“I’m sorry Peter,” I mutter.

“I don’t need you to be sorry,” my boss growls, “I need you to be right. Can you do that for me, or can’t you? It’s that simple.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t bear to look around the small conference room and see the smirks on Boris and his friends’ faces. This is so not what I expected when I took this job. I thought MIT was bad for chauvinists. Landwolfe, though, is ten times as bad.

“It’s just…” I say quietly, pushing through my body’s desire to just curl up and hide. “Some of the code … I just don’t understand what it’s supposed to do. Whoever programmed it –”

I see a black look flash across Boris’s face. Crap! I shouldn’t have said anything.

"– I mean, I’m probably just not getting it,” I say. God, I hate how I have to temper everything I say, just in case I hurt a man’s feelings. “Maybe someone can explain it to me. Because right now all I’m seeing is money going in and out of the market hundreds of times, but for no apparent reason; at least, none that I can see. It just seems…” I pause, searching for the right word.

“Inefficient.”

Peter stands up, and his chair falls away from behind him. He doesn’t even look around. I feel a growing sense of dread in my stomach. He flattens his palm and lifts it up to his eyes.

“You see this?” He growled.

I nod.

“This is me. Understand? And this…” He lowers his palm, inch by inch, holding my gaze the whole time. I can’t look away, but my cheeks burn up with humiliation. When he finally pauses, his back is hunched over, his fat belly compressed, and his hand hovering somewhere half way down his thigh.

"… This is you. Up here –,” his hand scoots back up to his eyes, “we make important decisions: decisions that actually matter. We ask questions that fucking lead somewhere. But down here,” his hand falls back down, “we do what we are fucking told, can you understand that?”

I nod dumbly. It feels like my tongue is caught in a bear trap.

“Good,” Peter smiles. It’s a fake, sickly sweet expression that looks false. “Maybe you can go, I dunno; get a cup of coffee or something. Leave the boys here with me.” He pauses. “I mean the team…”

He stares me down, and I’m left under no illusions that he meant what he first said: the boys.

“Of course,” I say in a voice that’s barely above a whisper.

It’s all I can do to blink back tears as I run from the conference room, folders pressed up against my chest. I feel like I’m running away instead of confronting the problem face on, but I don’t know what choice I have. I know with a guy like Peter, and his cronies, standing up to him would only make things worse.

So if I can’t do that, then… What the hell am I supposed to do?

I catch a glimpse of myself in the plate glass window of another – empty – conference room.

“Jesus…” I whisper. “What the hell were you thinking, Kim?”

I look like – hell – I don’t even know. All I do know is that the girl in that reflection isn’t me. Frankie’s words from last night still echo in my brain. When I woke up this morning, part of me – a silly, girlish part – thought that maybe if I dressed to impress, then Nate would notice.

So I guess that’s how I ended up here, dressed in a tight pencil skirt that – you know it – Frankie bought for me, and a tight white blouse that leaves nothing on my chest to the imagination. It’s an outfit I wouldn’t have picked myself in a thousand years, but one Frankie begged me to wear a hundred times. “You can’t not,” she said, “especially with those curves!”

I’m still burning from the humiliating dressing down I just received, and the memory makes me feel even more of a fool. I’m feeling like a little girl, who should have stayed at home to play with her toys, instead of playing dress-up, and pretending that she knows how to do her job.

I tear myself away from my reflection and head for the coffee machine. It’s not doing me any good to wallow in self-disgust.

As the water pressure builds and the machine whistles, I mutter to myself. I don’t care if I look like a crazy person. There’s no one around to see me. “This ends here. No more wallowing.”

Also, and most definitely, no more dressing up to impress a guy who wouldn’t have looked twice at you in high school…

No, I decide that I’m done. I’m done with Boris’s cutting remarks, and Peter’s humiliating demonstrations. I’m done turning red when a guy so much as looks at me. I’m going to make something of myself here. That does not include I’m opening my legs to some guy just because Frankie wants me to.

I put a lid on my cup of coffee and feel a reassuring burn against my palm. I hang on to it. It feels real, not just office drama, or boy drama, or any drama at all.

At least, I think, heading back towards the conference room. If I’m not going to hit on Nate, I can give up wearing these stupid heels.

