Strictly Unprofessional

Chapter Seven

KADE

Nadia left at 11:21 a.m.

He walked her to the elevator himself because he had been raised with manners he occasionally resented. She touched his arm in the doorway, fingers light and deliberate, and looked at him with those dark eyes that had once been very effective.

"Think about it," she said.

"I have thought about it."

"Think harder." She smiled. The elevator doors opened. "You know where I am."

The doors closed.

He stood there for approximately three seconds, decided he felt nothing particularly interesting about that interaction, and turned back toward the floor.

Viv was on a call. Head down, pen moving, the phone tucked between her ear and shoulder in the way that meant it was a long one and she had things to write. Her hair was up today, loosely, with pieces coming down at the sides of her neck in a way that was almost certainly unintentional and was absolutely not something he was looking at.

He went into his office and closed the door.

Board prep ran ninety minutes. Marcus talked numbers with the focused efficiency of a man who loved them, which Kade respected even when it made him want to open a window. By the end of it they had a clean position on the Henderson acquisition and a secondary strategy if the liability clause pushed back.

"Good," Kade said. "Send it to Legal before four."

"Already drafted." Marcus closed his folder. He did not move to leave.

Kade waited.

"She handled that well," Marcus said.

"Henderson?"

"Nadia."

Kade said nothing.

"Calloway." Marcus tilted his head toward the outer office. "Nadia Voss walked in unannounced, sat six feet from her desk for eleven minutes, and Calloway never blinked. Offered her water. Managed her like a visiting diplomat." He paused. "That is either very good professional composure or a woman with considerable personal discipline."

"She's good at her job."

"She's exceptional at her job. That's a different thing." Marcus stood. "Nadia noticed her too, by the way. I watched her clock Calloway on the way out."

That landed somewhere Kade did not examine immediately.

"Marcus."

"I'm leaving." He picked up his folder. "I'm already gone."

He left.

Kade turned his chair toward the window. Forty floors below, Manhattan moved with its usual indifference. He thought about Nadia's fingers on his arm, perfectly calibrated, and felt nothing he would describe as temptation.

Then he thought about Viv offering Nadia water with that pleasant professional smile, and felt something considerably more complicated.

He found a reason to be on the floor at 6:15.

It was not a good reason. It was a thin, barely constructed reason involving a document he could have accessed digitally, and he was aware of this, and he went anyway.

She was still there. Of course she was. The floor was empty except for her, the city going amber outside the windows, and Viv at her desk in the particular stillness of someone completely absorbed in their work.

She'd taken her hair down at some point. It was loose now around her shoulders, dark red in the low evening light, and she had her shoes off under the desk in a way she would never have allowed if she'd known anyone was watching.

He stopped in the doorway.

She had her bottom lip caught lightly between her teeth the way she did when she was concentrating, and her blouse had one button open at the collar that hadn't been open this morning, and she was completely unaware of him standing there, and he stood there longer than he should have before he said anything.

"Still here," he said.

She startled. Caught herself. Looked up with the composed expression that was just slightly slower to arrive than usual, which told him the surprise had been genuine.

"You're quiet when you want to be," she said.

"Occupational habit." He walked toward her desk. "What are you finishing?"

"The Henderson summary you wanted before nine tomorrow. I'd rather do it now than think about it tonight."

"You think about work at night?"

"I think about everything at night." She said it matter-of-factly, like it wasn't an admission. "It's a design flaw."

He leaned against the edge of the desk beside hers. Close enough that she had to tilt her chin up slightly to look at him. He watched her register the proximity and choose not to move, which told him something.

"Nadia," he said. "I want to be clear about something."

Her expression didn't shift. "You don't have to be clear about anything. It's not my business."

"It's not," he agreed. "But I'm choosing to be clear anyway." He held her gaze. "There's nothing there. Whatever she told you with that entrance today, I want you to have the correct information."

Something moved behind her eyes. Brief, deep, quickly managed.

"Why does it matter what information I have?" she asked quietly.

The question sat between them in the warm evening light.

He looked at her mouth for a moment. The red lipstick had faded to almost nothing over the course of the day and somehow that was worse, more human, more her, and he was aware that he was in water that was getting progressively less shallow and moving toward it anyway.

"I'm working on the answer to that," he said.

She looked at him for a long, careful moment.

Then she looked back at her screen.

"Henderson summary," she said. "Before nine."

"Before nine," he agreed.

He pushed off the desk and walked to the elevator and did not look back, because if he looked back he would see her watching him leave and he was not ready for what he would do about that.

The elevator doors closed.

He stared at his own reflection in the chrome.

Working on it was the most honest thing he had said in years.