"Fine," I say. "I'll need him for the client meetings and the on-site work. He handled the logistics at Linden well. He knows my process."
My voice is steady. I don't look at Ray. His gaze is a weight on the side of my face.
"Good." Richard gathers his folder and stands. "Full brief coming today. First meeting with Shaw's team is Thursday at their offices. Don't be late."
He leaves. The glass door swings shut and the conference room is just me and Ray and the hum of the air conditioning and the silence that rushes in to fill the space where Richard's authority used to be.
Ray doesn't move. He's watching me with those warm brown eyes and his expression is careful, open, patient in a way that makes me want to scream, because patience implies he's waiting, and waiting implies he thinks there's a reason to.
"The Whitfield file." I pick up the folder and keep my eyes on it. "I need you to pull the full acquisition history and run due diligence on Crane's financials. I want it on my desk by end of day tomorrow."
"Miles."
The way he says my name. Not Garcia. Not boss. Miles. Soft, like we're still in that bed in the mountains and the fire is dying and he's tracing my scar with his thumb.
"By end of day, Garcia."
He holds my gaze for a long moment. The resort is in the space between us — the bed, the heat, his hands, the knot, the quiet afterward when he held me and I almost told him everything. All of it sitting right there in conference room B under the fluorescent lights, and neither of us is going to acknowledge it.
"You got it, boss," he says. His voice is even, his face neutral, and whatever is underneath both of those things, I refuse to look at it.
He stands. He gathers his legal pad and his pen, and he walks past me toward the door, and as he passes the back of my chair his arm brushes my shoulder and his scent hits me unfiltered — close, warm, real — and my hand moves before I can stop it.
I grab his wrist.
We both freeze. My fingers are wrapped around his wrist and his pulse hammers under my thumb, fast, faster than his even voice suggested, and I'm staring at my own hand like it belongs to someone else. I didn't tell it to do that. I didn't decide to do that. My body just reached for him the way it's been reaching for him since the resort, and for one horrible, honest second I can't make myself let go.
Ray looks down at my hand on his wrist. He looks at me. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't pull away. He just stands there and lets me hold onto him and waits.
I let go. I pull my hand back and put it flat on the table and my heart is pounding and the heat of his skin is fading from my fingertips.
"Thursday," I say. My voice is steady because I will it to be steady. "Shaw's offices. Nine AM."
"Thursday," he repeats, quiet. And then he's gone and the door clicks closed and I'm alone with my hand on the table, still warm where I touched him.
On the way back to my office, I pass Lauren Chen's desk. She's a third-year associate, smart, sociable, the kind of person who has coffee with someone from every department and knows everything happening on every floor before it happens.
"Hey, Miles." She looks up from her monitor with a friendly smile. "Good trip? We heard you had to extend your stay."
Her tone is light. Conversational. There's nothing in it — no edge, no smirk, no knowing look. But the word heard detonates in my chest like a small, precise bomb. Someone noticed. Someone tracked that I was supposed to fly back Sunday and didn't. Someone mentioned it, and Lauren Chen heard.
"Travel issues." My voice doesn't change. "Flight got canceled."
"Oh, that sucks. Glad you're back, though."
She turns back to her monitor and I keep walking. My heart is going too fast and my face is doing its best impression of calm and I make it to my office and close the door and press my back against it and stare at the ceiling and breathe.
The coffee is still on my desk. Room temperature now. It's been sitting there for over an hour, right where Ray set it down. The cardboard sleeve has his thumb mark on it where he carried it from the shop.
I sit in my chair and look at it. I could drink it. Cold coffee is still coffee. I've been drinking cold coffee for years — alone, in this office, bought by myself, consumed without anyone knowing or caring how I take it. That was fine. That was my system.
This coffee is different. This coffee was bought by someone who remembers a preference I mentioned once in passing, who walked two extra blocks in the cold to get it from the right place,who set it on my desk without a word because he wanted to do something kind for me and didn't need me to acknowledge it. If I drink it, I'm accepting something. If I accept something from him, I can't pretend the rest didn't happen.
I pick the cup up. The cardboard is soft with condensation. I hold it, and for a second I bring it close enough to smell — cold coffee and cardboard and, underneath, the faintest trace of Ray's grip on the sleeve.
I drop it in the trash.
I sit back in my chair. The case file is open on my desk. Six weeks. Six weeks of pretending that the man reviewing my financial disclosures didn't have his tongue inside me last Thursday.