4. Liam

4

LIAM

I ’d retreated to my office during lunch to try and regain my composure after spending the morning around Clara. She fucked with my head in a way I’d never experienced. Watching her hunched over her drawing station with her bottom lip between her teeth printed an inescapable image in my mind.

Here, in my quiet office with no distractions, I twirled my pencil between my fingers and sat back to look over the concept piece for the new community hub. Something about it bothered me but I was too close to the project to see the problem. Cursing, I threw the pencil onto the desk and stretched my arms up over my head.

A message popped up on my phone. I snatched it up, grateful for the distraction, and read the text from Alexander. Urgent city council meeting tomorrow morning. Meet in my office.

Fuck. I grabbed the sketch and bolted from my chair, leaving it spinning behind me, and ran to Alexander’s office. My steps stumbled to a halt at the sight of Ethan and Clara leaning toward each other at the oval table where Alexander held most of his meetings. Blueprints, sketches, and four laptops covered the table. Everything we’d worked on so far. Clara’s long hair fell over her shoulder and brushed over Ethan’s arm. He’d rolled his sleeves up, and the hair wrapped around his forearm. His jaw tensed, his fingers flexing on the paper he held down as his other hand pointed out something to Clara. She shifted closer, her head dipping beneath Ethan’s chin. “This section here?”

Ethan shot me a look so full of tortured desire that I almost choked on my own spit.

Alexander stood behind his desk, his phone at his ear and his voice tearing through the room. “Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?” He watched Ethan and Clara with the same kind of longing that battered my chest. An electric energy crackled around the room. We were in a sudden time crunch. We should be focused on the meeting tomorrow. Urgency for Harrington’s project collided with the energy in the room and raised the hairs on my forearms.

Another part of me pulsed when Clara finally noticed her hair draped over Ethan’s arm and gathered it up with a whispered apology.

Alexander slammed the phone down and stalked over to the table. “No way to get out of it.”

“What’s the plan?” Ethan remained beside Clara, his thigh touching hers when he turned to look over her head.

Clara straightened and bundled her hair into a loose knot at the nape of her neck.

I followed the motion, barely stopping from asking her to leave it down. I moved to Alexander’s far side and added my community hub sketch to the blueprints scattered across the table.

“Clara.” Alexander stopped as though her name was some kind of exquisite fruit. He sucked air through his teeth. “You’ll work on the visual renderings and layouts. Ethan’s in charge of tech. Liam, you’re on the community engagement aspects.”

As usual, Alexander gave us the jobs we were best at. I grabbed what I needed and retreated to the opposite side of the table, to the chair furthest away from Clara. I’d stay there as long as possible. Which at the rate my body reacted to her, would be all of five minutes before I gave in.

I looked over the blueprints. “Harrington mentioned he liked your fountain in the hospital. Any reasons we shouldn’t include one here?”

Clara tugged on her lower lip with her thumb and forefinger, almost smudging her lipstick. “Could be a hazard. Little kids getting wet, especially in winter. We’d need more security to keep people from getting in it. But a train ride around the mall part would be fun and give the kids something to look forward to.”

“Great.” I added a note to the side of my sketch. Every time I made a line, I looked up to check on Clara. She sat with her ankles crossed, her knees together, and a look of pure concentration tightening her gemstone eyes. While the rest of us struggled, Clara remained in complete control.

It kind of pissed me off, but in a good way. I wanted her to be as torn up about us as we were for her. “What about a nude bar in the executive suite?” The absurd question had the desired effect.

Clara’s head snapped up, her entire focus locked on me. “Excuse me?”

“Just making sure you were listening.” I smirked and stood, picking up one of the blueprints and carrying it around the table. When I sat down next to her, she drew in a quick, sharp breath that shot straight to my dick. “The offices need to have an additional draw to them.”

“And your first thought was naked women?” A hardness entered her eyes, the censure sparking bright and pulling her lips into a sour pucker.

Ethan rolled his eyes from Clara’s other side, but he wasn’t immune to Clara any more than me. I’d lost sight of Alexander, but I felt the weight of his gaze on us.

“No.” My first thought was her naked in my bed. “What about this?” I shuffled the papers around until I found the one I needed. My shoulder touched hers. I enhanced the contact to check her reaction and a jolt of pleasure shot through me when she leaned into the pressure. I roughed out a few quick lines. “Interactive digital art installations. A few parks. We can include a dog park near the animal shelter. People can have play dates with their prospective pet in a place that will help them all relax. Adopting a pet from a shelter is hard, especially when they’re scared.” I drew a large rectangle a block away from her animal shelter. “Here.”

The pressure on my shoulder increased. Clara stretched closer and set her forearm on the table alongside mine. Her long sleeve kept me from feeling her skin on mine, but the heat of her swam through my head. When she took the sketch from me, her hair slid over my cheek in a tantalizing moment, the pure silk texture begging for me to snatch her into my lap and kiss her senseless. My cock strained against the confines of my slacks. Thank fuck for the table that hid my erection from her curious gaze.

She nodded. “That could work. Hold on.” She moved her laptop closer and pulled up the 3D design program. I watched her face while she worked, memorizing the angles and planes of her cheeks, how she twisted one side of her mouth when she thought of something, and how she smiled when things emerged on the program. “How’s this?” Excitement brightened her eyes and brought color to her cheeks. She spun the computer around toward me.

It was all I could do to look away from her face and pretend to look at the screen. Her infectious enthusiasm spilled over all of us.

