Under Pressure

Kennedy crossed her arms over her chest. This up close and personal it was difficult to ignore the way her breasts rounded higher, pressing against the tight confines of her shirt.

The erection he’d been sporting earlier roared back to life, pounding incessantly behind his zipper.

“The next time you call me cupcake, I’m going to shove one in your face. Fair warning. And if you think I’m going to just walk away from this and pretend everything’s okay, you have another think coming. This is my project, Asher. My job. Work with me here.”

She wasn’t going to leave this alone. He’d known Kennedy long enough to realize that when she sank her teeth into a problem, she didn’t let go until it was solved. Her single-minded determination was both frustrating and admirable.

Nothing stood in her way. In some ways, Kennedy reminded him of his grandmother. That woman hadn’t pulled any punches, literally. She’d been a true Southern matriarch, willing to cuff him upside the head for being disrespectful, only to follow up the deserved punishment with the warmest, biggest hug on the planet.

She’d never hesitated to put him in his place when he’d needed it, and as an angry, scared, hurting adolescent, he’d needed it often. She’d had the highest hopes for him, expecting him to do her and the memory of his father proud.

When his father was killed in action and his mother abandoned him, his grandmother had given him a safe place. So he’d wanted desperately to make her proud. His every decision growing up had been for that one purpose.

But the pressure he’d felt to live up to the glowing ideal of his father and make up for his mother dumping him on her doorstep had been huge. Difficult for a child to shoulder.

Right now, he felt the same weight as Kennedy stared up at him expectantly.

“I’ve got this,” Asher forced out.

“Obviously not, or you wouldn’t have run from that room like someone had tossed in a grenade.”

Kennedy pressed closer. Asher countered with a single step backward. He would have gone farther, but his back collided with the solid plane of the wall. Damn the small room.

She crowded him, glaring up out of those mesmerizing eyes, golden and fierce.

“You’re not going to g-give up on this, are you?”

“No.”

He stared down at her, his mind spinning and his body in turmoil—his need for her intertwining uncomfortably with the fear that surfaced each time he thought about standing in front of those damn cameras.

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