Page 231 of Sexting His Assistant

I look up at him. “Not because I asked you not to shut me out?”

“That too,” Luka says.

At least he admits it.

I lift the cup and take a small sip. The tea is too hot, and I regret it immediately. “Do you think she ran?”

“I don’t know,” Luka says.

“Do you think someone took her?”

“That is possible,” Luka says.

“Because of you?”

His face does not change much, but his eyes narrow slightly. “Because of what she knows.”

I want to ask if he is worried about her. I want to ask if he feels responsible. I want to ask if some part of him still cares about her because once, even if he says not recently, she was close enough to him that she could walk into his office and make a claim like that.

I don’t ask any of it. Because I love him.

That’s the problem.

I know it now with a certainty that has become harder to ignore each morning I wake up in his house and hear his voice outside my door, each time he stops himself from giving me an order and rephrases it like a man learning a language he hates, each time he looks at me as if he is one bad moment away from saying something neither of us can take back.

I love him, and I have no idea what to do with that.

Loving Luka Kazan is not a small feeling. It’s not safe, and it is not simple, and it does not arrive with any guarantee that I will survive it with my career, family, or sanity intact.

So, I sit across from him at breakfast and say nothing about love.

Luka says, “You are quiet.”

“People keep telling me that lately.”

“I dislike it.”

I look at him. “That sounds like a you problem.”

“It’s becoming one,” Luka says.

I almost smile.

Before he can say anything else, my phone vibrates on the table.

Meredith.

I answer quickly, partly because I’m grateful for the interruption and keep the phone on the table in case it gives me a headache.

“Hi,” I say.

“Nina,” Meredith says. “Are you resting?”

I look at Luka.

He watches me like he already knows the answer is no.

“I’m sitting,” I say.