Page 31 of Wells

I need to get ready for work and stop thinking about Midnight. I remind myself that men want what I give them, not what's underneath. What I think I'm getting from him is a farce, a fantasy I've created in my mind.

The slide deck for Ridge's executive briefing sits open on my screen. I've been adjusting the same pie chart for fifteen minutes, nudging the labels a quarter inch left, then right, then back again, because the small choices keep me from thinking about how I woke up with a stranger's voice in my head and finished what he started last night.

The air shifts behind me, and my spine knows before the rest of me does.

Wells.

I don't turn. I keep my eyes on the screen and my hands on the keyboard while my body lights up like he reached over my shoulder and flipped a switch I did not know he had access to. The soreness left over from last night flares into something sharper, and my thighs press together under the desk before I can stop them.

Oh, you've got to be kidding me. It's hormones. It's the morning. It's a body that got more attention in the last twelve hours than it has had in months and apparently cannot be trusted in public now. This has nothing to do with Wells.

He stops right behind my chair, and I shift in my seat, trying to will my own body into behaving.

"You all right?"

His voice is flat, the same tone he uses when he asks if I updated the Singapore file or locked the conference room. There is nothing warm in it, nothing that has any business making my stomach drop or my breath catch or my body decide now is the moment to remind me I am a walking liability.

I swallow and turn my head just enough to look at him without actually meeting his eyes.

"Of course."

He watches me. The dark hair, the hard line of his face, all of it works against whatever willpower I am scraping together. I hate that I notice how his shirt fits across his shoulders, how his hands hang loose at his sides.

"You look off."

I am off. I'm extremely off, one poorly timed thought away from excusing myself to the bathroom and reconsidering every life choice that brought me to this desk.

But I don't say that.

"Just tired. Late night."

His jaw tightens. Something flickers across his face, too fast to read, and then it's gone.

"Get some coffee, or something."

"Groundbreaking advice."

The corner of his mouth twitches. It isn't a smile, not even close, but his shoulders loosen, and he shifts his weight. He leans one hip against my desk.

I blink. Wells doesn't lean. He stands at a distance and delivers instructions in sentences so short they could double as Morse code.

"Ridge wants to review my findings on this by the end of the day."

"I know."

Wells nods. His fingers drum once against the edge of my desk, a single controlled tap, and then he goes still again.

Why is he still standing there?

I grip the mouse tighter and put my eyes back on the screen, reminding myself we are in an office with fluorescent lights and an HR department that does not appreciate employees who cannot keep their hormones in check.

He clears his throat. "Leadership liked the presentation you put together."

"Yeah?"

"So I think we stick to it for now."

I blink at the screen.