Chapter 2

Ariana’s POV

Sunlight. That was the first thing my eyes opened to…annoying blaring light, too much of it, stabbing straight through curtains….very expensive ones and to make it worse my head was doing this slow, ugly throb like someone had taken a rubber mallet to the inside of my skull overnight.

Where the hell am I?

The sheets were the kind of soft that doesn't exist in my apartment, some thread count I couldn't even guess at, and they smelled like him .... cedar, and something darker underneath, like leather left out in the sun. I lay there a second too long just breathing it in before my brain caught up with the rest of me.

Oh no. Oh no no no.

I sat up too fast which was a bad idea. The room tilted, and I pressed a hand to my temple and groaned, and that was when I noticed the note on the pillow beside me, folded. I picked up the note and squinted my eyes to stare at its content. My name was nowhere on it, of course he didn't know it either.

Had coffee sent up. Didn't want to wake you. .... D

D. Just D. Not even the decency of a full name, like I was supposed to just know, like I hadn't spent the night ....

Don't. Don't think about the night. You'll die of embarrassment right here in these very expensive sheets.

I closed my eyes trying so hard not to be embarrassed then I made up my mind and stood, maybe I could sneak away before he came in here.

I found my dress crumpled by the door like it had given up halfway there, one of my heels under the armchair, the other one was nowhere to be seen at all, and here I was hopping around a stranger's bedroom half-naked and hungover trying to locate a single shoe like some tragic, X-rated Cinderella.

The bedroom door opened before I found it.

"Looking for this?"

He stood in the doorway holding my missing heel by the strap. He was fully dressed already in dark trousers, no jacket, sleeves rolled to the forearm like he'd been up for hours, which, judging by the light, he probably had.

His eyes looked the same from the bar, somewhat worse in daylight or better. I genuinely couldn't decide, and my traitor of a body didn't seem to care which.

Get it together, Ariana.

"Thank you," I said, snatching the shoe, my voice coming out smaller than I wanted. "Look, about last night...."

"You don't owe me an explanation." He said it flatly, almost bored, like women threw themselves at him in bars on a semi-regular basis and he'd long since run out of things to say about it. Which, honestly, was fair. "You needed to forget something and there I was, your Uhhh ultimate solution "

"Right." I clutched my shoe to my chest like a shield. "Well. Thanks for that too, I guess."

He almost smiled. Almost. "There's coffee in the kitchen, if you want it before you go."

I wanted to say no, should have said no. I wanted to hold onto some scrap of dignity and march out of there with my head high the way I'd walked out of Lumen, except my head was pounding and my mouth tasted like a bad decision and to be truthful, I really did want the coffee.

One cup. Then you disappear and never think about this again.

The kitchen was the kind you see in magazines, marble everywhere, one of those coffee machines with more buttons than I have seen a coffee machine have, and he moved through it like he barely noticed how much it all cost, because to him it probably didn't cost anything at all.

Yes Ari, not weird at all.

"So," I said, wrapping both hands around the mug he handed me, "do I get a name now, or are we sticking with D forever?"

He looked at me a beat too long before he answered, and something about the pause made my stomach drop before he even opened his mouth, it was as if he was weighing my reaction.

"Damien." He said finally.

Damien. Fine. Normal enough name. Why does my chest feel weird?

"Damien what?"

"Ashford."

The mug slipped. I caught it .... barely .... the coffee sloshing over my knuckles and I barely registered the hot sting because my brain had gone completely, horribly still.

Ashford. Ashford. As in....

"Ashford," I repeated, my voice doing something strange and thin. "Like .... Ashford Group Ashford?"

Something shifted in his eyes as if he was regretting saying it, like he was only now putting a face to whatever he'd heard about the company grapevine, and God, I hated that I could watch him do the math in real time.

"That's the one," he said, slower now, careful. "You work there."

It wasn't a question.

"Executive assistant. Transferring to headquarters Monday." My voice came out flat, like I was reading it off someone else's resume "Guess I'll be seeing you around, sir."

Sir. Oh my God, did I actually just call him sir.

He didn't smile, which somehow made it worse, and for one long, awful second neither of us said anything, we just stood there in the kitchen with coffee cooling between us and what we did last night sitting in the room like a third person nobody had invited.

"Ariana," he finally said, and face snapped to his, because I never told him that either .... Priya must have, at the bar, or maybe I had and just didn't remember .... "this doesn't have to be complicated."

Everything about you already feels complicated, Damien Ashford.

"Sure," I said, and I even managed a smile, the fake kind I'd perfected years ago for exactly this sort of disaster. "Not complicated at all."

But as I gathered my shoes and my dignity….whatever was left of it, he walked me to the door in silence that felt heavier than ever, I already knew.

Monday was going to be a nightmare.