TAMING THE WOLF OF VOSS TOWER

EPISODE FOUR: THE RULES

(Days Six and Seven)

The healer's orders were simple: no gripping, no lifting, no stress, no work.

Damien Voss read them twice and then crumpled the paper in his gauze-wrapped fist, which hurt, which proved the healer's point.

"I'm the CEO," he said to the empty penthouse. "I don't rest."

"You do now," said Tessa from the doorway.

He turned. She stood with her toolbox on one shoulder and a stack of files under her arm, in her usual battered boots, looking exactly like a woman who had not slept and did not intend to apologize for it.

"How did you get in?"

"Your elevator's ward-line is mine. I wired it." She walked past him and dropped the files on his dining table. "Welcome to Day Six. I've cleared your schedule."

"You what?"

"Pia helped. Don't be mad at Pia." She held up a hand and ticked items off on her fingers. "Board call, moved. Investor lunch, moved. Two dinners, canceled. Tonight's gala, definitely canceled. You are officially unavailable until your hands can hold a pen."

"Tessa, I have a company to run."

"Adrian has a company to run. You have a recovery." She said it kindly but without give. "Rule Six."

"There is no Rule Six."

"There is now." She pulled a marker from her pocket, found a blank space on the fridge, and wrote it in big square letters:

RULE 6: THE PATIENT RESTS.

Damien stared at it. Then at her. Then, helplessly, he started to laugh.

"You're serious."

"I'm always serious about the people who hold my engine."

"I thought it was your engine."

"I'm willing to share." She patted the sofa. "Sit. I brought soup."

The soup was awful.

It was her grandmother's recipe, she admitted, which meant it contained an amount of ginger that could wake the dead. Damien ate it anyway, wincing with every spoonful, because she was watching him with her chin propped on her fist and her eyes bright with mischief.

"It's good for the nerves," she said.

"It's aggressive."

"That's how you know it's working."

"Have you ever cooked a mild thing?"

"Once. A boiled egg." She sighed. "It was a disappointment to everyone."

He laughed again, and the sound startled him. Here he was, in his own penthouse, at three in the afternoon, laughing at a boiled egg. A week ago, he'd have spent this hour in a boardroom, bored, calculating, fielding calls from people who wanted something.

Instead, a woman with grease under her nails was sitting cross-legged on his white sofa, scolding him about ginger.

It was the most relaxed he had felt in years.

That should have frightened him. He found, rather to his surprise, that it didn't.

Hale called at four.

Tessa heard Damien's phone buzz on the table and glanced over his shoulder. The screen read C. HALE, PROCUREMENT.

"Take it," she said, keeping her voice light. "I'll mute myself."

Damien picked up. "Corvin."

"Mr. Voss." The voice through the speaker was smooth as warm butter. "I heard about the accident. A terrible thing. I wanted to offer my deepest sympathies, and to ask whether there was anything the Procurement office could do."

"We're managing."

"Of course. Though I did think the board might benefit from an accelerated review of the crystal upgrade, given recent events. The engine is, after all, seventy years old."

Tessa went very still. Behind Damien's shoulder, she mimed a firm no.

"The board's agenda is full," said Damien evenly.

"Naturally. But if you'd allow me to prepare a preliminary proposal..."

"Not this month."

A pause. Just a fraction too long.

"Of course," said Hale, still pleasant. "I'll put it aside. And, Mr. Voss, if you'll forgive me, I understand Miss Brandt has been working very closely with you. I wouldn't want her to overextend. Such a dedicated employee. People do worry."

"Thank you for your concern," Damien said. His voice had cooled by several degrees. "Good afternoon."

He ended the call.

For a moment, neither spoke.

"He's fishing," Tessa said.

"I know."

"He wanted to know where I was."

"I know." Damien set the phone down very carefully. "I've known Corvin Hale for eleven years. He's never once asked after an employee's wellbeing."

"What do you think he wants?"

"The contract, probably. The usual. Hale's always had ambitions." He rubbed his temple with the back of one gauzed hand. "But this felt different. It felt..."

"Like a threat."

"Yes."

Tessa's pulse ticked. In her locker, two floors below the CEO's suite, a shard of pink crystal was wrapped in ward-cloth, and the thing it might mean sat on her chest like a stone. She almost told him. The words were right there, on the tip of her tongue.

But the signature had not yet appeared, and the proof was thin, and Damien's hands were burned, and for the first time in a week, he was resting.

Not yet, she thought. One more day. Let him heal.

"Rule Seven," she said aloud, to the fridge.

"There's no Rule Seven."

"There is now." She wrote it under the first one.

RULE 7: IF HALE CALLS AGAIN, SAY NOTHING AND TELL TESSA.

Damien read it. His eyes softened.

"Do you always do this?" he asked.

"Do what?"

"Look after people who didn't ask."

She shrugged, embarrassed. "I look after engines. People are just engines with more opinions."

"That's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me," said Damien, deadpan.

"It wasn't meant to be."

"I know. That's why it worked."

She threw a pillow at him.

On Day Seven, the real trouble arrived.

It came in the form of Seraphine Lorne, who swept into the lobby of Voss Arcanum at ten sharp in a pale gold coat, heels clicking, flanked by two assistants.

"I'm here to see Damien," she told the receptionist, with a smile like sunlight on a knife.

