Not In Her Job Description

THE COLISION

INDIRA The dress was trouble. I knew it the moment I zipped it up. It wasn't tackily indecent, Anika had too much taste for that but it was a lot. The neckline sat lower than anything I owned, the fabric skimmed every curve without apology, and the hemline stopped at a length that my mother would have described as optimistic. Midnight black, deep as ink, with that barely-there suggestion of blue when the light caught it just right. I looked at myself in the fitting room mirror for a long moment. Then I straightened my spine and walked out to tell Anika an unequivocal, non-negotiable, absolutely final no. Except Anika wasn't there. I stood at the edge of the fitting room corridor and looked out into the store. The rails of clothing stood untouched. The displays gleamed under soft lighting. The music drifted from the speakers, The Weeknd's Wasted Times, unhurried and atmospheric and beneath it, there was nothing. No shuffling footsteps, no murmured conversations, no rustle of shopping bags. The store was empty. I blinked. Then looked again, as though the customers might simply be hiding. Still empty. She said not to leave the dressing room until she got back. I had left the dressing room. A thin thread of unease wound itself through my chest as I moved further into the store, heels quiet against the polished floor. I checked the first section, womenswear, completely deserted. The second, accessories, not a soul. The third and fourth yielded the same result, and by the time I'd made a full loop my unease had graduated into something that felt uncomfortably close to genuine alarm. What kind of nightmare have I floated into? The music kept playing, indifferent to my predicament. I almost wished it would stop there was something deeply unsettling about Wasted Times soundtracking my slow spiral into panic in an empty Belgravia boutique on a Saturday morning. I reached into the small shoulder bag still miraculously on my arm and pulled out my phone. Dialed Anika. Pressed the phone to my ear and walked, not paying particular attention to direction, just needing the forward momentum of doing something. No signal. The call wouldn't connect. "Brilliant," I muttered to myself. "Absolutely brilliant." I tried again, head bent over the screen, frowning at the single bar that kept appearing and disappearing and walked directly into something immovable. The impact knocked the breath clean out of me. My phone nearly flew from my hand. I grabbed it, steadied myself, and looked up. And forgot, entirely, what I had been doing. He was tall, the kind of tall that recalibrates the space around a person. Dark hair, slightly disheveled in a way that looked entirely unintentional and somehow perfect. A jaw that could have been drafted rather than grown. And eyes, God, those eyes. Grey, deep and layered, the precise color of a sky that hasn't decided yet whether it intends to storm. He was quite possibly the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my life. The words left my mouth before I could exercise even the most basic modicum control. "Wow." My voice came out embarrassingly soft. "You are beautiful." For a fraction of a second, surprise registered on his face. Then something shifted, a warmth moved into those stormy eyes and his mouth curved into a slow, unhurried smile that did absolutely nothing good for my composure. He laughed. Low and rich, the kind of laugh that simply existed, effortless and genuine. It moved through the quiet of the empty store like something warm. "I've been called many things," he said, his voice a deep, unhurried baritone that landed somewhere in my chest and settled there uninvited. "Beautiful is new. Though I'd say it's considerably more suited to the person standing in front of me." Heat climbed my neck immediately. I lifted my chin against it. "That was very smooth," I said. "Do you practice that or does it just come naturally?" One dark brow arched upward, amused. "Completely natural. I'm deeply offended you'd suggest otherwise." "You don't look offended." "I'm a very composed person." His eyes hadn't left mine. "It's one of my better qualities." "And how many people have confirmed that for you?" "Several." The corner of his mouth twitched. "Though I'll admit none of them were quite as direct as you." "I've been told it's a flaw." "Whoever told you that," he said, with quiet certainty, "was wrong." The music continued its unhurried drift through the store and I became suddenly, acutely aware of three things simultaneously — that I was standing in a nearly empty boutique, in a dress that showed considerably more of me than I was accustomed to showing, having what could only be described as a moment with a stranger who looked like he'd been assembled specifically to destabilize women. I should say something sensible. I should ask where Anika was. I should do literally anything other than stand here and stare at him like he was an exhibit. He moved first. He reached out and took my hand in and unhurried and certain manner, as though the action required no deliberation whatsoever and raised it slowly to his lips. His eyes stayed on mine the entire time. His mouth brushed my knuckles and I felt it everywhere. He smelled expensive. Warm and clean with something darker underneath, something that had no business being as distracting as it was. And up close, with his hand holding mine, I noticed the detail of him. The sharp cut of his features, the quiet authority that seemed to exist in him at rest, the way he occupied space as though he had never once questioned his right to it. "And what might your name be?" he murmured against my hand. "My gorgeous lady." I almost