More than kiss him.
To pretend that I don’t want to rip off my clothes and beg him to take me on the floor of his office.
The rest of the building is still empty. The agents working under Nick aren’t due back for another week. We could bang like bunnies on every desk on the third floor if we wanted to.
But he doesn’t want to, and you’re being pathetic. Get your shit together, Alexandra, and get out of here ASAP. Before you make a fool of yourself.
“So…you wanted to talk in private?” I toss the words over my shoulder, worried my expression might give me away.
“Right. I didn’t ask you here to discuss the art,” he says in a softer voice. “Though I’m glad you like the piece. I chose it with you in mind—thought it might be something you’d enjoy looking at every day.”
My brows pinch together as I turn. “What?”
Nick pulls in a deeper breath. “I turned in my letter of resignation last week after Neville cleared me to offer you this position.” He reaches into the front pocket of his grey suit pants and pulls out a key dangling from a blue satin ribbon. “The office, the job…they’re yours.”
“No, Nick. You don’t have to do this,” I insist, my heart throbbing in my throat. “You shouldn’t do this. You’re going to be a wonderful director.”
“I don’t think so,” he says, his lips hooking up on one side as the key still dangles between us. “My heart just isn’t in the work these days, Zanny Wanny. I don’t want to be a spy anymore. I haven’t since we left Bali, in fact.”
“Of course, you do,” I say, too upset to react to the stupid nickname. “You’re just burned out from all the internal investigation stuff. No one enjoys being interrogated for weeks on end. But that’s over, and things can finally get back to normal.”
“I don’t want normal.” He takes my hand and places the key in my palm. “I want…extraordinary.” He folds my fingers around the cool metal, his touch making me simmer the way it always has and probably always will. “I knew that when we left Bali, too, but I didn’t want there to be any conflicts of interest when… or if…” He trails off with a shaky breath before his lips stretch into a wider grin. “I’m leaving Union Ten to start a non-profit.”
“A non-profit?” I echo, still stunned.
“Yes. To help victims of human trafficking. I already have a board of directors and a fundraising team and everything. We’re going to start with a halfway house for women and children here in Baden-Bergen and branch out to other cities as the organization grows.” His head tilts to one side as he adds more softly, “But I’ll stay here, of course. To be close to the people who matter most.”
“Oh. Well, that sounds…nice, but I… W-well,” I stammer, afraid to hope that his words and that look in his eyes mean what I think they mean.
Afraid to hope that he feels the way I do.
Like we made a wrong turn and missed a shot we should have taken.
Like we need a do-over before we lose something we might never find again. Connections like this don’t come around every day, and love isn’t nearly as common as they make it look in the movies.
I’m in love with Nick.
I’ve known that for a while now, but I haven’t dared to imagine that he might be on the same page. He seemed so certain that day on the plane, so convinced we should forget we’d ever been drawn to each other.
But maybe he wasn’t.
“Well?” he prompts after a beat.
“Are you sure about this?” I ask. There was a time when I would have killed—or at least lightly maimed—for this promotion, but sometime in the past six months, the job stopped being enough for me.
I’ve become aware of all the pieces missing from my life, the holes that work doesn’t fill.
I’m tired of going home to an empty apartment. Tired of having no one I can really talk to. Tired of holding the people I love at a distance. Tired of being the tough, unflappable woman I’ve been expected to be since I was a girl.
I want to…soften. To open up. To let people in.
People like my sisters and my close friends and…Nick.
“I’m sure.” He brushes a stray hair from my forehead with a tenderness that makes the hope surging inside me almost unbearable. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life, in fact.”
“But what about…” I take a breath, forcing the words past the lump in my throat. “What you said in Bali. On the plane.”
He sighs. “I was stupid on the plane. And scared. Seeing Blaire fire that gun, watching Stefano wrap his hand around your throat, realizing how many ways you could have died that day if it had played out differently…” He shakes his head. “The more I thought about it, the more it scared the shit out of me. Mostly because I knew that wasn’t the end of it. That as soon as you received your next assignment, you’d be back in the line of fire.” His shoulders lift. “But you love the work, and you’re so good at it. It would have been selfish of me to try to convince you to find a normal job, and I would have failed anyway. You’re a spy to the marrow of your bones.”