Page 18 of Babies for the Boss
If Molly is content to close the door on last night and return to what we were, then no one will ever learn there is anything between us. Fedor will have no leverage. She will not become a path someone decides to follow.
She will be safe.
It’s the only thing that matters now.
I have not allowed myself to care whether someone is safe in a very long time. The feeling is uncomfortable in the way unfamiliar things are. Foreign.
I’m not sure what to do with it except act on it, which I already am. “Good. Then we are in agreement.”
“We are absolutely in agreement.” She stands, smoothing her jacket with brisk efficiency, already moving on. “I’ll have the Vasiliev notes ready for your review by eleven.”
“Thank you.”
She nods once, collects herself, and heads for the door.
I watch her go, and the thing in my chest pulls tight again, quiet and inconvenient, the same way it did last night when she left on unsteady legs. Can’t peel my eyes from her ample ass under that skirt. Don’t want to.
I don’t want to stop this. No part of me wants it to be a one-time thing. It was addicting and toxic and so good I never wanted it to end. Last night was transformative for me. Something raw and unformed.
This morning it has edges. I’ll cut myself with it if I’m not careful.
I turn back to the window, to the gray, indifferent Manhattan, and I think about Fedor Vinogradov, and what it will cost me to keep a woman, who is simply my employee, safe from a man who has every reason to destroy me.
Whatever the cost, I will pay it. Ego, body, and heart be damned.
7
MOLLY
I last exactly eleven days.
Eleven days of brisk professionalism, eyes forward, spine straight, perfectly calibrated workplace composure. Eleven days of walking past Pavel’s office like it’s just a room, like nothing of naked consequence has ever happened inside it, like I am a woman completely unbothered by the memory of his hands.
On the twelfth day, I go shopping.
I tell myself it’s overdue. My work wardrobe has gotten safe, repetitive, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel good in what I wear. This is a completely normal, completely unrelated decision that has nothing to do with Pavel Strakov. I come home with four fitted dresses, two silk blouses, and a pencil skirt that my sensible inner voice immediately describes as a liability.
I wear the pencil skirt on Thursday.
The thing about Pavel is that he notices everything and shows nothing. I have watched him receive genuinely alarming news without his expression shifting by a single degree. He isthe most controlled person I have ever met, which makes it extraordinarily satisfying when his eyes drop to the hem of my skirt as I lean across his desk to hand him the Vasiliev file. Just for a fraction of a second, then back up to my face, blank and composed.
But I saw it. I straighten up and smile like I noticed nothing at all. “The revised projections are on page four.” His voice is perfectly even when he thanks me. I walk out on steady legs, turn the corner, press my back against the wall of the corridor, and grin at nothing for five full seconds.
Then I go back to my desk and start planning tomorrow’s outfit.
It becomes a game I play only with myself, which is the most dangerous kind. The new dresses come out one by one. I find reasons to stop by his office that are technically legitimate. A signature needed, a call to relay, a scheduling conflict that could have been handled by email but isn’t.
I time my coffee runs to coincide with his, an exercise in casual engineering that I am mildly ashamed of and not remotely ashamed enough to stop. On a Tuesday afternoon, I squeeze past him in the narrow corridor between the file room and the back stairwell, turning sideways in the tight space, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off him.
He goes very still.
I murmur an apology, keep walking, and do not look back because I have learned my lesson about looking back. I think about his stillness for the rest of the day.
Staff meetings become exercises in peripheral vision. I’m acutely aware of where he is in any given room, the quality of his attention when it moves in my direction. He’s better at hiding itthan I am. He’s not perfect at it, which is the most encouraging thing that has happened to me in several days.
It’s a Wednesday evening, and when the office empties out to just the two of us, the real game begins.
I’m at my desk when he comes out of his office. I hear him pause in the doorway, and I keep my eyes on my screen and my breathing even and tell myself I am a professional woman doing professional work, right up until his footsteps cross the floor toward me and stop just behind my chair.
