Rowan’s POV
I tossed my phone onto the hotel bed and stood at the window, watching the New York skyline bleed from indigo to grey in the early morning light.
The city sprawled beneath me—forty floors of steel and ambition separating my bare feet from the pavement—but the view registered as nothing more than expensive wallpaper.
My mind was three hundred miles away, stuck on a phone call that shouldn’t have lasted long enough to remember.
Who the hell was this woman?
And why couldn’t I stop hearing her voice?
I dragged a hand through my hair, irritated at the distraction.
I had a billion-dollar corporation to run.
Three back-to-back meetings scheduled before lunch.
A hostile acquisition that required the kind of surgical focus I’d built my entire reputation on.
And here I was, standing barefoot in a hotel suite at six in the morning, fixated on an assistant I’d never laid eyes on—a woman whose name I hadn’t even known until yesterday.
“Get it together, Sinclair,” I muttered to the glass.
The memory refused to cooperate.
Her voice—calm, melodious, infuriatingly unshaken—replaying on a loop I couldn’t interrupt.
Most people crumbled when I used that tone.
Senior executives.
Opposing counsel.
Men twice my age with three times my experience.
She hadn’t flinched.
She’d met my hostility with protocol, my sarcasm with composure, and my deliberate provocation with a professionalism so polished it bordered on insolent.
And I’d hung up on her.
Like a petulant teenager who’d lost an argument and couldn’t admit it.
I grabbed my phone and dialed Evangeline before I could talk myself out of it.
“Good morning, Mr.
Sinclair.” Her familiar warmth settled something in my chest.
“Morning, Evangeline.
How’s the new girl working out?” I aimed for casual and missed by a wide margin.
“Ms.
Vane is doing wonderfully.” I could hear the smile in her voice—the particular one she reserved for moments when she knew something I didn’t.
“Sharp as a tack.
Already mastered the filing system.”
“Ms.
Vane,” I repeated, turning the syllables over.
Finally a name to attach to that voice.
“Where did you find her?”
“She came highly recommended by Chase Dresden and through connections to Auden Winslow.”
That stopped me.
Auden was my closest friend and one of the most exacting people I’d ever met—a man who didn’t recommend his dry cleaner without a background check.
And Chase Dresden was one of our most valuable investors, a man whose judgment I trusted implicitly.
If both of them vouched for her, she wasn’t just competent.
She was exceptional.
“No previous experience as an executive assistant?”
“None whatsoever.” Evangeline’s tone carried the quiet satisfaction of someone who’d placed a winning bet.
“But sometimes raw talent is worth more than a decade of polished mediocrity.
You should have seen how she handled your little test yesterday.”
“I wasn’t testing her.”
“Of course not.” The diplomatic skepticism in her voice could have etched glass.
“You always snarl at unfamiliar women who answer your private line.”
“I don’t snarl.”
“I’ve worked for you since before you could drive, Rowan.
You most certainly snarl.
But Ms.
Vane didn’t so much as blink.”
That fact sat in my chest like a stone I couldn’t swallow—half irritation, half something more unsettling.
“Send me her resume.”
“Checking up on my hiring decision?” A gentle tease with steel underneath.
“Just curious.”
“That’s new for you.”
I scowled at the skyline.
“Just send it, Evangeline.”
“Yes, sir.
Anything else?”
“That’s all.” I ended the call before she could extract any more admissions.
Minutes later, my inbox chimed.
I opened Hadley Vane’s resume with an urgency I chose not to examine.
Business degree with honors.
Three years at Dresden Enterprises.
Glowing references.
Clean, organized formatting that suggested a mind that valued precision.
But no photo.
Every professional resume I’d received in a decade included a headshot.
Hers didn’t.
“What do you look like, Hadley Vane?” I murmured, scrolling through the document a second time as if the pixels might rearrange themselves into an answer.
My phone buzzed—Dorian Kingsley, VP, college roommate, and the only person alive who could annoy me without professional consequences.
“Ready for Harmon?” No preamble.
Dorian didn’t believe in preambles.
“Born ready.” I closed the resume, filing the unanswered questions in a compartment I’d retrieve later.
“Lobby in twenty.”
The Harmon meeting consumed the better part of the day—five hours of negotiation with a brilliant, long-winded patriarch who treated every contract clause like a philosophical debate.
