He was smiling into her eyes in a way that made her insides turn molten. That just added to the flare of heat he’d provoked by inviting her to sit beside him on the bed. She’d tried to interpret the invitation as an unspoken apology for making her work for so long without a break, but this smile wasn’t as easy to explain away.
She needed to go on the offensive to put this whole encounter on a more businesslike footing. “The first condition is that you pay for whatever I have to wear to the wedding. All of it: shoes, purse, wrap, whatever.” She couldn’t afford the kind of dress and accessories she’d need, and she wasn’t going to embarrass herself—or him—with the wrong clothes.
“What about the lingerie?” he asked.
She swallowed hard, trying to decide if he was merely wondering how much he would have to spend or if he was being deliberately provocative. “If it’s necessary,” she said, trying to sound cool and sophisticated when she could feel the blush scalding her cheeks.
“Maybe I’ll go along for that part of the shopping trip.”
Surprise made her stiffen as she realized she wasn’t imagining things. He was flirting with her. Why would Nathan Trainor flirt with a temp? He must be so bored with being confined to his bed he would do anything for entertainment.
“This is a business arrangement,” she reminded him . . . and herself. “You’re paying me to go to your father’s wedding with you.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it.” He lounged back against the pillows with a bland look that undercut the provocation of his comment.
Her heart was dancing in a confused rhythm, but she skewered him with a hard, clear gaze. “The second condition is that you have to fill me in on your family’s dynamics, so I don’t make things worse.”
He shifted on the bed and broke eye contact. “Trust me, nothing you do could make it any worse.”
She had brought up a touchy subject to give herself a chance to wrestle down the feeling of fluttering exhilaration he was causing, but now she wished she hadn’t. While it made her nervous, the knowledge that her boss was noticing her as a woman made her feel as though she’d drunk a whole glass of champagne in one gulp. It bubbled and fizzed inside her.
“Just give me a bare-bones outline,” she said.
Exhaustion washed over his face, making the bones show sharply under his skin. “I suppose you’re entitled to know what a minefield you’re walking into.” He closed his eyes for a moment.
Guilt nagged at Chloe and she wished she had the nerve to touch his hand where it lay inert on the rumpled comforter. “You can tell me another day when you’re feeling better.”
He opened his gray eyes. “Might as well get it over with.” He pushed himself higher up on the pillows. “The elephant in the room is that my mother committed suicide five years ago.”
“Oh!” Minefield was the right word. “I’m so sorry.” She winced at how inadequate that sounded.
“She’d struggled with depression all her life, so it wasn’t a complete surprise.” His foot began to jiggle in a nervous tic. “She shouldn’t have married a military man. Every time my father was assigned to a new base, she struggled to adapt to a new set of people. And my father was ambitious, so he needed his wife to be perfect. The strain was more than she could handle. Maybe if my father had been more . . .”
He stopped and frowned down at his twitching foot, drawing up his leg so the knee was bent and his foot was flat on the bed.
“That kind of pressure would be hard, even for someone without mental health issues,” Chloe said into the silence.
“She deserved as many medals as my father, but no one paid any attention to the wives. It was all about the soldiers,” Trainor said, an edge of bitterness in his voice. “Being the model officer’s wife used up most of her strength. There wasn’t much left for . . . other things in her life.”
Chloe put together what Ed had said about Trainor’s father with what Trainor was saying about his mother. That left the man in front of her emotionally abandoned by his parents throughout his childhood. It also appeared that he held his father at least partly accountable for his mother’s death. No wonder he felt so ambivalent about his father’s upcoming wedding.
She couldn’t help it: she needed to offer him comfort. That required leaving her chair and perching on the side of the bed so she could place her palm over the back of his hand.
His skin was warm but not scorching, as it had been when his fever raged. She felt the hard bumps of his knuckles against her hand, and she could smell the spicy citrus of the shampoo he’d used earlier in the day.
For a long moment he went silent and still. She held her breath, wondering if she’d misread him or if his mood had simply changed too drastically. Then he turned his hand and wrapped his long fingers around hers, letting her feel the strength in his grip. His response sent a thrill of nerves zinging through her. She’d made the first move in a dance whose steps she didn’t know.