It was a fair request but this sudden unexplained need to have her trust hit him. It wasn’t rational. He hadn’t earned it, but still. “We already have a deal, Ellie.”
“I don’t appreciate being made to choose.”
She wasn’t getting this. He pushed off from the counter and walked into the living room area. Stopped right in front of her so she had to look up to give him eye contact. “The point of the agreement is to defuse the issue with the public. Noah will either stop with the videos or he won’t.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
The urge to reach out and brush his fingers over her cheek almost overwhelmed him. He shoved his hand into his pants pocket to prevent any touching.
It was bad enough he was there. That he had this odd need to see her, to make sure she hadn’t changed her mind. He had a phone. He knew how to text. Hell, when he’d first thought about a fake engagement and how it would work, he’d assumed his assistant would be the one in contact with Ellie. That his time with her would be for public view only and a complete farce. Yet, here he was. In her house. Talking family drama.
There was nothing disconnected about this arrangement that he could see.
“With us being together, Noah won’t be able to hide from me. I’m confident I can get him to understand. I hired him, young and untested, because I saw something in him.” He crossed his arms over his chest and scanned the room, not doing anything to hide his long look. “So…this.”
“You’re changing the topic.” She stood as she talked.
The move put her so close. He could smell the shampoo clinging to her hair and the sharp scent of the wine.
“Obviously.” His gaze drifted to her shirt. “Do you want to change?”
“I probably have to throw it away.” She winced as she plucked at the material. “And I love this shirt.”
He didn’t become attached to clothes, so he had no idea how to respond to that. “Go ahead.”
Without another word, she slipped into the bathroom, hesitating only long enough to grab a balled-up sweatshirt off the top of one of the boxes piled around the room.
He took the few minutes of alone time to study her apartment again. Tiny and cluttered but homey. There were things everywhere. Shoes piled under the window. A stack of magazines under the coffee table. A…was that a suit jacket on the floor? He scooped it up and draped it over the clean part of the couch. That took him to his next errand. Into the kitchen area to find something to clean up the wine on the cushion.
He was kneeling on the only clean and open part of the floor, doing a combination of dabbing and scrubbing on the stain. He was pretty sure it grew the more he worked on it.
Just as he decided it would be easier to buy her a new couch, she stepped into the room.
“Okay, I’m relatively dry…” Her laser gaze honed in on him right away. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“You probably have a team of humans who clean for you.”
“Are we fighting again?” He hoped not because there was no way for him to win this battle. She clearly thought he was inept at anything but running a business, and since her brother was trying to ruin that, she might not even find him competent in that regard.
“No, but is there a reason you didn’t tell me I had wine in my hair?”
This seemed like slightly safer ground. “I wasn’t sure you cared.”
She frowned at him. “You are an odd man.”
That wasn’t a topic he wanted to explore, so he stood with the wet rag still in his hand. “You have two choices.”
“You’re not planning on testing me on the agreement provisions, are you? I didn’t memorize the thing.”
Her mind really did bounce from topic to topic. Sometimes it took him a few minutes to catch up. He didn’t want to admit that or how invigorating he found the entire verbal battle. “This evening we either can go to dinner or I can help you get packed.”
“You make those sound like reasonable options.”
She stood right in front of him now. Blame the pink slippers, but he towered over her. She wasn’t petite or even short. She likely stood around five-seven. But compared to his six-one, he had the definite height advantage. “I can be reasonable.”
“I haven’t seen much evidence of that.” Her voice took on a breathy quality.
He chalked it up to the room or dust or the boxes or something, because his breathing didn’t sound right in his ears, either. “Well, I’m told the early days of fake dating can be rough. We’ll both adjust.”
“That almost sounded like a joke, but you’re not wrong. There really should be a handbook.”