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* * *

Being in the office without Eloise was strange and I didn’t like it. Even though I had my headphones on, the lack of her presence was like hearing my name called and looking up to find there was no one there.

I also kept wondering what she was doing in the house with her afternoon off. I might have thought she would leave or go do something, but her car was still parked in front of the garage.

I’d gotten the distinct impression, over these few weeks, that though Eloise did have friends and went out, at heart, she was a homebody. It made sense with the career she’d chosen. Not a lot of people would be able to stomach sitting alone and typing for hours on end in solitude for year after year. Definitely wouldn’t be me, no matter how much I got paid. My sanity would crack after a few days.

Eventually I made it to the end of the day, and I didn’t want to just leave without saying goodbye, so I sent Eloise a message that I was heading out and she told me to come and find her in the gym.

First I was hearing about her having a gym, so I tentatively went to the second floor and stepped down the hallway.

The second door on my right was open, and I heard sounds of a woman’s voice coming from a TV.

“Knock, knock,” I said while also rapping on the doorframe with my knuckles. Like a weirdo.

Peering in, I saw something that I didn’t expect, and that almost made me wish I was sitting down.

Eloise sat up from a yoga mat and hit pause on the workout that was playing on the large TV mounted to the wall above a line of mirrors.

And there she was, wearing a black sports bra and matching skintight yoga pants with her hair pulled back and looking up at me as if she hadn’t expected to see me standing there.

Fuck. I needed to say something. Right now. Anything. Anything at all.

Say.

Something.

“I…”

Eloise got herself together before I did. She shook her head and sat back on her mat, stretching her legs out in front of her.

“I was just doing a gentle class. My neck and back get all stiff when I have my migraines and it can help to stretch.”

“Oh,” I managed to say. There. That was something. Now that I had regained the power of speech, I had to get control of my eyes, because allllll I was doing was staring. And staring.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed Eloise’s body before, but she’d never been this dressed down in front of me and it was causing my brain to misfire and think all kinds of terrible, dangerous things.

I would not, I would not let myself look at that strip of skin between the hem of her sports bra and the waist of her pants. That was a no-go zone. A blaring red warning light.

“Are you on your way out?” Eloise finally asked.

“Yeah,” I said, gluing my eyes to her face so they didn’t venture anywhere else. “Yeah, I’m going home.”

She nodded and got to her feet, grabbing a bottle of water as she stood.

This was worse. This was so much worse. Skin. So much skin. Too much skin.

I stumbled backwards and banged my back on the doorway.

“See you tomorrow,” I gasped out before I turned around and basically bolted down the stairs so I didn’t say or do anything to get myself seriously fired.

Chapter Ten

Eloise

I hadn’t expected her reaction to seeing me in my workout gear. It hadn’t occurred to me that I should change or cover up. I went to Pilates class in the same outfit. Many people had seen me like this, so why would it matter if my assistant did?

It shouldn’t have mattered.