Please don’t fire me.
The thought reverberates in my head as I step into the office, my legs shaking now and my heart pounding.
“Shut the door.” Adrian’s voice sends a shiver down my spine.
I do as he says, and as I turn back around, see that Adrian has pulled up a second chair beside him. He uses his eyes to make it clear I’m supposed to come and take a seat, and I instantly comply.
“I want to walk through what you provided us with this morning,” Adrian’s voice is clipped, and I brace for a thorough verbal lashing as I take a seat beside him.
He clicks through two slides. “These are clean enough.” The praise is so faint I almost miss it.
“Thank you.” I brace for the negative, knowing it’s coming. And it arrives, exactly on schedule.
“Slide fifteen. The margins are off.”
I lean over to get a closer look, inhaling something masculine and slightly intoxicating. But once I focus, I realize the margins are off, but like… by about amillimeter.
Still, I reach out and correct it in front of him.
His eyes follow me in a way that leaves me blushing, and while he doesn’t smile, there’s a flicker of something in his expression. He shifts forward, close enough that I can see the outline of his day-old shave, the shadow of it along his jawline.
“People assume precision doesn’t matter,” Adrian begins to explain. “But the thing is thatgood enough, is not always enough when we have a client with an eye for detail.”
I nod, heart pounding. “I get it. I will make sure I watch the margins going forward.”
He looks at me, eyes narrowed, like he’s recalibrating his assessment. For a minute, the world goes pin-drop silent, except for the hum of the building and the almost imperceptible sound of him breathing.
He gestures to the screen again. “You missed something else.”
I look closer, panic spiking. There it is. A freaking footer on slide 22, still in the old font. I fix it and hit save.
He watches the whole time, like a predator with infinite patience.
“Better,” he says. “You caught that before I pointed it out. Nice work.” The words are so alien coming from his mouth that I almost think I hallucinated them.
Before I can say anything else to him, he stands abruptly. The move brings him even closer, and suddenly I’m hyperaware of everything—the warmth of his body, the way his shirt pulls against his broad shoulders, and the scent of his soap.
He peers down at me, as if he’s waiting for something. Maybe for me to run, or faint, or just fail to hold his gaze.
So, I hold it, meeting his dark eyes with every ounce of fake courage I have.
And as I do, the tension rises to a near-suffocating level. But he doesn’t break it, and neither do I. The sunlight is harsh through the glass, but it makes the whole office fade until it’s just us, stuck in some kind of unspoken challenge.
He leans in just the smallest amount. But it’s enough to make mefeellike a line has been crossed.
His hand lands on the back of my chair, and my lips part. My brain is short-circuiting and I have astrongurge to do something that would bereallybad for my chances of staying long-term with this company.
I donotneed to sleep with two-thirds of my bosses.
“Madison,” Adrian murmurs, his breathing suddenly heavier.
My jaw slacks for a second, and then Adrian suddenly shakes his head, as if he’s snapped himself right out of whatever this is.
“Please keep the presentations tidier. I have work to do,” he states, voice flat. He turns and sits back down behind his desk, exiting out of the slides and shifting to something else.
I blink a couple of times, feeling painfully aware of my heart rate. I swear, it takes a full thirty seconds before my legs agree to hold my body upright. I gather what’s left of my dignity and exit the room, careful not to look at my own reflection in the glass because I’m sure I look completely deranged.
Back at my desk, I drop into the chair and try to make sense of what just happened. My head is spinning, and my body feels all tingly. I can still smell his cologne.
