I shut my laptop with a little more force than necessary and leaned back, letting my chair spin toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. The view was next-level. Pleasure Valley after dark—twinkling lights, quiet streets, the whole postcard-cute aesthetic. I spent more time looking at it here than from my penthouse, which probably said way too much about my priorities. At least the office didn’t echo when I walked through it.
But work wasn’t happening tonight. Not when my brain kept replaying her. The woman with tinsel in her hair, a smile that didn’t quit, and curves that made my palms itch like they were already holding her. She walked in looking for someone and walked out with my focus, my sanity, and—if I wasn’t careful—my damn self-control.
And I did not lose control. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.
I’d pulled her employee file after lunch. Not because I was interested—just due diligence. The CEO should know his employees, especially when they knocked over five grand worth of awards and apologized like their life depended on it.
Gabriella Travers. Twenty-three. Graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English and a minor in marketing. Hired remotely in June, right after graduation. Six months of stellar work—every piece of copy she’d written had performed above benchmarks. The Gingerbread and Gossip campaign had gone viral, driving a three hundred and forty percent increase in engagement for the client.
Address? Reboot Condominiums, Unit 16D.
I’d stared at that line longer than I should have. She lived in my building. Nine floors below me, but still. I’d been passing her in the lobby, probably, or the elevator. Maybe that’s why she seemed familiar this morning, why something about her had lodged itself under my skin like a splinter I couldn’t quite reach.
Her emergency contact was listed as “Mom” with a phone number in Ohio. No significant other, no spouse—not that it mattered. Not that I was looking.
I grabbed my jacket from the back of my chair and shrugged it on. The office was quiet now, everyone having gone home to their lives, their families, their Christmas shopping, or whatever normal people did at 6:15 on a Tuesday night. I should go home too. Order something. Pretend to watch TV. Fall asleep on the couch because my bed was too big and too empty and reminded me too much of all the things I’d lost.
My grandmother had always said I worked too much. “Eli, sweetheart, you’re going to wake up one day and realize you’ve built an empire but forgotten to build a life.”
She’d been right, of course. She usually was.
I locked my office door and headed down the hallway, my footsteps echoing on the polished concrete. Past the content studio—dark now, ring lights powered down. Past the glass-walled conference rooms we used for client pitches. Past?—
I stopped.
The small conference room at the end of the hall—the one I used for private calls and strategy sessions, the one with the whiteboard I’d covered in Q1 projections just yesterday—had its door closed. Light glowed from underneath.
Nobody used that room. It wasn’t exactly off-limits, but everyone knew it was mine. My assistant would’ve mentioned it if she’d booked it for something.
I walked over and pushed the door open. Gabriella sat at the far end of the table, laptop open, shoes kicked off underneath her chair, legs tucked up underneath her. Her hair—still sparkly—was piled on top of her head in some kind of messy bun situation that shouldn’t have been attractive but absolutely was. She had earbuds in and was muttering to herself while typing, then deleting, then typing again.
A half-eaten granola bar sat next to her laptop. A travel mug that readPowered by Caffeine and Christmas Cheerperched precariously on the edge of the table. She’d commandeered my space and made it hers—cozy, chaotic, and completely at odds with the stark minimalism I’d carefully created.
I should’ve been annoyed. I wasn’t.
“Gabriella.”
She didn’t hear me. She just kept muttering and typing, her face scrunched up in concentration.
I tried again, louder. “Gabriella.”
She jumped, one earbud flying out as her gaze shifted to me. Her hand knocked into the travel mug, which tipped. Luckily, she lunged forward and caught it before it could slam into her laptop.
“Crap on a cracker.” She pressed a hand to her chest, breathing hard. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“You’re in my conference room.”
Her eyes went wide. “Your—” She looked around like she was just now seeing where she was. “Oh. Is this yours? Nobody said—I just needed somewhere quiet, and this door was open, and—” She was already shoving her feet back into her heels, grabbing for her laptop. “I’m so sorry. I’ll go. I didn’t know.”
“Stop.” I took a tentative step forward. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. I’ve been here for—” She glanced at her laptop screen and her face went pale. “Oh no. It’s after six?”
“It’s almost 6:30.”
“Shit.” She grabbed her charger, started wrapping the cord around her hand with jerky, frantic movements. “I completely lost track of time. There were so many people, and the noise, and I couldn’t focus, and then I found this room, and it was so quiet, and I just—” She stopped, took a breath. “I’m rambling again.”
“You do that a lot.”
