4
Milo
Spencer drives the way he sits in a meeting, both hands where they belong, eyes on the road. It’s a good car, low to the ground, built for speeds I doubt he’s ever actually taken it to.
My phone buzzes against my thigh, and his thumb taps the wheel sharply. I swipe the notification away without reading it. It buzzes again forty seconds later, and Spencer’s thumb taps again.
“You know,” I say, “for a man driving a car this nice, you look like you’re steering a school bus through a flood.”
“I’m driving fine.”
“Your knuckles disagree.” I nod at his hand on the wheel. “And you’ve blinked, like, twice since we left the garage. I’m starting to think the road personally wronged you.”
He doesn’t answer that, which I’m learning is his answer to most things.
“I already said sorry,” I try instead, quieter. “So why are you still mad?”
“I’m not mad.”
“You’re doing a really convincing impression of mad, then, because from where I’m sitting this reads like mad.”
“I’m not mad, Milo.”
“Then something’s wrong. And I don’t get why you won’t just ask me instead of doing the thousand-yard windshield thing for thirty minutes straight.”
His eyes flick in my direction, the same look he gave my outfit this morning right before he told me it wasn’t office attire. It stays on me half a second longer than a driver should spend not looking at the road, and my stomach does an unhelpful little flip about it.
“You got a girlfriend somewhere,” he says, “unhappy you moved into some guy’s house to be his live-in assistant?” His eyes go back to the road before he adds, “Or boyfriend.”
I laugh, because that is not remotely where I expected this to go. “No jealous anybody. My love life currently consists of me and a plant I keep forgetting to water.”
“Then what?”
I could keep deflecting. It’s basically my whole professional skill set at this point. But his shoulders and the look in his eyes make me want to just tell him. So I give him the soft version.
“It’s my mom,” I say, watching the median blur past. “She’s going through kind of a rough patch.
Landlord stuff, money stuff, the usual parade.
She calls when it gets loud in her head, and I’m the only one who picks up.
” I shrug, aiming for light. “My dad left when I was two, so it’s just been her, my brother Dean, and me.
She’s been doing the single-mom thing for twenty years, and some days she’s great at it and some days not so much.
Today happened to be one of the not-great days. ”
I don’t look at him while I say it, because I’ve found that’s easier, but I feel him look at me, longer than before.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I can tell he means them. Spencer doesn’t seem like a man who spends sentences he doesn’t mean.
“It’s fine.” I wave a hand like I’m swatting the whole conversation out of the air.
“It’s just a lot sometimes, that’s all, and I should’ve handled it better today instead of blowing up your meetings.
It won’t happen again tomorrow, I promise.
I’ll keep her outside work hours. I didn’t mean to bring my personal circus into your workday. ”
He doesn’t say anything to that, but the tapping stops. His hands ease off the wheel half a degree, and I count that as a win.
We drive another few minutes like that, the silence easier now, and I’m looking out the window watching the highway peel off into storefronts instead of overpasses, when I realize the turns aren’t matching up with anything I remember from the way in.
“Wait.” I sit up straighter. “This isn’t the way back to the house. Where are we going, boss?”
“Don’t call me boss.”
“Where are we going, then, sir?” I say it just to watch his jaw do the thing again, and it does not disappoint.
“There’s a store,” he says, ignoring the sir. “I can’t have you running around the office in that until your first paycheck clears.”
I look down at myself, at the crop top and the shorts. “Excuse me. This is a good outfit. It has range.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
“It’s just too—” He stops himself.
My mouth curls before I’ve fully decided to let it. “Too cute? Too iconic? You’re gonna have to finish that sentence.”
“Too much,” he says finally, which is a non-answer, and I decide I’m not letting him off that easy.
“Too sexy?” I supply for him, watching his ears go a shade darker even though his face gives up nothing. “That’s what you’re not saying. You think I’m too sexy for the office.”
“I think you’re distracting my employees,” he says evenly.
