I couldn’t look at him directly. Not for too long.

Every time my gaze slipped too close to his mouth, or the line of his jaw, or the way his sleeves pulled taut over his forearms, heat crept up my chest and settled, burning, behind my ears.

I sat straight-backed in the chair across from his desk, clutching my portfolio like a shield, trying to will myself into a version of Elena Vargas who didn’t remember what his skin felt like under her palms.

Nicholas Wolfe didn’t seem fazed.

If he recognized me, if he remembered every inch of my body pressed against his in a hotel bed barely a week ago, he didn’t show it.

He read my resume with the clinical attention of a man scanning a quarterly report.

“You’ve worked in architecture,” he said, voice steady, eyes skimming the page.

“Yes,” I said, forcing my voice not to wobble. “I left five years ago.”

He didn’t look up. He just nodded, pen tapping lightly against the desk.

“And why is that?” he asked, as casually as if we hadn’t once shared the kind of night that leaves fingerprints under your skin.

“I got married,” I said, my fingers tightening against the edge of my portfolio.

That word hung awkwardly between us for half a second. But he didn’t react. He just turned another page, eyes unreadable.

“And now?”

I swallowed, the taste of regret sharp on my tongue. “Now I need to work.”

This time, he glanced up, just for a second, but it was enough. Enough for me to feel like I’d been yanked to the center of the room and pinned there by the weight of his attention.

“Do you handle pressure well?” he asked, returning his attention to the file.

“Yes,” I said, heart hammering.

“Confidentiality?”

“Always.”

“Do you take initiative?”

“When needed.”

I hated how fast the answers came and the way my voice stayed calm while my body remembered every inch of him. I felt like I was back in his bed, but instead of soft sheets, it was words. Instead of touch, it was tension, thick and heavy in the air between us.

Except this time, he wasn’t giving anything away. No heated glances. No teasing smiles.
Just Nicholas Wolfe, CEO, treating me like any other applicant who happened to stumble into his carefully ordered world.

I half-expected him to break. To let slip even a joke about the night we’d torn each other apart with a kind of reckless reverence. But he didn’t.

At the end of the interview, he closed the folder with a kind of deliberate finality, setting it neatly aside like the conversation, like whatever unspoken thing still simmered between us, didn’t matter.

“You’ll hear from us soon,” he said, voice neutral, almost dismissive.

I nodded, my breath tight against the inside of my ribs.

“Thank you again,” I managed, already half-rising from the chair, desperate for the door.

But just as I reached for the handle, his voice stopped me.

“Ms. Vargas?”

I turned, pulse spiking, unable to hide the way my fingers tightened against the metal.

He was still seated behind the desk, one hand draped loosely over the closed folder, the other resting flat against the polished wood. His face was unreadable, but his eyes…
his eyes were something else.

“You were well-prepared,” he said.

The words were polite. Professional. The kind of thing a CEO said to a promising candidate.

I gave a small nod, my voice quieter than I intended when I said, “I try to be.”

I opened the door and stepped through it.

Only when the elevator doors slid shut behind me, sealing me away from the impossible heat of that office, did I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

My chest was still burning. And my heart was pounding hard enough to hurt.

“What the hell have I gotten myself into?”