4. Reece
Reece
T he office is quiet. Sunday quiet.
I like it this way, no calls, no overlapping meetings, no board members knocking on the glass pretending they didn’t schedule something just to be seen.
The sun filters through the floor-to-ceiling windows in long, pale bands, warming the edge of my desk like it’s trying to coax me into pretending this space is something softer than what it is.
But I don’t pretend. Not here. I stare at the open file in front of me, jaw flexing.
Skye Rhodes.
Her résumé is clean. Organized. Deceptively simple, like it’s daring the reader to underestimate her. But I don’t. I read between the lines. I always do.
She wasn’t lying. Her role at LexaTech was significant, senior marketing analyst managing cross-platform brand strategy, responsible for three product launches and a sixty percent uptick in lead conversions year-over-year.
She’s incredibly competent. Overqualified, even. Too good to waste sixteen weeks as my assistant. And yet here I am. Reading her résumé for the third time like the bullet points might rearrange themselves into a reason not to call.
I lean back in my chair and slide the document aside, fingers steepling as I stare at the phone like it’s a loaded weapon.
I lied to Skye. I haven’t conducted interviews that left me disappointed.
I’ve actually been putting it off. Leann left me a list of candidates already vetted.
All perfectly fine. Qualified. Predictable.
The kind of people who won’t make me forget where the line is.
Who won’t look at me the way Skye did across that bar like I was something she wasn’t sure she wanted to approach but couldn’t stop watching anyway.
I press my thumb into the center of my palm, grounding myself. This isn’t about attraction. It’s about trust.
Leann ran my life with precision. She filtered noise, anticipated chaos before it hit, made sure the right people got in and the wrong ones didn’t. I don’t have the patience to babysit someone new. I need sharp instincts. Thick skin. A mind that can move as fast as mine. Skye has all of that.
And maybe that’s what unsettles me.
That’s not the fucking reason and you know it.
She’s not the girl I remember. That version was full of wide-eyed adoration for a boy who didn’t know what to do with her heart. This one… this woman is different.
I stand and walk to the window, fingers curling loosely into the pockets of my slacks. The city hums beneath me, cars threading through streets, pedestrians bundled against spring wind, all of them moving in a rhythm I used to crave.
Lately, it just feels loud. Distracting.
I stare out at the skyline and wonder when that shift happened. When being untouchable started to feel less like strength and more like isolation. When control stopped being armor and started becoming a cage.
When Skye said she’d been laid off, there was no self-pity in her voice.
Just resignation with her cute sarcasm. Acceptance that the rug had been pulled, and now she had to figure out what to stand on next.
I know that feeling. The free fall of starting over.
It’s not the kind of thing you come back from the same.
I tap my thumb against my leg twice, then walk back to the desk. My phone sits exactly where I left it, dark screen, waiting. I pick it up and open the single text message from Skye, reading it over again in my head but in her voice.
My thumb hovers over the call button. This is business, I remind myself… Just business. Sixteen weeks. That’s all. But then Archer’s face flashes across my brain.
Would he care?
I shake my head, telling myself of course he wouldn’t. Their history is almost a decade old and he’s clearly happy with his long-term girlfriend. Whatever happened between them has nothing to do with me or my company.
Then why don’t you plan on telling him?
I hit dial, pushing the last thought from my mind. It rings once. Twice. And then her voice hits my ear, bright and a little winded, like she wasn’t expecting the call but answered anyway.
“Hello?”
I exhale once, slow and quiet. “Skye, hello. It’s Reece Blackwood.”
There’s a brief pause on the other end of the line, just long enough to make me wonder if she’s going to hang up. Then—“Well, hey there, stranger.”
Her voice is lighter than it was at the bar, but there’s a flicker of surprise underneath it, maybe even amusement.
“I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time,” I say.
“I mean, I just finished reorganizing my spice rack, but other than that, I’m all yours.”
I smile. “That sounds… therapeutic.”
“It was. I even found a few spices I forgot I owned, so it should be pretty exciting time next time I cook.”
I chuckle quietly, catching myself. “I wanted to follow up on our conversation.”
“You mean the part where you offered me a job over cocktails and vanished like Batman?”
“That’s the one.”
She hums, a teasing sound that hits my nerves like a fingertip dragged across skin. “I was beginning to think I dreamed sending you my résumé last night.”
“It was real.”
“Damn. Guess I can’t blame the wine.”
“No,” I say, voice tightening slightly. “Are you having second thoughts?”
There’s another pause, and this one isn’t light. It stretches between us, unspoken meaning slipping in through the cracks of our respective silences. I clear my throat and lean against the edge of my desk.
“No.”
“Good, because I reviewed your résumé,” I say, bringing us back to neutral ground. “You’re more than qualified.”
“I was worried I came off desperate. I had three typos in my cover letter and almost submitted a version that started with ‘To whom it may concern and/or tempt.’”
I let that one hit and choose not to react. What I can’t tell is if this is just grown-up Skye, bold and brash with a touch of flirtation.
“I’m glad you followed up,” I say instead.
“Me too,” she replies.
“It’s a temporary position,” I remind her, more for myself than for her. “Sixteen weeks, twenty at most. You’d be working closely with me—calendar, travel, correspondence. Everything my current assistant manages. She’s left an extensive guide, but there will be some onboarding.”
“Sounds doable.”
“You’ll have access to my schedule and full discretion over who gets to see me. It’s a high-trust role.”
“I can handle it.”
“I know.”
That silence comes back again, tighter this time. She’s waiting for me to say more but I don’t.
