I should be over the moon.

I should be beside myself with satisfaction, with joy, because last week with Vivienne was amazing. Beyond amazing—it was on a plane I never thought I’d witness with any woman. An absolutely intoxicating mix of submission and freedom, and all of it seamless, all of it transitioning without a hitch.

Vivienne is so open with me in those moments, so vulnerable about what she wants from me, what she needs from me, and it’s like we don’t even have to speak to understand each other.

But when I woke up this morning, all the calm was gone.

What if there’s some other…motive for being so open?

The reality is that I need to focus on work. Vivienne and I have our evenings, have our nights, but while I’m at the Wilder Building my attention needs to be here one hundred percent.

“Mr. Wilder, everything’s in place for the meeting.” Emily stands in my doorway with a leather folio in her hands, the last item I’ll need to take with me into the conference room.

“Thanks, Emily. I’ll be right there.”

It’s the first meeting of the day, and already I can feel my mind wandering off into places it’s definitely not supposed to be. But there’s no other alternative. I square my shoulders, slide my phone into my pocket, and go.

It’s almost four o’clock by the time I’m able to exhale all the jittery energy that’s followed me around all day. I wonder what the hell Chris O’Connor and his team are doing right now. I wonder who the undercover agent is. I want to go stalk the floors until I find him, but how will I be able to tell?

I bend my head over a sheaf of contracts waiting for my signature.

Stop thinking about this shit.

A gentle knock at my door makes my jaw clench with irritation. How am I supposed to get this done if I’m interrupted every five seconds? I look up, ready to dismiss whoever it is with a cutting remark, but I can’t.

Because it’s Vivienne.

Her face is a little pink, like she’s been thinking of what we did last night and getting ashamed in retrospect, but her smile makes me smile back. “Ms. Davis.”

“Mr. Wilder—could I come in for a minute?”

“Of course. What do you need?”

Behind her back, I see Emily move down the hallway and get on the elevator. She’s undoubtedly going down to the seventh floor, where Wilder Enterprises maintains a state-of-the-art copy center. If you wanted, you could bind an entire book down there and sell it on the street outside.

But book binding is the last thing on my mind.

Vivienne steps up to the edge of my desk and looks down at a folder in her hands.

“Do you have something for me, Ms. Davis?”

When she looks up again, her eyes are sparkling. “It’s a decoy.” She opens the folder and shows me that it’s empty. “I thought—listen, maybe this is a stupid idea. I’m regretting coming up here more than a little right now.”

“Tell me.” My heart aches when I see her, aches and grows warm and beats hard, and right now is no exception. The warring thoughts are taking place only in my mind. I should get back to work. Vivienne should get back to work. We should save this for later.

“I thought we could…go on a date.”

I look at her with narrowed eyes. “A date?”

“Yes. A date to somewhere we’ve never been before.”

I look past her once more to see if Emily has returned. She hasn’t. “We could go Saturday.”

“What about right now?” She’s smiling tentatively, but with every moment the conversation lengthens, the smile gets dimmer. “I thought I could tempt you outside for the last hour of the day. I wanted to…return the favor from last week.”

“Last week?”

The smile flickers. “You took me home with you on a Monday afternoon, a little before the day was officially over. I thought…” Her voice lowers, and two bright spots of color appear on her cheeks. “You know what, this was a mistake.” She wrinkles her nose. “A mistake. Let’s do something on the weekend. It’s only two days away.” She clears her throat, glances over her shoulder. “Thank you, Mr. Wilder,” she says in a voice meant to carry, and then she turns away, toward the door.

I’m out of my seat in an instant, my entire chest aching, and I catch her by the wrist. I lower my own voice. “Do you know something, Vivienne Davis?”

“What?” Her eyes are wide and searching, but her body is still half-turned toward the door, like she can’t wait to get out of here.

“I love you.”

The smile comes back to her face, wide and pure. “I love you.”

“I’m—I had a lot to do today.”

“The weekend,” she says again, sounding calm and assured. “The weekend will be fine. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Then she laughs. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

“No. We’ll go now.”

“Dominic, we don’t have to—”

“Be waiting for me in the Town Car in five minutes.”

Vivienne’s eyes sparkle. “I’ll be there.”

She hustles out of my office and back to the elevators.

I take a deep breath in and stifle a wave of paranoia.

Get ahold of yourself, Wilder.

This isn’t some crazy ploy to get me away from the office, to destabilize Wilder Enterprises. That’s coming from someone else, someone who wants to benefit the Chinese government and betray the confidences of my company. It has nothing to do with Vivienne, and neither does the fact that I need to concentrate on my work.

I can give in to her. This once, I can take an hour off in the afternoon and be with my gorgeous girlfriend.

Girlfriend.

The word, even as a thought, makes my chest feel light at the same time that a cold knot forms in my stomach. At some point, we’re going to have to—

No. I’m not going to get into all that now. Yes, at some point we’ll have to make some decisions about what this means for her job, for my company, but we can get to those later. For now, all I have to do is love her.

And I love her. I love her more than anything. Even Wilder Enterprises.

I repeat it to myself as I leave a note for Emily, close the door behind me, and go to meet Vivienne, my mind still behind my desk.