Corner Office Confessions

Chapter 4: Late Nights

By nine p.m., most of the sixty-second floor had emptied out, leaving only the hum of the air conditioning and the glow of Nerisa's laptop screen. The Hartley numbers weren't adding up, and she refused to hand in anything less than perfect.

She didn't hear the office door until it was already open.

"You're still here." Nathan stood in the doorway, tie loosened, looking somehow more human in the low light than he had all week.

"So are you."

"I own the building. I have an excuse." He stepped inside, glancing at the spreadsheets scattered across her desk. "You don't."

"I wanted to get it right." She rubbed her eyes, fighting exhaustion. "There's a discrepancy in the Q3 projections. I think someone rounded the numbers to make the shortfall look smaller than it is."

Something shifted in his expression — surprise, maybe, or the beginning of respect. He walked closer, close enough that she caught the faint scent of his cologne, close enough that her pulse betrayed her by picking up speed.

He leaned over her shoulder to look at the screen, and for a moment, neither of them moved. She was intensely aware of how near he was, of the warmth radiating from him, of the silence that had turned charged and strange.

"You're right," he said quietly, his voice lower than before. "Nobody else caught that."

"Lucky guess."

"No." He straightened, putting careful distance between them again, like he'd caught himself doing something he shouldn't. "It wasn't."

Their eyes met, and for one unguarded second, something passed between them that had nothing to do with quarterly reports.

Then he cleared his throat, stepped back fully, and the CEO mask slid back into place. "Go home, Ms. Smith. That's an order."

She gathered her things slowly, feeling his eyes on her the entire way to the door — and wondering, as she walked out, whether he'd felt it too.