"I'm sorry, Miss Lorne, Mr. Voss is unavailable..."

"He's always available to me."

"Not this week," said Tessa, appearing at the foot of the stairs with a clipboard and a large grease smear along one forearm.

The lobby went quiet.

"Oh," said Seraphine, in her silver-bell voice. "You."

"Me."

"The help. How are you today, dear?"

"Employed."

A few people at the reception desk made a noise suspiciously like a laugh. Seraphine's smile did not flicker.

"I think I'll go up."

"I think you won't."

"Excuse me?"

"Mr. Voss is on medical leave. He's recovering from injuries he sustained saving this building." Tessa lifted her clipboard like a shield. "Under the terms of our agreement, no visitors."

"Your agreement?"

"Our company agreement."

"I see." Seraphine's gaze traveled slowly down Tessa's body, taking in the dungarees, the boots, the soft round stomach, and rose again with delicate disdain. "How fascinating. I hadn't realized the CEO had taken such an interest in his maintenance staff."

The temperature in the lobby dropped ten degrees.

Tessa had heard a thousand versions of that look in her life. At school. At the first three companies that had fired her for not being the right shape for the front desk. At family gatherings, where aunts patted her shoulder and said you have such a pretty face. She'd spent twenty-six years building armor for exactly this.

She took a slow breath.

"Miss Lorne," she said quietly. "I fix the engine that keeps your family's crystal glowing in this tower's lobby. I have saved the building twice in a week. I don't need your approval, and I don't need your pity. I do need you to leave my CEO alone until his hands heal."

Seraphine's eyes narrowed.

"Your CEO."

"My patient."

"He is nobody's patient. He is Damien Voss." She stepped closer, and her voice dropped to a razor whisper. "Do you honestly believe he'll look at you? You? The girl with a wrench? Men like him play games with women like you. It's a bet to him. It's a distraction. When the thirty days end, he'll be back in a silk suit, and you'll be back under a pipe."

The words landed. Tessa felt them go in, small and sharp, finding every old soft place.

She didn't flinch.

But somewhere behind her, from the top of the stairs, a deep voice said, very softly:

"Miss Lorne."

Damien came down the stairs slowly, bandaged hands at his sides, in an ordinary gray jumper and slacks. He hadn't put on a tie, hadn't combed his hair. And yet every person in the lobby straightened, as if the tower itself had stood up.

"I believe," he said, stopping beside Tessa, "that Miss Brandt told you I was unavailable."

"Damien, darling..." Seraphine's whole face rearranged itself into warm sweetness. "I was only worried about you."

"No," he said. "You were here to find out whether it was true."

"Whether what was true?"

"That I've stopped seeing anyone." He did not raise his voice. "It's true. I've stopped seeing you, Sera, too. I thought I'd made that clear after the Moonlit Terrace."

"We were never exclusive..."

"No. We weren't. That was the problem." He looked, briefly, almost sad. "I am sorry. I should have been honest sooner. I wasn't kind to you, and I wasn't fair, and you deserved better."

Seraphine stared at him as if he had spoken in another tongue.

"But I will not," Damien went on, still quiet, "allow you to speak to a member of my staff like that. Not in my lobby. Not ever."

"I was only..."

"You were cruel. She is the bravest person in this building." His hand, gauze and all, found Tessa's shoulder and settled there, steady and warm. "If she says I can't see visitors, then I can't see visitors. She's in charge of my recovery, and as far as I'm concerned, she's in charge of a great deal else."

A hush fell.

Seraphine's lips parted. For one moment, the silver-bell mask cracked, and Tessa saw something raw beneath it: hurt, wounded pride, and, strangely, a flicker of fear.

She isn't only angry, Tessa thought. She's frightened. Of what?

Then the mask snapped back.

"Fine," Seraphine said brightly. "I'll go. But remember this, darling. When this is over, everyone will remember who was kind to you before she was."

She turned and swept out in a gust of gold silk, her assistants hurrying behind.

Silence.

Then Pia, from the reception desk, whispered a reverent "Oh, my gosh."

"Don't," Tessa muttered.

"I said nothing."

"You said it with your face."

Damien exhaled and lowered his hand. He looked at it, the bandages gone slightly gray, and gave a rueful half-smile.

"I'm sorry you had to hear that."

"Why? You were wonderful." Tessa swallowed. "A little dramatic. But wonderful."

"I meant what she said about the bet."

"I know."

"It started as one."

"I know," Tessa said, softly this time. "You said so on the first day."

"I did." He met her eyes, and the gray in them was very clear. "I'm no longer sure it still is."

Her heart did something dangerous and quick.

"Rule Eight," she said, a little unsteadily.

"There's no..."

"Rule Eight: Don't say things like that in a lobby full of witnesses."

He laughed out loud, startling the room. "Add it to the fridge."

"I will," said Tessa. "Right after I fix your elevator."

She walked away fast, before her face could give her away, and did not look back. If she had, she would have seen two things.

The first was Damien Voss, staring after her with an expression that, three weeks ago, he would have called absurd.

The second was a thin, neatly dressed figure at the mezzanine rail, watching the whole scene with a soft smile and a cup of coffee going cold in his hand.

Corvin Hale lifted the cup in a small, polite toast.

Then he turned, unhurried, and disappeared into the crowd.