Page 179 of Sexting His Assistant

The room keeps filling around us. People move in practiced circles, stopping Luka every few steps. A trustee thanks him for his donation. A surgeon from the pediatric wing speaks to him about equipment funding. A politician with very white teeth tries to shake his hand too long. Luka handles all of them with the same controlled attention, polite enough to be respectable and distant enough to remind everyone that access to him is temporary.

I stand beside him and listen.

At first, I feel like decoration.

Then Luka keeps doing something that makes it impossible to stay annoyed.

He includes me. When the surgeon mentions procurement delays, Luka says, “Nina has been reviewing the vendor file.” When the trustee asks about the upcoming expansion, he says, “She can speak to the schedule better than I can.” When a donor makes a lazy joke about assistants running the world, Luka looks at him until the man stops smiling.

By the time we reach our table, I’m still irritated with him, but it has become difficult to enjoy properly.

A server replaces my champagne with sparkling water before I ask. I glance at Luka.

He does not look guilty.

“You arranged that?”

“You were holding the champagne like a weapon.”

“I was using it for confidence.”

“You had enough.”

“You are very bossy for someone on probation.”

His mouth almost curves. “Probation?”

I resist the urge to stick my tongue in front of him.

His eyes shift over the room again, and the small change in his face reminds me that he is not here only for the gala.

He’s watching.

The guests, the entrances, the service staff, the bar, the men speaking too quietly near the far wall. I don’t know what he sees, but his body changes each time his attention catches on something. It is subtle, a tightening in his jaw or a pause in his hand at my back, but I’m learning to notice those things.

I wish I weren’t.

A man approaches us and leans close to Luka’s ear. One of his security people. Dima, I think.

Luka listens without reacting.

Then he looks at me. “I need to speak with someone.”

“Okay.”

His voice lowers. “Please.”

That stops me.

He says it like the word costs him, and because I’m apparently weak to basic manners from dangerous men, I nod.

“Fine,” I say. “But I’m not a decorative plant. If anyone asks, I’m networking.”

“You’re better at it than half the people here.”

“Correct answer.”

He looks like he wants to touch me. He doesn’t.