13. Quinn
QUINN
THE DOOR LATCH FAIRY STRIKES
I woke up feeling hungover, which was rude because I’d consumed one glass of champagne over three hours.
My mouth was dry. My feet hurt. My calves had strong judgments about dancing in thrifted satin heels, and my brain, traitorous little office appliance that it was, kept replaying Rafe Virelli saying my name in the hallway outside my apartment.
Quinn.
Not Ms. Bradley. Not the intern. Not a person temporarily useful to his case.
Quinn.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.
“Absolutely not,” I told it.
Max, asleep on his bed beside mine, didn’t respond.
He was still recovering from being the only dog at a service-dog gala, which had apparently required all the stamina of a military deployment and the emotional range of a Broadway lead.
His plum tie lay on my dresser. I’d taken it off him the second we got home, mostly to keep him humble.
It hadn’t worked. Even asleep, he looked vaguely smug.
My alarm went off again.
I slapped it quiet and sat up too fast, which my body treated as a personal betrayal.
“Okay,” I whispered, pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead. “Good. Great. We love being alive and employed and not texting our best friend at six-twelve in the morning to ask, hypothetically, how many butterflies is too many butterflies to have for a dragon client.”
Max opened one eye.
I pointed at him. “Don’t look at me like that. You danced with him, too.”
He closed his eye again, offering no defense.
I dragged myself out of bed and into the tiny bathroom, where the mirror revealed a woman who had slept badly after making the poor choice to experience hope, attraction, career advancement, and emotional whiplash in one evening.
My mascara had mostly survived my shower and was now a faint shadow beneath my eyes, which felt accurate for a woman who’d slept poorly and made several emotional mistakes in formalwear.
Very professional.
Very hirable.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and pinned my hair into submission. The dress hung on the back of my closet door, much too glamorous for the morning after. I looked at it for two full seconds before turning away.
Nope.
Last night had happened. The Friday meeting was real.
Dr. Georgiana Sorel had agreed to personally review the provenance packet.
Rafe’s family sword was closer to coming home because I’d spoken carefully, Max had sat beautifully, and Miriam Sorel had been the exact kind of woman who made you believe marriage could involve both private safe words and excellent event design.
Also, Rafe had almost looked like he wanted to kiss me.
Maybe.
Possibly.
I got dressed in gray, wide-leg trousers, a tucked-in blouse the color of marigolds, and a thrifted houndstooth blazer that made me look put-together even though I didn’t feel it, which was the entire point of office attire.
My shoes went on last, blessedly flat and therefore the only footwear I trusted not to betray me before noon.
I packed my tote with my laptop, a legal pad, the charger that only worked if angled perfectly, and the leftovers Avery had bullied me into taking.
Then I opened my empty cabinet and considered treating myself to coffee from the place two blocks over.
Real coffee.
A latte with oat milk and enough cinnamon to convince my nervous system it had been hugged.
I could almost taste it. Warm cup in my hand, actual espresso, maybe one of those little pastries I pretended were breakfast because they had almonds on top. Almonds were basically protein, anyway.
Then I remembered the office had free coffee.
Free coffee that tasted like someone had threatened a bean near hot water, but free was a powerful flavor profile.
“No latte,” I told Max, clipping his leash to his collar. “We are women of restraint.”
Max blinked at me.
“One woman and one man of restraint. Sorry. Very rude of me.”
He yawned.
The apartment looked smaller than usual after the gala, which I hated. I loved this place fiercely, but after chandeliers and marble and a car with enough room for Max to stretch out like a visiting statesman, my apartment seemed vulnerable in the morning light.
That wasn’t Rafe’s fault.
It was also not a reason to think about him.
Which I absolutely wasn’t doing.
I wasn’t thinking about the way he’d asked permission before adjusting Max’s tie. I wasn’t thinking about his hand at my back when we’d danced. I wasn’t thinking about how he’d stepped away outside my door, jaw tight, as if restraint had cost him something.
And I was definitely not thinking about his fucking gorgeous mouth.
My romantic life had been stale for long enough that my body had decided to treat basic male proximity like breaking news.
That was all. I blamed it on stress, exhaustion, the formalwear effect, plus an extended dry spell best classified as a protected historical site.
