REJECT ME PROPERLY

Chapter 5: Give Her a Name

Thirty floors had never been so long.

Alina fixed her eyes on the numbers above the door. Avery Durke stood beside her, hands in his pockets, and an elevator built for twelve suddenly felt like a phone booth.

2. 3. 4.

"I didn't bring the coat," she said.

"I noticed."

"It's at the dry cleaner's. There was a whiskey incident."

"You're lying."

"It's under my bed." She sighed. "Next to my dignity."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. He killed it on sight.

*Oh, he smells so good,* Daxy moaned.

*Doesn't he?* Nimor agreed from somewhere between their skulls. *I've always said his best feature is his neck.*

*Stop talking to each other,* Alina thought furiously.

*We can't,* both wolves said at once, and they sounded thrilled about it.

Avery's jaw locked. His eyes cut sideways to her, and she knew with total certainty he was hearing every word.

"Your wolf," he said through his teeth, "is extremely loud."

"*My* wolf? Yours just said your neck is your best feature."

"He's wrong."

*I'm never wrong,* Nimor said.

11. 12. 13.

Avery turned to face her fully. "Who sent you?"

"Durke Holdings, Communications Division. Nine o'clock. I have the email."

"You were engaged to a man in my hotel. Then you were in my suite with a key booked in your name. Now you're in my building." His voice stayed perfectly even. "I didn't build this company by believing in coincidences."

"And I didn't get dumped, fired, and photographed in one night on purpose." She met his gaze. "If I wanted to trap a billionaire, Mr. Durke, I'd pick one with a sense of humor."

18. 19. 20.

"I could have you walked out of this building in thirty seconds."

"You could." She shrugged. "Then you'd never find out who booked that suite."

That landed. She saw it. A flicker behind the gray.

"You think I don't want to know?" Her voice dropped. "Somebody texted me about my fiancé. Somebody put an invitation in my mailbox and a key in the envelope. And those photographers in your lobby knew your name before I'd even walked past them. Someone is playing both of us. And you need someone who finds people for a living."

The elevator chimed. *30.*

The doors opened onto chaos. Phones ringing. Screens everywhere showing the same image: a woman in a charcoal coat, face hidden, stepping out of the Veyra. A woman with a severe blonde bob and a tablet was shouting at no one in particular.

Avery stepped out first, and the entire floor went silent.

Every head turned. Somebody dropped a stapler.

He glanced back at Alina. "Well. Go to your interview."

He walked off toward the glass conference room at the far end of the floor.

Alina let out a breath she'd been holding since the lobby.

---

The interview lasted four minutes.

"Forget it." The woman with the blonde bob, *Marcy Kim, Head of Communications*, according to her lanyard and her fury, glanced at Alina's résumé for exactly one second. "Rain Communications. You worked the *Cold Feet* chef disaster?"

"I wrote his apology."

"I read it. It was disgusting. Extremely effective." Marcy stood. "Interview's canceled. You're hired. Welcome to the war room."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"We're in a crisis and I need hands. Can you think under pressure?"

"It's the only way I think."

"Good. Because our CEO has a nine-billion-dollar deal bleeding out on the table, and nobody on this floor can find one woman in a coat."

Alina opened her mouth. Closed it again.

*Oh,* Daxy whispered. *This is delicious.*

---

The war room was glass on three sides and panic on the fourth. Dino Marse lounged at one end of the table, tie loose, charm rumpled. Simone Dalone sat to the right of the head chair in red, scrolling her phone as if the crisis were a mildly tedious brunch. Six strategists talked over each other at once.

"We deny. It's not his coat."

"It's his coat," Marcy snapped. "It's bespoke. His tailor already sold the story."

"We say she's a relative?"

"She left the private tower at dawn. Nobody is buying *cousin*."

"Then we find her," someone insisted. "Pay her. NDA. She disappears."

"We leak a bigger story," a young man in glasses suggested. "Something that buries this one."

"Like what, Theo?" Marcy's voice could have stripped paint. "Shall we fake a moon landing?"

Alina stood against the back wall with a borrowed tablet, watching the comment sections scroll past in real time. *Who is she? Look at those shoes. Is that a champagne stain? Durke has a heart??? Somebody check on the three accountants.* Thousands of comments, every one of them asking the same question. Nobody was angry. Everybody was curious.

Curious was worth money. Curious was a door.

*Say it,* Daxy urged. *You know you're right. Say it.*

*She'll get fired on her first day,* Nimor observed. *I'm fine with that. More time for us.*

Simone smiled without lifting her eyes. "Or Avery simply announces that the woman in the coat was me."

The door opened.

Avery Durke walked in, and the room forgot to breathe. He took the head chair. He didn't look at Alina. Somehow that was worse than if he had.

"Options," he said.

Marcy ran through them. Deny. Distract. Find and pay. Simone.

"All wrong," Alina said.

It escaped before she could stop it. Every head in the room swung toward her.

Marcy's eyes narrowed. "Our new associate, Miss Argstone. Hired four minutes ago."

"Five," Dino corrected cheerfully. He was studying Alina with an expression of dawning, enormous delight. She had a terrible feeling his nose had just told him exactly who she was.

Avery finally looked at her. "Go on, Miss Argstone."

She stood. Her heart was slamming, but she'd stood in rooms like this before, and she knew one thing better than anyone at this table. Stories.

"You can't deny a coat. You can't distract from a mystery, because the internet loves a mystery more than oxygen. And paying her off is how this becomes a scandal forever. The second anyone finds that NDA, it stops being romance and starts being a cover-up." She drew a breath. "Madame Rinora doesn't care that you spent the night with someone. She cares what it *means*. So stop hiding the mystery woman. Give her a story. A real one. Not a one-night stand. A private relationship the press stumbled onto. Then give her a face, and a name."

Silence.

Simone laughed softly. "Which is exactly what I said."

"No," Alina said. "You said *lie*. The internet can smell a lie from space. People are already analyzing those photos: height, hair, the shape of her hands. Your height is wrong, Miss Dalone. And your hands have never looked that tired."

Dino made a sound behind his coffee cup that might have been a sob of pure joy.

Avery leaned back in his chair. His eyes had not left her face.

"And your personal opinion of me, Miss Argstone?" he asked quietly. "Since you'll be writing my love story."

The room waited.

"I don't have one, Mr. Durke." She held his gaze. "I feel absolutely nothing for you."

For half a heartbeat, the world flared gold.

She felt it behind her eyes, a burning bloom, there and gone. No one else seemed to notice. No one except Dino, who inhaled his coffee directly into his lungs.

Avery's expression didn't change. "Good," he said. "Neither do I."

And his eyes flashed the exact same shade.

*Oh,* Daxy breathed. *Oh, that's new.*

*It happens when they lie,* Nimor purred. *About us. How absolutely wonderful.*

Avery rose. "Everyone out."

Chairs scraped. Simone lingered, her gaze sliding between the two of them like a cat watching two birds on a wire. Marcy herded her toward the door. Dino went last, walking backward, pointing at Avery with both index fingers and mouthing something deeply unprofessional.

The door closed.

They were alone in a glass box thirty floors above the city.

Avery walked around the table slowly, the way wolves circle.

"Your plan," he said. "Give the mystery woman a story. A face. A name."

"Yes."

"We don't need to find her."

Alina's pulse jumped. "Mr. Durke—"

He stopped in front of her, close enough that cedar and rain filled every breath she took.

"She already has a name," Avery said. "Yours."