The moment she heard the click of the door sound with the closing of the door, Karie felt herself draw in a slow breath and hold it. He’d removed his suit jacket and made his way around the desk to step behind her. It was like the very air around them began to spark with unspoken tension. The feeling among them only rose when he lowered down to observe the laptop screen with her. His nearness set every inch of her to tingle and it was hard for her to focus as she released that breath only to find the next one harder to take. Karie was so aware of his nearness that she nearly leaned her cheek against his for that final, actual contact. He asked her a question about the trend of her profits, making her lean away from him instead.<br/><br/><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#00b3b3">“As you can see, I’ve been in the black the past couple of years and that business is steady but my profit margin is low due to investing it mostly back into the pub.”</span>Who was she kidding? She rarely kept a penny for herself, paying for Meagan’s little brother’s medical bills when he was stuck by a bicycle and broke his arm in the fall. Or, when she sent Cookie’s banger to the shop to get new exhaust so that it no longer puffed out black smoke when he started it and tainted the air for a full block radius. She didn’t show him the itemized summary of her expenditures, for she felt it honestly was none of his business, but he would see that some months brought in less than others.<br/><br/>He did it again, allowing his breath to flow across her skin and she knew his eyes kept drifting from the screen onto her. Was he merely sizing up the kind of woman she was? The room was starting to become warm and her mouth began to water. What would he think of her if she carried out the urge that was screaming at her inside? Karie reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear then toss it over her shoulder, the side directly where his face rested. She’d been natural enough in doing so. He also knew she’d made sure not to touch him in the process. He now had full view of the length of her smooth neck. Her skin was so pale and unblemished that he could see the tint of the most prominent of veins traveling up. Karie swore, if he leaned in and kissed her neck that all pretenses would fall away and she had no clue as to how far she would go.<br/><br/>It didn’t matter if he was or wasn’t the man that plagued her dreams. He sounded like him, looked like him, hell… he even smelled like him. A shiver ran down her spine and she bit her lower lip hard. The contents of the screen blurred and she had forgotten what he’d just asked her.