All of those things had to matter.
Because otherwise...
“Good morning, Mr. Havington.”
She would be completely defenseless againstthis.
This being her boss’s sky-blue eyes following her every move as she entered the office of her boss, and just like before, it was like crossing one world to another, and in this world, there was unfortunately just her...and him.
“Good morning, Kyara.”
This being everything that had to do with Lyrius Havington, VP of Operations, and the man who stillneverfailed to make her heart pound and her knees knock against each other every time she was in his vicinity.
I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus.
She had been studiously chanting these words to herself for three years now, never mind if they didn’t make her blind to her boss’s smoldering good looks. She had long accepted that her body had an incurable reaction to his presence. Nevertheless—
I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus.
The words did the job where it mattered, and that was to prevent anything internal from turning external...even if the way her boss was looking at her now, well...
How did he do it?
She had been around other billionaires, but none of them had made her feel like this. None of them were like Lyrius Havington, with the way his presence dominated any room hewas in. He didn’t just make everything smaller. He only had tobethere, and he laid claim on everything. The very air they breathed, the people around him, herself included—it felt as if they all automatically belonged to him.
But that...that was just something she had learned to accept as another one of those incurable things. Incurable and inevitable, but it didn’t have to mean everything because of one important thing.
I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus.
Lyrius’s lips slowly curved in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes at all. Kyara had been working for him for three years. Thirty-seven months to be precise, and in all those months she had been on his payroll, he had learned to identify the moments where her mind was completely focused on...him, the boy who had beaten him to asking her out by several minutes.
He’d also learned, somewhere in those thirty-seven months, that she Googled things at her desk and read them out loud to her screen as if the screen needed convincing. Paper types —what makes cardstock different from cover stock, oh, never mind, found it.Carpet pile, commercial versus residential, with a smallhuhat the end she hadn’t known he’d heard from twenty feet away. He’d never looked up when she did it. He’d also, somewhere in those thirty-seven months, started waiting for it.
“I have your coffee, sir.” Kyara was extra careful not to bump into her boss in any way as she placed his coffee on the side of his table. It took about twenty-five seconds to complete this task, which she considered the most difficult part of her job...and it was also the same reason why she had only made one request on Cyrus. Breakfast dates every day, to protect her heart from feeling anything inappropriate—
“Thank you, Kyara.”
—so why wasn’t it enough?
When she first made the request to Cyrus, he had told her she was so cute, with how infatuated she was with him. And at that time, all she had been able to do was smile because that...that was what she wanted. To be in love with a man like Cyrus, who wasn’t tall, dark, and handsome.
“What do you have for me today?”
But three years had already passed, and it still hadn’t happened. She still wasn’t in love with Cyrus while her boss, however...
“You have a scheduled call with the Tokyo office in an hour.”
Managing his schedule was like playingTetriswith all the people who wanted and needed to talk to him, and honestly, everything about her job was fun. Challenging but fun.
“We also have a new investor deal in South Korea...”
What she had never been able to “solve”, however, was this.
Her boss making her feel so self-conscious even though he was simply gazing at her as she continued with today’s schedule. She wished she could say he had grown uglier over the years. Looks-wise, character-wise, reputation-wise—she would take anything-wise at this point. But sadly, he was, like, she didn’t know, Keannu Reeves? He didn’t age. He just got, well, more terrifyingly and impossibly—
Don’t even finish that sentence, Kyara.
Shayla had warned her about that.Slippery slopeswere to be avoided, not tested, period. It was how even the noblest of men fail, like how David should have just walked away after “accidentally” seeing Bathsheba outside his window. He saw her, and it should have ended there. But instead, he asked about her, sent for her, and well...the rest was history, along with the unfortunate Uriah resting in peace.
