails of his dress shirt. “What happened to my clothes?”
“That happened,” he said, pointing a finger at the demon cat.
“I meant, how did I get undressed?”
He lowered his gaze to her legs. Realizing that was a recipe for insanity, he raised his eyes to employer-employee appropriate levels.
“The clothes fairies.”
“The clothes fairies?”
“Aye.” Unsure why, he’d decided to answer her with a faintly Scottish brogue. “That’s their job. To remove the clothing of tired or inebriated lasses. Sandwich?”
She nodded.
He put a mug of coffee before her along with cream and sugar on the side. He had no idea how she took her coffee. He wasn’t supposed to know.
She glanced down at the coffee and condiments. Usually she was the one bringing him coffee, so she was understandably thrown at the role reversal. This little moment encapsulated perfectly the changes that had occurred in their dynamic over the last twenty-four hours.