She’s sitting behind her desk, bathed in late-afternoon light, typing furiously on her laptop. She’s wearing a simple white silk blouse, but the way it drapes over her makes me want to rip it off with my teeth.
But what really kills me are the glasses.
Today they’re red.
Delicate frame, cherry-red, slightly cat-eye.
They should make her look strict and professional. Instead they make her look obscenely sexy.
Christ.
This woman could wear a burlap sack and I’d still find a way to have fantasies about it. But with those glasses? I suddenly want to see her wearing nothing but them.
I lean my shoulder against the doorframe, my heart thudding off-beat.
“Special delivery for the woman who keeps saving my life.”
Sloane’s head snaps up.
Her eyes go wide behind the lenses.
“Cohen?”
I step inside and nudge the door shut behind me with my foot. I set the flowers down on her desk on top of a stack of folders.
“Don’t tell me you were working on my psychological profile,” I say, trying to sound casual even though I feel like a teenage boy with his first crush.
She looks at the flowers. Then at me.
Her cheeks flush a soft pink.
“What are you doing here? The briefing’s tomorrow.”
“I was in the neighborhood. And I figured… it’s been a while since you last tortured me in this office.”
Sloane picks up the bouquet, brushing her fingers over the petals. The simple little gesture twists something in my gut.
“They’re beautiful,” she murmurs. “Thank you.”
Then she looks back at me, cautious now.
“But seriously, Becker. Why are you here?”
I drop into the chair across from her—the one where she usually interrogates me.
I feel… off. Unsteady.
Grace’s words echo in my head.Do you really think you could have a relationship like our parents’ with a woman like Sloane?
I look at her.
She’s everything I don’t deserve. She’s demanding, sharp as hell, loyal to the bone. She would never let someone like me walk all over her.
I am absolutely, thoroughly gone for her. Fine. I admit it.
But her?
A woman like Sloane Heart, who has a plan for everything, who chases perfection—would she ever evenconsidera guy like me for anything more than a quick hookup or a business arrangement?
