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“Happy birthday.”

Then the doors close.

3

RAE

BUILDING SECURITY ACCESS LOG - 12:39 A.M.

Floor 40: Kir Lazarev [EXIT]

Floor 40: Lukas Lazarev [EXIT - unauthorized smoking detected]

Floor 40: Rae Everett [FROZEN IN PLACE]

I’m not sure how long I stand there after Lukas has gone before I snap back to my senses.

I look down at myself. Despite my best efforts, my blouse is still untucked and my hair is still an ungodly mess. The card he left in my hand feels like it weighs about a gazillion pounds.

What the hell just happened?

I replay the last hour in my head. Honestly, it’s a lot for a girl to process. Especially a girl whose brain has been reduced to lukewarm banana pudding by one hell of a bad day.

It all just happened sofast.One second, I was trying to remember whether the Tokyo office is thirteen or fourteen hoursahead of us here in New York; the next, Kir’s hands are on me, his mouth sealed to my neck, he’s purring filthy things that don’t belong in an office, my nipples are puckering out of sheer physical reaction to a man grinding himself into me, and even though I don’t think I feel that way about him, he’s still a gorgeous man, objectively speaking, and the longer I went without shoving him off, the closer he came and the more my stupid, virginal body wanted to just melt, melt, melt…

And then his father.

Hisfather.

Appearing out of nowhere like smoke. Like a bad dream. As if the universe decided my birthday hadn’t been humiliating enough already, so why not throw a gorgeous, intimidating older man into the mix so I could embarrass myself in front of him?

I turn and rest my forehead against the window. The glass is icy to the touch and it fogs when I exhale. My reflection looks back at me: flushed cheeks high and pink, swollen lips, eyes stuck too wide.

I look like someone who just got caught doing something she shouldn’t.

Because I did.

Kind of.

Didn’t I?

God, I don’t know anymore.

My stomach churns. I can still feel the ghost of Kir’s fingers on my skin. My nostrils are still full of his cologne, cinnamon andfire. But even though I’m a muddle of a million things right now, I know it’s not really Kir that has me feeling so frazzled.

It’s a man of ice. It’s cigarette smoke and the memory of gray eyes that burned the way you get burned by the coldest water you’ve ever felt.

I shake myself out of it. Standing here mooning over what just happened isn’t going to change anything. It will probably just make things worse, in all likelihood.

I tuck my blouse back into the waistband of my skirt, try to do damage control on the wrinkles, and rearrange my hair into something slightly less disastrous.

Lukas’s card goes into my pocket. I’ll deal with that later. Or never. Preferably never.

My coat is hanging on the back of my chair. I grab it. My bag is under my desk where I left it this morning, back when I was just a sweet, naive summer child. I grab that, too.

The office is eerily quiet. It’s like walking through a forbidden graveyard as I head for the elevator. Even on the carpet, my foot strikes are loud enough to make me cringe.

I press the button to summon the elevator, step back to wait…