I had no business developing feelings for a sexy billionaire dragon shifter, especially not when he was a client that could possibly advance my career.
Besides, there was no way that man was interested in a broke intern with student loans, one elderly dog, and a tote bag held together by sheer force of will and a little luck.
What could I offer him?
A MetroCard with insufficient funds and access to the best discount ramen in a six-block radius? A dog who outranked everyone? A working knowledge of advanced setting on a copy machine?
Just thinking about entertaining the idea of feelings was ridiculous.
I grabbed Max’s travel bag from the chair and slung it over my shoulder. “Come on, Maximus. Time to go to Auntie Avery’s and pretend Mommy didn’t almost make a series of utterly stupid choices last night.”
Max rose slowly, shook himself, and followed me to the door.
The hallway smelled like someone’s toast and someone else’s weed.
Beneath that, I caught a hint of the lemon cleaner Mrs. Nguyen used because management’s idea of hallway maintenance involved waiting for tenants to give up and do it themselves.
I locked my apartment, checked the knob twice, then guided Max down the stairs at his pace.
He was moving a little slower than usual, but that was to be expected after all the compliments he’d received at the gala.
At the bottom, I shifted my tote higher on my shoulder, tightened my grip on his leash, and lifted my foot to push the lobby door open the way I did every morning.
It didn’t move.
I pushed again, harder. Still nothing happened.
For one horrifying second, my brain assumed the building had finally given up and trapped us inside out of spite. Then I looked properly.
The door was latched.
Latched.
Not hovering near the frame like a suggestion or pretending to close while remaining open to every package thief and drunk stranger. The lock sat aligned. The plate had been adjusted. The whole door rested in the frame like a respectable member of society.
I stared at it.
Max sniffed the seam, then looked at me.
“No,” I said.
He kept looking.
“No.”
Everything else in the lobby looked the same. The radiator was still clanking in the corner, the mailboxes were still dented. But a new screw gleamed in the strike plate. Fresh metal, clean edges. Someone had fixed it.
I pressed one hand to my mouth.
“Oh my god.”
Max’s ears shifted.
“Oh my god,” I said again, and then I started laughing, slightly hysterical because the front door latched and I knew exactly which severe, emotionally repressed dragon had stared at that broken lock like it had personally insulted public safety and then failed, apparently, to leave it alone.
“Rafe,” I wheezed.
Max wagged once.
“Do not wag at this. We are upset.”
Max wagged again.
“Furious, actually.”
The laughter made my eyes water, screwing up my mascara. I leaned against the mailboxes and tried to pull myself together, but the door was still fixed, still sitting there like a very small act of care wearing plausible deniability.
Which was absolutely not helping the butterflies.
My laugh softened into something quieter. I hated that my chest felt warm. I hated that the warmth had nowhere professional to go.
“Okay,” I told Max, wiping carefully beneath one eye. “New theory. He’s not interested in me. He’s just romantically attracted to functioning infrastructure.”
Max sneezed.
“Exactly. A very normal billionaire hobby.”
I pulled the door open. It opened smoothly, then eased shut behind us with a firm, beautiful click. The click should not have felt intimate. Locks were not intimate. Locks were hardware. Hardware wasn’t flirting.
Except, it seemed my standards had collapsed somewhere between the slow dance and the almost-kiss in the hallway, because that click zipped straight through me.
The world outside was bustling already, even this early in the morning. Delivery trucks barreled down the road, and a cyclist swore at a cab as it nearly turned into him. I took a breath, squared my shoulders, and started toward Avery’s.
“Free coffee,” I reminded myself.
Max walked beside me, elegant and mildly smug.
“Work,” I added. “Career. Professionalism. Friday meeting. No emotional disasters before nine.”
He glanced up at me.
“I mean it.”
Another block passed before I looked back toward my building. I laughed helplessly, then continued walking.
By the time Max and I reached the corner, I’d lost the fight with myself.
I should not text Rafe.
He was my client. Sort of. Not my client personally, obviously, because I was an intern and interns didn’t have clients.
Still, he was part of my professional world, and my professional world didn’t need a morning message that said, Hello, I saw that you fixed my broken lobby door after rejecting my mouth last night. Thoughts?
Max stopped beside a light pole and looked up at me.
“What?” I asked. “You’re not on the ethics committee.”
He gave a slow blink.