By the time we’d hammered out terms for acquiring his encryption startup, the sun had crossed the sky and my patience had been ground to powder.
“That was brutal,” Dorian said as we walked back through the hotel lobby, loosening his tie.
“But worth it.
Harmon’s software gives us the edge over Ashcroft Industries.”
“Forrest Ashcroft can go to hell,” I said flatly, thinking of my chief rival with the particular distaste reserved for men who built empires by poaching rather than creating.
“His company’s been circling our clients for years.”
“Speaking of the Ashcroft family—” Dorian shot me a sideways glance.
“Heard from Ivetta lately?”
I scowled.
Aaron’s daughter.
A woman who’d parlayed one regrettable dinner date into a campaign of manufactured intimacy that ranged from tiresome to unhinged.
“Thankfully, no.
Though she’ll surface at the next charity function, telling everyone we’re practically engaged.”
“Persistent, I’ll give her that.” Dorian laughed, but the amusement didn’t quite reach his eyes.
He knew as well as I did that Ivetta was more than a nuisance—she was a strategic liability wrapped in designer packaging.
Back in my suite, I opened my laptop to clear the inbox.
Most items were routine—delegatable, forgettable, the administrative white noise of running a company this size.
One email snagged my attention.
From: [email protected]
My finger hovered over it for a beat longer than professionalism warranted before I clicked.
Mr.
Sinclair,
Attached please find the detailed analysis of the Chen proposal you referenced during yesterday’s call.
I’ve taken the liberty of including comparative data from our previous negotiations with companies in similar verticals, as well as a breakdown of potential profit margins based on three different contract scenarios.
The meeting has been rescheduled as noted, and all relevant materials have been forwarded to your tablet for access during your flight tomorrow.
Please let me know if you require any additional information.
Respectfully,
Hadley Vane
Executive Assistant to Rowan Sinclair
Sinclair Group
I read it twice.
Then I opened the attachment.
I hadn’t requested this analysis.
I’d mentioned the Chen proposal to gauge her reaction—a throwaway test, barely worth the breath it cost.
She’d not only taken the initiative to prepare a full report but had included comparative data I hadn’t considered, organized with a clarity that made the information almost effortless to absorb.
Not just competent—insightful.
And she’d accomplished it on her first day, between learning a filing system, fielding my hostility, and being left alone in an office she’d occupied for approximately six hours.
I leaned back in my chair, fingers drumming the armrest.
Who was Hadley Vane?
And why did the question feel less like professional due diligence and more like something I couldn’t stop turning over in my hands?
My phone buzzed.
Auden: How’s New York?
Still planning to be back Friday?
I stared at the message, then typed: Change of plans.
Coming back tomorrow.
Business here is wrapped up.
His reply was immediate: Since when do you cut business trips short?
Got a hot date?
Just eager to get back to the office, I sent, and even as I typed it, I knew it was only half the truth.
Sure.
Whatever you say, came Auden’s skeptical response.
I ignored the follow-up.
I pulled up my calendar.
Early morning flight.
In the office by afternoon.
Just in time to catch the mysterious Ms.
Vane before she left for the day.
I booked the flight, then sent Evangeline a brief email about my changed schedule.
I didn’t mention I’d be coming in.
Let it be a surprise.
Standing at the window again, the city lights scattered across the dark like a circuit board coming to life.
This was absurd.
I was a man who made decisions worth more than most people would earn in a lifetime without losing a second of sleep.
Rational.
Controlled.
Disciplined to the point of austerity.
And I was rearranging my entire week to meet a woman whose voice had gotten under my skin like a splinter I couldn’t reach.
“This is professional curiosity,” I told the window firmly.
“I need to know who’s handling my affairs.”
But even I didn’t believe it.
There was something about Hadley Vane—something in the quiet certainty of her voice, the precision of her work, the way she’d stood up to me without raising hers—that had burrowed past every defense I’d built and settled somewhere I wasn’t prepared to examine.
I packed my suitcase with the controlled efficiency of a man who refused to acknowledge what he was feeling.
Tomorrow, I’d meet the woman behind the voice.
I’d assess her competence in person, establish the boundaries this position required, and put whatever this fixation was back in the box where it belonged.
And if I tested her limits along the way—if I pushed, just a little, just to see what she was made of—well.
If she was going to be my right hand, she needed to learn to handle the beast everyone claimed I was.
The thought made me smile.
The smile concerned me more than the thought.