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I smiled.Good girl. Professional.
The door hissed again, and I craned my neck, keeping myself as hidden as possible while checking on Sadie. She didn’t move for a second. She seemed to stare out the gaping window that overlooked the lake, glaring into the choppy water roughed around by the wild breeze.
Silence steadied itself in the hallway. Distant sounds of weights clinking followed by grunts came about, and the occasional cry of a child, all the usual sounds of a building floating up to my animalistic ears. But here in the hallway with Sadie, it was remarkably quiet.
She approached the window and rested her hands on the sill. What was she thinking about that made her stare off like that? Something about her hesitance to return irked me. So, that little incident had scared her off. I knew I shouldn’t have been handling any tools while thinking. I always checked out at the most inopportune moments.
She probably thought I was some kind of psycho.
Damn it all, I didn’t want it to be this way. She wouldn’t let me in if she thought I was dangerous or crazy—or both. She probably would have asked my brother if she hadn’t been so frightened of the notion of it getting back to me. I should have known better than to try to keep her tucked away in my office like that. Maybe a separate office would have been better, though I wouldn’t have been able to watch her round ass look so goddamn good in those taut yoga pants.
The sound of buzzing shattered my thoughts, and then I realized that Sadie was checking her phone. She sighed heavily. She draped herself over the sill, trying to mesh with the glass of the window while she raised the phone to her ear.
“Mom, I’m at work.”
Extra points for professionalism, but she’s taking too long to get back to me.
Another sigh fogged the glass. “Mom, can we talk about this later? The luncheon can’t possibly be more important than my—”
She stiffened.
“My boss isn’t taking advantage of me. I chose these hours.”
Pride tangled like ivy in my chest. Yes, she was indeed far better than the rest. I admitted quietly to myself that I couldn’t see her personal life. Perhaps her mother had been bothering her earlier in the day.
“Mom, this is really getting old,” she groaned. “I don’t want to take a date to the luncheon—Because I shouldn’thaveto take a date to the luncheon—Because I don’t care what the others think.”
It seemed my assistant had a little dilemma on her hands. No wonder she seemed distracted this morning. I thought she had been thinking about her encounter with Izdor. Who wouldn’t have done the same?
“I don’t see what good it would do,” she argued. “I don’t see how having a date would make me more respectable.”
I saw her reflection in the glass as she drifted back from the window. Red blotches decorated the area around her eyes. She seemed like she wanted to cry.
“Alright, well, I need to get back to work. No, I don’t work with Bella anymore. Yes, being an assistant is a serious job.” She snorted. “Iampaid my worth, and my boss is amazing. I’ll talk to you later.Goodbye.”
She forcibly clicked the screen and shoved the phone into her pocket. This memory would stick with me for ages. I’d never heard anyone defend my name after knowing me for such a brief time.She said I’m amazing. My head filled with all sorts of ideas, things I knew I couldn’t think about now if I wanted to make it back to my office without starch in my pants.
So, her mother was pressuring her about a date. I had plenty of ideas aboutthatas well, though they were less palatable than biting Sadie’s neck. If I had followed my instinct, I could have saved her the trouble. Shifters understood the bite intensely. Her mother would have seen it and shut right up about any date nonsense. Except to meet me, of course.
I slipped back into the shadows to get to the office before Sadie realized I was gone.
I settled in at my desk. I hunched over the blank pages, senses scanning the hallway repeatedly for her arrival. She wandered inside, plopped into the chair, and dove into furious typing.
Just a second was all I needed. I turned around and put on my best sympathetic frown. “Everything alright?”
“Yes, fine. Xavier sent a punch.”
I chortled. “I’m surprised you didn’t punch me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“He would have insisted.”
She gave me a tight smile. “I would never want to hurt you, Andres.”
While my name sounded lovely in her mouth, I wanted to hear her call mesiragain.
Under different circumstances.
