Page 27 of Sexting His Assistant

“Don’t I?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she says, and now anger rushes back to cover whatever else she is feeling, “because it has nothing to do with you.”

The lie is transparent.

I step around the chair.

Nina does not step back.

“Then look me in the eye,” I say, “and tell me that text could have been sent to any man.”

Her silence answers first. Then quietly, she says, “This is inappropriate.”

“That did not trouble you five minutes ago.”

Her chest rises and falls once, hard. “I was not sending it to my boss.”

“No,” I say. “You were sending it to some fool who doesn’t know what he’s being offered.”

She stares at me.

I’ve said too much. I know it the instant the words leave my mouth. The problem is that I don’t regret them.

Nina’s voice is very soft when she says, “What exactly do you think I was offering?”

Dangerous question.

More dangerous because she does not seem to know she has asked it.

I should end this. I should hand her back her dignity, remind her this is work, and reestablish the boundaries I have been carving into stone for years.

Instead I say, “A fantasy.”

She says nothing.

I continue, because restraint is slipping and I’m suddenly tired of pretending it is effortless. “One written by a woman trying to convince herself she wants an ordinary man.”

Her eyes widen.

“And does she?” I ask.

She draws in a breath. “You don’t know what I want.”

“No,” I say. “But I know what you wrote.”

“That doesn’t mean⁠—”

“It means enough.”

My gaze drops to her mouth before I can stop it.

When I look back up, she’s seen.

Nina’s hand tightens around her phone. “I said I was sorry.”