Afraid of Love

CHAPTER 3

By the end of her first week, Khloe had developed a theory about Frank Simon.

He was testing her.

There was no other explanation for it. Every day brought something new — a last-minute schedule change, an urgent document that needed restructuring, a call from an overseas client in a time zone that required her to stay late. Each time, she handled it without complaint. Each time, he acknowledged it with a brief nod or a quiet well done that she told herself she did not care about.

But the theory grew more complicated by Friday afternoon, when she returned from the printer to find a new chair at her desk.

Not the standard office chair she had been using all week. This one was ergonomic, cushioned, and clearly expensive. There was no note. No explanation.

She knocked on his office door.

"Come in."

He was at his desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled to the elbows, working through a pile of documents with the focused energy of a man who had never once wasted a minute of his life.

"There is a new chair at my desk," she said.

"Yes."

"I did not request one."

"No." He turned a page. "But you have been sitting for ten-hour days, and the standard chair in this office is not designed for that. I noticed you adjusting it repeatedly on Tuesday."

Khloe stood very still.

He had noticed that. On Tuesday. While running a company.

"That was unnecessary," she said carefully. "I was perfectly comfortable."

He looked up then. "You were compensating. There is a difference." He held her gaze for a moment, then returned to his papers. "You can return it if you prefer."

She did not return it.

She told herself it was simply because it would have been wasteful. Not because she sat in it on Friday afternoon and felt, for the first time in years, like someone had paid attention to a small detail of her life without being asked.

That feeling frightened her more than she wanted to admit.

Over the weekend, she called her friend Serena.

"He bought you a chair?" Serena shrieked.

"It is a work chair. For work purposes."

"Khloe. He is into you."

"He is my employer."

"Those two things are not mutually exclusive —"

"Serena." Khloe. Her voice was calm and flat and final. "Do not do this."

A pause on the line. Then Serena, softer: "Not every person is going to hurt you, you know."

"I know that," Khloe said.

She did know it. Intellectually, logically, she knew that. The problem was that it was really hard to give heart to anyone with all the bad experiences she had seen in the lives of people around her.

"I just need the job, Serena, so I don't care if he his in to me or not,ot" she said quietly. "That's all."

"Okay," Serena said. But she did not sound convinced.

After she hung up, Khloe said to herself,

She was sensible. She was smart. She was not the kind of woman who would fall for her boss.

She was going to be just fine.

Monday morning, Frank was already at the office when she arrived.

He looked up when she walked through the door.

And for just a moment — just one unguarded, honest moment — he smiled.

It was a small smile. Barely there. Gone in an instant.

But Khloe saw it.

And felt unusual; she started doubting whether she was really strong enough not to fall for him.

The second month settled into a rhythm that Khloe both appreciated and quietly feared.

She was good at her job — excellently good, and she knew it. She anticipated Frank's needs before he voiced them. She restructured his scheduling system in her third week, cutting unnecessary meetings by thirty percent and grouping similar tasks to protect his deep-focus hours. He had looked at the new system for a long moment when she presented it, then looked at her, and said simply: Keep going.

Those two words had lit something small and warm in her chest that she immediately smothered.

But the rhythm had a complication.

Frank Simon was not the man she had expected.

She had expected cold. Distant. The kind of wealthy, powerful man who treated staff like furniture and measured everyone by their usefulness. She had met men like that before and found them easy to dismiss.

Frank was not like that; this made it hard for her to dismiss him from her thoughts.

He remembered the names of every person on his staff. When the building's maintenance worker, old Mr. Smithy, had a family emergency, it was Frank who quietly arranged two weeks of paid leave without being asked. When a junior analyst made a costly error in a client report, he called her into his office privately, corrected the error himself, and sent her back to her desk without humiliation.

Khloe watched all of this, and it troubled her deeply.

"You're staring again," Priscilla said, appearing beside her with a lunch bag.

"I am reviewing the afternoon schedule," Khloe said without looking away from her screen.

"You were looking at his office door."

"The schedule is on my screen."

Priscilla sat on the edge of the desk uninvited and unwrapped a sandwich. "You know, three assistants before you lasted less than two months each. Mr. Simon is — intense. Demanding. Most people find it too much."

"I am not most people."

"No," Priscilla agreed. "You're clearly not. Which is interesting, because he seems more — " she searched for the word " — human lately. Around you."

Khloe finally looked at her. "What does that mean?"

Priscilla shrugged innocently. "Just an observation."

That evening, staying late to prepare briefing documents for Monday's board meeting, Khloe was alone on the floor when Frank's office door opened. He stopped when he saw her.

"You're still here."

"The briefing documents needed preparation."

"I have a team for that."

"I am aware. I chose to do it myself so it would be done correctly." She glanced up. "No offense to the team."

Something tugged at the corner of his mouth. He crossed to her desk and looked at the documents spread across it, reading quickly with the sharp attention he gave everything.

"These are good," he said quietly.

"I know," she said.

He laughed.

It was a sudden, genuine, completely unguarded laugh — brief, startled out of him, like even he was surprised by it.

Khloe looked up at the sound of it, and for one unprotected moment, she smiled back.

Then she caught herself. She looked down. She straightened the papers unnecessarily.

"You should go home, Miss William," he said, his voice returned to its usual measured tone.

"I'll finish this first."

A pause. "I'll have someone bring up dinner. You can't work on an empty stomach."

"That is not necessary —"

"It is not a request," he said. But gently. In the way that somehow made it feel less like an order and more like someone caring whether she ate.

She said nothing.

He went back into his office.

Twenty minutes later, food arrived at her desk. Jollof rice and grilled chicken from the restaurant on the ground floor. Her favourite. She had mentioned it exactly once, in passing, to Priscilla three weeks ago.

She stared at the food for a long moment.

He could not possibly have remembered that.

But he had.

Her hands stilled over the keyboard. She looked at his closed office door. Behind it, she could hear the faint sound of him still working, still pushing through the evening like rest was something that happened to other people.

Something moved in her chest — warm and quiet and terrifying.

She pulled the food closer and told herself it was just dinner.

Just dinner.

She did not know that Frank had asked Priscilla three days ago what Khloe's favourite food was.

She did not know that he had remembered it immediately and completely.

She did not know that he was sitting behind that closed door, unable to focus on a single document, thinking about the

way she had smiled.

Two seconds. Barely a moment.

It was the best thing he had seen all year.