“So far, so good,” my editor Rob said, hovering outside my cubicle like the boss from Office Space. I was almost expecting him to say “Yeah, I’m gonna have to ask you to come in this weekend…”

The irony, of course, was that I already worked weekends. That was the thing about being a writer, even a journalist. I was never not working.

Dara and I had managed to get together for drinks on Saturday, but she couldn’t convince me to go out dancing afterwards. Clubs just weren’t my style. I felt like I’d outgrown them. To be honest, they scared me a little bit. A lot of weird shit could happen to you in a bar, surrounded by a lot of drunken strangers.

“What’s happening with the news desk?” I asked Rob.

“They’re working on the staffing for each department at a time. You really that anxious to lose your job, Lizzie?”

I flushed and looked down. My blog wasn’t doing nearly well enough to risk my paycheck. “No, I don’t want to lose my job. I just…” I gave him a plaintive look. “You know I wanted to be in news. That was always my goal, ever since I first got here.”

“You’re doing a great job with Miss Behave. If the owner didn’t think so, he would have just merged the columns and given it to Ash alone. Obviously you’re bringing something to it that they want to keep. Just keep bringing that.”

What I was ‘bringing’ was a naïveté that I felt more and more in conflict with.

“Actually, the owners wanted me to ask you something.”

That explained why he was hovering over my cubicle. “What?”

“They loved the column you guys did on dating websites. The CTR for ads on that page were insane. They want you guys to follow it up.”

“How?”

“Go set up a profile somewhere, and write a column detailing the kind of responses you get. Ooooh…” He rubbed his hands together. “Better yet, make a profile for each other.”

Oh dear god. “Hasn’t that been done before?”

“Not by Miss Behave and A Guy’s Guy.”

I sighed. These were what you would call sacrifices for the work-life balance—a teeter-totter that I inevitably would get my ass bumped on.

“They want you to go on a few dates, too.” He looked vaguely embarrassed.

Bump. I stared at him in horror. “You’re pimping me out, Rob?”

“No, I mean with Ash.”

My heart sped up. “You mean together? Like together together, or some kind of double-date?” Both options sounded dangerous.

“Let me see what I can do,” he said. I could see his brain working on a way to spin ideas to his bosses. “They also want you to find a question you can follow for more than just one column.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Like an ongoing dialogue. Therapy online, in a sense. Find a question that you think could have legs.”

“How would I choose something like that?”

He tapped his mouth. “I can ask Ash to pick something, if you like. Or I can take a look and see if anything catches my eye.”

Oh no. “I’m sure we can figure something out.”

“See? You’re already working well together.”

That was somewhat true. We’d managed to find a reasonable rhythm. He stuck to his niche and I stuck to mine. Sometimes I felt really stuck, though.

I couldn’t deny that I was attracted to Ash Garrison—and I had absolutely no idea what to do about it. I was so pathetic at flirting that I couldn’t even tell if he was flirting with me. I didn’t think he was, but he bought my lunch an awful lot.

He’d gotten in the habit of texting me before he arrived, and just bringing it with him. The one time I got the jump on him and brought in some soup and salads from home for both of us, he complained that he was craving a big, greasy cheeseburger. So we ended up having both. Easy for him—since he went to the gym pretty much every day.

The most exercise I got was wrestling with my conscience.

The next Friday, I was still looking for a good question to follow-up on when we’d had to meet for dinner instead of lunch. The real question I was struggling to answer was, why it felt so much more like a date instead of a business meeting. It could have been because Ash brought a bottle of wine with him, as well as Italian take-out.

The office was mostly deserted by the time we spread things out on the conference table. The lights were down around the whole floor, making everything seem a lot more intimate and quiet. We even spoke in hushed tones, as though we were working on a secret project or something instead of an advice column.

“Dear Guy’s Guy,” he read from his screen, “Do you have any advice on how to learn to deep throat?”

I nearly choked, accidentally deep throating my pasta. Ash handed me a napkin and pushed my coffee mug of red wine closer to me.

I shook my head. “I think I’ve had too much already. You’re a bad influence, bringing this to the office.”

His eyes gleamed like melted chocolate in the low light. “I think you need more bad influences in your life, Lizzie.”

What was I supposed to say to that? “One of us has to behave.”

“Sure, but which one?” he teased.

He’d gotten better at gently pushing my buttons. He was feeling around, trying to figure out how to get under my metaphorical skirt and make me crazy.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t so metaphorical.

Ash was a much more accomplished flirt than I was, for sure. Every time I felt a quiver of excitement, I had to remind myself that he was probably like this with all women. I wasn’t special.

