I had to tilt my head up now that he was nearer. Being close to his tall, well-muscled figure made me feel tiny by comparison. My curves and lines unsubstantial compared to the space he took up on the deck. And I was suddenly aware of how little I had on. Just the slinky red dress and panties underneath it. Not even a bra—it would have shown under the thin straps.

  “I, uhhh…” I cleared my throat and tried again. “I may have thought of you a time or two, also.”

  “May have?” He was giving me this intense look that made me want to tell him all my secrets. It was just something about those light hazel eyes that seemed to look inside me.

  “Okay, I did,” I admitted. The way he got that out of me so easily, I was really glad he didn’t know that after our encounter the other day, I’d loaded my e-reader with sexy stories about older men and younger women.

  Nick reached forward with his free hand and picked up mine. He raised it toward him, and for a moment, I thought he was going to kiss the back of my hand like some kind of courtly knight. But instead, he paused, our hands bridging the distance between us. He opened his palm and pushed his fingers through mine, linking us. When he spoke, his voice was low, quiet, and devastatingly sexy. “And where were your hands… while you were thinking about me?”

  I gasped and tried to untwist my fingers from his, but he didn’t let go. He stared me down for a long moment while I squirmed under his gaze. His cologne gently tickled my nose, some woodsy, masculine scent. He smelled delicious. His eyes flicked down to my chest, once, then twice, and I was aware of my nipples pushing against the red satin of my dress.

  And then he flashed a devilish wink in my direction. “It would be pretty hypocritical of me if I objected to something you’d done while remembering me.”

  Blushing, I felt like he could see straight into my mind. But then I was struck by what he said. Did that mean… did that mean that he’d touched himself too, while thinking of me? That thought made my pulse race again, and suddenly I didn’t mind being embarrassed. It was actually pretty hot the way he could make me squirm like this. He was just so composed. At ease with himself. Utterly certain that he could say these things to me and make me want him more, not less. That kind of confidence was such a turn-on.

  The look in his eyes alone was enough to melt my panties. He looked… single-minded. Focused. On me. I licked my lips because my mouth suddenly felt so dry. What was he going to do? Kiss me? Hold me? Bend me over and fuck me? Whatever it was, I couldn’t wait to find out.

  His eyes were on my lips, and I held my breath. But then there was a noise, a shrill laugh coming from just around the corner. Both of us stopped dead. I’m not sure how he felt, but I’d pretty much forgotten about every other person at the party.

  Blinking down at me, Nick seemed to come out of a trance. He took a step back, then another. At long last, he spoke. “Shit. What am I thinking?”

  “It’s okay… we didn’t…” I trailed off. Took a deep breath. Looked him in the eye. “I kind of liked what you were thinking” I said, my voice soft.

  “Me too,” he said, with a quick glance downward. My gaze followed his. There was definitely a hardness straining against his jeans. “Seeing you in that red dress… with your hair up like that… it made me forget myself. But I can’t let it happen again.”

  This was so unfair. He fascinated me in a way no man had in a really long time. Perhaps ever. With Brad, it had been friendship that eventually turned into love. But never in my twenty years had I met someone who excited me so much from the start. Was it really going to be over before it began? “But… can’t we even try—”

  “No,” he said. “And you know why.”

  I did. I wished I didn’t, but I did. Even if he weren’t my dad’s boss, there was the age difference. The fact that I was a college student, and he was a high school principal. He was a strong, confident man who knew what he wanted. He probably had been in lots of relationships. I’d just been in one. There could never be anything between us, but damn he was tempting. So I’d probably better remove myself from temptation.

  He appeared to have had the same thought because he was already backing up. “I’d better get back to the party. It was nice seeing you again, Cassie.”

  “You too,” I said softly, wondering how to address him. If there was any chance that he’d ever be standing by my side again, his arm around me like he did at the coffee shop, then I’d call him Nick. But since there wasn’t… “Thank you for coming tonight, Mr. Conner.”

