Perfectly Inappropriate

When she folded her arms across her chest, his grin widened. “I’ve surprised you again, it seems.”

“Ah, yeah…just a bit.” She pondered how to handle this. One: shut the door in his face and go back to bed and pretend this never happened. Two: attempt to fix her hair and save a little face. Or three: accept her reality. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she finally said, figuring the latter was the only feasible option.

“It’s early, I know.” He gestured inside. “May I come in?”

“Sure.” She stepped to the side then shut the door behind him. Her brain never worked first thing in the morning, but when she inhaled his spicy cologne, the memory of getting herself off last night filled her mind. Surely, that realization should embarrass her.

Oddly, no embarrassment came. Maybe because she was trying to figure out what had brought him here. “Wait. How do you even know where I live?”

He glanced around Paige’s digs then turned those intense eyes onto her. “Your address was provided on your background check.”

“Oh, right.” Damn, she needed coffee quick or this was really going to turn embarrassing fast.

Noah’s mouth twitched. “I take it you’re not a morning person.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not even awake yet. If you leave now, I can guarantee I would think I had dreamed this.”

He chuckled and lifted his hand, offering her the bouquet. “I hope this is a good enough apology for waking you.”

She accepted the flowers, took a big sniff of a daisy, and smiled. “Flowers are a sure way to make me smile. Thank you.”

He nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets.

She swallowed against the sudden urge to move closer to him. Noah had this magnetizing thing she’d never seen in anyone before. Maybe that was why he was such a good senator and the public loved him.

Instead of following what her body wanted, she went in the opposite direction and entered the galley kitchen with white cabinets.

“Is this your apartment?” asked Noah, as Olivia grabbed the vase out from beneath the kitchen sink.

“No, it’s Paige’s, the woman you met with me in the restaurant.” She turned on the faucet and started filling up the vase. Yawning, she placed the back of her hand over her mouth. “I’ve been living here with her since my engagement ended.”

“I see.”

The curiosity in his voice had her turning off the faucet and glancing over her shoulder. Noah stood next to the window staring at one of the dozens of framed black-and-white photographs on the bookshelf. Olivia smiled, grabbing the scissors out of the drawer. Paige had always been Olivia’s number one cheerleader over the years. She had even supported Olivia’s dream to become a street photographer wholeheartedly, until Olivia realized how hard that dream was to bring to life.

Noah studied each picture intently before moving on to the next one. “These photographs are incredible,” he finally said, glancing over his shoulder with intrigue glistening in his eyes. “Did Paige take these?”

“Nope, I did. Paige just likes to display them all.” Olivia looked away to open the bouquet and began cutting the stems. Talking about photography was harder than talking about Cameron.

She heard Noah’s footsteps move toward her, then his finger tucked under her chin, lifting her face up to his tender stare. “You’ve got a terrible habit of hiding. Why do you always look away when talking about yourself?”

“Because I don’t like talking about myself,” she said straightforwardly.

He gave a gentle smile while removing his hand from her face to cross his arms. “Good thing we aren’t talking about you exactly and are discussing the photographs. You took them?”

Feeling like if she looked away, she’d be declaring weakness, she met his gaze straight on. “Yup, some are recent, some not.”

“Is photography your career?”

“I wish,” she explained. “It’s more like a hobby.”

His head cocked, eyebrows drawn. “Why just a hobby? You’re clearly talented.”

“Well, thank you,” she said with warm cheeks. “But as it is, making a career as a street photographer is incredibly hard. Like most creative careers, it’s a long hard struggle before you make it.”

“Did you try to make it?”

She shrugged. “It’s a really tough business to get into, so no, I never gave it a real shot. When it came down to my career path, I made the smart choice and got into graphic design instead. Technology is where the money is.” Or at least that’s what Cameron had always said.