Sofia gripped her cell phone till the edges pinched her fingers while she waited for Adrian to pick up. She was tired of waiting. And at the end of this marathon day, she was just plain tired.

“Hello, beautiful.”

“Don’t you ‘hello, beautiful’ me!”

“¡Ay! What’s got you ticked off?”

“You and your inability to do what I asked. You turn in these order forms half filled out and mostly illegible and expect me to track down all the freaking details for you. It’s bullshit, and I’ve put up with it long enough.”

“You’re calling me after eight o’clock on a work night to complain about the way I do paperwork after twelve years?”

“Technically, I’ve been dealing with this shit for three years, but it ends tonight.”

“That’s not why you called me.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it isn’t. We aren’t children, and you don’t need to make excuses to call me.”

Sofia resisted the urge to chuck her phone at the wall. As satisfying as that would be, she simply didn’t have time or funds to replace it. She settled for yelling her displeasure into it.

“Argh! You arrogant bastard! I’m not calling to flirt with you. If I were, I wouldn’t call you an asshole for wasting my time. Let me guess. You’re sitting at home, watching the game with dinner and a beer resting in your belly.”

“What, are you spying on me now?”

“Guess where I am. The office. I sure as hell haven’t been able to turn my brain off for the night and relax. After a full day in the office and a surprise afternoon on camera, I’m still here placing orders from your half-assed form. I haven’t eaten since lunch, and I still haven’t solved the budget crisis. Thanks by the way for throwing me under the bus on camera with that. What the fuck? So yeah, I’m gonna call you and interrupt your evening, because I deserve better than this.”

Sofia let all of her frustration vent into the phone. When she ran short of breath, she paused and waited for his response.

Crickets.

He’d hung up on her. Son of a bitch! All of the warm and fuzzy feelings she’d been considering nurturing shriveled and snapped in the fire of her rage.

Five minutes later when the phone rang, she let it go to voicemail. She was afraid she might say something she couldn’t take back. Her anger had temporarily disabled her filter. When it rang again, she turned off her ringer. When he called a third time, she turned the music in her office up to eleven. She’d given him enough energy today.

She pushed his orders to the side for later. The music would keep her awake and focused so she could finish the other requests in her pile. She would have ignored them completely just to spite him, but they were for the Shah project. She couldn’t afford to have things arrive late, but she was too mad to deal with his shit right now. She put her head down and buried her anger in the classic alternative rock she was blasting.

So when the door to her office swung open, she screamed and grabbed her stapler as if she could use it to ward off an attacker or the zombie apocalypse. When she could draw breath again, she used it to shout.

“What the hell? Don’t you knock?”

“I did. I also called you three times after my phone died to tell you I was coming to fix the papers,” Adrian yelled back, competing with Dolores O’Riordan wailing about tanks and bombs and guns.

Sofia slapped the keyboard to turn off the music. Charged silence filled the room, neither willing to be the first to break it. Sofia gave in to her curiosity. “Your phone died?”

“Yes. I forgot to plug it in when I got home.”

“Huh. I thought you hung up on me. How much of my rant did you catch?”

“Enough to know I’d better show up with a peace offering. Would you put the stapler down?”

Sofia looked at the stapler in her hand still held raised to strike and wondered who she thought she’d be maiming with a Swingline. She carefully put it back on her desk.

He passed her a sealed Tupperware. “Trade? Paperwork for dinner?”

She eyed him suspiciously. “What’s in there?”

“Pollo en mole.”

Sofia moaned deep in her throat, her mouth salivating at the words and flat-out drooling once the smell hit her nostrils. His freshly-showered clean man scent snuck in behind it and her rage weakened.

“Deal. That smells incredible.” She shuffled the papers again to find his POs and shoved the papers into his chest to remind him that she was angry. That he was here to work. That they had established boundaries. That she absolutely wasn’t going to kiss him again.

When her every impulse screamed for her to put her lips back on his, she clutched the Tupperware to her chest to keep her hands from reaching out and grabbing him. Who needed reminding of the boundaries?

He looked so good, his T-shirt wet with droplets he’d missed with his towel. She imagined that he’d thrown on those clothes intending them to be his pajamas. He’d be going to bed soon. Hmmm, Adrian in bed. Adrian in her bed. Damn it! I’m angry. Not horny. ANGRY! This took the term “hangry” in a whole different direction.