  Chapter Five

  “EVERYONE, CAN I please have your attention?”

  I felt nervous as all eyes turned to me. After everyone had finished eating, I’d gone through the house and the deck, Paul Revere style, asking people to gather in the large living room, I’d seen Nick talking with various teachers, many of whom I recognized from my four years at the high school.

  Now everyone was crammed into the living room, seated on sofas, chairs, armrests of chairs, and anywhere else they could fit. Mom and Dad sat in the middle, on two dining room chairs I’d placed there for them. At my back was the eighty-five-inch television they had indulged in last Christmas.

  “Twenty-one years is a long time,” I began nervously. “That’s longer than I’ve been alive.” There were chuckles at this though I hadn’t meant to make a joke. But somehow seeing people’s friendly smiles helped me to relax. “Which I guess is how it’s supposed to work,” I said, grinning at my parents. Mom already had tears in her eyes and I hadn’t even shown them my gift yet.

  “Since I wasn’t around—or very aware—for the first few years, I interviewed some people who were. Family. Friends. Anyone I could. And I’ve got pictures—pictures that Mom and Dad probably thought were buried forever.”

  Everyone laughed again, a few people patting my parents on the shoulder.

  “So, I now present to you, the world debut of Robert and Gwen: The First Twenty-One Years.” Hitting the remote, I dashed across the room, stepping over legs so I could get the lights. The music from my video started, and I blinked, trying to see where I could sit in the darkened room.

  “Cassie, over here,” my Aunt Lauren whispered. Her voice came from the direction of one of the longer sofas, so I moved cautiously toward her, trying not to step on anyone. A quick glance at the screen made me hurry. I’d seen the video a hundred times while editing it, but I didn’t want to miss anyone’s reactions.

  “Scooch over, there’s room,” Lauren was saying. And then I could see a small space at the end of the couch. I kicked off my shoes, folding my knee underneath me as I sat down so that I’d be higher up. But the space was tighter than I thought, and I overbalanced, placing a hand on the arm of the man next to me.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, quickly withdrawing my hand.

  “No problem,” came a familiar voice. It was Nick.

  Seriously? I was wedged against the hot, hard body of the man I was forbidden to see? Life really wasn’t fair sometimes.

  We were really scrunched in tight, too. I shifted my weight away from him, trying not to touch him, but there wasn’t enough room. Finally, he eased his arm out from between us and put it over the back of the couch behind me. That freed up a little space though we were still thigh to thigh.

  Soon, though, my focus was on the video. Mom had said I’d been working on it a lot this month, but the truth was I’d started it way back in February. Twice I’d returned home from college on weekends I knew my parents wouldn’t be here to scan hundreds of photos from their photo albums. I also raided their things in the attic, finding a treasure trove of old love letters, mementos from their first dates, baby clothes from when I was born, and more. They were definitely savers.

  The video was arranged chronologically, a mixture of pictures, snippets of videos, warm wishes from various family and friends, and more. It was all set to my parents’ favorite songs. By the time we got to my favorite part, a recorded message from my mother’s ninety-three-year-old Grandpa Jack in New York, I heard quite a bit of sniffling. I knew Mom was crying, of course, but she wasn’t the only one.

  When the video was halfway through, I began to relax. It was going well. People liked it. No one was checking their phones—everyone was watching. Just as if it were a real movie. Relieved, I slumped back in my seat, forgetting that Nick’s arm was behind me until I bumped it with the back of my head.

  I stiffened as I felt him there, but he casually draped his arm around my shoulder. Closing my eyes briefly, I let myself enjoy the feeling of being so close to him. Ours sides were pressed together, our legs touched. His arm was around me. And I know it was just a friendly gesture on his part, but it still felt good.

  We’d gotten to the part of the video in which my parents and I had taken a trip to Europe, and now people were laughing at the video clips of my dad trying to say phrases in Italian, German, and French. I laughed, too, at a scene of him buying food from a street vendor in Rome and saying gracias instead of grazie.

