Page 86 of Bad Girl
His busy day. The man had arrived at work at ten fifteen.
“I appreciate it,” I said, in the tone I reserved for things I did not appreciate.
The tension had been building since morning. Since before morning if I was honest—since the moment I’d woken with Kael already alert beside me, restless in a way that had nothing to do with the run or the rose garden or any of the careful groundwork of the past weeks. Something was shifting. Close now. The event that would seal everything between us, tip the balance from building toward arrived.
It could happen at any moment.
I heard the lift.
Faint. Three sets of doors between us and it. But I heard it.
Kael went absolutely still.
I inhaled—long, slow, my chest rising until the buttons of my shirt pulled against it—and beneath Nora’s considerable contribution to the atmosphere of the floor, underneath everything, I caught the edge of it.
Her.
“I have to go,” I rasped.
“No.” Cuán leaned forward.“Don’t you dare—”
I slapped the laptop shut.
Blissful silence.
I reached for my keys and phone, listening. Her voice in the outer reception—low, clipped, the distinct quality it got when Bad Girl was close to the surface. Nora’s response. A pause. The sound of Nora deciding, with great professional dignity, that this was an excellent moment to take a personal break.
Smart woman. I’d approved her raise last quarter and it had clearly been the correct decision.
I never made it out of my chair.
The door flew open.
Kael made a sound in my chest that I had no intention of repeating in polite company.
She was flushed—colour high in her face, hair escaping around it, one hand locked on the door handle with a grip that suggested it was doing some structural work in keeping her upright. Her eyes found mine immediately.
The scent hit me like a closed fist.
I sat very still and breathed through it with every resource I had.
“You,” she said, pointing at me with the focused energy of someone who had identified the source of their problem and was prepared to deal with it directly.“Need to fix this.”
A beat.
“Right now.”
She stamped her foot.
I looked at the foot. Then back up.
This was the reward of patience. Of plants and rose gardens and hands held for three seconds on the way home. Of Kael pressed back and back and back again while I made careful, considered decisions about timing and trust and the delicate architecture of something that couldn’t afford to go wrong.
She had just stamped her foot at me.
I slipped my keys and phone into my pocket.
And stood up slowly.