“So it’s not a me problem, it’s an everyone-else problem.” I’m grinning now, full wattage. “Got it. I’m a workplace hazard. I should get a sign. Caution: extremely fetching PA, proceed with—”
I don’t get to finish, because the car’s slowing, and when I look up from him to actually track where we are, the rest of the sentence goes out of my head.
It’s a store everyone knows by reputation, the kind that doesn’t need a name over the door.
Spotless glass, no price tags visible in the window because a store like this assumes you already know better than to ask, mannequins dressed in quiet, expensive neutrals.
Spencer’s already pulling into a spot at the curb.
“No,” I say immediately. “Absolutely not. I can’t afford so much as a scarf in there, and I’m not letting you watch me have a nervous breakdown over a price tag. They’ll smell my net worth from the door.”
“It’s not coming out of your pocket.” He puts the car in park. “Consider it a work expense. I’m giving you the tools you need to do the job, same as I’d expense a laptop or a phone plan for anybody else on payroll.”
“This is not a laptop, Spencer, this is a building where the air costs money.”
“I’m not sending my assistant into meetings underdressed because his first check hasn’t landed. That’s not on you to fix. That’s mine.”
“I really don’t think you understand the math here,” I say, but weaker now, because he’s already unbuckling his seat belt like the conversation ended three sentences ago. “This feels like I’m about to owe you an organ.”
“You’re not,” he says, and opens his door.
I sit there another second, staring at the storefront, at Spencer rounding the hood toward my side, and I think about arguing it one more round.
Then I remember the eleven minutes it took me to pack my whole life into a duffel bag and two milk crates, and I decide that maybe, just this once, I let somebody else win.
He’s out and around the hood before I’ve got my seatbelt off, and by the time I catch up, he’s already at the door, a slab of glass with a thin brass line for a handle. He pushes through it like he’s done it a thousand times, which, judging by what happens next, he has.
“Mr. Rhodes.” A man in a charcoal suit materializes from behind a rack of coats, already smiling. “We weren’t expecting you until next week.”
“Change of plans,” Spencer says, and the man’s smile widens as he nods.
A second person peels off from the register, a woman with a tape measure looped around her neck. Her eyes do a fast, expert pass from my sneakers up to my hair, polite and unsparing at once. I can tell she’s already tallying how much work I’m going to be.
“He needs a wardrobe,” Spencer says. “Office appropriate. He starts from scratch.”
“Of course,” the woman says. “Right this way.”
I trail behind her past a wall of shirts so white they hurt to look at directly, past a table of folded knits, and I keep my hands in my pockets because some feral thrift-store part of my brain is convinced that touching anything in here adds to a bill.
She pulls three things off the rack in quick succession, laying them over her arm: a crisp cotton shirt, pleated gray trousers, and a navy fine-gauge sweater.
“These would work well for the office,” she says, holding them up against me without touching me. “Clean lines. Very versatile.”
“Very,” I agree, because it is, technically, true, in the same way oatmeal is technically food.
I look past her shoulder at what I actually want, which I clocked the second we walked in: a deep sapphire shirt in a silk so dark and rich it reads as black until the angle’s right.
“Can I see that one?” I ask, pointing.
She follows my finger, and a flicker of are you sure crosses her face, quickly smoothed back before it lands. “That’s a statement piece. Might be a bit much for daily office wear.”
“I think I can pull it off,” I say, and reach past her before she can find a diplomatic way to steer me back toward the navy and gray.
I grab trousers to go with it myself, black, slim through the leg but not tight, a cut that would look amazing on my ass, and I know right away that this is the outfit.
I’ve been dressing myself since I was old enough to have opinions, and when you grow up never able to afford the wrong thing, you learn to spot the right one on sight.
The fitting room is bigger than my old bathroom.
I change fast, leaving the top two buttons open, tucking the shirt into the trousers, and I catch my own reflection for half a second before I make myself stop looking, because if I start admiring myself in a store like this, I’ll forget I can’t actually keep any of it.
I step back out.
Spencer’s over by the window, phone in hand, thumb moving across the screen, and he doesn’t look up right away.
