Noah leans against my desk, taking a leisurely sip of his coffee that I hope tastes stale.
“How was your evening?” His tone is calm, cool, and collected while I’m none of the above.
“Fine,” I reply, shuffling papers I don’t need to organize. “Just caught up on some reading.”
What I don’t tell him is that I spent the night staring at my ceiling, replaying our conversation in the conference room and wondering what would have happened if I’d decided to act on my desires. I also don’t mention how I checked my phone three times to see if he’d texted, even though he’s never texted me outside of work hours.
I definitely don’t tell him that I nearly killed my vibrator recalling his damn forearms flexing with each movement during the presentation or his tight ass walking by my desk with an extra swagger that suggests he carries a substantial package. I don’t tell him any of that.
“You?” I ask, immediately regretting the question. I don’t want to know about his evening. I don’t want to hear about whoever put that satisfied look on his face.
“Productive,” he says, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “Very productive.”
I swallow hard, focusing on my keyboard. “The Newside contracts came in this morning. I’ve flagged the sections that need your attention before sending to legal.”
“Great,” he says, but he doesn’t move toward his office. Instead, he stays perched on the edge of my desk, watching me with those dark eyes that seem to see too much. “You okay? You seem tense.”
I am tense. Tense because he looks like he spent last night doing things I don’t want to think about with someone I don’t want to picture. Tense because his satisfied smile is making my stomach twist with something that feels dangerously close to jealousy.
“I’m fine,” I lie, hitting my fingers on the keyboard with unnecessary force. “Just focused on work.”
He studies me for another moment, and I can feel his gaze on my face like a physical touch. Finally, he pushes off from my desk and heads toward his office.
“Let me know when the commissioner’s office calls,” he says, disappearing inside.
I stare at the closed door, hating the way my body reacts to his proximity. Hating even more the way my mind immediately conjures images of him with some woman, his hands tangled in her hair, that relaxed smile spreading across his face as he?—
Stop. Just stop.
I throw myself into work with desperate intensity, responding to emails and organizing files like my life depends on it. But every few minutes, my traitorous eyes drift toward his office door, and I catch glimpses of him through the glass walls. He’s drawing again, bent over his drafting table with that same intense focus, but there’s something looser about his posture today. Like all the tension that usually coils through his body has been released.
The thought makes my face burn.
By ten thirty, I’ve reorganized his entire filing system twice, and this is when I receivethe call.
“Noah King’s office, this is Beatrice.”
“Hi, is Noah there?”The voice on the other end is distinctly female—breathy, familiar in the way that suggests a certain level of intimacy. My stomach drops like I’m in a free-falling elevator going down fifty floors.
“May I ask who’s calling?” I manage, my voice professionally neutral even as my grip tightens on the receiver.
“Just tell him he forgot something that belongs to him last night. He’ll know what I mean.”
Her words make my face flush hot, then cold, then hot again as the implications sink in. Of course. Of course that’s why he looks so relaxed this morning. Why his collar is wrinkled and his hair is messed up in that specific way that screams I-just-rolled-out-of-bed-and-didn’t-bother.
“I’ll let him know,” I say, proud of how steady my voice sounds when everything inside me feels like it’s crumbling.
“Thanks, hon.”
Hon. She called me hon, like we’re friends sharing secrets about the man we’re both sleeping with. Except I’m not sleeping with anyone—I’m just the pathetic user of a vibrator whose battery is just about dead.
The woman’s words echo in my head, confirming what I already suspected from his disheveled appearance. Noah King spent last night with someone. Someone who now has his, what? His watch? His wallet? His underwear?
I swallow hard against the bitter taste in my mouth. This shouldn’t bother me. It shouldn’t matter who Noah spends his nights with. He’s my boss, nothing more. Whatever charged moments we’ve shared were just workplace tension. Proximity. Stress.
Yet here I am, gripping my pen so tightly it might snap, fighting an irrational urge to storm into his office and demand details I have no right to ask for.
I force myself to take three deep breaths before standing up. Professional. Detached. That’s what I need to be right now.
