If the Sun Never Sets (If Love 2)

What the hell. Might as well give it a shot. It couldn’t hurt. Right?

Chapter Thirteen

If someone had told Farrah last week that she’d willingly go on a road trip to upstate New York with Blake, just the two of them, she would’ve laughed in their face.

Yet here she was, ensconced in a rented Range Rover with her ex-boyfriend while they drove around Syracuse, looking for a place to eat lunch.

In her defense, she’d been desperate.

Farrah had gone into a tailspin when she received Blake’s text telling her the apartment had to be finished by late June because Mode de Vie was shooting a lifestyle feature on him there. It’d almost been enough to make her forget their inappropriate encounter at the lounge two-and-a-half weeks ago.

Mode de Vie. The most influential lifestyle magazine in the country. They always asked for the interior designer’s name when they shot at a subject’s home, which meant Farrah’s name would appear in its hallowed pages in a few months. That was the equivalent of an author getting their book featured in Oprah’s Book Club. One mention in the esteemed magazine could vault her from being an unknown to the brightest star in the sky…if her design was good. If not, Farrah could forget about her future in the industry.

Blake didn’t want any major remodeling done, thank God, which shaved weeks, if not months, off the process. But seven weeks was still a tight turnaround for redesigning an apartment his size.

Farrah had been a whirlwind of activity since she found out about the new deadline: calling contractors and pushing them for quotes and start dates, sourcing materials, and searching through every website and every store in the five boroughs for the perfect pieces that would transform Blake’s apartment into his dream home.

She’d succeeded, for the most part.

The only hiccup was the vintage trunk sitting in a little shop in Syracuse, four hours from New York City. Farrah had found it on the store’s website but when she called, they informed her they didn’t ship large items. She’d have to pick it up herself.

That wouldn’t have been an issue, except Farrah hadn’t driven since she moved to New York. She sure as hell wasn’t going to brave the city streets on her own. None of her friends in the city drove either, and she’d seriously considered hiring an Uber for the eight-hour roundtrip drive before Blake called her for a progress update.

She’d mentioned her dilemma; he’d offered to rent a car and drive her, and she’d accepted.

Now, here they were, with the trunk from the shop nestled snugly in the back of their car.

“This looks promising.” Blake slowed in front of a diner on the edge of downtown Syracuse. Since it was summer, the town swarmed with tourists instead of students from its eponymous university.

Farrah spotted several out-of-town license plates in the parking lot: Vermont. New Hampshire. Pennsylvania. Fortunately, there were a few parking spaces left. All the other restaurants they’d passed had been packed.

“Fine by me. I’ll eat anything at this point.” Farrah’s stomach growled with a ferocity that could scare off a pride of lions. “Hurry, before someone takes those spots.”

Blake smirked. He pulled the Range Rover into one of the empty spots, his muscles flexing against his shirt sleeve as he turned the wheel. Even in a simple white T-shirt and jeans, he could melt the panties off a nun. “I forgot how snippy you get when you’re hungry.”

“I’m not snippy.”

So what if she was? Farrah only had a bagel and coffee for breakfast, and that’d been hours ago. When she wasn’t fed, she got a little…well, snippy.

That, plus Blake was acting weird. Not in an overt way. He’d been a perfect gentleman all day. He’d picked her up, let her choose the playlist with no complaints—not even when she played five Taylor Swift songs back to back—and didn’t blink an eye when she spilled water on her shirt.

Water. On her white shirt. And not a single comment, not even a glance. He’d merely handed her a napkin and hummed along to “Blank Space” while she dabbed at her semi-transparent top.

Which is a good thing, Farrah reminded herself. It wasn’t like she wanted any extra attention from Blake, aside from what their professional relationship entailed.

Heat rose on her cheeks when she remembered their near kiss. She’d woken up the next morning hungover and mortified. They technically hadn’t done anything, but the whole experience felt so intimate they might as well have had sex.

At least, Farrah thought so. Judging by Blake’s cool attitude, he didn’t feel the same way.

They walked in silence toward the diner. The beautiful blue skies from earlier that morning had darkened into an ominous slate grey, and Farrah smelled the earthy promise of rain in the air.

Despite the few empty parking spaces, the inside of the diner overflowed with patrons, and Blake and Farrah waited thirty minutes before the hostess showed them to a table. By the time they received their food—well over an hour after they’d parked—Farrah was ready to snap someone’s head off.

“Jesus.” Blake’s jaw dropped as Farrah tore into her chicken sandwich with a gusto she usually reserved for Anthropologie sales and Henry Cavill. “You’d give some of my college teammates a run for their money. And these are three-hundred-pound linebackers we’re talking about.”

Farrah washed down her food with a healthy gulp of her chocolate milkshake. “I’m hungry.”

“I can tell.” One of Blake’s dimples peeked out before it disappeared, and her stomach twisted in a way that had nothing to do with hunger.