“Here are the orders. Do you see all the little boxes? Believe it or not, I need the information in all of them to fill out the order online. I’m going to reheat this.” She hid behind sarcasm and ran, pushing past him to the office kitchen. She put the chicken and rice dish into the microwave and timed her breath to the countdown of seconds. She needed to regain her equilibrium before she went back in there. Ever since that kiss, she felt like he kept knocking her off-balance.

She grabbed a fork from the drawer and washed the few dishes that were left in the sink, so that their clients wouldn’t think they were slobs, while she waited for the chicken to cool enough to eat. Returning things to order soothed her, when she wasn’t busy resenting the fact that she was the only one who did it around the office. She wiped off the countertops again for good measure.

She took one more deep breath, and this time her head filled with the rich spicy scents of the mole. Her walls trembled a little. She’d been cross and bitchy with him on the phone, and he’d brought her food. That definitely earned him a few points. True, his mother had probably made it, but he’d brought it to her when she needed it. It was getting harder to hold on to her mad. Unlike the other men in her life, she’d told him she had a problem and he’d shown up to help. She carried the plastic bowl back to her office.

Adrian had taken her seat at the desk and had a pen in a death grip. His tongue peeked out between his lips, his concentration at once cute and fierce. He used the mouse to navigate down the screen, muttering part numbers under his breath.

She stood behind him and leaned over his shoulder, pointing with her fork at the screen.

“You know, if you use the search function here, it will go faster than trying to navigate around using the menus.”

“I’m used to seeing this page on my phone. I can barely find what I need there. Here, everything is in a different place.”

Sofia leaned back on the counter and took a bite of the chicken and moaned as the gorgeous blend of chilies, cocoa, nuts, and spices melted with the soft, tender meat on her tongue. This was the best Mexican food she’d had in ages, and she was going to savor it. She licked her lips, not wanting to miss a drop of that sauce.

When she realized Adrian had stopped typing and was staring at her, embarrassment flooded her face.

“What? It’s delicious. Where did you get it?”

“Uhhmm, my, uh, my mom made it.” He had turned to watch her over his shoulder, and he couldn’t get his work done if he wasn’t even looking at the computer.

She moved, resting her rear against the edge of her desk so she could face him where he sat. “Darn it. I’m going to have to steal her away from you. This is amazing.”

“Yeah, good luck with that. It might be the only way to get her out of that house. I’ll tell her you liked it.” He scribbled a few numbers on the order form in front of him.

“Loved it,” she corrected as she took another bite.

He leaned back in his chair and set down his pencil. His intent gaze unnerved her.

“What?”

“I just like hearing that word from your lips.” He shifted in her chair, drawing her attention to his lap, and the fact that his sweatpants hid none of his excitement. What was it about an erection under gray cotton that made her thirsty? Good Lord, she wanted him without any of these barriers between them. She’d been angry and frustrated, but the combination of his caring actions and his gorgeous body were quickly eroding her determination to keep things all business at the office.

He hitched his hips again, and she knew she’d been caught staring. Chuckling, he put his hands on her hips and rolled the office chair over so he was seated directly in front of her, deliberately in her space.

“You know, I’m still a little hungry. I did have to smell that goodness all the way over here. Can I have a little taste?”

She searched for the perfect piece, intending to tease him. She held the morsel of chicken suspended in front of her mouth.

“Come and get it.”

He stood and leaned into her space, his lips open to receive the bite, his eyes full of laughter. She grinned and popped it into her own mouth, chewing with dramatic appreciation. She’d expected him to laugh. When his eyes narrowed to focus on her lips, she was toast, slowly roasting in the heat of his gaze. She dropped the fork back into the plastic bowl and barely managed to swallow before she moved in to give him his taste fresh from her own lips.

Adrian followed her lead and kissed her senseless. The only place they touched was lip to lip, and it wasn’t nearly enough. So when Adrian paused just long enough to remove the fork and Tupperware from her limp fingers and boost her up on her desk so she was fully supported, she didn’t complain. She let go of her good intentions and held on tight to his hips instead. He smelled deliciously clean from his shower, and she had a moment’s worry over her own scent after a full day of work. But only for a moment, before he drove every thought out of her head.

Framing her face with his hands, he tasted her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids, before returning to her mouth. Her hands were free to roam, and she let them explore the impressive muscles that lined his spine, all the way down to his very fine ass, which she gripped to pull him flush against her between her spread legs. Even through layers of clothing, feeling his hard erection pressed against her clit sent waves of heat through her belly. After months of self-service, she was ready to hand over control. She wrapped her legs around his hips, trapping him against her while she rocked her hips toward his. This had escalated quickly, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Keeping herself from mounting the man was taking all of her restraint. He moaned and slid his hands around her waist.

