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I need to tell her the truth.

All of it.

Not the carefully edited version. Not the technically accurate bullshit I've been feeding her.

The truth.

I didn't offer her access to my life because I'd suddenly decided transparency was a virtue.

I brought her close because I wanted to control the threat. I knew she was investigating Granddad. I wanted to know what she knew, who she'd spoken to, what she'd found, and where she intended to go with it.

I had her investigated. I researched her work.

Her history.

Her reputation.

And when I realized there was an attraction between us? Yeah, I considered using that too.

Fuck.

That part tastes particularly bitter now. Because the attraction was always real.

Everything I've done with her has been real.

But she doesn't know where it started.

And every day I wait makes that omission harder to defend.

Tonight.

I've told myself that three nights in a row.

Tonight I'll tell her.

Then she looks at me. Smiles. Calls me an asshole. Steals half my coffee even though hers is sitting right fucking there. Crawls into my bed.

And I push the conversation to tomorrow because I'm a coward.

There, I said it.

Apparently Mitchell Knight can negotiate billion-dollar acquisitions without blinking but can't tell one thirty-five-year-old reporter the truth because I'm terrified she'll stop looking at me the way she does now.

Pathetic.

Which is probably why I make another questionable decision Monday morning.

I bring her to work with me.

Not literally.

She's not a fucking child.

But I tell her she can use my office suite as her base for the day.

“You're serious?”

Layla stands just inside my office with her laptop bag hanging from one shoulder.