said something ridiculous. I could feel it forming. "Indira Miles," I said instead. The change was immediate. Subtle, it was very subtle. I could tell he was clearly a man who kept his reactions on a very short leash but unmistakable. Something shifted behind those grey eyes. The warmth didn't vanish entirely but it pulled back, like a tide receding, replaced by something I couldn't immediately name. Calculation, perhaps. Recognition. His hand still held mine. "Indira Miles," he repeated, quietly, as though he was placing the name somewhere specific in his mind. I frowned slightly. "Do we know each other?" He looked at me for a moment that stretched just a beat too long. And it left me unsettled, not in a good way. "Not yet," he said finally. --- KYLE Kayla was going to be insufferable about this. I already knew it. She had dragged me across London on a Saturday morning under the pretense of shopping for me, for a new wardrobe befitting my new position, she'd said, very seriously, as though she were my stylist and not my younger sister whose primary motivation was putting a dent in my credit card. And yet somehow, within forty minutes of arriving, she had compiled a small mountain of things for herself and dispatched me across the store to locate some specific perfume brand she claimed was only available in this particular boutique. I was errand-running. I, Kyle Worthington, incoming CEO of one of Britain's largest corporations, was errand-running for a brat named Kayla. I was on my phone as I walked, composing a message to Althea, I had inherited her along with the role, and there were instructions I needed her to have before Monday when I registered movement in my peripheral vision approximately half a second before impact. The collision was solid enough that I heard the sharp intake of breath from the other party. I caught my phone, looked up and — Stopped. Wasted Times drifted from somewhere overhead, and I stood there in the middle of an empty boutique thinking that whoever had curated this store's playlist had absolutely no idea the kind of damage they were doing. She had auburn hair, deep and rich, the kind of color that didn’t come from a bottle, falling in loose waves around her face and shoulders. Her skin was clear and luminous. And her eyes, when they met mine, were an extraordinary green, deep as forest shade, shot through with amber the way some stones hold light inside them. The dress she was wearing was midnight black and it fit her the way clothing occasionally fits a person, not like it was placed on her but like it had always belonged there. I forgot, momentarily, what I had been typing. Then she opened her mouth and called me beautiful with the unguarded sincerity of someone who hadn't meant to say it out loud, and I felt something shift in my chest that I had absolutely no framework for. I laughed genuinely, which was not something I did with particular frequency and watched the color rise in her cheeks even as her chin lifted against it. She was embarrassed but she wasn't retreating. She held her ground with this quiet, bright defiance that I found immediately and unreasonably compelling. She's funny, I thought. And completely unaware of how she looks right now. Or perhaps aware, and simply unbothered. Either way, it was refreshing in a way I hadn't anticipated on a Saturday morning. When she asked if my smoothness was practiced, I felt the laugh rise in me again. I couldn't remember the last time a conversation had moved like this, so quick and natural, with no performance on either side. No agenda. Just two people in an empty store talking as though they'd been doing it for years. When I took her hand, I wasn't entirely sure what I intended. It simply seemed like the natural continuation of the moment, the only logical next step in a conversation that had been moving steadily toward something neither of us had named yet. Her hand was warm and soft and she smelled faintly of violets and something clean and bright, like sunshine processed through open windows on a good day. I raised it to my lips and kept my eyes on hers and watched her try very admirably to remain composed. "And what might your name be?" I asked. "My gorgeous lady." "Indira Miles." I went very still. The name landed with the quiet precision of something that had been aimed. I know that sounds dramatic and I am not, by nature, a dramatic man but there is no other way to describe the specific quality of that moment. The way the world seemed to hold its breath for exactly one beat. Indira Miles. Administrative Assistant to the CEO. Previously: Team Lead, Sales. The woman I had read about less than an hour ago in the back of a car. The one unknown name on my entire staff roster. The person who would be managing my professional life starting Monday morning and whom my grandmother had chosen for reasons she hadn't bothered to explain. She was standing in front of me in a black dress, smelling of violets, with her hand still in mine. I kept my expression even. It required slightly more effort than usual. "Indira Miles," I said, mostly to hear it again. To confirm it was real. She frowned, a small, precise crease between her brows. "Do we know each other?" I looked at her for a moment. At those green and amber eyes, direct and curious and entirely unguarded. At the woman who had called me beautiful without a trace of strategy, who had given as good as she got without a moment's hesitation, who had stood in this empty store completely alone and met a stranger's gaze without flinching. My new assistant. Starting Monday. Gran, I thought, with a feeling of exasperation, you absolute menace.

"Not yet," I said. And I meant it in more ways than one.