Stella sat at her desk, her head heavy, her eyes sandy, every muscle in her back and arms aching from sitting at a computer for hours and hours, her body rigid from stress. She felt obligated to finish what she promised, especially since her work getting deleted was her own damn fault.

Note to self—she thought—anytime she was on a laptop and near Logan, she needed to make two backups. Just in case.

A goofy smile broke out on her face at the thought of there being a next time. She loved the feeling of being kissed and held by Logan, and all the niggling doubts that always plagued her where he was concerned—that he flirted with her to keep her hanging on, that he had a thing for Astrid Allen—all that had been laid to rest when she was in his arms. He’d made her feel wanted.

Even before that, with his careful thoughtfulness regarding her comfort, and the way he’d taken care of her since had made the stressful hours seem a little more bearable.

And then she’d gotten a call from Omar Ellickson, well-respected software engineer who’d built an empire off his ideas, a pioneer in tech, asking if she’d wanted to meet with him to talk about a job.

Her sheer giddiness had distracted her for a good twenty minutes, time she could not afford to waste. It also helped to steel her for dealing with her sisters, who were—to put it mildly—not pleased with her decision to trim a day or two off their trip to get this finished. But they knew the kind of person Stella was, knew that she was incapable of leaving someone in the lurch, of not following through with a promise once she’d made it.

In the hours since she’d talked to them, she’d put her nose to the grindstone and made some progress, but it was getting to the point now where she was so tired that her brain was lagging and foggy. She’d have to go back and look at what she’d done two, three times because she wasn’t firing on all cylinders. She was exhausted and she knew she needed to stop for the night, but she didn’t want to.

That was when an alert popped up on her desktop. She’d had them set for many things related to Logan, his company, and his family. Sure, they had a whole PR department to handle such things, but Stella liked knowing what was being said in the press so that she could be proactive about anything that she needed to be doing to help the situation. More often than not, it was nothing, but these alerts had come in handy from time to time.

This night, they just served to land a blow to her already emotionally and physically exhausted state of mind.

A rush of nerves and adrenaline pulsed out from the pit of her stomach to her fingertips as she clicked on it, and she would readily admit that she wasn’t in the best state of mind to see what she saw when her browser loaded.

It was a series of photos snapped in the press line of the gala Logan went to—and was probably still at.

A series of photos with Astrid Allen.

Deep down, Stella understood that red carpet photos, especially candid ones like these, often weren’t representative of anything. They were a millisecond captured in time, one moment when they looked a certain way that sold a certain image.

Rationally, she knew this.

But she was not rational in that moment. She was exhausted, stressed out, and barely hanging on by a string. And those pictures were picking at all her self-doubt where Logan was concerned, making her feel upset and unsettled because they hadn’t had time to talk about anything yet.

Stella closed her eyes and cradled her head in her hands, then leaned back in her chair. She took deep, calming breaths, hoping to ease the horrible twisting feeling in her stomach. It did not work.

She felt scattered, like nothing made sense.

Her head hurt in her effort to keep the welling tears at bay. Her throat was killing her from swallowing past the lump in it.

She probably zoned out a little bit, which would explain why she didn’t hear Logan come in, and she jumped when he said her name.

He stood stock still, staring at her from across her desk. It was probably a sight to see, leaving her as a normal, functioning person and coming back to her falling apart. Between her never-ending work, her potential new job offer from one of her idols, her sisters’ disappointment, and her insecurities laid bare by a few online snapshots, it’d been a hell of a day, and Stella couldn’t get a handle on herself.

“Are you okay?” he asked, taking a cautious step forward, like she was a scared, cornered animal.

There were so many things she wanted to say, but she was unraveling. It wouldn’t do her any good to express herself when she was like this, and the day had stolen away her ability to reason.

“I want to get out of here,” she replied, her voice wavering.

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “We can do that.”

“Not we. Me.”

Even in her current state, Stella didn’t miss the way Logan’s face fell. “What happened?”

“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

He nodded quickly. “I told you. Go on your trip; I’ll figure something out. We’ll delay the launch, Stella. It’s not worth all this.”

He thought she was talking about the coding.

“Not that,” she said. “This.” She vaguely gestured her hand around them as if that would explain everything.

“Work?”

She nodded. “Work. You.”

He looked devastated and confused. “Me?”

Later, Stella would blame the day she’d had on her lack of verbal filter, but she couldn’t keep her thoughts to herself anymore. She felt a very intense need to let him know, well…everything.

“I think I’ve been in love with you for…I don’t know how long, but a while. And I always found a way to talk myself out of it. You were with Astrid, were going to need a society wife, and you were always such an ass to me. But then you’d give me just enough to think…maybe. Sometimes you’d be sweet and so thoughtful it knocked the breath out of me. But then you’d show up in some more pictures with Astrid Allen, and I’d think I was just seeing things because I wanted to see them. And then the other night happened and those maybes crept up again, and I thought…he must feel the same way about me. I felt it. I knew it then, but now I just feel like I’m seeing things that aren’t there again, that I’m letting myself believe that kisses under mistletoe mean something when they don’t. How can they when you go and do something like this?”

“Something like what?”

She motioned to the picture on her screen, and Logan stepped around to get a look at what she was talking about.

“That didn’t mean anything,” he said, his voice firm and unwavering.

“It looks like it meant something. All the other pictures I’ve seen of you two look like they meant something, too.”

“It means that my mother has dreams of us getting married that are never going to come true.”

“But…she’s your people.”

Logan let out a long breath as he crouched down in front of her so that they were eye-to-eye. “What do you mean, she’s my people?”

“She’s rich, your mother approves of her, she’s gorgeous, she’s photogenic. And she can wear a long dress without looking like a stump.”

Logan took one of her hands in his, and shook his head as he smiled. “You wore a long dress last night, and trust me,” he said, brushing the pad of his thumb across her knuckles. “You took my breath away, and you definitely didn’t look like a stump.”

“But—”

“Stella, you know everything about me. You know my social security number, you know that I hate lemons. You know that I spent most of my childhood terrified of the dark because Drake would always hide under my bed with a fake monster arm and poke me with it once I’d fallen asleep.”

That made Stella laugh. She’d teased him about it ever since he told her that story.

“You know about all the ways I’m worried about fucking up my family’s legacy with this company. I tell you everything. Don’t you think you would’ve known if there was someone else in my life?”

That cut through some of the mania brought on by her never-ending, exhausting day.

“Yes,” she admitted. She’d only ever seen pictures of him and Astrid in press lines, and he’d never asked her to send Astrid flowers, or do any of the things he normally did for women he dated, things that he hadn’t done for anyone for a long, long time now.

“How could there be anyone else in my life, when you’re already in it?”

Logan reached out and cupped her cheek. Stella leaned into it and let out a tired sigh. That was exactly what she needed to hear; it was enough to tamp down the rising doubts she had about what happened last night.

They could deal with it more when she wasn’t about to fall to pieces from exhaustion.

Logan cupped Stella’s face, leaned in and kissed Stella’s forehead, and she gripped his wrists for support.

“Can I take you home? We don’t have to decide anything tonight.”

She nodded tiredly. “I’d like that.”

Logan stood and held out his hand. “C’mon.”