“A Bruno Mars song?”
“Yeah. It’s West Coast Swing. A lot of it is to rock music. Anyway, Hannah is really happy to have you here, Nick. So you guys can have fun together while I go practice.”
I leave the room because I don’t want to know if Nick looks up Ollie. I should be above making Nick jealous, but not if he’s going to tell me that Ollie dresses like a golfer.
The next day,I receive an email from Destiny:Can you and Ollie have a meeting to go over the language in my draft report? You’re the best writers on the team. Use track changes.
I write back at once, then email Ollie and offer to book us a conference room. He replies:I think my office should work.Of course he has his own office. I have twelve square feet in a cubicle sea, and he probably has custom window shades and a view of the Hudson.
“Hey,” he says to me as I enter. His tone is friendly but polite. He is wearing a blue pinstripe suit that looks tailored and vaguely British; the jacket is hung neatly on a coat hanger behind the door. His office is unreasonably large and lined with bookcases and a framed photograph of startling orange and grey cliffs above a cool blue ocean. I gaze at the photo for a moment as he steps beside me.
“Australia?”
“My brother took it,” he replies quietly. “He was always a good photographer. That’s around Wilsons Promontory. We went there a few times growing up.”
“And you put it up even though you’re upset with him?”
Ollie smiles. “Well, sometimes I imagine shoving him off the cliffs, so there’s that.”
I turn to face him. “Listen, Nick and I?—”
“It’s okay.”
“I don’t want you to think there’s anything going on. Hannah is so desperate for time with her dad, she insisted he stay.”
“Laura, it’s fine. Just tell me when he’s gone.”
“Okay.” I wonder if he’s going to bring up Eliana; I wonder if I have the courage to ask. “So anything new with you?”
He looks at me, then looks away, shrugs. “Not really.”
Cool. Nothing to see here, right? Not like he is dancing again with his ex-girlfriend. “So,” I begin, “shall we talk through this document together?”
He catches something odd in my tone and looks at me for a long moment. “Yeah, of course.” He turns to his own computer and clicks on a file. “Let’s start with page one.”
For the next forty-five minutes we are completely professional. My inner rebel Laura keeps making wildly inappropriate remarks in my head, and I keep batting her away successfully. The topic we’re discussing doesn’t help.
“So I guess we’re saying that office relationships are complicated, and we recommend but don’t require disclosure?” I ask.
“Right. Right.” He gives me a sharp look and then looks down and coughs. “I can finish this. I’ll just summarize it for Destiny and send it back to her.”
“Great.”
I stand up. He walks to the door with me.
“Wait,” he says. “Wait a second.”
I turn to him. His hazel-green eyes look unusually dark. I wait for him to speak and he doesn’t.
“Well,” I say brightly, “at least I know that if you break my heart, we’ll both be professional about it.”
His eyes flash with something, and I see something that looks surprisingly like longing in his expression.
Then he pushes me gently against the wall and looks at me for a moment before he gives me a long, lingering kiss, his whole body against mine, hot and close. One of his hands drifts up to caress my neck. My knees seem to melt, but the warning light is flashing again; I wonder if this is the kiss you give someone if you’re never expecting to kiss them again.
When he pulls away, he does not meet my gaze.
“Sorry.” The word sinks quietly into my shoulder. “I know we’re at work.”
