And then he walked off the set.
Lucas appeared at my side. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re officially a Cupid’s Arrow commercial star.”
CHAPTER 4
DANE
I’d been staring at the back of Ina’s head for way too long. I was starting to think I might be losing my mind. In my life, I’d admired plenty of women’s backsides before, but never just the back of their head. This was a new one for me and I wasn’t sure how I should feel about it.
I considered closing my office door but it was supposed to be open these days. Norma had insisted after attending some leadership conference last year, where apparently they’d proclaimed that “open-door CEOs” fostered better office camaraderie. That supposedly meant increased profits. And now I had no privacy and a perfect view of my assistants’s desk. And by extension, her well-proportioned head.
Ina sat with perfect posture, her dark hair pulled back in some kind of complicated twist thing that made my fingers itch to touch it. She wore a cream-colored sweater that looked soft. I could imagine touching that too.
The sweater. Not the tempting woman underneath.
I forced my attention back to my laptop screen, where a spreadsheet of projections blurred into meaningless numbers. That lasted all of two seconds.
My eyes drifted back to her slender neck. She had to feel me staring at her. Didn’t women have a sixth sense? Maybe it was her upbringing. I knew she came from some small town out west. Did they not develop the ability to feel someone watching them?
If she felt me staring, she didn’t let on. She never turned around, flinched, or glanced back in my direction. She never touched the back of her neck like she could feel my gaze.
Ina’s desk phone rang. She answered it with that bright, professional cheerfulness that seemed to be her default setting. “Dane Kavanagh’s office, this is Ina. I’m sorry, Mr. Kavanagh isn’t available. Would you like to leave a message? Okay, I’ll jot that down.”
She hung up, made a note on her computer, and went back to whatever administrative task she’d been working on. I felt an entirely inappropriate surge of satisfaction.
She’d been my assistant for three weeks now, and in that time, she’d somehow transformed my entire professional existence. My schedule, which had previously been a nightmare of double-bookings and missed meetings thanks to Elise’s increasingly scattered attention in her final months, now ran like a Swiss watch.
Ina had a sixth sense for knowing which calls I actually wanted to take and which ones needed to be diplomatically redirected. She’d reorganized my filing system, updated the contact database, and had even started color-coding my calendar in a way that should have been overkill but was actually super helpful. I was Type A, but she was like a Type a, lower-case A. She was just as driven but without losing her joy and light.
The woman was perfect at her job. Which was exactly the problem.
Because every time I noticed how good she was at her job, I also noticed other things. Like the way she hummed quietly toherself when she was in her groove. Or how she kept a small succulent on her desk that she’d named Bernard, according to the little nameplate she’d made. I had heard her talking to Bernard and legit thought she was talking to an imaginary friend. Then I saw the nameplate.
I noticed she wore different charm bracelets every day, each one making soft tinkling sounds when she moved her wrist.
And of course yesterday.
What the hell had that been?
Every person in that warehouse hadfeltthe sexual tension in the air. We could have bottled it and sold it as an aphrodisiac. Then Cupid’s Arrow would have a perfect success rate, instead of an almost perfect one.
But there was no replicating the heat I’d felt. No bottling that lightning. I had never experienced anything like it before, and I had gotten around.
Keith’s voice cut through my spiraling thoughts. I looked up to find him leaning on Ina’s desk, saying something that made her laugh. He was flirting with her.
The asshole. Doesn’t he have any work to do? I can find him some.
Keith turned and caught my eye through the open door, gave me a casual nod, then said something else to Ina before sauntering into my office.
“Shut the door,” I said flatly.
He did, still grinning. “Morning to you too, sunshine.”
“If you want sunshine, you’re in the wrong office,” I said, not hiding my irritation.
Keith Billings had been my CFO since the beginning, one of my first investors when Cupid’s Arrow was just a concept and a pitch deck. We’d gone to high school together. Keith had been born into money, summered in the Hamptons, and knewwhich fork to use at fancy dinners without having to watch what everyone else did first.
“So,” Keith said, dropping into the chair across from my desk and propping his feet up on the edge. “How’s it going with the hot new secretary?”
