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Because I've known you for two days and I'm already developing instincts toward you I have absolutely no business possessing.

I settle for, “Because she was bad at her job.”

Layla snorts.

“What?” I ask.

“That is the most Mitchell Knight answer imaginable.”

“It's also true.”

The elevator doors open. I gesture for her to go first.

She does.

Wildflowers and vanilla trail behind her.

Fucking hell.

“I know somewhere else we can go,” I say.

She glances over her shoulder.

“Somewhere else?”

“A boutique around the corner.”

“Do they sell dresses to women with asses?”

The question catches me off guard.

Not because of the ass comment. I'm already intimately acquainted with the fact that Layla Hawthorne has one.

Visually acquainted, anyway.

It's the humor.

After everything that just happened, she can still make a joke.

How about that?

I'm surprised by it.

By her.

And by the way the sound of her own joke seems to loosen something inside her. My jaw unclenches with it.

“I've been told the designer considers women having bodies an asset rather than an inconvenience.”

That earns me a laugh. A real one. Full and throaty and completely unguarded.

Better.

Much fucking better. I want to hear it again.

“So,” she says as we walk, “who taught you about designers and women's fashion?”

“Women, of course.”