Alexander came up behind her. “That’s great. Visually appealing by itself. We could add some potted plants, maybe even a whole garden center off to the side.” He tapped a few keys on the keyboard.

Clara started to move her hand back at the same time Alexander moved, and their fingers collided on the keyboard.

“Sorry,” she whispered. Her eyes met his and I swore I saw actual sparks fly between them.

Yep. We were well and truly smitten with this woman. She could ask me for anything and if it was in my power, I’d give it to her.

Alexander held her gaze several seconds past what would be considered appropriate. No one moved. I barely dared to breathe. Finally, he backed away. All the oxygen that had been sucked from the room returned and I hauled it into my greedy lungs.

Concentrating with Clara beside me became an exercise all by itself. I kept stealing glances at her that she occasionally caught with a side-eye. She’d raise a brow, fiddle with the mouse, then resume working. We hit some kind of rhythm between the four of us and before I knew it, my stomach rumbled like hours had passed.

Alexander snapped his laptop closed and squeezed his eyes shut. “Let’s break for dinner.”

“Dinner?” Clara checked her phone and gasped.

“Who’s hungry for Marcello’s?” My neck popped when I rolled my shoulders, and I let out a groan.

Clara shot me a devious grin. “I’d offer to rub your shoulders, but you’d probably try to add that to your naked women buffet.”

“The only buffet I want is the one that has you covered in whipped cream.” I raised both eyebrows, the look daring her to keep the challenge going.

Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again, then snapped shut and stayed that way.

Pity. “Anyone opposed?” I waved my phone. “I’ll call in the order and have it delivered.”

At the grunts of affirmation, I swiveled back to Clara. “Any favorites?”

“You have no idea,” she muttered under her breath.

I cupped a hand around my ear. “Sorry. I missed that.”

“I said pineapple, bacon, and ham.” Her chin shot up and it was her turn to stare me down. “With extra cheese and sauce.”

“Your wish is my command.” I stood and stretched my arms overhead, my spine protesting sitting so long.

Thirty minutes later, we’d cleaned up the table and spread three pizzas in place of the blueprints and sketches.

Clara filled her plate, added an extra cup of sauce, and grabbed one of the bottles of water from the mini-fridge behind Alexander’s desk.

I stacked my own pizza and returned to my seat beside Clara. “What do you think so far?” I waited until I’d chewed and swallowed to start the conversation.

Clara’s eyes shot wide, then narrowed on me. I loved putting that surprised look on her face. It gave me wild, devious, sexual thoughts. She bit into her pizza and chewed slowly, probably to keep from answering me.

“You think they’ll approve this?” Ethan leaned back in his chair and propped his socked feet on the table. He’d gotten rid of his shoes hours ago while pacing the far end of the room. He liked to pace and think.

I’d caught Clara watching him too, the same way she watched Alexander and even me. By some miracle, she felt the same attraction we did.

Alexander rocked in his chair, his feet flat on the floor. His office sported a small set of windows behind his desk, and I caught a brief glimpse of Silverbrook wrapped in snow before a flurry of flakes blotted out the view. A short shrug and Alexander lifted a slice of pizza. “We’ll find out tomorrow. We’ve made excellent progress in a day, and they can’t fault any of our designs.”

“They might.” Clara dipped her pizza in the sauce and took a bite. Sauce dribbled onto her bottom lip.

Before she could lick it away, I leaned in and slid my thumb over her bottom lip.

All the blushes I’d seen from her before held no comparison to this one. Her freckles stood out in stark relief against the red sweeping up her neck and into her cheeks. A breath whistled from her nose but neither of us moved. She sat in front of me, as ripe and beautiful as any woman I’d ever dreamed of, and I wanted her. I’d wanted her from the minute she walked into the restaurant yesterday and challenged us. The ache was a painful thing that needled my bones and prickled my nerves until they burned.

She was the type of woman I would obsess over, love desperately, and fuck mercilessly. My grin denied all of those things as I smoothed the curve of her lower lip, gathering up more sauce. “It’s a bold look. Almost as red as my winter suit.”

Heat flickered between us when her gaze roamed over me as though to visualize the red suit.

I pulled my finger back and stuck it into my mouth, closing my eyes for effect.

Ethan groaned from across the table.

I knew the feeling. I tasted her on my finger, the sweet and subtleness of her lipstick and the lingering tomato tang of the sauce. I wanted more.

“What?” Fear coated Clara’s voice.

A brush of wind sliced over me and I opened my eyes to find her moving to join Ethan at the windows.

Ethan frowned down at his phone. “Anyone else getting a weather alert?”

I checked my phone. “No.” It buzzed and a blanket of snow drifted across my screen. “Yes.”

“We should have gotten this an hour ago.” Ethan palmed the glass. “I can’t even see the road.”

I’d known something was wrong when I looked out earlier, but I’d thought the wind was whipping snow around. The second alert lit up my phone, along with the peal of the blizzard warning emanating from all four of our phones.

“Fuck.” Ethan cursed. “Blizzard warning. They’re telling people to stay inside. Sudden temperature drop with whiteout conditions. It’s headed our way, but the wind from the mountains is pushing it in too fast for us to try and get out ahead of it.”

I clicked on the weather app on my phone and read the same story Ethan spouted off. “Breakneck speeds. I’ve never heard them say that before.”

Clara paled, her body shaking in a full-body tremor. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ll be fine.” Alexander stood and crossed to her side. “We’re safe here.”

Ethan nodded. “We’re not going home tonight.”