Chapter Three: Working Late
1063 Words
The office emptied out by seven most nights, down to the cleaning crew, and whoever had a deadline bad enough to justify missing dinner. On the second Thursday after the Ashford file, Nora was one of exactly two people left on the floor, and the other one was Sebastian.
She told herself it was a coincidence for the first hour. By the second, she'd stopped bothering to lie to herself about it.
"You're still here," she said when she passed his desk on her way to the printer and found him frowning at a spreadsheet like it had personally wronged him.
"Apparently, so are you."
"I have a deadline."
"So do I." He didn't look up. "Mitchell wants this reconciled by morning, and I've been staring at the same column for twenty minutes."
Nora set her folder down without entirely deciding to. "Let me see."
He slid the laptop toward her, and she leaned over his shoulder to look, close enough that she could smell him, something clean and warm that she'd noticed before and pretended not to notice, and it took her a full three seconds longer than it should have to actually focus on the numbers.
"Your formula's referencing the wrong tab," she said. "It's pulling from March instead of April."
"That would explain it."
"You really are bad at this."
"I really am," he agreed, and there was something in his voice when he said it, some private amusement that didn't match the words at all, that made her look at him instead of the screen.
He was already looking at her.
Neither of them moved for a second that stretched longer than a second had any right to. She was aware of how close she was standing, close enough that if she leaned down another inch her cheek would brush his, and she was aware, too, that he hadn't pulled away, hadn't made any of the small polite adjustments people made when a coworker stood too near.
"Nora."
Her name in his voice did something to her that no amount of common sense could talk her out of.
"Yes."
"I should tell you to go home."
"Should you."
"I should," he said again, quieter this time, like he was arguing with himself and losing. "It's late. You've got a deadline. This isn't."
"Isn't what."
He didn't answer. Instead his hand came up, slow enough that she had every opportunity to step back and didn't, and brushed a strand of hair off her cheek, his fingers grazing her jaw for half a second that felt considerably longer than half a second, and Nora felt her breath catch somewhere she'd have to examine later, once she remembered how to think straight.
"This isn't appropriate," he finished and didn't move his hand away.
"No," she agreed. "It isn't."
Neither of them moved.
Somewhere down the hall, the elevator chimed, the sound of the cleaning cart rolling closer, and the spell broke just enough for both of them to remember they were standing in the middle of an open office floor with glass walls on three sides.
Nora stepped back first. She had to. If she hadn't, she wasn't entirely sure what would have happened next, and that uncertainty scared her more than anything else about the last thirty seconds had.
"I should let you finish your spreadsheet," she said, and her voice came out steadier than she felt, which she counted as a small victory.
"Right." Sebastian cleared his throat and looked back at the screen like it might save him. "The March tab."
"The March tab," she agreed, and picked her folder back up, and made herself walk to the printer instead of standing there a second longer, because she had the distinct sense that if she stayed in that spot one more moment, deadline or no deadline, she was going to do something she couldn't undo.
She didn't look back at him. She didn't need to. She could feel him watching her the entire way across the floor, and it took everything she had not to turn around and let him see exactly how much that felt like being touched.
Sebastian sat very still after she disappeared around the corner, one hand still faintly warm from where he'd touched her jaw, and thought, with a clarity that irritated him more than it should have, that he had just come closer to ruining three months of careful planning over the curve of one woman's cheekbone than he had in any boardroom fight of his entire career.
He should have pulled his hand back the second he'd raised it. He hadn't. He'd stood there instead, close enough to breathe her in, close enough to feel the exact moment her breath had changed, and some reckless, ungoverned part of him had wanted nothing more than to close the last few inches between them and find out what she tasted like.
His phone buzzed on the desk.
The board moved the Whitfield vote up to Monday, the message read. You need to decide who you trust before then. Sitting in an office pretending to fix spreadsheets isn't the same as making a decision, Sebastian.
He set the phone down without answering.
Monday. Three days to figure out who around him could be trusted with the truth of who he was, and he was no closer to an answer than he'd been three months ago, except now there was a woman two desks away who'd made him forget, for one entire minute, that he had a truth to protect at all.
He looked toward the printer, where Nora stood with her back to him, papers in hand, very deliberately not looking his way, and thought that whatever careful plan he'd built for this deception, it had never accounted for the possibility that the person he'd have the hardest time lying to would be the one person in the building who had no idea there was anything to lie about.
His phone buzzed again. Not the board this time. A name he hadn't seen in over a year, one that made his stomach drop the second it lit up the screen.
Miss me? the message read. I heard you're back at the office. We should catch up. I know things about your new secretary friend that might interest you.
Sebastian's hand went cold around the phone.
- Writer