  “You have to send me a copy of this, Cassie,” Aunt Lauren whispered, and several other people concurred. Pleased, I set my hand down without thinking where it would land—which ended up being on Nick’s hard thigh. Oops. But wow, it felt good. The heat from his skin rose up even through his pants. He must work out—he seemed to have muscles in all the right places.

  After a moment, Nick shifted, his free hand closing in on mine. He moved my hand off his leg, and it felt like he was going to let me go—but then he clasped my hand tighter.

  We sat that way for the last few minutes of the video, pressed against each other, his arm around me, my hand in his. I wished the video were three times longer because I didn’t want to move. Being this close to him felt so intimate. Almost like being his girlfriend for real.

  But I knew we couldn’t let anyone see, so thirty seconds before the end of the presentation, I let go of him and wiggled my hips forward until I had enough space to rise, slip my shoes back on, and pick my way toward the lights.

  The second I flipped the lights on, there was applause. Actual applause. People were hugging Mom and Dad, but they were congratulating me. And unless I was very much mistaken, it wasn’t the standard pat on the head adult kids sometimes got from their parents’ friends. Everyone seemed genuinely impressed.

  Compliments flew from all sides by the time I made it to my parents. Dad gave me a long hug and then turned to his friends, telling them that there was cake in the dining room. Mom gave me a hug and didn’t stop, tears streaming down her face onto my shoulder. “Cassie, that was amazing. Thank you so much.”

  By the time I’d worked my way into the dining room, I’d received so many kind words that I’m pretty sure my face was bright red. Of course, that could have had something to do with the second glass of wine I’d snagged.

  Mom handed me a big slice of vanilla cake with fluffy butter-cream icing. It looked delicious. Then she gave a piece to the person behind me. It was Nick.

  “That was incredible,” he said to me, and then took the cake from my mom. “You have a very talented daughter.”

  “I agree,” Mom said, her smile huge. “I have no idea where she found all those old videos. And how did you get a recording of Grandpa Jack?”

  “I have my ways,” I said with a grin.

  “But we have to talk about that picture of me in my bathing suit on the Las Vegas trip. You can edit that out, can’t you?”

  “I can…” I said, trailing my voice so that the unspoken words were “for a price.”

  “Better stay on this one’s good side,” Nick said with a smile. “Otherwise her next video might be an exposé.”

  Mom laughed, and Nick addressed me again. “How did you get all those different elements, the pictures, the letters, the videos, the interviews, to work so seamlessly together? And all set to music, too.”

  “It took a lot of time,” I said honestly. Most computers had some kind of automatic slide show function, but this was many levels above that. I’d planned every second of the video out ahead of time and made it all work together.

  “I wish I had the time to do that,” he said. “Or the know-how. I inherited my house from my parents, and there are boxes of old photographs, journals, old clothes, letters, and more. The entire closet in a spare bedroom is full of their things. And their parents’ things. I’m not sure how many generations it goes back.”

  “You really should scan the photos at least,” I told him. “Then you can save them in the cloud and have them available anytime you want.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a not very enthusiastic sigh. “That’s on the to-do list someday.”

  Mom jumped in. “But you don’t just want hundreds of pictures all in some digital folder somewhere. A video like this is something you can enjoy for the rest of your life. You could hire someone—” Mom paused, and I looked at her as I took a bite of cake. “I know! You could hire Cassie.”

  Nick turned to stare at my mom at the same time I started to choke on a mouthful of cake. He pounded on my back as I coughed, and Mom took this opportunity to expand on her ideas. “She can go through all the boxes. Organize and scan the pictures. Go through the old letters and journals. Make a video like she did for us. Or one of those photo books, or both. She’s great at that kind of stuff.”

  I’d stopped sputtering, but Nick’s hand was still on my back, rubbing slightly. Then he moved it abruptly as if he just realized he was doing it.

  Finally, he spoke. “I couldn’t ask her to help me with that—”

  “But she’s been looking for a part-time job this summer, and she hasn’t found anything. Nothing at all.”

