11. Jenna
Jenna
At five twenty-seven, I begin Operation Avoid Dominic.
The plan is simple, elegant, and built on sound logistics, which is to say it’s the best work I’ve done all day.
Bennett left with Layla at five—obviously attempting some kind of work/life balance in the early stages of his marriage.
So that means I’m no longer needed in the building and can slip out early as well. Sorry, Dominic.
Not sorry.
This is what you get for ambushing me . . .
The west elevators run express after five fifteen. So if I leave now, I can be in the lobby before five thirty, in a cab by five thirty-five, home by six, door locked, phone off, bath running—an alibi in fluffy socks.
Dominic Cruz can arrive at six o’clock on the dot with all the confidence in the world, and he’ll find an empty desk and a lesson about scheduling dinners by decree.
It would be simpler if I genuinely hated him.
Hate has a protocol. Hate you can file. What I have instead is a ledger that refuses to balance, and I’ve been auditing it all week.
Debit: He ambushed me in his office, kissed me until I forgot what I went in there to accomplish, and patted my ass like we’re a couple in a sitcom.
Debit: He thinks a locked door counts as a counteroffer.
Debit: He calls and texts incessantly. So much that I had to rename him DO NOT ANSWER.
Debit: There’s a clock on this—this is the biggest cost of all. Ninety days. Ninety days to quietly unwind what we did, clean, sealed, like it never happened. After that, it stops being erasable. I need him to sign those papers.
Credit: I answer when he calls. Because .
. . I don’t even want to think about why I answer.
Maybe it’s the sound of his voice? Maybe I developed some weird dependency on it while we were in that hotel suite?
But every night this week, without fail, he’s called.
And I’ve stared at my phone, willing myself not to answer.
But I always do.
God help me. I hate that this man finds it so easy to get under my skin.
It’s the thing I’ve been fighting against all along.
He’s attractive—I’d be completely blind and lying if I couldn’t admit that. I found him attractive the moment I laid eyes on him during my first day working for Bennett. That much I can admit. I could even survive it. Chemistry is just chemistry; it’s a rounding error with a pulse.
The problem is that Dominic Cruz pays attention to me like there’s a version of me worth the overhead, and when he eventually hands me the bill—when his interest in me fizzles out—that’s the part I won’t survive.
I know how this works. I’ve known how this works since I was seventeen.
Attention like his is a campaign, and campaigns have objectives, and when the objective is achieved, the attention stops—that’s not cynicism, it’s pattern recognition.
Men like Dominic do not willingly choose “Bennett’s ice-queen assistant” unless there’s a challenge in place.
I refuse to be a man’s “challenge” again.
Which is exactly why I’m leaving.
Tokyo was temporary insanity with excellent lighting, and what we did there had a shelf life, and the longer I let this run, the more witnesses there’ll be when it ends. I can survive almost anything in private. I have before. It’s the audience I can’t afford.
So. Empty desk. Lesson learned. Everyone retains their dignity—especially me.
I shut down my computer, straighten a stack of folders, and pull my purse out of the bottom drawer.
When I look up, Dominic is standing in my doorway.
Massive grin. One shoulder against the frame like he grew there. And in his hand, wrapped in brown paper and string, an armful of peonies the exact pink of a secret.
“Going somewhere, Pemberton?”
“Home,” I say, with as much dignity as a woman caught mid-heist can produce. “It’s five thirty.”
“Looks like I’m right on time then.” He checks his watch, unbothered. “Good thing I know how you think. You’d have been in a cab if I gave you a few minutes longer—don’t think I wouldn’t chase you home to your apartment, though. Ends of the earth, sweetheart. You and me.”
He winks and I do my best to ignore the way my heart kicks up at the simple sight of him. Why does he have to look this good? And since when did he start wearing a tie?
“Those had better not be for me,” I say, eyeing the peonies, because they’re beautiful and I want them and both facts are infuriating.
“The flowers were Roz’s idea.” He pushes off the door frame and sets them in my arms. Up close they smell like June. “The rest of the evening is all me. You can be mad at both of us in the car.”
“I’m not going to dinner with you, Dominic.”
“OK,” he says pleasantly, not moving. “Then we can stand here until security does their rounds and finds us, and by Monday the whole building will know I brought you flowers the size of a toddler. Your call.”
I look at him. He looks at me. The peonies breathe between us like a hostage.
“I hate you,” I say, reaching for my coat.
