Hadley’s POV
The last hour of the day is the one I can actually work in.
Phones stop, the floor empties out in stages, and whatever chaos the afternoon produced settles into something I can file.
Then Orson started singing.
He does this.
Somewhere around five he stops pretending to be a professional and gives the whole floor whatever’s stuck in his head, and today it was “Oh!
Pretty Woman,” performed at a volume that should have been embarrassing and wasn’t, because the infuriating man can actually sing.
“Orson.” I leaned back to see him over the partition.
“Genuinely.
You should be auditioning for something.”
“Every couple of years I think about it.” He came around and propped himself against the corner of my desk.
“Then I remember I’d have to work somewhere that isn’t here.” The grin dimmed a little.
“Brenna caught me up at the copier.
About earlier.
You okay?”
“I’m fine.
Really.” I meant about sixty percent of it.
“Thank you for asking.”
“Good.” He straightened and started patting his pockets for keys.
“I’m ducking out early.
Nova’s back and she sent me a text with I’ve planned something in it, and her something is never a small something, so I intend to break several traffic laws getting home.”
“Look at you.
Devoted.”
“Fourteen years and counting.” He pointed at me.
“Full report tomorrow, over lunch.
And listen — come do something with us this weekend.
I told Nova about you and she’s decided she has to meet you.”
“I’d love that.” I hesitated half a beat.
“Could I bring someone?”
“Bring four someones.” He was already walking backward toward the doors.
“Night, pretty woman.”
I was still smiling at that when the voice came from directly behind my chair — low, unhurried, close enough that I felt the words on my ear before I heard them.
“Miss Vane.
You’re becoming a problem for me.”
I did not turn around.
I want that on record.
“My business partner whistles like a lovesick sixteen-year-old every time you cross the floor.
My assistant has given you a nickname.
I’ve read the same paragraph of a contract four times today and could not tell you what’s in it.” A pause, and the smile came into his voice.
“And I appear to have developed a serious dependency on chocolate cake.
Where do you imagine this ends?”
Caramel poured over ice.
“Mr.
Sinclair.” I kept my eyes on my screen and my tone perfectly even.
“You should really be more careful about what you get addicted to.”
He laughed, quiet, right beside my ear.
“Come on, pretty woman.
Let’s take all that somewhere it gets properly appreciated — dinner, after the day we’ve had.” He was moving off now, toward the elevator where Dorian and Evangeline were already waiting.
He glanced back.
“And don’t think being fed means our earlier conversation is over.”
The wink was entirely unnecessary.
Dinner was better than I’d braced for.
The place had that particular hum of a room full of people enjoying themselves without shouting about it, the food was genuinely excellent, and I laughed more in two hours than I had in the preceding two weeks.
Dorian tells a story the way other people build a case — evidence, callbacks, a closing argument.
Evangeline heckles.
Rowan mostly watched all three of us with an expression I couldn’t quite name.
When the dessert menus came, he ordered the chocolate cake without opening his, then tipped toward me until his shoulder touched mine.
“Help me with it?”
I nodded before I’d decided to.
That’s the trouble with him — charm, certainty, and something underneath both that doesn’t ask so much as assume, and finding out I don’t especially want to say no has been the single most alarming discovery of my month.
Dorian pounced immediately.
“Evangeline.
You need to see what this man has become about chocolate cake.
I’ve told him he’ll be re-tailoring every suit he owns by August.”
“Which is precisely why I share it with my extremely capable assistant.”
“Hadley.” Evangeline set her wine down with great ceremony.
“You need rules.
With these three, and with Orson.
Everything I taught you about holding the line — apply it now, while you still can.”
“Far too late for that,” Rowan said.
“Our newest hire has had me completely under her thumb since week one.”
My face went hot, and every single one of them noticed.
Afterward Evangeline offered to run me home, and Rowan had declined on her behalf before she’d finished the sentence — no sense in her doubling back across town, he said, which would have been more convincing if my apartment weren’t in the opposite direction from his.
He pulled up outside my building and cut the engine.
Turned in his seat to face me properly, which is a thing almost nobody does.
“That was an intense day.”
And then, because I’d been rehearsing it since the fourth floor, it all came out at once.
“Rowan, I owe you an apology.
What I did today was unprofessional — all of it.
I let her get to me and I crossed lines I’ve never crossed anywhere I’ve worked.
I actually had my resignation written and sitting in a drawer by four o’clock, and then everything went up in flames with Ashcroft and I never got the chance to hand it in.” I made myself breathe.
“This isn’t who I am.
But something about you sets off reactions I can’t account for, and when you push, I go straight over the edge.”
Silence.
I finally looked at him.
He was smiling — not politely.
Delightedly.
“That’s the first time you’ve said my name without a title in front of it.” He looked ridiculously pleased about it.
“I’d like to keep it.”
I nodded, thrown completely off my script.
“Hadley.” He shifted so he was facing me square on.
“I know that isn’t who you are.
Before I left Foster I had Evangeline pull your entire file, and then I called your old supervisor myself and kept him on the phone for twenty minutes.
I know exactly what kind of professional I hired.” His mouth twitched.
“I also know that anyone with a functioning pulse would have reacted to what I spent today doing to you, because I was doing it on purpose and enjoying myself enormously.”
He pushed both hands back through his hair — that gesture, the one that’s rapidly becoming a problem of my own.
“Though I’ll tell you what it cost me.
During that video conference I couldn’t retain one word of what was being said, and what I wanted, with a room full of people on the screen, was to bend you over my desk and put my hand across that gorgeous backside of yours.
I don’t lose focus in meetings.
Ever.”
“Rowan—”
“Do you have the faintest idea what you left me with?
Watching you get yourself there and not being allowed anywhere near it.”
“I’m sorry about that.” I wasn’t, particularly.
“I was furious with you after lunch.”
“Don’t apologize.” That smile arrived, slow and entirely wicked.
“Just bear in mind that next time, I’d like an invitation.”
He sobered.
“I’m not firing you.
You’re extremely good at this job, and whatever happens between us privately, I’m confident it doesn’t touch the professional side.
Am I right?” He waited until I nodded.
“Then can we simply let it go where it’s going?
And possibly stop rendering me mute in front of clients?”
I nodded again.
And somewhere under the mortification there was a small, disgraceful thrill at having rattled this immaculately controlled man badly enough that he’d just admitted it out loud.
“Go and sleep.
You must be flattened.” He reached over and lifted my hand off my lap.
“We’ll talk properly tomorrow.”
He turned it and pressed his mouth to my knuckles, unhurried about it.
I got out, walked toward my entrance, and was halfway there when the window came down behind me.
“Hadley.” Laughter all the way through it.
“For the record — I fully intend to keep provoking you.”