Chapter Twelve
Simon
Monday morning arrived with the kind of headache that felt like pressurized fog sitting just behind my eyes. I knew it was from lack of sleep, so even though Raina would make coffee when she arrived, I’d stopped at a café on my way in and downed a double shot of espresso.
The pain in my skull hadn’t budged, but now my heart was pounding like I’d touched a live wire—partly from the caffeine, partly from the anticipation of seeing her again.
I sharpened my focus on my computer screen, scrolling through emails that had accumulated over the weekend. The office was still quiet, Raina not yet having arrived, and I already knew this was going to be a long day.
My exhaustion was the result of two sleepless nights spent staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, thoughts churning in restless circles. I couldn’t stop replaying everything that had happened at the gala—the tension with Chuck, Alexander’s invitation, and most of all, the ruse Raina had invented.
This fake relationship.
The implications kept unspooling in my mind, one after another.
To make this convincing, we’d have to touch in public.
Hold hands. Stand close. Act like two people who couldn’t get enough of each other.
Alexander was perceptive; he’d see through anything half-hearted.
If we were going to sell this, we’d need to be intimate. Convincing. Real.
And then there was the kiss.
I’d kissed women before—countless times. It had always been a means to an end, the expected prelude to something more. I’d never given much thought to kissing itself. It was just… a step. A formality on the way to the main event.
But kissing Raina had been different.
The softness of her lips. The small gasp she’d made when our mouths first met. The way she’d melted into me, her fingers pressing against my chest like she wanted to pull me closer. That kiss had stirred something in me I hadn’t felt in years. Maybe ever.
And now I was supposed to fake a relationship with her while maintaining professionalism?
The contradiction was almost laughable. An oxymoron of the highest order.
How was I supposed to hold her hand and gaze at her adoringly in public, then return to the office and pretend she was just my assistant?
How was I supposed to keep my hands to myself when every instinct I had was screaming at me to touch her again?
I rubbed my tired eyes, turning from my computer as the elevator dinged at the end of the hall.
My already racing pulse skipped a beat.
I listened to her soft footsteps approaching, a familiar rhythm I’d come to recognize over the past few weeks.
She paused at her desk as usual, doing something on her computer, and I found myself resenting the layout of the office and the way my position made it impossible to see her from where I sat.
It took her longer than normal to come to my door.
Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed before, but today I was already on edge, every nerve ending attuned to her presence.
The anticipation was unfamiliar, both electric and unsettling.
I wasn’t used to waiting for anyone like this, wasn’t accustomed to the way my chest tightened with each passing second.
When she finally appeared in my doorway, I immediately knew something was wrong.
At first glance, she looked the same as always.
A red silk blouse tucked into high-waisted grey trousers, her blonde hair falling in soft waves over her shoulders.
No baked goods in her hands this Monday morning, but that wasn’t what caught my attention.
It was her expression. She smiled, but it wasn’t the same smile I’d grown accustomed to—the one that lit up her entire face and made the very air in the room feel lighter. This smile was polite. Professional. Her lips curved, but there was no spark in her blue eyes.
“Good morning,” she said, stopping about halfway across the room instead of approaching my desk the way she usually did.
Her voice was wrong too. Warm and courteous, exactly what I would have expected from an assistant I didn’t know.
But I did know Raina. She was bright and cheerful, even first thing in the morning, and she’d never bothered to hide it.
In the beginning, her sunshine personality had grated on me.
I wasn’t a morning person, and her relentless cheerfulness had felt like an assault.
Today, her subdued greeting made my chest feel tight.
It was wrong, and I hated it.
“Good morning, Raina.”
She blinked, surprise flickering across her features. It occurred to me that I rarely returned her morning greeting. I wasn’t trying to be an asshole. It was just the way I’d always been.
I couldn’t explain why I was acting differently now.
“I received an email from Mr. Cole’s assistant this morning,” Raina said, her tone carefully neutral. “He’s unavailable for your phone conference today. He’d like to reschedule for next week.”