  Gee, thanks, Mom, I wanted to say. But instead I looked at her through watery eyes as I sipped some wine. Finally, I recovered enough to speak. “I’m sure Ni—Mr. Conner can hire a professional if he wanted something like that.”

  I looked up at him, expecting him to agree with me, but he was looking at me speculatively. “That looked pretty professional to me.”

  “See? It’s perfect,” Mom said, beaming. “When can she start?”

  “Mom—”

  “Honey, he liked your video. Everyone did. If Nick wants something like that to preserve his family’s memories and you need a job, why shouldn’t you work together?” Without waiting for my input, she turned to Nick. “When can she start?”

  He hesitated, and I held my breath, not sure what he was going to say—and not sure what I wanted him to say. Could I handle working with him if we couldn’t be together? “Well, I’ll need to show her where everything is and what I want done…” Nick appeared to be thinking aloud, but then he turned to me. “I have to be at the school for summer classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But Tony takes Tuesdays and Thursdays. So how about a couple of hours in the afternoon on those days?”

  It took me a minute to remember that “Tony” must be Mr. Green, the assistant principal. Not that that mattered. What mattered is that I’d be working with Nick. In his house, twice a week. Was that smart, given what had almost happened between us out on the deck?

  But I was beyond thinking about whether this was a good idea. This was a man I really liked, and now I’d get a chance to see him a couple times a week—and get paid for the privilege? It was a no-brainer.

  “I’m in.”

  * * *

  The rest of the evening passed in a blur. I didn’t get to talk to Nick again, but I had fun anyway. Everyone kept saying how much they loved the video, and my parents beamed every time they saw me.

  Things went great up until the very end. Just as some guests were gathering up their things in preparation to leave, the door opened, and three people came in. Mr. and Mrs. Harper and their son. Brad.

  Crap.

  My dad was in his study, showing some new books he’d gotten to his friends, but my mom stepped up to greet her friends. “Sara, Tim, you made it!”

  “We drove straight through, only stopping to drop off Ste—Brad’s friend,” Mrs. Harper said, giving my mom a hug. So Stephanie had spent the week with Brad and his parents. Mr. Harper leaned down and kissed her on her cheek, but when Brad tried to do the same, Mom stepped to the side and his quick kiss landed in her hair. I grinned—Mom had my back when it counted.

  But I was uneasy with Brad here, a discomfort that went beyond just seeing my ex-boyfriend. It took me a minute to figure out why--I think the two glasses of wine had gone to my head. The problem wasn’t that Brad was here. The problem was that Brad thought Nick and I were dating.

  If he saw Nick here, he might say something. I scanned the room and saw that the principal had already figured that out. He had his suit coat draped over his arm and headed toward the front door as Mom ushered the Harpers into the dining room for cake. Nick paused at the entryway and gave me a quick wave. I waved back and then said goodbye to some of my old teachers who were leaving.

  Following them out the door, I looked up and down the street, curious to see where Nick had parked. He’d gotten here late, so it could be some ways off. Mentally flipping a coin, I turned left, plunging through a swarm of gnats and other assorted Florida insects until I reached the sidewalk. Moving quickly, I saw an interior light go on in an SUV ahead of me.

  “Nick—Mr. Conner,” I called out as I rushed up to his car.

  He had one hand on his open passenger door. When he saw me, he tossed his jacket inside and shut it. “I think after tonight you can call me Nick,” he said, and I couldn’t read his expression in the dark.

  “Okay, Nick. What time on Tuesday? I mean, if you still want to.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Good,” I said. “My mom can be a little pushy.”

  “That can come in handy. Like when she’s raising money for the high school.”

  That was true. My mom did a lot to help the students of Sago Palm. “Umm… so, maybe one o’clock?”

  “That sounds good.”

  “Do you have any equipment? A scanner? A computer for me to use?” I couldn’t believe I was standing here on this gorgeous evening, with this gorgeous man, and I was asking about computer equipment.