Page 111 of The Silver Fox Brother

No answer.

I try again.

Still nothing.

He must have stepped away from his desk.

Instead of waiting for his return, I know what I'm doingby going myself. But I go anyway. I stride down the corridor and turn the corner where I see Winter's office door is open. I knock once and walk in without waiting for permission.

She looks up from her laptop.

"Do you ever wait to be invited in?"

"I need the updated timeline for the Tribeca project. Investor inquiry."

Winter sets down her pen.

"I would have had it ready for you if I'd known you needed it."

"That's fine. I just need it now."

She stands and crosses to the file cabinet against the wall, pulling open one of the drawers. She rifles through folders for a moment before extracting a thick file. She walks back toward me, extending the file.

As I reach for it, our fingers brush and the papers slip—not from my hands, but from hers. Pages scatter across the floor, some sliding under her desk, others fanning out across the hardwood.

"Damn it," Winter mutters, immediately crouching down.

I crouch beside her without thinking. We both reach for the same sheet. Our hands collide—fingers brushing, then tangling over the paper.

Winter looks up.

We're close. Only inches between us, both kneeling on her office floor, hands still touching. I can see the exact moment she realizes how close we are. Her breath catches, pupils dilating slightly, lips parting.

I don't move and neither does she. The air between us feels heavy, charged with something neither of us is saying. Her perfume is stronger this close—subtle but there, and I'm suddenly very aware of the fact that if I leaned forward just slightly—

Winter pulls her hand back.

She breaks eye contact, looks down at the scattered papers, and starts gathering them with hands that aren't quite steady. I help in silence, collecting pages and handing them to her until everything is back in order.

We both stand. Winter smooths the papers into a neat stack, not looking at me.

"Here." She extends the file toward me, careful this time to make sure our fingers don't touch.

I take it. "Thank you."

"Anything else?"

Her voice is professional, controlled, but there's an edge underneath that wasn't there before.

"No. This is what I needed."

I walk out the door and head back toward my office. I close the door behind me and set the file on my desk.

Winter Hayes has been working on this project for a while–and somewhere in that time, proximity became awareness. Awareness has become attraction. And attraction is becoming a problem I don't know how to solve.

I pull out my phone and dial into the investor call. But my mind is still on Winter's office floor, on the way she looked at me, on the fact that neither of us moved for far longer than we should have.

This is getting dangerous..but I'm not sure I care.