“Okay,” I say, spreading my arms. “Verdict?”
He looks up.
Whatever he was about to type just evaporates, his thumb going still. His eyes drop slow, tracking the line of the shirt to where it’s tucked at my waist, and there’s a beat before he catches himself and drags them back up to my face.
The saleswoman, hovering a polite distance off with the navy sweater still folded over her arm, opens her mouth to say something, but Spencer cuts her off without even looking at her.
“We’re good from here,” he says. “Thank you.”
She blinks and retreats toward the register.
“Well?” I say, spreading my hands wider. “Say something.”
“I’m assessing the fit.”
I turn a slow circle in front of the mirror, watching him in the reflection. “You can just say I look good, Spencer. It’s allowed. I won’t put it in an email.”
“You look fine.”
“Fine,” I repeat, delighted. “Wow. Careful, all that enthusiasm, I might faint.”
He’s already moving, crossing to a rack near the window. He flips through it until he pulls something out and holds it up, considering, without handing it over yet.
It’s a deep wine color, silk again, and when he finally passes it to me his fingers brush mine over the hanger.
“Try this.”
“Bossy,” I say, but I take it, because I want to see where this goes now. “Didn’t realize personal shopping came with the job offer. Do you do this for all your assistants?”
“Just try it.”
I go change. When I come back out, he’s pulled two more things off the racks himself: an emerald knit that never would’ve occurred to me and a shirt in soft plum, the fabric draped so it looks like it would move when I walk.
“You keep going dark and jewel-toned,” I say, turning to show off the wine one. “This a whole vision, or are you just grabbing?”
“They suit you better than the gray. Try the emerald.”
I laugh, but he’s not even smiling. He almost never smiles, I’ve noticed that much already. But he hasn’t looked away, so I keep talking.
“You know,” I say, “I did my due diligence before I took this job. Read your whole Instagram, start to finish. You don’t move in with a stranger without checking he’s not a cabin-in-the-woods situation.”
“And?”
“Inconclusive. But a man who keeps handing me shirts to try on is definitely going on the evidence board.”
“Noted,” he says, and hands me the knit.
I decide to quit joking while I’m ahead. I like this job, and I like it more than I like pushing my luck, so I go change.
The knit fits close through the shoulders and drops soft at the waist.
When I come back out this time, he’s the one who reaches for me before I’ve even said anything, taking my collar in both hands, adjusting it where it’s sitting crooked.
I go very still.
He’s close enough that I can smell his woodsy soap, nothing sweet in it, and his thumbs are working the collar flat with the same unhurried focus he brings to everything else.
His head’s dipped, eyes on his own hands, but then they drift, slow, down past the collar to the line of my collarbone, and lower, to the stretch of chest the shirt leaves bare.
The air goes tight, and I think, distantly: oh, no. Not now.
He’s my boss, I’ve had this job two days, and I need it so bad, but none of that stops the heat climbing up my neck or my breath going shallow when his hand slides from the collar to the bare skin just below it, thumb brushing once, light, against the side of my throat.
It isn’t an accident. I know the difference between an accident and this.
“Spencer,” I say, and it comes out breathy.
He doesn’t answer. His thumb moves again, barely, tracing the same half inch of skin, and his eyes come up to mine, dark now.
A stack of hangers goes over behind the register, plastic clattering against the floor.
Spencer’s hand drops, and he steps back, putting a full arm’s length between us that wasn’t there ten seconds ago. He clears his throat, reaching for his phone.
“Find trousers to match,” he says, voice level again, nothing left in it of a moment ago. “Get whatever you liked. The knit too. We should go.”
“Right,” I say, in a voice that doesn’t sound like mine. I don’t even fully register what he’s telling me.
I change back into my own clothes and gather up the things I liked, including the knit, and carry them to the register. Spencer’s already there with his card out, handing it over before I can get a look at the total.
Then he’s holding the door, phone in hand, and neither of us looks at the other the whole way to the car.