Closer Than They Should
1400 Words
Chapter Six
Closer Than They Should
Lily's POV
By her second week at Addams & Co., Lily had developed a theory.
The twins were watching her.
Not obviously. Not in a way she could point to and report to HR with a straight face. It was subtler than that the kind of attention that existed in the periphery. A glance held a beat too long when she crossed the office floor. A pause in conversation when she entered a room. The way Jason's eyes would lift from whatever document he was dissecting and find her across the glass partition without any apparent reason to do so. The way Tyson always seemed to know when she'd arrived in the morning before she'd announced herself had her coffee order ready, her schedule pulled up, like he'd been waiting.
She told herself it was a coincidence. Professional attentiveness. The natural hyperawareness of two men who had built an empire on noticing everything.
She was almost convincing herself.
✦ ✦ ✦
Monday. She had been on a call with their legal team a complex scheduling negotiation she'd handled entirely alone when she'd looked up mid-sentence and found Jason standing at the glass wall of his office, arms folded, watching her with an expression she couldn't decode. Not displeasure. Not assessment. Something quieter than both. When their eyes met he didn't look away. He held it for one long, deliberate moment then turned back to his desk like nothing had happened.
Her train of thought had derailed entirely. She'd had to ask the lawyer to repeat himself twice.
Wednesday. She'd stayed late to finish restructuring the overseas correspondence files the kind of task that didn't need to be done that night but satisfied something in her to complete. She'd assumed she was alone on the floor. Then Tyson had appeared from the boardroom at nine forty-five, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and stopped when he saw the light still on at her desk.
He hadn't told her to go home. He hadn't said much at all. He'd simply pulled up a chair uninvited, unhurried sat down across from her, and worked in silence at the other end of the desk for forty minutes like it was the most natural thing in the world.
When she'd finally shut down her computer he'd looked up with that almost-smile. "Good work tonight, Kitten.""
She'd opened her mouth to correct him. He'd already stood and walked away. She'd sat there for a full thirty seconds feeling something. She refused to examine what exactly.
✦ ✦ ✦
"They're watching you," Naomi said. Not looking up from her lunch. Entirely casual. Like she was commenting on the weather.
Lily set down her fork. "I'm sorry?"
"The twins. They're watching you. I've counted Jason has looked through that glass partition at your desk eleven times this morning. Eleven. His record before you arrived was zero."
"You've been counting."
"I've been observing. There's a difference." Naomi finally looked up. Her expression was warm but serious. "I've worked on that floor for two years, Lily. I have never not once. seen either of those men take a personal interest in an assistant. In anyone on staff, actually. They're professional to a fault. Contained. Separate."
"Maybe they're just making sure I'm doing the job correctly."
Naomi gave her a look. The kind of look that said she was being diplomatically stupid and they both knew it.
"Lily. Jason restructured his entire afternoon on Wednesday to be on the same floor as you. His calendar said boardroom from seven. He didn't go to the boardroom. I checked."
A beat of silence.
"You really do count things," Lily said finally.
"I really do," Naomi agreed pleasantly. "Are you going to tell me you haven't noticed?"
Lily picked up her fork again. Said nothing. Which was, of course, its own answer.
Naomi nodded slowly. "That's what I thought."
✦ ✦ ✦
She thought about it all afternoon. Tried not to. Failed comprehensively.
The problem was that it wasn't just the watching. That she could have rationalised powerful men in high-stakes environments were hypervigilant by necessity. What she couldn't rationalise was her own reaction to it.
The way her pulse picked up when Jason called her name from across the office. The way she found herself noticing which window Tyson had chosen that morning and feeling something almost like warmth when she got it right. Small things. Invisible things. The kind of things that had no place in a professional relationship and no logical explanation in any other kind.
She'd had a boyfriend for six months and never felt a fraction of this pull. Which was either deeply telling or deeply alarming. Possibly both.
You're being ridiculous, she told herself firmly, and went back to the correspondence files.
The intercom buzzed at four-fifteen.
"Ms. Hayes. Our office." Jason. No explanation. Just that low, certain voice and the click of disconnection.
She knocked twice. Entered.
They were both in the office this time Jason at his desk, Tyson standing at the window he'd claimed as his favourite on the east side. The late afternoon light was cutting long and gold across the floor and catching in their eyes in a way that made the amber in them glow almost unnaturally warm.
She noticed that. She filed it away under things to think about later when she was safely alone and focused.
"You flagged the Meridian contract," Jason said. Not a question.
"Yes." She had a clause buried in page forty-seven of a sixty-page document that the previous assistant had approved without reading. "There's a liability clause on page forty-seven that creates an exposure if the overseas shipment timeline shifts by more than fourteen days. Given the current delays at the port it's a realistic risk."
A silence. The kind that in most offices would have felt uncomfortable. Here it just felt considered.
"Legal missed it," Tyson said from the window. Not an accusation. Just a statement of fact delivered with a quiet, curious satisfaction.
"Legal had sixty contracts to review this week," Lily said carefully. "I had one."
Jason looked at her for a long moment. That beam-of-something focus that she was slowly, reluctantly getting used to.
"Send your notes to legal. CC us both."
"Already done," she said. "This morning."
Something moved across Jason's face. Gone before she could name it. But it had been there something that looked almost dangerously close to admiration.
"Is there anything else?" Lily asked.
Tyson turned from the window. The almost-smile was fully present now, unhidden, and it did things to the room's atmosphere that she was choosing not to acknowledge.
"Stay safe going home tonight, Kitten."
It was such a simple thing to say. Casual. Offhand almost. But the way he said it low and genuine and with his eyes holding hers for exactly a beat longer than necessary made it feel like something else entirely. Like a hand pressed flat against a door she was trying to keep closed.
"Goodnight," Jason added quietly. And then, like he couldn't quite help it "Princess."
"Two men. One word each. She felt both of them like a hand around her heart."
She made it back to her desk. Sat down. Stared at her screen for approximately forty seconds without seeing a single thing on it.
Then she picked up her phone and texted Jerry.
I think I might be in trouble.
His response came in eleven seconds flat.
Twin trouble or regular trouble
She stared at her phone. Put it face down on the desk. Picked it back up.
I am not answering that.
TWIN TROUBLE. I KNEW IT. LILY MARIE HAYES I KNEW IT.
She put her phone away. Went back to the correspondence files. Told herself very firmly that she was a professional and professionals did not develop feelings for their employers.
The problem was and she was just beginning to understand this, in the slow, reluctant way you understood things you weren't ready for whatever she was feeling didn't feel like something she had developed.
It felt like something that had always been there. Waiting. Like a word on the tip of your tongue that you'd been trying to remember your whole life and couldn't quite reach.
Until now.
She didn't have a name for it yet.
But it was getting louder every day.
✦
End of Chapter Six
- Writer