“I know.” He takes the coat from my hands and holds it open for me like we do this every night. “Tell me again at dinner.”
“I intend to.”
He won’t tell me where we’re going. In the car he talks about everything except the folder on his desk—Roz’s granddaughter’s birthday, the client who tried to fire him twice in one phone call and then sent a fruit basket, whether Chicago has acceptable ramen or whether we’re going to have to do something drastic about it.
I sit with the peonies on my lap like a corsage the size of my torso and give clipped, one-word answers for the first ten blocks.
By the twentieth, I’m arguing with him about ramen.
He doesn’t point it out. He just drives, one wrist draped over the wheel.
When Dominic parks the car, he’s out and opening my door before I even reach for the handle. He slides a hand under my elbow as I stand, the gesture half chivalry and half a power move, the kind that says, I will not let you escape. I leave the peonies in the car and follow him toward a green door.
The restaurant doesn’t have a sign. It’s just that green door, a man named Maurice, and a staircase down into gold light and cigarette-era glamor: candlelit booths ringing a small stage, a band in shirtsleeves tuning up, a singer adjusting a microphone like she’s fixing her lipstick.
The place is packed with people—half of them angled to the small, low stage, the other half angled for privacy in a booth. The host ushers us to a table, right in front of the stage.
We sit. Dominic thanks the host, orders us drinks before the man is out of earshot, and then turns his attention to me, and the full wattage of a Dominic Cruz gaze is a lot to ignore at this range.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” I say, straightening my utensils on the tablecloth.
Before he can respond, a server appears with a whiskey for him and a negroni for me, which is not at all what I would have ordered, but the moment I take a sip, I realize it’s exactly what I want.
How the hell does he do this?
He watches me over the rim of his glass. “Tell me what I’m trying to do.”
“Win.” I drain half my glass, then set it back down. “You’re trying to win.”
He smiles, slow and wicked. “Wasn’t aware it was a game, Pemberton.”
“Everything’s a game with you. That’s why you’re good at it.” I cut my gaze to the band, who are deep in a muted riff, the pianist’s head bobbing to his own beat. “Don’t mistake me for a rookie.”
“I never would.” He leans forward, elbows on the table, and the flickering candlelight picks up something golden in his skin. “But I think you’re missing the part where we’re on the same team.”
I stare at him, feeling the slosh of negroni warmth in my gut.
If we were on the same team, he would’ve signed the paperwork I gave him today instead of saying no.
If we were on the same team, he would be sitting across from me as a holiday fling, not as the man orchestrating an after-hours spectacle.
“I know what happens when you win,” I say.
“You spike the ball and walk off the field. Men like you are all the same—team players until you can grandstand at the end.”
Dominic’s eyes sharpen, but the smile never leaves. “You think I’m in it for the victory lap?”
“Maybe not consciously.” I watch the way he turns his glass, the way his thumb traces the bevel. “But if you made a list of the things you need, ‘winning’ would be in the first five.”
His tongue runs over his teeth in a way that I’m sure is supposed to annoy me. Unfortunately, it’s also irritatingly hot.
“You done psychoanalyzing me?” he asks. I take another sip for courage.
“Not even slightly.”
He laughs—just a small exhale, like he’s genuinely amused instead of deflecting. “If you’re right, and I’m in it to win—what do you think I’m trying to win?”
“Depends,” I say, matching his gaze over the waxy candle. “You could be trying to win the deal. Or the applause. Or—” I hesitate, because the negroni is hitting code red in my veins. “Or you want me to lose something. Control, maybe. Dignity.”
He studies my face for a beat. I can’t tell if he’s proud or wounded.
He nods, once. “Smart.” He lifts his glass and tilts it toward mine—a silent dare, which I ignore.
“Jenna,” he says, and the sound of my name is weaponized, as always.
“What if I told you there is no universe where I spike the ball and walk away? That I’ve spent every day of the last three years wanting no one but you, and the only objective is convincing you I’m not your worst pattern playing out? ”
I hate that my hand tightens around the glass.
“Interesting thesis,” I say. “Unfortunately, we had an agreement.”
His expression doesn’t change, but something in his eyes goes still.
“Ten days,” I remind him, each word crisp enough to cut through the candle smoke. “Tokyo only. Nobody knows. When we landed in Chicago, it ended.”
“It didn’t.”
“It did.”
“It changed.”
My laugh is small and cold. “Contracts don’t change because one party develops selective amnesia and a flair for flowers.”