“Are you always this charming during interviews?” she finally asks, clearly noticing my curt responses and clipped tone.
“Only when I’m coming from a place of desperation.”
She lets out a short, surprised laugh. “Wow. That felt almost honest.”
I glance out the window. “I don’t do well with pretense.”
“Then you might’ve picked the wrong woman.”
“I didn’t.”
Another beat of silence, this one full of something heavier than the rest.
“I’ll send you a formal offer,” I say, trying not to let her sultry voice worm it’s way into my brain. “Start date is this coming Monday. Office hours are pretty standard, but I prefer early starts.”
“Shoot, I’m more of a night owl, but I’ll adapt,” she teases.
“Well, I’m sure there will be some late nights as well.” I don’t intend for it to sound like it does but it’s too late. I can practically feel the tension seeping through the phone.
“I can do that too,” she says a little softer.
I clear my throat. “Great, sounds like we will work well together, then.”
“Alright, Mr. Blackwood,” she says, tone bright again, any shred of tension now dissipated. “Looks like you’ve got me at your beck and call… at least temporarily.”
The sound of those words, her voice calling me that again, shouldn’t land the way it does—heavy and intentional, like she knows the effect it has.
“I’ll have the contract sent by end of day,” I manage.
“Looking forward to reading it.”
I almost hang up.
Almost.
But something makes me pause.
“Skye.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m trusting you with a lot.” I don’t say it as a warning or like I’m worried she can’t handle it, but I also need her to know the reality of the situation. As my right hand, she’ll have access to me and my company in a way nobody else does.
Her voice softens again, but there’s a smile in it too. “Don’t worry. I’ll behave.”
That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.
“See you soon,” I say.
“Can’t wait.”
The line goes dead, and I set the phone down with more care than necessary. I stand there for a long moment, staring at the city as if it might offer some kind of absolution, but it doesn’t.
By the time I get home, the sun has dipped behind the skyline, casting my penthouse in long shadows and a golden haze. I set my keys down on the entryway table and loosen my tie with a slow, practiced motion. The silence here is familiar, soaked into the walls, expensive and expansive.
I used to think it felt like freedom. Zero obligations to anyone. Nobody to pester me about getting home late or working on the weekends. Nobody to remind me that I’ve missed a significant date. Now, more often than not, it feels like an echo chamber.
I cross the space to the bar and pour myself a drink, an aged bourbon that burns just right going down my throat. I settle into the leather armchair by the window, glass in hand, and stare out at the city below. From this height, the world looks manageable. Predictable even.
Which is a lie, of course.
I’ve built my entire life on the illusion of control. Systems, routines, measured choices. I know how to take a risk without letting it show. I know how to negotiate without raising my voice. I know how to want something without letting it interfere.
At least, I used to.
Skye Rhodes shouldn’t be interfering.
But I can still hear her voice. That sharp, teasing lilt as she said, “ Looks like you ’ ve got me at your beck and call… at least temporarily.” She made it sound like a game. Like she knew I’d already lost.
She doesn’t belong in my world.
Not because she isn’t capable—she’s more than capable—but because she’s not afraid of me.
Most people walk into a room with me and shrink, recalibrate, try to figure out who they need to be to earn my time.
Skye does the opposite. She challenges by default.
She meets power with irreverence and fires back twice as fast.
And it unsettles me.
I take a slow sip of the bourbon and let it settle in my chest, trying to drown the image of her, barefoot in her apartment in that oversized hoodie and those damn leggings she wore the other night, smirking at her laptop as she typed her email to me.
The part of me that is still logical, still rooted in rules and risk mitigation, knows this is a mistake. I hired her to be my assistant, but there’s a part of me, one that’s been quiet and buried, that’s already imagining more.
I close my eyes, picturing what it’ll be like to see her every morning.
To hear her voice outside my office door.
To feel her presence in the space I’ve kept sterile on purpose.
She’ll bring chaos, I already know it. She’ll ask questions I’ve avoided asking myself for years because she knew me before this world.
And I’ll let her.
I shut my eyes and lean back in the chair, the weight of the day catching up with me all at once.
I’m tired. But more than that, I’m lonely.
Not in the obvious sense. Not in the dinner-party-for-one kind of way.
It’s quieter than that. Deeper. The kind of loneliness that builds when you’ve stopped letting people matter.
My wife died when I was thirty-five.
Archer was fourteen. He needed someone who could show up and absorb the pain, make sense of the loss, remind him that the world could still be safe. But I didn’t know how to be that for him.
Instead, I buried myself in code, deadlines, and investment rounds. I became a machine out of necessity, and then I stayed that way because it was easier.
It took years to win my son back. Years to prove I could be more than a memory of absence. And now that we’re finally in a good place, now that we’ve found some kind of rhythm again… I hired his ex-girlfriend. A woman I can’t seem to stop fucking thinking about.
I can hear her laughing in my head. You didn ’ t think that through, did you?
No. I didn’t. But I will. I’ll keep it professional. I’ll keep my distance. I won’t let her smile mean more than it should. I won’t let her presence fill the spaces I’ve kept empty on purpose.
This is temporary. Sixteen weeks. Then it ends.
I take one last sip of the bourbon, finish it in a single, slow swallow, and set the glass down. Then I rise from the chair, roll my sleeves to the elbow, and walk back toward my desk. There are emails to send. Contracts to finalize. Rules to reinforce before she steps into my space.
Because if I don’t set the boundaries now… I won’t have any left to hold on to.