Sofia cringed and reached her hands under his, raising his to her upper back. She tried to lose herself in the kiss again. He pulled her in close, making her feel cherished and protected. When he slid his fingers forward to graze the sides of her breasts, her awareness of her body focused to that narrow point, allowing her to ignore the parts that she wished she could hide. But when he slid his hands down her sides again to grip her hips and lift the hem of her shirt, her focus shifted with them. She wished that the desire this created would be enough to shout down her self-consciousness, but it wasn’t. She reached down to block his upward momentum, and this time he definitely noticed. He stopped kissing her altogether and stepped back.

“Why did you stop?” she asked. Please, let it be any other reason…

“You keep pushing my hands away when I touch you. I didn’t think you wanted me to keep going.”

“No. I… That’s not…” She sighed. “Never mind. Let’s just finish so we can go home.”

He reached for her again, one hand heading for the space between her legs, and she clenched them shut tightly, trapping his hand on the edge between heaven and hell. She’d taken care of unwanted advances since middle school when she’d gotten breasts ahead of everyone else. She hadn’t needed her brothers or her cousin then, and she didn’t now.

She gritted her teeth and corrected his assumption that she wanted him to finish her. “I meant the purchase orders.”

“Right. Sorry. Of course.” He raised his hands in the universal sign for surrender, before gesturing to her chair.

She sat and struggled to find the offending papers and her outrage to go with them. He stood stiffly, arms crossed, behind her. He was frustrated, and she couldn’t blame him. She was too busy berating herself for screwing up a hot-as-hell kiss to remember why she was supposed to be mad. All she could find was the sad. The shame of her reaction. The remorse over losing something she’d never had in the first place. That loss of potential pinched her heart harder than she expected, but she had to protect herself. Once he got his hands on her, once he saw what she was hiding, he wouldn’t want her. And when he backed away, it would hurt even more if she’d let him get closer. The sadness and pain she’d bundled up in her weight gain threatened to break free, so she clamped down on it hard. Tears in her eyes, she turned back to the form he’d tried to fill out before they’d gotten distracted.

“Okay. This…is better. Please, just…fill it out…next time.” Damn it. She was losing the battle to keep her tears out of her voice. His hand brushing down the back of her hair, offering comfort even after she’d pulled away, broke her.

All of her combined stresses poured out of her heart and down her face. She dropped her head onto the desk and gave up the fight.

Adrian continued to smooth his hand over her hair while making a shushing sound, as if she was a child with a skinned knee instead of a woman with a bruised heart and a stressed mind. Her pains were not easily fixed with a Band-Aid and a kiss. She couldn’t deny that it brought her comfort though. How long had it been since someone had cared enough to comfort?

She turned in to that comfort, and he was there, kneeling next to her, arms open wide. His strong shoulder caught her tears as she let herself be wrapped up in his hug. She’d been so strong for everyone for so long… She’d borrow some of his strength for a while and put herself back together.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you. Let it all out.” His deep voice rumbled through her, breaking the last walls around her heart. So she did.

“It’s just…everything. I hate this part of the job, but I do it because my family needs me to, and if I don’t nothing gets done and no one gets paid. Now that I’ve got the designs, too, and the show, I resent the time it takes away from doing what I love. And then I started missing Gabe, and then I got mad at him for leaving me with this mess, but that gets me nowhere. It’s not like he can come back and fix it. This crap takes even longer when the order forms are only half filled out, and I know more are coming tomorrow. And I still haven’t gotten the show budget back on track. I really don’t want to screw this up. I need this, and Mom and Dad need this, and you need this…and…and then I argued with Dad because he was being Dad, and then I blew things with you… I just… It’s been a bit of a day.” As her words ran dry, her embarrassment swamped her and she reached around him for the peanut butter cups in her candy drawer. Adrian must have thought she was reaching for her work, because he intercepted her and pulled her back in close.

“Just leave it a minute. I don’t know what to say to most of that, but you didn’t blow things with me. I don’t know what I did to make you back away, but I’d like to. I don’t want to screw up whatever this is either.”

“What exactly is ‘this’?”

“I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”

Could she trust him? Did she dare hope that he would still want her once all of her walls were opened up, revealing her hidden flaws? He’d risen to every challenge she’d thrown in his path so far. The caress of his rough fingers down her arm tempted her, but the gleam of truth in his eyes convinced her.

She summoned her courage and met him out on that ledge, ready to take the leap alongside him.

“Me, too.”