Chapter Six
949 Words
VIVIENNE
The eggs arrived at 9:17 a.m.
Scrambled, with toast, from the place on forty-one that she had personally recommended to the building manager eight months ago and had never once ordered from herself because she was always too busy making sure other people's mornings ran correctly.
The delivery guy set them on her desk with a cheerful nod and left before she could object.
She stared at the plate.
Through the glass wall, Kade was on a call, turned sideways in his chair, one ankle crossed over his knee, completely unbothered by the small act of chaos he had introduced into her morning. He said something into the phone that made whoever was on the other end laugh. He did not look at her.
She ate the eggs.
They were excellent. She was furious about it.
Her phone lit up.
DAMIEN [9:19 AM]: is that BREAKFAST on your desk
VIV [9:20 AM]: Someone made an error with a delivery.
DAMIEN [9:20 AM]: viv that came from forty-one
DAMIEN [9:20 AM]: i watched a guy get in the elevator with it
DAMIEN [9:20 AM]: WHO ORDERED IT
VIV [9:21 AM]: I'm eating. Stop watching me.
DAMIEN [9:21 AM]: i am watching you EAT BREAKFAST AT YOUR DESK
DAMIEN [9:21 AM]: on a wednesday
DAMIEN [9:21 AM]: viv
DAMIEN [9:21 AM]: VIV
VIV [9:22 AM]: It's eggs Damien not a marriage proposal.
DAMIEN [9:22 AM]: it's the INTENTION behind the eggs babe
DAMIEN [9:22 AM]: men who intend nothing do not order women breakfast
DAMIEN [9:22 AM]: they just don't
VIV [9:23 AM]: He was being considerate. He's my employer. Employers are sometimes considerate.
DAMIEN [9:23 AM]: one time my employer forgot my name for six months
DAMIEN [9:23 AM]: considerate is a spectrum babe and EGGS is on the far end
She locked her phone and finished her breakfast with great dignity.
She did not look at Kade through the glass wall even once.
(Twice. She looked twice. Briefly.)
The Legal call ran to twenty-eight minutes, which was two minutes under her cap, which she considered a personal victory. She sent them a follow-up summary before they'd had time to hang up, because if you gave Legal the chance to schedule another call they absolutely would.
At 10:53 she was cross-referencing the Henderson liability clause when she heard heels on the marble by the elevator bank. Sharp, deliberate, the kind of walk that expected rooms to rearrange themselves accordingly.
She looked up.
The woman was somewhere in her early thirties, with dark hair swept back and the bone structure Damien had described as requiring scientific study. She was wearing a cream blazer that cost more than Viv's rent and carrying nothing except her own composure.
She looked at Viv the way certain women did. Assessing. Not hostile, exactly, but measuring.
"I'm here to see Kade," she said. Her voice was low and practiced. "Nadia Voss."
There it was.
Viv held her gaze for exactly one second, smiled with the professional warmth she had perfected over eleven months, and looked down at the schedule she already knew did not contain this name.
"Mr. Mercer has his ten o'clock running until eleven and a board prep directly after," she said pleasantly. "I don't have you in the calendar. Did you have an appointment?"
"He'll want to see me."
"I'm sure he'll be delighted to." Viv picked up her pen. "I can find you a slot on Thursday afternoon, or Friday morning before ten. Which works better?"
Nadia Voss looked at her with the expression of someone unaccustomed to being managed by people who made significantly less money than them.
"I'll wait," she said.
"Of course." Viv gestured to the seating area with the same pleasant smile. "Can I get you anything? Water, coffee?"
"I'm fine."
She sat.
Viv went back to the Henderson clause.
Her posture was perfect. Her face was neutral. Her pen moved steadily across the notepad in her neat, looping handwriting and she was the picture of a woman who was completely unbothered by the presence of her boss's beautiful ex-girlfriend six feet from her desk.
She was extremely bothered.
She handled it the way she handled everything. She buried it under competence and kept moving.
At 11:04, Kade's office door opened. He stepped out with Marcus, mid-sentence about the liability clause, and stopped.
The stop was small. A half-second pause in his stride that she would only have caught because she knew his patterns the way she knew her own name.
"Nadia." His voice gave nothing away.
"I was in the building." Nadia stood with the ease of a woman who had rehearsed this. "I thought we could finish our conversation from yesterday."
"I have board prep in four minutes."
"It won't take long."
The silence lasted exactly three seconds. Viv kept her eyes on her notepad and wrote the word Henderson four times in a row because her pen needed to be doing something.
"Four minutes," Kade said. "Calloway, push board prep by ten."
"Already done," she said, without looking up.
She heard his office door close.
Marcus appeared at the edge of her desk. She felt him standing there before she saw him. He had the quality of a man who took up considered space.
"You good?" he said quietly.
She looked up. His expression was unreadable but not unkind.
"I'm always good, Marcus," she said.
He nodded once, slowly, like he was filing something away.
Then he went to wait by the window, and Viv went back to Henderson, and the eggs sat finished and cold at the edge of her desk like evidence of something she hadn't decided how to feel about yet.
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