Cullen’s brows drew together and he let out a laugh. “The social media stuff she’s been putting together. The boutiques are all fighting over her now. They each want their own Evie campaign and are using her images as jump-off points for their window displays.”
My heart rate slowed to something closer to normal, and I forced a tight smile. “Yeah, she’s doing really well.”
So well, in fact, that I had to credit a large part of the revenue hike to her efforts. I’d told Cullen that earlier in the week, but my own guilt made me wary of repeating it. Was I too complimentary? Was I too friendly toward her? Not friendly enough?
All in all, this was getting real fucking old. Something had to give, and soon. Besides the fact that I was in a near-constant state of arousal, I also had to wrestle with my conscience. I felt like a fraud. Here I was at lunch with Evie’s brother, unable to stop thinking about my fingers working inside her, and that little break in her voice when she came.
Not cool. Not cool at all.
I managed to get through the rest of lunch without choking, but the whole thing had left a bad taste in my mouth.
By the time we headed back to the office, I was feeling like shit on every level. For being a bad friend, for having to basically ignore Evie at the deli, and for not singing her praises as loudly as I should have been as far as work went because I didn’t want Cullen giving me the side-eye.
I made a mental vow to take the coming weekend and make some major decisions about Evie and about my life. Somehow, I’d managed to keep my vow to not go all the way, but there was no shot that was going to last. I was a hair trigger away from losing control every time we were together, and soon, this flesh and blood would fail me. Before that happened, I had to have some idea of where things were going from here.
On a whim, I told Cullen to go on ahead of me. “I’m going to stop off and grab a coffee. See you up there.”
He was already distracted by a text he’d gotten and threw up a quick wave before disappearing through the double doors.
I veered off toward the little café next door and ordered one of those mocha lattes Evie liked and a chocolate-covered biscotti.
It was totally irrational how excited I felt as I stepped off the elevator to our offices a few minutes later and made a beeline toward Evie’s desk. She was on the phone but she waved at me, a smile playing on her lips.
“Yes, Linda. I totally understand. And I agree, the purple would look great with the green, so for the next round of images, that’s what we’ll do.”
I set the coffee on Evie’s desk and tugged the biscotti out of the bag. Her whole face lit up, and her fingers brushed mine as she took it from me.
“You’re my hero,” she mouthed, her eyes going soft with something I couldn’t quite name.
I went to my desk feeling like exactly that. A fucking superhero, to be exact. What was it about this woman that she could make me feel that way with something as simple as a smile?
I thought back to a time when we were younger that I’d seen that same smile.
A bunch of us had gone swimming at the lake one hot summer day. I’d been with a girl, Annalise Benson. She’d developed early, and I was ashamed now to say that was all I’d seen in her, because she was also catty and a total snob.
That day at the lake, we’d been dating for about a month, and I still hadn’t been able to see past her tits. Evie had been around twelve and had finally started to grow out of her tattletale stage, so we’d let her come with us. She was paddling around in the water while Cullen chatted with some friends on the beach.
Annalise and I were making out in the shallows when I heard Evie cry out. I’d pulled away so fast, I nearly knocked Annalise on her ass to get over to Evie. She’d apparently cut her heel on a sharp rock and was bleeding badly enough to require stitches.
As I’d carried her to shore, I overheard Annalise muttering under her breath. “I don’t know why we had to bring that clumsy brat with us, anyway.”
I could feel Evie stiffen in my arms at the cruel words, and as I looked into her tear-filled eyes, an icy rage had flowed through me.
“We didn’t have to bring her. We wanted to,” I’d snapped. “And she might be clumsy, but at least she’s not a stuck-up bitch.”
Annalise had taken off in a huff, taking my chances of getting laid along with her, but I didn’t give a shit. Because Evie had looked up at me with that smile.
Why had it taken so long for me to see what I saw in her now?
And how the fuck was I going to explain all this to her brother in a way that didn’t tear us all apart?
Chapter Twenty
Who would ever compare?