“Next question,” I said after a swig of wine. I pulled my head back and spun around on my chair a little, taking care not to knock his knees beside me.

“Huh. Mooney highlighted this one. What’s that about?”

Maybe an option for the ongoing feature he wanted? “What’s the question?” I asked.

He hesitated before shrugging. “I have a crush on a co-worker,” he read out. “How do I find out if she might be interested in me?”

I stopped spinning and leaned over. “Is that yours or mine?”

“Yours, actually.”

“Hmmm. I guess it depends on the context of the workplace. Do they work in fast food or in adult entertainment?”

He chuckled. “Does it matter?”

“Sure. If he’s a prison guard and she’s an inmate, then I don’t think it’s appropriate.”

“Then they wouldn’t really be co-workers.”

“Okay, then. If there’s no uneven power dynamic between them, then he could just ask her out.”

“Isn’t that considered sexual harassment these days?”

I rolled my eyes. “I suppose it would depend on how he asked her. If he took his dick out and asked her if she wanted to suck it, then yes.”

His mouth fell open. “I didn’t know you had such a dirty mind, Elizabeth Bell.”

Heat crawled up my face. “Sorry, I’m not ‘behaving’.”

“Don’t apologize.” His brow creased, but the corner of his mouth curved upward. “I like it.”

Oh boy. I definitely needed to slow down on the wine.

He tapped his chin. “He could try giving her signals and see if she returns them.”

“Signals? Like what?”

He spun his chair around, and grabbed my seat so I was facing him. Spreading his legs wide, he pulled my chair closer until my knees were wedged between his.

Oh.

It became preternaturally quiet, just a cocoon of dim light around us from our glowing laptop screens.

“Like he could get closer to her, physically,” he suggested, reaching out to place his hands over mine on the arm rests of the executive chair.

I inhaled sharply. He was so close I could smell the wine on his breath, and the fading spicy scent of whatever body wash he’d used after the gym. I really did envy that body wash.

“He could try touching her casually,” he murmured, lacing his fingers through mine at the same time as squeezing my knees between his thighs.

“Casually?” I squeaked.

Oh god, this was definitely flirting.

His head tilted, his eyes dark. “Or not so casually.”

“And h-how would she return these signals?”

“By touching him back, maybe. Body language. The way she smiles.”

My voice was so low it was almost a whisper. “And what if she’s not sure what to do?”

“For professional reasons?”

“Or personal reasons.”

“Then I guess she should read the Employee Handbook. Or she should listen to her instincts.”

“What if they say different things?”

I moved our entwined hands from the armrest to the top of his thighs. His muscles flexed under his pants.

Warm. Hard.

He sucked in a breath. I stared down at our fingers, our arms, my knees pressed together, his lap surrounding me.

It wouldn’t be difficult to climb up there on his lap, in the big leather chair. I could straddle him, my knees going around his hips and thighs. Feel the hard plane of his quads under my backside, shifting me from side to side as I got comfortable.

It was a terrible, tempting idea.

I looked up to meet his heated gaze. It had me locked in my seat. A shadow of beard darkened his jaw, but I could still make out the way he was grinding his teeth together. He searched me, but I wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for.

My instincts?

“Miss Behave…”

“My name’s Lizzie,” I reminded him softly.

I licked my lips, my heart pounding. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted to kiss him. Suddenly, there wasn’t anything in the world I wanted more than to feel his lips sliding against mine, but this was as far as I could go. I wasn’t about to humiliate myself further. He would have to take the last step, make the last move.

He didn’t.

Tugging his hands free, he placed mine back on my knees like I was a schoolgirl.

Then he leaned back in his chair, his chest moving up and down more quickly than his slumped posture would suggest. The tendrils of the tattoo over his heart snaked up out of his denim shirt, glinting darkly at me in the blue light from the computer.

“Then she should go with the Employee Handbook,” he said, his voice tight.

I felt almost bereft as he pulled away from me. It was embarrassing how much I’d wanted him to reach forward and touch his mouth to mine. I licked my lips.

“Ash…”

Using his feet, he pushed his chair away from mine and turned back to his laptop. His left hand rubbed his thigh as his right went to the track pad.

He cleared his throat. “I have an idea. Why don’t you answer that one for me, and I’ll answer it for you? We’ll see who’s closer. Your editor would probably love that angle. Do you know why he highlighted it?”

I said something vague about the back-and-forth Rob had suggested. Ironically, that was exactly how I felt at that moment.

I was adrift, a solitary dinghy in an ocean of sexual tension. And Ash was a big ship, passing me by without throwing me a line. I just bobbed along, moving with the waves, my throat dry and my body overheated.

My instincts, apparently, were wrong.