A wall of steam blanketed over us, and I gave it one last good scream.
“Nick, dooooooon’t!”
It was too late. Without a care in the world, Nick stepped underneath the streaming jets of water—taking me right along with him. They soaked through my hair, just a second before they soaked through my clothes. My tiny pajamas clung to me in shock, as I coughed and spluttered and laughed—still pounding away at him all the while.
“Abby,” he swung me upright and lowered me to the floor, looking me up and down with a very serious frown, “do you realize that you’re still wearing clothes?”
“Oh...you bastard!”
Even though he’d finally set me down, I jumped on top of him once more. Flying through the air with an enraged little shriek, before scrambling around to get on top of his back.
“You think it’s funny?!” I demanded, yanking the nozzle off the stand and spraying it directly in his face. My hand groped blindly for the wall dials, and managed to turn the whole thing ice cold. “Well, I think this is funny! How do you like that?!”
A burst of wet laughter echoed off the tiled walls, as he shielded his face as best he could with me swinging wildly from his shoulders. A second later, the temperature was readjusted and he had wrestled the thing free.
I slid down with a smug sort of satisfaction. Then promptly began showering as if the whole thing had been my idea all along. Nick watched my progress with a bemused grin, and handed me a bottle of shampoo when asked.
“You know,” he panted, still a little breathless from the sudden assault, “I’ve never seen this side of you before.”
“The side of me that would jump on you in the shower?” I repeated with a wry grin, lathering up the sides of my hair. “No, I’m pretty sure that would have been frowned upon back at the office.”
Like it was being professionally frowned upon right now...
An image of my shell-shocked office flashed back through my mind. A dozen pairs of wide-eyes staring incredulously back into mine. A hundred or more newspapers scattered across the tables behind them. The way that Allison and Jake had tried to shield me from the worst of it.
For once, even Harold’s judgement wasn’t an exaggeration.
I had crossed the line. That hard line, that in my profession, you don’t ever cross. I was literally showering on the other side of it right now.
“Hey,” he said gently, spinning me around so he could see my eyes.
The two of us hadn’t talked about the news blitz on our new ‘relationship’ since it had happened yesterday morning. He’d tried to breach the subject back at Barneys, but by that point, I was too wound up to go there myself. Then he’d pulled out that ring, and the rest of the day had promptly fallen to pieces.
“This is going to be okay—you know that, don’t you?” He bent down so that we were on the same level, looking calmly into my eyes. “In three months, the board is going to be satisfied, my father will surrender that flash-drive, and everything will go back to normal.”
One: I wasn’t sure I wanted everything to go back to normal.
And two: I wasn’t sure it ever could.
“For you, maybe,” I said quietly. A handful of bubbles slid down the side of my face, and my shoulders wilted with a tired sigh. “You can walk away from something like this, Nick, I can’t. I’m a publicist who fucked one of her clients. There’s no coming back from that.”
For one of the first times since I’d met him, he could think of nothing to say. He simply bowed his head, standing beside me as the water crashed over our heads.
“I called my father, you know.”
I looked up in surprise. Yes—Mitchell was the man who had leaked the story just to punish us. He was the man directly responsible for my subsequent career suicide. But at the same time, he was the man who was still holding all the chips. I didn’t think there was a way in hell Nick would cross him now. Not when those photographs were still hanging over our heads.
“You did?” I asked softly, absolutely stunned by the gesture. “What did you say?”
A stab of tension tightened all Nick’s features, darkening his eyes as he recounted the tale. “Well I never call him, so on the random occasion that I do—his secretary always puts me directly through. She didn’t this time. Said he was in a meeting, and couldn’t be disturbed. I didn’t believe that...so I went over there myself.”
Nick Hunter set foot inside the Hunter Corporation? While it might have seemed like a rather natural turn of events—I couldn’t remember the last time it had happened. He avoided the place like the plague. Only ever visiting when forced.
I couldn’t believe that he would voluntarily go there now.
“So what happened?” I pressed quietly, trying to keep the tension from my voice.
Nick let out a sigh just as tired as mine.