Page 12 of Tempted By the Safety

Whatever he was about to type just evaporates, his thumb going still. His eyes drop slow, tracking the line of the shirt to where it’s tucked at my waist, and there’s a beat before he catches himself and drags them back up to my face.

The saleswoman, hovering a polite distance off with the navy sweater still folded over her arm, opens her mouth to say something, but Spencer cuts her off without even looking at her.

“We’re good from here,” he says. “Thank you.”

She blinks and retreats toward the register.

“Well?” I say, spreading my hands wider. “Say something.”

“I’m assessing the fit.”

I turn a slow circle in front of the mirror, watching him in the reflection. “You can just say I look good, Spencer. It’s allowed. I won’t put it in an email.”

“You look fine.”

“Fine,” I repeat, delighted. “Wow. Careful, all that enthusiasm, I might faint.”

He’s already moving, crossing to a rack near the window. He flips through it until he pulls something out and holds it up, considering, without handing it over yet.

It’s a deep wine color, silk again, and when he finally passes it to me his fingers brush mine over the hanger.

“Try this.”

“Bossy,” I say, but I take it, because I want to see where this goes now. “Didn’t realize personal shopping came with the job offer. Do you do this for all your assistants?”

“Just try it.”

I go change. When I come back out, he’s pulled two more things off the racks himself: an emerald knit that never would’ve occurred to me and a shirt in soft plum, the fabric draped so it looks like it would move when I walk.

“You keep going dark and jewel-toned,” I say, turning to show off the wine one. “This a whole vision, or are you just grabbing?”

“They suit you better than the gray. Try the emerald.”

I laugh, but he’s not even smiling. He almost never smiles, I’ve noticed that much already. But he hasn’t looked away, so I keep talking.

“You know,” I say, “I did my due diligence before I took this job. Read your whole Instagram, start to finish. You don’t move in with a stranger without checking he’s not a cabin-in-the-woods situation.”

“And?”

“Inconclusive. But a man who keeps handing me shirts to try on is definitely going on the evidence board.”

“Noted,” he says, and hands me the knit.

I decide to quit joking while I’m ahead. I like this job, and I like it more than I like pushing my luck, so I go change.

The knit fits close through the shoulders and drops soft at the waist.

When I come back out this time, he’s the one who reaches for me before I’ve even said anything, taking my collar in both hands, adjusting it where it’s sitting crooked.

I go very still.

He’s close enough that I can smell his woodsy soap, nothing sweet in it, and his thumbs are working the collar flat with the same unhurried focus he brings to everything else. His head’s dipped, eyes on his own hands, but then they drift, slow, down past the collar to the line of my collarbone, and lower, to the stretch of chest the shirt leaves bare.

The air goes tight, and I think, distantly:oh, no. Not now.

He’s my boss, I’ve had this job two days, and I need it so bad, but none of that stops the heat climbing up my neck or my breath going shallow when his hand slides from the collar to the bare skin just below it, thumb brushing once, light, against the side of my throat.

It isn’t an accident. I know the difference between an accident and this.