Of course, those are my famous, last, Murphy-just-got-you, words. Seriously: the stiletto on my right heel catches on a carpet square, and then everything falls apart. I drop the folders clutched against my chest to the floor as I throw out my left arm to get my balance, and the coffee –

“Damn!” I swear. It’s everywhere.

I look down to see papers scattered across the floor, or speckled with dark splotches of coffee. The skin on the back of my hand is red and smarting from the pain of the scalding liquid. And worst of all?

My tight, white blouse is covered in goddamn coffee.

I kneel down, scrabbling to collect every single last one of the documents I just scattered across the floor in my near-hurricane-disaster before someone sees what has happened to me. I feel like the kid in the lunch room who drops their tray.

Of course, there is worse to come. There’s always more to come…

I hear a sound coming from the corner at the end of the hallway – the gentle thud of feet treading upon the thin carpet, and the murmur of voices. I freeze for a half second; then pull the last of the documents into an untidy bundle. I pick the coffee cup up, and scuff the wet puddle with my shoe.

“Come on, come on…” I mutter, leaning down to pick up the last scattered sheet of legal paper.

The voice is clearer now. I can hear two people, and –

I know that voice.

It’s Nate.

Now this is a really big problem. For a second I’m paralyzed again. Somehow, I manage to pull myself together, again. After all, it was only a couple of moments ago I decided I was done with being meek, and done with being timid: almost.

I might be quiet, but I’m not stupid. I know what the sight of his steel-gray eyes does to me, and that sharp spicy scent. It befuddles me, bewitches me. I can’t put myself into his presence. That would be playing into his hands. I know that, just because I’ve decided he’s out of my plan, doesn’t mean I’m out of his.

Nate’s deep, rumbling voice is coming from in front of me – the direction in which I was headed. I pull a sharp about-face.

Options, options.

Heading back means heading past the glass-walled conference room I just left. That’s not ideal. The last thing I want is to let Boris and his snickering minions see me covered in coffee like this. Heading forward means – well, it means Nate.

My eyes flicker left and right, and settle upon an unmarked door.

Nate’s getting closer. I can hear scraps of his conversation now: “you can put that on my calendar,” and I know it’s only a matter of time before he gets here. I’m running out of time.

I dart towards the mystery door and try the handle. Nothing, it just rattles. I try again, and this time whatever stubbornness inside the mechanism, whatever part is overdue for oiling, gives way. A sense of relief overcomes me as it turns, and I duck into a darkened room.

I let out a deep sigh.

I’m safe.

My eyes slowly get used to the windowless room’s murky gloom. The only light comes from the crack underneath and all around the doorway, but it’s enough to get my bearings.

“What the hell are you doing, Kim?” I whisper. It’s a filing room. I stumbled into a damn filing room. Now I’m inside, I realize just how crazy stupid this is. This is so not what I meant when I decided to put my big girl pants on.

The murmur of conversation gets louder and louder. And then…

It stops.

Just outside the door.

“Is there anything else I can get you, Mister Foster?” A woman’s voice says. It’s low, husky – and seductive. I immediately recognize it for what it is; she’s hitting on him. A pang of jealousy surges through me, the voltage high. I feel my jaw clench, hear my teeth grind together.

“I’m fine, thanks, Carol,” Nate says. He sounds disinterested. I breathe easy again.

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do,” the woman pauses, and I can almost imagine her toying with her hair, “for you?”

Crud: I need to hide.

The long rows of filing shelves loom out of the darkness. I pull out my phone, lighting my way with the screen. I pass A to F, G to L, and hide myself all the way at the end of the alphabet. Coffee is still dripping down my fingers from the squashed cardboard cup as I set it on the shelf.

Breathe.

The only thought I have is what on earth Nate will think if he finds me. There’s no reason he should, but that doesn’t stop an irrational fear from growing inside me. I need something to distract my mind. Anything will do. I pull up the messaging app on my phone.

Kim: are you up?

Frankie: …

“That’s very kind, but I’m okay, thanks,” Nate says. He sounds amused. Again, that realization lights me up inside. I try and squash the feeling down, but it escapes my fingers and jumps straight back up.

“Oh, okay,” the woman says. She sounds disappointed. “I just need you to sign…” She pauses again. “Here.”

I hear the scratch of a pen.

Kim: I’m hiding in a goddamn filing cabinet. What do I do?

