She could see him on the phone with a client, elbows splayed on his desk. As she watched, he reached one-handed for his coffee cup, only to set it down in a way that suggested he’d forgotten it was empty.
I guess Annica still doesn’t ‘do’ coffee, she thought, smiling unconsciously.
Just as quickly as it surfaced, her smile faded.
It had been forty-eight days since he’d shown up at her job in San Francisco to blackmail her into coming back. Two weeks since he’d proposed to her in that empty mall.
Three days since their fight.
Cut from the same cloth was a funny choice of words, since even though they shared no blood, they’d been raised together like brother and sister.
When she shot down his first attempt to complicate their relationship further, he had taken the rejection personally. He had become obsessive, dangerous.
Her own personal tormentor.
For a whole summer, she’d been at his mercy—which was unfortunate, because he had none. He had taken her innocence and then, later, her soul.
Now, he was after her heart, as well.
When he had shown up in her life again, she had been terrified that he was going to humiliate her as revenge for her leaving all those years ago. His little blackmail mistress, take two. But, confusingly, he had given her a job. And rather than chase her around the desk like she feared, he had been a consummate professional about it.
Professional, but not nice, no. As his assistant, he’d kept herrunning around the office, getting his coffee, but also handling client files and sourcing out new clientele. She’d never had that much responsibility at her previous job and even now, working under Arthur, she often found her pace of work to be rather slow. With Nicholas, he had forced her to rise to the challenge. To prove to him—and herself—that she wouldn’t just roll over in defeat.
It had never been enough for him to have her on her back, after all.
Her face heated and she looked down at her lap.
She’d slept with him every night this week.
They didn’t exactly advertise their relationship but people talked. Just the other day, a group of women had been in the breakroom gossiping about how Nicholas went through assistants as if they were disposable.
“He’s had three secretaries this year! Can you believe it?”
“Maybe he’s screwing them and paying them off.”
“Madison!” The third woman’s eyes darted in Jay’s direction.
They had laughed the nervous laughs of people who knew they’d gone too far when they realized she was in the room.
“Good morning, Jay,” the third one had said, too brightly, while the others stared into their coffee, and Jay had said, “Hello,” in what she hoped sounded like the voice of someone who would never screw her employer.
Despite what he thought, hewouldresent her if she ended up costing him his job or turning him into a joke. Maybe he didn’t think he would now, while the bloom was still on the rose, but she knew better than anyone how quickly love could turn to resentment or even outright loathing as soon as you were nolonger what the other person wanted.
She was going to have to give him an answer at some point. She just didn’t know what to do. He saw her in a way that nobody else did, with a clarity that often felt obscene. She didn’t have to pretend with him but that sort of honesty came with strings that tied you down, and after years of seeing her mother wither under the control of his father, she was reluctant to give Nicholas the same power over her if it meant a tragic ending.
He said he’d wait for me. So why do I feel like I’m running out of time?
Across the room, she saw Nicholas get up from his desk and jog down the stairs. She sat up. Her panic mounted as he headed in her direction, but instead of speaking to her dead on, he circled around behind her. A sudden pressure on the back of her chair suggested that he was casually resting one or both arms there. If she leaned even slightly back, her head would touch his chest.
“What—” she began, only to fall short as he spoke past her, to Annica.
“Did you get the files I sent you?”
Annica lifted off her headphones while Jay stared very hard at her screen. “Yeah.” The other woman glanced in her direction and did a slow double-take. “I haven’t looked at them yet. Can I review them by the end of the day?”
“I’d prefer it be done as soon as possible.” The nape of her neck prickled as Nicholas began to toy with a curl of her hair. “I need it for the investors I’m meeting with at four.”
The screen blurred in front of her eyes.Oh my god.
