I tear through the morning’s paperwork and lead the meetings with more enthusiasm than usual. I want to get things done. I am sick of letting Vivienne Davis control my thoughts, and so I refuse to let her.

Much.

At ten o’clock, all the paperwork for the day is done, and we’re ahead of schedule on status meetings. Most of the afternoon is free. I can change that.

But first, I’m going to go for a walk. There’s a café at the end of the block that makes delicious iced coffee and I’ve never been able to get anyone at the Wilder Building to duplicate it. It’s so relentlessly beautiful outside my window that I can’t resist. Now that I’m back on track, it’s fine to indulge for a few minutes.

I go out past Emily’s desk, and she looks up at me when I stop in front of it. “Mr. Wilder,” she says with a smile. “You’re ahead of schedule today.”

“Thanks to you.” Her cheeks go a little pink. Emily is unwaveringly professional, but sometimes she can’t quite control her reactions when I’ve done something to please her. “Is there anything on Monday that we could move up? I have a gap in my schedule.”

She swivels her chair toward her computer screen and deftly navigates to next week’s calendar. “I’m not exactly sure. I can make a few contacts and follow up with you. Will you be gone long?”

“I’m walking to the café.”

She nods at me and smiles again. “I’ll have a list of options for you to review when you get back.”

Since I’ve come out this way, I decide to take the public elevator down to the lobby. If I can move some of those meetings to this afternoon, it could free up time Monday morning to explore some of the options I’ve been meaning to get more intel on in terms of new energy patents we might want to acquire before they get too far into the process. This is an area in which my father unquestionably failed. He didn’t go after new tech aggressively enough. He didn’t go after anything aggressively enough, but his distractions were the things that undid him in the end.

The elevator stops, and I look up at the floor indicator, forgetting for a second that I’m not in my private car.

The doors slide open.

And in steps Vivienne Davis.

She’s looking down at the contents of a folder in her hands and gives me a cursory glance for long enough to step out of my way, and then she does a double take and blushes a deep red.

“Oh, I—” She turns automatically toward the doors, but they’re already sliding shut. To her credit, she doesn’t try to pretend that she was about to bolt. She squares her shoulders and turns to face me. “Mr. Wilder.”

“Ms. Davis.”

It’s there already, sizzling between us while we stand together in this relatively confined space. It’s hard to look into her eyes, but I’m not going to let her see that she kept me up half the night.

One corner of her mouth turns up. “You can call me Vivienne.”

The sound of her voice, softening like that, makes my chest go tight, and I can’t keep up the pretense. “I don’t know, Ms. Davis. We’ve been through this before, and it didn’t turn out very well.”

She bites her lip. “I know. I was hoping—” The elevator starts moving downward, and she steps farther in and turns to face the doors. We’re shoulder to shoulder for a moment, and then she turns to face me, green eyes locked on mine. “I was hoping to run into you.”

The sentence comes out in a rush, like she’s been holding it in for a long time. Maybe she has.

“What for?”

I can’t look away from her. I don’t want to look away from her.

“I wanted to apologize.”

“You don’t owe me an apology, Ms. Davis.”

She flinches, only a little, but I see it. “Please,” she says quietly, and there’s something there in her voice, something open and honest. “Call me Vivienne.”

“Vivienne, don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable. Clearly, something I did last night made you uncomfortable.” I clear my throat, not dropping her gaze. “And it was wrong. It was inappropriate, unprofessional, and—”

“It wasn’t wrong.” She breaks in so suddenly that I’m taken aback. Her cheeks are still pink, flushed, and she’s clutching the folder to her chest. “It’s not wrong to—feel attracted to someone.” Her eyes are on the floor indicator, which is ticking steadily down to the lobby. “I’m sorry I reacted that way. Something you said—it reminded me that I’m supposed to be professional, I work for you, and—”

“And it doesn’t matter, does it?” It’s her turn to look a little shocked, and I step closer. She takes a single step back and hits the wall, her back pressed against the shining surface. “It doesn’t matter, because even though it’s not appropriate, you still can’t stop thinking about me.”

“I can’t,” she whispers.

“Do you know how I know?”

“How?”

My face is inches from hers. I breathe in the light scent of her perfume. “I can’t stop thinking about you, either. I’m not supposed to have you, Vivienne Davis, but I want you.” Her breath is shallow, fast. “I wasn’t lying when I said it last night, and I’m not lying now. I want you, and I don’t give a shit that you work three levels below me.”

“Two,” she blurts out. She’s caught between a smile and a frown.

“What?”

“Two levels below you,” she says, nodding down at the folder. “I did such a wonderful job on the Mumbai meeting that I got promoted. I’m going to be Mr. Overhiser’s chief executive assistant.”

Closer and closer and closer. Somehow, she’s getting closer to me with every day. Chief executive assistants attend meetings in place of executives when they’re double booked. They coordinate with Emily to make sure any individual meetings work with my schedule.

I don’t want to fire her.

I don’t want to derail her career.

And I can’t let her go.

It’s in this moment, right now, that I make up my mind.

“Two levels. Is that all?”

“Yes,” she says, her voice dropping as I lean in closer, my lips next to her ear.

“Somehow that makes it more inappropriate, don’t you think?”

She can’t speak. She only nods.

“I have a solution.”

Her eyes go wide and bright, and she’s holding very still, like it’s all she can do not to turn her head and kiss me right now. “What is it?”

“I want to spend time with you, Vivienne Davis. I want to spend time with you alone. I want to spend time with you in places where we can talk about anything, because I have to know more about you.”

“But how—”

“I’ll keep a secret,” I whisper, and then I lean in and take her earlobe between my teeth so gently that it won’t leave the hint of a mark. She gasps, hands going tight around the folder in her hands. “We’ll keep it a secret, and nobody needs to know.”

“Yes.” She breathes the word and a jolt of satisfaction fills me, warms me, threatens to burn me up.

I step away from her. There’s an instant of confusion on her face, and then the elevator dings, and the doors slide open.

I turn and move to step out, to act like nothing has happened. It’s all part of the game now.

“Yes,” she says after me, her voice clear and strong. “Yes.”