BECCA GRABBED HER purse, a stack of files, and hightailed it out of the office. It was too early for lunch, but she was beyond caring.
Devon wanted her gone.
So she’d disappear.
Three flights of stairs down and she was in the lobby. Twenty-seven strides and she was through the front door. Her car was parked six spots down.
Except her car wasn’t the only thing in the sixth stall.
Mick was alongside her Toyota Corolla, a can of black spray paint in one hand as he wrote something…
Not something, but an obscenity, and it wasn’t the special four-lettered “f” one she used sparingly, but the one that rhymed with a punt, as in football — not that she was opposed to punting the jerk through the goalposts of life.
Becca saw red.
She’d always thought it just an expression, but in this moment, after Devon’s confession and with Mick painting a freaking curse word on her car, she’d had enough.
She took a step forward.
A hand on her shoulder stalled her. “What the fuck are you doing?” Devon snapped.
“Don’t curse at me.” She struggled, trying to free herself, but only managed to knock her purse down her arm and nearly drop the files. “Let me go. I’m—”
“Going to stay right here while I take care of it.”
He released her and crossed to her car, moving like lightning while somehow managing to look casual and unhurried at the same time.
Becca stared stupidly after Devon for a few seconds before managing to pull her head out of her you-know-what.
She stormed over, heels clicking on the pavement. Mick had hated her wearing them, hated the way they made her tower over him.
And so she’d given in. She’d worn flats, because like a little pansy, she hadn’t wanted to fight with him over something “stupid.”
But Becca loved heels.
The rapid click-click had always made her smile, a secret internal grin that made her feel powerful, her personal I’m-a-woman-hear-me-roar moment. Today, however, her heels had the opposite effect.
They whipped two sets of male eyes in her direction, one petrified and one furious as all get out.
Devon leaned toward Mick and said something she couldn’t hear. It made her ex’s face pale before he dropped the paint can and sprinted away.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked — okay, yelled — when Mick had gone.
“Me?” Devon asked — okay, yelled — back. “You’re the one who thought it might be a good idea to confront the man who’s been harassing you. Don’t you have a restraining order? Why would you think that’s a good idea?”
“I don’t have a restraining order because the judge didn’t grant it.” Turned out, Mick’s father was a golf buddy of the one who’d presided over her case.
“That’s bullshit,” Devon said, snatching his phone from his pocket.
“Stop cursing at me,” she told him again.
“I’m not cursing at you. I’m cursing at the bastard who thinks it’s okay to tag your car, send you threatening notes, and come to your apartment in the middle of the night.”
“How do you know he sent me notes?” she asked. She hadn’t mentioned that to anyone. “And showed up at my apartment?”
If she’d ever wanted to witness a man having an oh-you-know-what moment, this was it. His eyes widened, a slight rosy tint appeared at the tops of his cheeks, and he actually ground the toe of one shoe into the pavement. “I — uh—”
His phone rang, and the relief on his face was so obvious that Becca was tempted to laugh.
Somehow, despite her car being defaced and her boss telling her she was a nuisance before interjecting himself into her life in a very nuisance-like way himself, she was amused.
Because Devon like this — chivalrous, concerned, contrite — was almost cute.
And that was a completely different side of him than the powerful, take-no-prisoners executive she normally saw.
“Pascal, good. I need you in the parking lot immediately,” he said and hung up. Avoiding her eyes, he moved around the car taking pictures, bending to study the undercarriage, the tailpipe.
“Devon,” she said.
He ignored her.
“Devon.”
His sigh was audible even though she stood on the other side of her car. “Let me do this first, okay?” He took one more picture, walked around the hood of her Toyota, then got right into her face.
In her three-inch heels, he was still taller, but not by much, and he didn’t have to crouch to meet her eyes.
“How?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Except, it did. Especially if what she was seeing was real.
Concern. Actual genuine concern. And beneath that?
Heat.
She sucked in a breath, and his eyes flicked to her mouth. They tingled, ached, needed.
Kiss her.
For real this time, not in the fantasy-dream-world of her mind.
One hand came up, cupped her cheek. He leaned in.
Their mouths were so close she could feel his breath on her lips, could smell the cinnamon on his tongue.
Devon moved a hairsbreadth closer and—
“Sir.”