Page 6 of Based on You

So I'd opened the notebook. The Assistant was basically my reality, padded with fiction. My female lead reported to a man with the same dry humor, a man who wore the same intoxicating cologne. She wanted him with a heat that had no business existing inside a professional dynamic. In real life, those urges were strictly mine, carefully managed and fiercely unspoken. On the page, things went differently.

The crucial split was in the male lead.

In my manuscript, he wanted her back. Not in the open, and not pitched at a register that would land a corporate executive in HR's crosshairs. He wanted her in every muscle he held still, every word he weighed before it left him, because he'd decided he shouldn't, a quiet, near-religious restraint barely holding.

I hadn't written him cold. I'd handed him Simon's warmth, his sharp humor, the easy banter we shared on the forty-seventh floor. Underneath that polished surface, though, I'd given him an obsession the real Simon Beckett would never carry for me. A possessive, simmering hunger tucked in the negative space between their professional exchanges.

My oblivious heroine had no clue. She took every exchange at face value, telling herself it was nothing, because she was too practical to see phantoms where nothing existed.

I exhaled and dropped my gaze back to the handwritten pages.

In the scene I was drafting, she was waiting for him. The elevator would chime, she'd rise to her feet, and her heart would leap into her throat before he even rounded the corner. She'd learned the cadence of his footsteps by heart. I had her pulse racing the moment his eyes locked onto hers. Loud. Like a criminal bracing to get caught.

I paused and read the line back.

If only real life handed me the same thrill in return. I didn't want the dread of getting caught. That could stay safely in the fiction. But I wanted the male lead to want me back with the same senseless intensity I dragged to this desk every morning.

I set my pen down, stared at the blank wall past my monitor, and let myself sink into the fantasy for three seconds. That was my rule. Three seconds, and then the longing went back in its mental box. I picked up the pen and kept writing.

I was mid-sentence—Sandra waited with her heart in her mouth, her pulse banging a frantic rhythm against her ribs whenever his gaze fell on her—when the elevator at the far end of the corridor dinged.

I kept writing.

The steps coming off the elevator belonged to him. I knew them at once without looking up. My fingers kept flying across the paper as he rounded the corner and strode down the aisle toward my desk. Finally, I lifted my head.

His eyes were already locked onto me.

My heart slammed against my chest. Loud. Just like the guilty criminal I'd written about a minute ago. He wore a beautifully tailored gray suit, holding my gaze in a way that made it near impossible to look away.

I kept scribbling blind, clinging to the pen and page like they were my only safe harbor. The space between us shrank with every step. Sweat slicked my fingers against the plastic barrel of my pen. I took in nothing but his sharp gray suit, his steady stare, and the closing distance.

When he was five steps away, I flipped the notebook face-down and scrambled to my feet.

His gaze dropped from my flushed face to the closed notebook on my desk, then drifted back up.

"What were you writing?" Simon asked.

"Nothing important, sir." I slid the notebook into my top drawer and shut it with a firm click.

He watched me, his face giving away nothing. Slow, his eyes swept down for a brief but thorough survey of my outfit before he tilted his head.

"Your burgundy dress goes rather well with my gray suit," he said.

I glanced down at myself. The dress was simple, fitted at the waist, the kind of tailored cut that knew what it was doing without shouting about it. Deep burgundy, good fabric. It had been the first thing I reached for that morning. I hadn't thought about why until now.

With my wider hips and fuller figure, I leaned on this dress to keep my proportions looking deliberate. Standing at my mirror at dawn, I'd thought, yes. Now he was looking at me like he agreed.

"It's a beautiful dress." Simon's voice dropped low. "Good for a date."

A wry smile spread across my lips. "Unfortunately, I have no one to go on a date with. So I can only wear it to the office."

He scoffed, a half-smile playing on his mouth. "Isn't that much better?"

"That you like the dress?" I challenged.

He nodded, without a trace of embarrassment. "Yeah. I like that you have no one to go on a date with, so you had to wear it here for me to see."

My breath hitched. "Sir, if anyone heard you say that, they'd think I dress for you."