Page 90 of Falling for the Enemy

“Well—”

Her breath caught. “I knew it.” That quickly, the false sense of security ripped away.

“I was just going to say, Wren’s been here, but she doesn’t count.”

And the tentative sense of security was back.

She smiled, cheeks flushing like a swooning teenager, too inexperienced with her own feelings not to embarrass herself. She bashfully looked at him, poking her bare foot out from under the blanket to push his knee with her toe. “I guess it’s fine then.”

He caught her foot, his thumb rubbing softly over the smooth skin by her ankle. “It?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Your way. We can try it if you want.”

“I want.”

Something warm and gooey unraveled in her chest, but for once she let it just happen. Trust would be difficult, but she was willing to try. For him.

He looked down at her foot. “Is this the ankle you hurt?”

She nodded, and he gently lifted her foot to examine it.

“It looks good. Did you end up seeing the doctor today?”

“No. Astrid made me some anti-inflammatory tea that brought the swelling down. Between that and the aspirin, I decided I was fine.”

He lifted her heel and pressed a soft kiss to her ankle. “And a kiss to make it better.”

Oh, she was in trouble…

CHAPTER 11

“HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW?”

The elevator doors opened on the forty-fifth floor, and Soren strutted across the threshold with the swagger of a man who earned every bit of authority he claimed. The C-suite atrium was alive with demands, a centric part of the hive where the buzz never stopped.

His assistant, Marie, was already standing, prepared with a full debriefing of his morning schedule. “Good morning, Mr. Hawthorne. Did you have a nice weekend?”

“I had a fantastic weekend, Marie. How about you?”

“Mine was quiet, the way I like it.”

“Great.”

She dove right into business. “Brennan’s waiting on the New England logistics. Parsons needs the Q4 sign-off before lunch. Mr. Aldrich emailed to request the numbers for the Poland deal. And there are Danishes in the break room if you’d like me to fetch you one.”

“Danishes?”

“A thank you from the bank.”

He moved toward his office without breaking stride, his mind still threading through every delicious memory from the weekend. The taste of her. The surrender. The moment she finally admitted she was his.

He’d won. Actually won. And Jocelyn was finally his. Not just a body he sometimes begged the right to touch, but someone he could call and talk to, someone he could plan a future with. The world narrowed to a crisp, precise view, clearer, as if everything he’d ever wanted had finally come into focus.

“Pull the Brennan file and get me his projections by the end of the day,” Soren decided, ready to take on the world. “Tell Parsons I need the Q4 raw data in my office in twenty minutes. Not the summary. The raw numbers.”

“Already pulled both,” Marie kept pace beside him, her tablet angled toward his sight line. “Brennan’s waiting. Parsons is ready whenever you are.”

The office door opened before they reached it. He implemented the system himself after Magnus died. The locks read his biometric signature and only his—a small rebellion against the ghost that still haunted this space.