Page 17 of Babies for the Big Shot

Barely.

I gather my things with trembling hands, whisper a final “goodnight, Captain Clippy,” and try not to look directly into Nick’s office as I flee the building with all the grace of a wounded gazelle on fire.

Tomorrow, I’ll be better. Calmer. More confident.

Maybe I’ll even wear deodorant before the panic sweats kick in.

But right now?

I just need wine, carbs, and possibly a ritual cleansing to remove the lingering shame of referring to a stapler as my co-worker.

CHAPTER FOUR

Nick

It has beenfive business days since Sara Brooks stepped into my office, wearing a coffee-stained blouse and the kind of confidence that doesn’t apologize. Five days, and I still find myself measuring my focus against the precise moments she disrupts it.

She sits twenty-three feet from my desk. I measured it. Not out of obsession, but because I value accuracy. Quantifiable variables create stability. Distance, positioning, exposure. What can’t be measured becomes risk. And risk, in my world, is not taken lightly.

Except, apparently, where she is concerned.

She hums while she works. Narrates tasks under her breath. Argues with her stapler as though it has agency.

None of it should matter. But I hear her, fragmented pieces of thought and commentary that cut through the usual monotony of office noise. It’s distracting. Not because it’s unprofessional, though it is, but because it’sher. And that presence, undisciplined and unapologetic, continues to take up more space than I’ve given it permission to.

It’s not desire. Desire I can compartmentalize. This is something else. Something that persists even after I’ve tried to box it in with polite disinterest and procedural distance.

This morning, I manage precisely three hours of sustained avoidance. Then the espresso machine intervenes.

She enters the break room just as I reach for the mug I left on the tray. Her fingers brush mine, nothing significant. A fraction of contact, entirely forgettable in any other context. But it lands with the weight of a trigger pulled. My pulse spikes before I can will it back into order.

The scent is immediate. Coffee. Vanilla. A faint trace of the kind of shampoo that belongs in a drugstore aisle, not an executive office. Familiar. Too familiar.

We both remain still.

Then her gaze lifts. Direct. Alert. A flicker of something I can’t name passes between us before she speaks.

“Wow,” she mutters. “Déjà brew.”

I study her. “Did you just?—”

“Make a coffee pun under duress?” she replies. “Yes. Apparently, this is what stress does to my dignity.”

Humor as deflection. I’ve seen it often enough in high-stakes rooms to recognize the pattern. She’s attempting to disarm the moment before it solidifies into something too real.

She leans against the counter, arms folded, shoulders tense, chin elevated.

“Relax, boss man,” she says. “I’m not going to throw myself at you. We already had our HR violation.”

The word lands sharply.

“Violation,” I repeat, tone neutral. “That’s how you classify it.”

She straightens. Her posture shifts but her gaze holds. “Anonymous elevator hookup. Followed by finding out you’rethe CEO. I’d say that qualifies. I just skipped ahead to the part of the story where everything burns down.”

There’s the joke again, but the heat in her neck and the pressure of her grip on the ceramic say more than the line delivered.

“You don’t strike me as someone who regrets her decisions.”