Page 14 of Dial F for Finance

There are several answers to that.

We need to talk about the terrace.

We need to talk about your mouth.

We need to talk about the fact that I spent twelve hours forcing myself not to show up at your apartment and have received no medal, parade, or applause for said restraint.

Instead, I lift the folder in my hand.

“Nakamura.”

Something moves across her face before she locks it down. Disappointment, maybe. Irritation. Hard to tell with Jenna. The woman can make a spreadsheet look emotionally available by comparison.

“Of course,” she says, and looks back at the contract.

I’ve been doing this dance with her for three years. Standing in doorways. Offering drinks. Letting her cut me down in public because at least when she’s using the knife, she’s looking at me. I hid what I wanted inside the joke so well that she still thinks the joke was the point.

The problem, naturally, is that I never changed the packaging. I kept the grin. The flirting. The Pemberton in the low tone she pretends to hate. From her side of the room, I probably still look like the same arrogant bastard who called her Bennett’s ice-queen assistant and announced that working with her should be fun.

Not my finest moment.

Also, not inaccurate enough to be defensible.

I move into the seat across from her and set the folder on the table between us. “Our Tokyo counsel says Nakamura wants us tired.”

“Strategic fatigue,” she says immediately.

“Yes.”

“Long meetings. Courtesy dinners. Translation questions that aren’t translation questions. Three rounds of revisions designed to make everyone so bored they concede out of self-defense.”

“That’s depressingly close to Hiro’s exact wording.”

“Then Hiro is competent.”

“He’ll be delighted to hear you approve.”

“I don’t approve. I acknowledge.”

“Praise, from you.”

“Don’t let it go to your head. There’s very little room left up there.”

I smile before I can help it. That’s the thing about Jenna. Even furious, even guarded, even when every word she says is designed to keep me at a clean professional distance, she still slides in under my ribs with ridiculous ease.

She opens the briefing folder and scans the first page. The cabin light catches on the neat fall of her hair, on the smooth line of her cheek, on the red polish covering nails that I desperately want raking down my back.

I should not be thinking about her nails.

Unfortunately, my brain has become a lawless jurisdiction where she’s concerned.

“What’s the ask?”

It takes me a moment to focus enough so I don’t blurt something obscene. “Twelve additional percentage points.”

Her eyes lift. “That’s not an ask. That’s a mugging.”

“It is aggressive.”