My Rival, My Partner

Chapter Seven: Claire's Corner Office

Claire's POV

Claire Vasquez had worked alongside Dane Copper for four years, through two rounds of layoffs, one disastrous office holiday party, and the entire slow-motion catastrophe of the Brindlewood contract falling apart, and in all that time she had never once heard him hum at his desk.

He was humming now. Something without a discernible melody, tuneless and absent, the kind of sound a person made when their body was doing one thing and their mind was very obviously somewhere else entirely.

She let it go for two days out of professional courtesy. By the third, curiosity won.

"You're doing the thing again," she said, dropping into the chair across from his desk with the particular unbothered confidence of a woman who had earned the right to interrupt him whenever she pleased.

"What thing."

"The humming thing. The staring-at-your-phone-and-smiling thing. The thing where you left work on time twice this week, which, Dane, in four years, I've seen you leave on time maybe six times total, and two of them were this week alone."

Dane's ears went faintly pink, which was, Claire thought, extremely telling for a man who otherwise had excellent professional composure under pressure.

"The joint proposal's going well. I'm in a good mood about work."

"Uh-huh. And is 'work' six-foot-something, has an accent I can't quite place, and texts you enough that your phone lights up during our Monday morning meeting?"

"That was a client."

"Dane."

"It was a client-adjacent situation."

Claire crossed her arms and waited, which was a technique she'd perfected over four years of getting the truth out of Dane Copper one silence at a time, he broke under sustained, patient eye contact faster than almost anyone she'd ever worked with, some artifact, she suspected, of growing up as the responsible one in a house that hadn't had much patience to spare.

"It's complicated," Dane said finally, which from him was practically a confession.

"He's the rival, isn't he. Ashworth."

Dane didn't answer, which was its own answer, and Claire felt a complicated mix of delight and genuine concern settle into her chest at roughly equal weight.

"Okay," she said, softer. "I'm not going to lecture you. God knows you don't need another person in your life telling you what you should and shouldn't want." She paused.

"But Dane... his family basically owns half the commercial development in this city. You're three years out of school on a contract that could make your entire career. If this goes sideways, professionally or otherwise, it's not going to go sideways evenly. You understand that, right?"

"I know what I'm doing."

"Do you, though? Because the last time you told me that, it was about the Brindlewood client, and we both remember how well that went."

Dane's jaw tightened, and Claire immediately regretted the comparison, Brindlewood had been about a client with bad intentions dressed up as a good opportunity, and whatever this was with Callum Ashworth clearly wasn't that, not from the way Dane's whole face had softened just talking around the edges of it.

"This is different," Dane said quietly.

"He's different. I don't — Claire, I don't know what this is yet. I'm not going to pretend I do. But it doesn't feel like Brindlewood. It doesn't feel like a mistake I'm making on purpose because I'm tired of being careful."

Something in his voice, earnest, a little scared, entirely unguarded in a way Dane rarely let himself be even with her, made Claire's teasing evaporate into something gentler.

"Okay," she said again. "Then I believe you. But if his family gets weird about this, and rich families like that always get weird about things eventually, you call me. Immediately. Not after you've already tried to handle it alone for three weeks, which is your other terrible habit."

"Deal."

She stood to leave, then paused at the door, unable to resist one last dig.

"For the record, I already had money on this. Marcus, Ashworth's assistant, we've been getting dinner, bet me twenty bucks a natural disaster would be the thing that finally got you two to say something to each other."

Dane blinked. "You're betting on my love life with the rival firm's assistant."

"I'm betting on your love life with a man I am absolutely, one hundred percent not developing feelings for myself, no further questions, please," Claire said, and left before he could ask the obvious follow-up, because she didn't yet have an answer she was ready to say out loud.