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Not right now it didn’t. Maybe not ever, as long as she was touching me and I got to touch her.

“You’re really good at pretending to be straight. Like, you could teach a class,” I said, and she snorted.

“It’s not something I’d recommend.”

Eloise’s phone startled both of us. “Shit. I have a call scheduled with Sylvia in fifteen minutes.”

Right. Work. The thing we were supposed to be doing before we’d kissed.

We looked at each other at the same time.

“Am I still your assistant?” I asked.

She nodded and her hand left me. I wanted to yank it back, but I stepped away to put some breathing room between us.

“You’re my assistant as long as you want to be. I know this complicates things, but I don’t want this to affect your job.”

For the one who was older, that sounded spectacularly naive to me.

“El, it’s going to affect us. But I think we can make this work. Can we at least…try it? See what happens? I’ll look for something else, but I really don’t want to lose this. I like working for you and with you.”

If working with her meant we made out during our breaks instead of drinking tea or coffee then that was fine with me.

Eloise let out a long breath and nodded. “Okay. We’ll try it. But if things get difficult, or you decide you want to be done, I’m not going to stop you.”

I didn’t want to talk about doom and gloom. I just wanted to enjoy what was happening right now.

“I understand,” I said, leaning forward and kissing her once. “Now eat your breakfast so you have something in your stomach before your call.”

* * *

After her call, we had our usual meeting, but this time I ended up flirting with her a lot more than figuring out what I was supposed to be doing today.

“You have to stop,” Eloise said the third time I made her blush. She threw a pen at me and I used my notebook to deflect it.

“No way. You signed up for this, Eloise Roth. You get all of me or none of me,” I said, and she sat back in her chair and crossed her arms.

“Fine. I’ll take all of you.”

The way she said it shocked me. So easy. As if she hadn’t been having a crisis about me earlier.

“Is it weird how easy this is?” I asked. “It feels easy.”

She nodded slowly. “It does feel easy. I’m not sure why that is, but I’m trying not to question it. Maybe that makes me a bad person.”

“No,” I said immediately. “It doesn’t.”

Eloise groaned and laid her head down on her desk. “You’re making it so hard to focus right now.” Her voice was muffled.

“I’m sorry?” I said, my stomach a riot of butterflies that felt like they were going to flap so hard that I was going to levitate right out of my chair.

Eloise lifted her head. “No, you’re not. You’re not sorry at all.”

I grinned and pushed my chair back to my desk. “You’re right. I’m not.”

* * *

Eloise