Page 9 of Tempted By the Safety

I scowl at him, and Milo sees it out of the corner of his eye and goes pink, color climbing up from his collar into his cheeks.

I wonder how far down that blush reaches, whether it stops at his collarbone or keeps going. As soon as I realize what I’m doing, I look away and clear my throat so loud that Andy glances over at me.

I make myself watch the slide.

During the coffee break, Milo excuses himself, phone pressed to his ear, voice low, as he goes out into the hallway. I stand by the window with a paper cup of coffee I don’t especially want,and Andy drifts over, eyes tracking the same hallway I’ve been tracking.

“So,” he says conversationally. “Who’s the eye candy?”

It takes me a second to answer, mostly because I’ve been thinking something along those lines myself since yesterday, but I don’t like the way Andy says it.

“He’s my PA,” I say. “Stop looking at him like that.”

Andy’s eyebrows go up. “Like what?”

“Like you want to eat him.”

“Okay, okay.” He raises both hands, laughing under his breath, but I know Andy well enough, three years of partner dinners and one very ill-advised bachelor party in Vegas, to know that laugh doesn’t mean he’s backing off. It means he’s filing it.

“Gee. No need to get so territorial, brother.”

“I’m not—”

Milo comes back through the door before I finish the sentence, phone vanishing into his pocket, smile reassembled, and I shut my mouth, because none of the available endings do me any favors.

The day keeps moving after that, meeting bleeding into meeting, a working lunch that’s mostly Andy talking with his mouth full and the finance guy arguing from Chicago about packaging costs. Milo’s phone goes off in nearly every one of them, and every time, he silences it without looking, shoulders sitting tighter than they did this morning.

By four o’clock, we’re between the last two meetings, alone in the conference room labeled Performance, waiting on the next group to file in, and his phone goes off again.

“That phone’s been going all day,” I say. “I’m not paying you to take personal calls. Whatever it is, you can sort it out later.”

I expect an apology. What I get is Milo tipping his head to one side, studying me like I’ve handed him a compliment.

“You know,” he says, “you’re really hot when you’re angry.”

I recognize it immediately for what it is, deflection dressed up as flirting, the same reflex I watched him run in the parking lot when his smile snapped back on before I’d finished offering him a job.

“You shouldn’t talk to me like that,” I say, and I hear it land wrong the second it’s out of my mouth.

The grin falters at the edges before it can catch, and the blush from this morning comes back all at once, darker, and he looks down at his phone.

“Sorry,” he says quietly. “That was out of line.”

He doesn’t say what the calls are about, and I don’t ask. The next group is about to file in wanting decisions from me, and I don’t have the time to go looking for whatever’s sitting under that apology.

4

Milo

Spencer drives the way he sits in a meeting, both hands where they belong, eyes on the road. It’s a good car, low to the ground, built for speeds I doubt he’s ever actually taken it to.

My phone buzzes against my thigh, and his thumb taps the wheel sharply. I swipe the notification away without reading it. It buzzes again forty seconds later, and Spencer’s thumb taps again.

“You know,” I say, “for a man driving a car this nice, you look like you’re steering a school bus through a flood.”

“I’m driving fine.”

“Your knuckles disagree.” I nod at his hand on the wheel. “And you’ve blinked, like, twice since we left the garage. I’m starting to think the road personally wronged you.”