I needed to finish this damn project.
To sleep.
Distance.
Hell, I needed a job where I wasn’t feet away from Sebastian Reid—where I wasn’t already half-convinced I’d combust the next time he looked at me like he had tonight.
Because if my subconscious was already blurring the lines between my master and my boss?
I was in more trouble than I realized.
Chapter 20
Sebastian
Igritted my teeth. I’d been in a foul mood since I woke this morning. Sebastian Reid wasn’t the kind of man who woke up irritated for no reason. He didn’t do unexplained emotions. Everything had a source, a pattern, a cause.A fucking reason.
And the cause had been clear the second I opened my eyes.
Mira.
I hadn’t meant to open myself up to her. Not even a little. But I’d done exactly that the night I took her to dinner. I’d shown her pieces of myself most people would never get close to. She’d been standoffish ever since and I didn’t like it.
Yesterday she’d spent more time downstairs with Micah than she had at her own desk. Fine. They were working a case. We all were. But when I’d called her up at the end of the day to go over what they’d found?
Micah had come alone.
She went home, he’d said.
Sick.
Bullshit.
I’d seen her that morning—bright-eyed, focused, steady as always. And Mira Rhodes didn’t get sick days. She pushedthrough everything I’d thrown at her. She worked circles around people who’d been with me for years.
The lie had been obvious.
She hadn’t gone home sick.
She’d gone home to avoid me.
And that pissed me off.
If she’d truly been sick, she wouldn’t be up for tonight’s session. Not the kind of training we did. But when I’d texted her last night with the details, she’d responded immediately:
I’ll be there.
It should have been enough.
It wasn’t.
Because Ihatedbeing lied to.
Despised it.
And that’s exactly what Mira had done.
The worst part?
