Page 46 of Tell Me What you Think

Olga stops in the middle of the room, looking at her boss with something like envy at how composed she seems — but it's not her apartment on the line, so she has no reason to panic.

"You're right. Do you want more?"

"No, I'm good."

Olga nods, exhales hard, and reaches for another box from the shelf, but she's so on edge that it slips through her fingers and ends up scattered across the floor.

"Damn," she mutters, staring at the mess.

To make it worse, this one is full of her grandmother's buttons and spools of thread. She presses her hands to her head and plants her back against the wall, because all she wants to do is scream with anger and frustration, but she doesn't want Marina to think she's losing her mind.

Out of the corner of her eye she watches Marina stand up and pull her hair back into a low ponytail, but everything looks blurry because her heart is in her throat and a tightness is squeezing her chest.

"Hey, it's okay. We just pick it up and keep going," Marina murmurs.

"I'm sorry, I'm just losing it." Olga shakes her hands as if they're wet and there's no towel to dry them. Then she sets them on her hips, drops her gaze to her feet, and lifts it again, feeling slightly steadier than she did a few seconds ago.

"We're halfway through and it hasn't turned up."

Suddenly she feels Marina's hand on her shoulder and goes completely still.

"That's lucky, then, since we still have the other half," her boss says, then narrows her eyes. "I didn't take you for a pessimist."

Olga's eyes fly open.

"I'm not a pessimist," she protests like a child, making the vice president laugh. "It's just — okay, maybe today I am, a little," she admits, embarrassed. "It's that I need this to be over. No matter how hard I try to understand Marc, I can't. I would never do this to someone, even if I were living on the street."

"That's because you're not like him. You have principles. You're kind and you're a good person. Don't wear yourself out trying to understand him — he doesn't deserve that much of your attention. Put your energy here, looking for the document."

Olga stares at her, holding back the urge to kiss her again, and she manages it — but what she can't stop is her gaze sliding down to Marina's lips, and the vice president feels a tingle move through her body from her hands all the way up to the back of her neck, leaving her breathless.

"Okay, right, let's keep going. Sorry for the meltdown." Olga crouches down and starts picking up everything scattered on the floor, but Marina needs a few seconds to recover from the feeling before she can help her.

It's past two in the afternoon, the room looking like a flea market, when Olga stands up again.

"Do you like carbonara? I make a pretty good one, and I could put some together if you want," she offers, her cheeks lighting up — because even though she's eaten with her boss before, eating at the office is nothing like cooking for her.

"I'd want more than just some," Marina teases, fascinated by Olga's blush, which is becoming increasingly obvious to her as a signal of what her assistant feels.

"Right, yes — I mean, I'll make more, obviously, you can eat as much as you want—"

"Olga."

"What?" Her assistant goes still.

"Whatever you make will be fine. Relax."

"Of course, I'm not nervous," she says without taking a breath. "It's just that, well—"

She looks left and right, with no idea how to defend herself from her own traitorous body, which has her waving her arms like she's trying to shake off fleas and talking without pausing for air while she says nothing useful.

"I have wine if you want."

She suddenly turns around and walks out of the room without waiting for her boss's answer, moving at a quick pace down the hall to the kitchen, where she fills a glass of water and drinks it in one long gulp. She stands still for a few seconds as the water travels down, and forces herself to breathe when she hears Marina's footsteps in the hallway.

While she cooks, her boss decides to help her relax by bringing up something from work, and it does the trick — Olga stops thinking about the pull of the woman and that low current that has been pushing her toward Marina since she arrived, and actually focuses on the conversation.

They eat hungrily and mostly in silence at first, with a single comment from Marina praising the pasta, until she twirls some spaghetti onto her fork and sets it back on the plate instead of bringing it to her mouth.