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“Worried you’ll jinx it?” He nodded. “I understand. Alright, I’ll drop it, but I can see whoever this woman is, she’s special. The look on your face is telling me all I need to know.”
I looked down and tried not to smile. “She is special,” I agreed. “But that’s all I’m telling you. Please, don’t ask me anything else.”
True to his word, Dean dropped it, and when the waiter brought his card back, we left the restaurant and moved on to talking about work. Unsurprisingly, Dean didn’t leave me in the lobby. He rode the elevator back up with me, and I knew he would probably spend the rest of the afternoon catching up with all his old coworkers. I let him step out of the elevator first.
“Oh good, you’re out of your meeting,” I heard him say. When I stepped out after him, I saw he was talking to Kat, who had a confused look on her face. “Too bad it took so long, we were going to invite you along for lunch.”
She smiled. “My meeting,” she said. “Yes. Right. I was in a meeting.”
“With Lolli,” I said. “How did it go?”
“Oh, it went great,” she said, picking up the lie right where I’d left it. “But I just got out of it like two minutes ago, so I couldn’t have gone to lunch. Hope you two had a good time though.”
“We had a great time.” Dean smiled at me. “Now, I need to find your brother,” he said to Kat. “Any idea where he might be?”
“I would say his office, but we both know that’s highly unlikely.”
Dean laughed. “No bother, I’ll go find him.” He waved to us both and walked away. Kat stared at me, her expression stiff.
“Mr. Hollis,” she said. “Can I see you in my office really quick? I need to give you a rundown of how the meeting went.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” I said.
I walked behind her, but not too close. In her office, she walked over to the window and stared out at the Boston skyline, leaving me to close the door. The moment it clicked shut, she spun around and glared at me. “You went to lunch with my dad? Are you insane?”
“I tried to get out of it,” I said. “But he left me withnowiggle room.”
“What did you two talk about?”
“Mostly just work stuff.”
“Mostly?”
I took a step towards her. “I didn’t tell him about us, obviously. I can’t think of anything worse than Dean finding out what happened between us last night. It would be such a betrayal.”
“I can’t either.”
“Good, then we’re on the same page.” I paused. “At least, about that.”
She frowned. “What else do we need to get on the same page about?”
I slowly took another step and now we were only about a foot apart. “Well—I think we should talk about it. About last night.”
“Fine. Let’s talk about it. We had sex, it was objectively very good, and now we just have to decide where we want to go from here.”
I laughed. “Wow, that was… succinct. Okay. Well, you go first. Where do you want to go from here?”
She seemed surprised by the question, and I liked being able to catch her off guard. She was acting like all of this was so normal, so commonplace, and maybe it was for her, but I was in new territory here. Still, that didn’t mean I was going to let her take sole control of the situation.
“I—I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “The way I see it, you and I are sexually compatible. It would be a shame to throw that away just because we work together, but if weweregoing to evenhumorthe idea of hooking up again, we have to set some ground rules.”
“Sure,” I said. “Like what?” I hoped my excitement didn’t shine through my tone too obviously, but I was elated to hear that she wanted to have sex again.
“First, we can’t develop feelings for one another. That one should go without saying, but to be safe, I’m going to say it anyway.”
