He wasn’t looking at her, though. He was still studying the file in front of him, his gaze rapt and intent, as though it held the answers to the universe.

Unaffected.

Part of her wanted to sulk. The other part of her insisted this was a good thing. She did not need him being aware of how aware she was of him. Didn’t need it at all. But still…

He glanced up, his brown eyes opaque, and she couldn’t read anything in them. There wasn’t a sign of heat, interest…anything. Good, she didn’t want… Focus on the job! She dug her nails into her palm, used the slight pain to center herself. Just in time for her to focus on his words as he said, “I just think it will be better if you wait to talk to the women before you try to get a read on this one.” Then he shrugged and said, “But you’re the hotshot here. If you want to do it now, be my guest.”

Destin shook her head. “You’ve filtered for me too many times, Caleb. I trust you.” She gathered the pages, giving that simple task more attention than needed. Made it easier to not look at him that way.

Still, when the skin on her arms prickled and she felt the weight of his stare, it made it nearly impossible not to look at him. No. Not nearly. Impossible. Against her will, she found herself looking at him, lost in the brown velvet of his eyes…and now, they weren’t unreadable.

There was heat there. Hunger. Something that looked too much like her own longing. She swallowed against the ache in her throat as he rolled to his knees and crawled across the floor until he was kneeling in front of her. “Do you trust me now? You never did before.”

Destin swallowed and shook her head. “You’re wrong, Caleb. I always trusted you.”

A sad smile curled his lips and he reached up, traced his finger across her mouth. “If you trusted me, we wouldn’t have fallen apart.”

“Fallen apart?” she said, curling her fingers around his wrist. She could feel the strong, steady beat of his pulse, could feel him…the heat of him, throbbing against her shields and she wanted to say to hell with it and just get lost in him again. It had been so wonderful. So amazing. She wanted it so blindly, so desperately.

“We didn’t fall apart, Caleb,” she said quietly. “You walked away from me, remember?”

“And you didn’t say a thing to stop me,” he replied, his voice just as quiet as hers.

His eyes, darkening to near black, locked on her face and when he eased in closer, she had to fight just to breathe. “Every step of the way, I waited for you to say something, Destin. Every damn step.”

Yeah, right…she could feel the words hovering on the tip of her tongue. Wanted to hurl them at him. The only problem was that he wasn’t lying. It was enough to wrench her heart in two.

And when he eased closer and pressed his lips to hers, she couldn’t move away, couldn’t even think about it.

As his mouth took hers, she reached for him. It was the very last thing she should do.

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