Alicia stiffens slightly against me, and I feel the shift rather than see it—that subtle tensing of muscles, the mental gears starting to turn again.
“You should get that,” I say, even though I don’t want her to.
“It can wait.”
But her eyes are already tracking the screen, reading the preview text even from here. It can’t wait. We both know it. She slips from the bed, gathering clothes with practiced efficiency—no self-consciousness, no hesitation. Just movement with purpose. When she steps into the bathroom, I hear the water run briefly, and when she emerges minutes later, she’s already transforming. Hair smoothed. Blouse buttoned. Every trace of what just happened carefully tucked away. She moves to her office without looking at me, phone pressed to her ear. Through the open door, I hear her voice—steady, composed, utterly different from the woman who trembled in my arms ten minutes ago.
“This is Alicia Morgan.” The response on the other end is frantic, male, panicked. I catch fragments: “...video...everywhere...board sees this…”
“Okay, breathe. You have twenty minutes before the evening cycle picks it up.” Her tone is surgical. “I’ll text you what to say. And for God’s sake, don’t delete the post. It looks guilty.”
He keeps talking, frantic. She cuts him off—calm, professional, surgical. “No, you don’t get to control the story. You respond with transparency and you move forward. You hired me for damage control, not miracles.”
There’s a silence, then the sound of her keystrokes.
I pull on my jeans, every trace of earlier heat replaced by something else entirely. Admiration, mostly. Maybe a little awe.
When she emerges from her office a few minutes later, she could be anyone’s crisis manager—polished, untouchable, the version of herself the rest of the world sees.
I’m leaning against the doorframe when she passes through the bedroom, professional smile in place, like she can compartmentalize everything—including me.
“I need to send a few emails,” she says, not quite meeting my eyes. “Rain check on dinner?”
“Sure.” I watch her disappear into her office, and the click of the door feels deliberate. I stand there in her bedroom—sheets tangled, the scent of her perfume still on my skin—and realize two things.
One: I want her again. More than I should.
Two: Getting close to Alicia Morgan is going to be a challenge.
I should feel regret. This crossed every professional line Gabriel and I discussed. But regret requires thinking you made the wrong choice, and standing here in her bedroom, I can’t bring myself to believe that. What I did feel was the shift—the moment she went from Alicia-the-woman to Alicia-the-crisis-manager. Seamless. Instant. Like she has an internal switch and someone just flipped it.
I’ve been around controlled people before. Military guys who could compartmentalize anything. But this? This is different. She’s not shutting down emotion—she’s filing it away, categorizing it, deciding when and how to access it again. It’s impressive as hell. It’s also unnerving. Because if she can do that with what just happened between us—tuck it away like a completed task—where does that leave me?
An hour later, I’m in the basement, checking the perimeter cameras for the third time when I hear her footsteps on the stairs.
She appears in the doorway—still dressed, still composed, but there’s something softer around her eyes now. Tired, maybe. Or just human again.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks. The monitors flicker blue light across her face.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” she says. “The call. I didn’t mean to just?—”
“You don’t need to apologize.” I lean back in the chair. “It’s your job.”
“Still.” She crosses her arms, not quite stepping into the room. “That rain check—I actually mean it.”
“Whenever you want.”
She nods, then hesitates. Like she wants to say something else but can’t quite find the words. “Stella comes home tomorrow after school.”
“I know.”
“So we should probably…” She trails off, but I understand.
“Keep things professional when she’s around,” I finish.