The Right Swipe (Modern Love, #1)(34)

Rhiannon nodded. She didn’t wear much makeup, but here was another layer. Lakshmi always knew what she needed. “Send him in.”

When Lakshmi left, Rhiannon darted to her desk. She sat, opened the drawers, shoved the stacks of paper into them, and then arranged a notepad and a pen on the empty surface.

When the door opened again, Samson’s huge form following Lakshmi in, Rhiannon leaned back in her leather chair, twining a pen between her fingers. She nodded at Lakshmi, dismissing her, then raised a cool eyebrow at Samson. “What a surprise,” she said loudly as the door closed. Hopefully Lakshmi heard that.

He smiled, his eyes as warm as they’d been when she’d accosted him in that garden. So warm she dropped the pen. Damn it.

“I’m sorry to bother you at work.” He sat down in the chair opposite her desk, adjusting his big body in the smaller pink chair. He glanced around her office curiously, and she tried not to bristle and guard her domain like a feral dog.

She was aware her office didn’t look like what people expected from her. Crush’s signature colors, sherbet pink and bright yellow, dominated. From the second a person walked into this building, Rhiannon had wanted them to feel like they were in a cheerful bowl of candy.

Her furniture was small and dainty, chosen more for aesthetics than sturdiness. It did mean that she curled up in her window seat to work more often than not, but that was fine. She had never really owned delicate furnishings. Working for other employers, she’d always had to be on guard against displaying her femininity for fear they would think she wasn’t tough.

Here it didn’t matter. No one could judge her for how she decorated her office because she answered to no one.

She shrugged. “I bothered you at work a few days ago.”

He crossed one leg over the other. Gone was the suit he’d worn for his date; he was back in worn jeans and a long-sleeved ribbed shirt. The sunny yellow of his shirt made his skin pop a warmer brown. “So you did. That’s actually why I’m here.”

She sat up straighter. “You talked to your aunt.”

“No, Aunt Belle hasn’t returned my message yet. Hopefully soon.”

She deflated a little. “Oh.”

“But, in the meantime, I wanted to talk to you about another proposition.” He glanced over his shoulder, and she followed his gaze. The panels on either side of her door were glass, and she rolled her eyes when she saw at least five of her employees, Lakshmi included, loitering at a desk within view of the both of them. “Do you mind if I . . . ?” He gestured at the glass.

She nodded and he walked to the door, closing the blinds with two snaps, making the small office more intimate. She settled deeper into her chair, pressing her palms over her belly to calm some of her butterflies.

He is not here to sex you up. Calm down. “What proposition?”

He nudged his chair closer to her desk, and sat again, handing her his phone. “I had my first date for the campaign after you left. Here’s the raw footage.”

Aw, shit. He was gonna make her watch him turn his sweet smile on that beautiful woman?

She sniffed, to make it supremely clear she did not give a fuck about anything he did or who he talked to, and hit play on the video. “She’s gorgeous,” she admitted in as flat a tone as possible. Just because she didn’t dress up didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate style. The woman exuded glamour, from the tips of her fiery hair to her high strappy sandals.

“Hmm,” Samson agreed. “Keep watching.”

Rhiannon refocused on the meeting, hitting the volume button up so she could properly hear their exchange. After a minute, her eyes went wide. After three minutes, she looked up at him. “Did you seriously ask her if she was wearing hair extensions?”

He rolled his lips in. “Keep watching,” he repeated.

Rhiannon couldn’t help but do just that, and her envy vanished as she watched the couple on the screen with all the horrified fascination of someone watching a train wreck. She winced when Samson choked on a french fry. He took a sip of water, which he then spit on the tablecloth when he was racked by a coughing fit.

She inhaled when Samson oh-so-casually asked his date if she liked to “Netflix and chill” with her nephew and his reaction when the far-too-patient woman explained what he was asking. “What did you think Netflix and chill meant?” Rhiannon demanded, pausing the video.

“Exactly what it says! Watch television and relax.” He shook his head, bewildered. “I didn’t know it was about sex. Why can’t people say what they want to say?”

“Because we live in a puritanical society that can’t use the S word out loud.” Rhiannon shook her head. “You’re not that old, how do you not know slang?”

He sniffed. “It doesn’t have anything to do with age. I haven’t been plugged in for a while. This is the internet’s fault, going around changing words and meanings.”

Rhiannon rubbed her hand over her mouth to hide her smile. But she had to bite her lip not to laugh when Samson’s big hand knocked the girl’s large glass of wine over. Right into her lap.

Samson cleared his throat. “Let’s shut it down there. That’s enough for you to get the gist of what happened.”

She turned the video off in the middle of Samson’s frantic attempts to dry the girl’s dress, and put the phone on her desk. Then she looked up at Samson, whose face was a deep red under his brown skin.