I scowled, and she probably assumed it was because of the cancelled meeting. Normally, that kind of thing would set me off. Instead, I was irritated by the change in her. Maybe that wasn’t fair, considering I was grumpy as hell most of the time, but I couldn’t bury the feeling.
I rose from my desk and came around to her side.
As I approached, Raina held her ground, her chin lifting slightly as she met my gaze.
I wondered what she saw in my eyes. Could she tell how badly I wanted to repeat the kiss from Saturday night?
Could she sense the conflict raging inside me, the war between desire and professionalism that had plagued me since the night of the gala?
“Sit down,” I said, pulling the chair in front of my desk closer to her.
She tilted her head, hesitating. “I was going to make coffee…”
I shook my head. “I’ve already had too much caffeine this morning.” I gestured toward the chair.
Raina let out a small huff as she sat, folding her arms over her chest and looking up at me like I was wasting her time. Insolent. Defiant.
Infuriatingly tempting.
She was truly the only woman who had ever dared to push back against me. Everyone else—employees, business associates, the women I’d dated casually over the years—they all deferred. Agreed. Accommodated. Raina challenged me, and God help me, it made me want her even more.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, impatience threading through her voice.
I exhaled slowly. “That’s what I want to know. You seem unhappy this morning.”
Raina let out a scoff. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
A grin tugged at my mouth before I could stop it. This was a new side of her—openly annoyed, making no effort to hide it. It was… endearing. Cute, even.
I doubted she’d appreciate hearing that.
“I suppose that makes me the expert,” I said.
“I’m fine.” She shifted in the chair, her fingers drumming against her forearm.
I fixed her with my best no-nonsense glare—the one that had helped me dominate countless boardrooms—but Raina seemed entirely unaffected. She leaned back and raised one stubborn eyebrow, matching my intensity with her own.
“I should get to work, sir.”
Sir. The word landed somewhere low in my gut, twisting into something it had no business becoming. I couldn’t help imagining how it would sound in a different context—breathless, desperate, falling from her lips in the throes of desire.
I shoved the thought aside and leaned forward, placing my hands on the armrests of her chair to cage her in. I was bent over her now, our faces separated by mere inches.
“I told you to call me Simon.”
“Okay, Simon.” There was a bite in her voice, and a challenge in her eyes.
The impulse to bend her over my desk and spank her flashed through my mind. Completely inappropriate, absolutely an HR disaster, and yet the image refused to leave. Maybe we were past worrying about such things. We were supposed to be faking a relationship, after all.
“Can I go back to work now?” she asked impatiently.
“Not yet.” I inhaled, and her perfume hit me stronger than ever before—vanilla and flowers, sweet and intoxicating. It smelled like an invitation. “I think we should talk more about our relationship.”
Something flickered in Raina’s eyes, too quick for me to identify. “We don’t have a relationship.”
Ahhh. There it is.
I didn’t know exactly what was bothering her, but I was certain now that it was connected to the fake dating arrangement. It was the only thing that had changed between us. Based on the edge in her voice, I was on the right track.
“Don’t be like that,” I said, letting a teasing note lighten my tone. “This whole thing was your idea, after all.”
“And I suppose you’re going to hold that against me forever.”
“No.” I meant it. I might not have been thrilled in the moment, but I knew she’d only been trying to help and it had worked like a charm with Alexander, honestly. “I’m just trying to figure out why you’re angry.”
“I’m not!”
Her hands flew up and pressed against my chest, shoving hard. She wasn’t strong enough to actually move me, but I stepped back, allowing her to escape the chair. Raina shot to her feet, flustered, her face flushed as she tugged at the collar of her blouse.
Not angry at all. Sure.
“If this is going to work,” I said evenly, “we’re going to have to be honest with each other. Otherwise, I might as well call Alexander and tell him to partner with Chuck instead.”
At that, something in her expression finally softened. “You should see your face when you say that. You look like you’d rather chew glass than let Chuck get one over on you.”
I shrugged. She wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t going to force her into this if she was truly unhappy about it. Even if that meant losing Alexander’s business.
The thought stopped me cold.
When did her well-being become more important than a business deal?