Frankie: I’m too hung over to deal. What the hell are you talking about?

Kim: It’s Nate. He’s outside.

Frankie: laughing face emoji.

I freeze. Did I miss something? I can’t hear anything outside. Did they leave?

Kim: Okay, call off the rescue. He’s gone.

Frankie: ...

The door handle rattles. I catch my breath.

Please be the girl, please be the girl, I think, repeating it over and over in my mind.

The handle falls silent. I let out every last scrap of air from my lungs. He’s gone.

Except – of course, he’s not. The door pushes open with a slight shuddering sound, as whoever is on the other side applies more force. I press my back against the bookshelf, and my phone arm falls limply by my thigh. Frankie is forgotten.

I close my eyes.

I’m not breathing. Someone else is. I don’t dare look up.

“Expecting someone?”

The bad news: it’s Nate’s voice. Already, after only a couple of days, I’d know it anywhere. What’s even worse: he’s right in front of me. He’s possibly just a few inches from my face. Damn, what the hell do I do? I can’t just stand here with my eyes closed –

“I –,” I stammer. “I’m just looking for –”

Nate’s spicy, masculine scent fills my nostrils. Even without speaking, I’d know who he was anywhere. I didn’t know I liked the smell of men before I smelled him. Maybe I still don’t. Maybe it’s only his that I like.

I open my eyes. Nate’s standing in front of me in a smart, tight navy three-piece suit. His waistcoat is buttoned neatly at the front, his jacket loose. He’s not wearing a tie.

Nate grins and cuts in. “Something? Or maybe …” He reaches over my shoulder and plucks a file from the shelf. “Someone?”

“Yes!” I cry out. “I’m here to get –”

He looks down at the file in his hands. “Transaction records from March 1988? What did you say you did here again?”

“I didn’t,” I reply with more conviction than I feel.

“I’d like to know,” he says with a cocky grin on his face. He sets the file back on the shelf. God, he looks so damn smug. And so damn –

“Do I have to tell you? I reply. My brain feels like a tractor stuck in deep mud. I’m trying to come up with an excuse, but I’m falling short.

His eyes glance downwards, and I cross my arms to hide my chest. “Relax,” Nate says, picking up his staff badge from the lanyard around his neck. “Can you read that? It’s a little, ah” he glances around the darkened room, “gloomy in here…”

I’m glad it is, because my cheeks are burning up. “What does it say?” I croak.

“Nate Foster,” he reads. “Head of Security.”

Oh crap. I don’t know what the heck I’m supposed to do here. I can tell the truth, and then let Nate think I’m the sappiest girl this side of the English Channel. Or I can lie, and then lose my job – and maybe more…

I licked my lips. My mouth is dried out. “I was,” I croak, improvising, “trying to find some privacy.”

Nate cocks his eyebrow. “Privacy?”

I indicate my stained top. I feel more confident now. I’ve got a line, and I’m sticking to it. “I spilled this damn coffee all over myself.”

“Uh huh,” Nate nods. He glances down, and trails his fingers down my upper arm. I swallow nervously. It feels like he’s left a wildfire burning in his wake. “So I see. Any particular reason you didn’t, you know, go to the restroom up the hall?”

Because I wanted to avoid this! I don’t scream. “I didn’t know,” I finish lamely.

Nate licks his lips. He doesn’t look convinced. “I think we both know the truth, Kim.”

Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Where is he going?

“But maybe there’s a way we can …work things out.”

“What do you have in mind?” I whisper. He’s so magnetically close. Every time he looks at me, I feel a need to press my body against his. I don’t know what’s coming over me.

He pauses, as if weighing up what he’s about to say. Then, casually, in a way I’d never dream of, he pops the question. “Have dinner with me.”

My body aches to tell him yes. Before my brain catches up with what my mouth is doing, the word is at the tip of my tongue. Yes.

Somehow, I just can’t do it without feeling it would be betraying everything I in which I believe. I’m not a, a…

Slut.

I am not surrendering; especially not because a pretty boy smiled at me; especially not this pretty boy.

My mind twists and contorts like an acrobat. Just as I’m about to break, I get a surge of courage. I push Nate off of me.

“You don’t remember what you did, do you? Not any of it.”

I slip past Nate’s body. His lips are stunned into silence. I’m glad. I don’t trust myself not to give in to his silver tongue.