January in London had teeth.
The kind of cold that sank into the bones, biting through coats and scarves, curling beneath doorframes. Christmas already felt like a distant dream and the new year had arrived with an avalanche of deadlines.
The postponed campaign — the one they were working on before Robert was sent flying across time zones over the past two months — was finally back on the table. Which meant long days, endless meetings and more coffee than was ever wise.
Isabelle didn't mind the work. What she minded was how much she minded him.
Robert was back. Unruffled, just enough to make the London grey look colder, his suit sharp, his expression unreadable as ever — though now, every time their eyes met, something flickered there. A knowing. A recognition neither of them acknowledged.
"Morning," he said, passing her desk with a faint smile.
"Morning," she replied, matching his tone — light, professional, almost casual.
Almost.
It was impossible not to notice her.
She commanded his attention, but not in the way Sienna had, all perfume and calculation, but quietly, effortlessly. Isabelle moved through the chaos of the office with calm precision, her presence steady, grounded, grounding.
He told himself he respected her work. That was all. But then she'd laugh, that low, genuine sound with a smile that reached her eyes and something inside him would catch.
They'd spent most of the week buried in the campaign pitch: revising timelines, refining presentations, anticipating the questions that clients always threw like knives. Somewhere in the middle of it, their conversations began to drift.
One minute they were discussing market strategy; the next, they were talking about childhood holidays or how British weather had no sense of decency.
It wasn't flirting. Not quite. But it wasn't not either.
It surprised her, how easy it was.
How Robert, the man she'd once suspected of sabotaging her, had become the one person in the office she could talk to easily.
He noticed things. The way she'd start tapping her pen when she was frustrated. How she took her coffee when the day was going wrong. Once, after a particularly tense client call, she'd found a packet of her favourite biscuits quietly left on her desk. No note. Just… there.
Not that she needed a note.
Sometimes, they'd share a look in a meeting when someone said something absurd and that single glance was enough to send her fighting back a smile. Their private language of raised brows and half-suppressed laughter.
It felt dangerous — in the smallest, sweetest way.
He kept telling himself it was harmless.
That the reason he lingered by her desk was purely practical. That when their hands brushed over the same file and neither pulled away immediately, it was nothing.
But the line between nothing and something had grown thin. Almost transparent.
She was careful, never letting the warmth between them stray into something that could be misread. But sometimes he caught her looking at him; not shyly, not nervously, but as though she was trying to work out a puzzle she hadn't meant to start.
And sometimes he caught himself doing the same.
They spent one long evening in the conference room, finalising slides for the presentation. The city lights blurred against the glass and the office had emptied hours ago.
She was standing at the window, staring down at the traffic, her reflection like a faint ghost in the glass.
"Do you ever switch off?" he asked quietly.
She smiled without turning. "Not really. You?"
"Same," he said. "Maybe that's why I look so tired."
She turned then, meeting his gaze and for a moment, everything stilled.
The room, the city, the dull hum of computers. Just her eyes, calm and searching, catching something in his that neither of them wanted to name.
She blinked first, breaking the spell with a soft laugh. "We should probably call it a night."
He nodded, though every instinct told him to stay.
"Goodnight, Robert."
"Goodnight, Isabelle."
Her name felt like something he shouldn't say aloud, it was too precious, but he did anyway.
By February, they had slipped into a quiet, secret rhythm within the office.
They didn't seek each other out, but somehow always ended up in the same places; by the coffee machine, at the end of meetings, in conversations that lasted longer than they should.
He made her laugh in ways no one else did. She made him soften in ways he hadn't in years.
And still, neither crossed the line.
Late one Friday, she caught him watching her as she shut down her laptop. Their eyes met, and for one charged second, it felt like standing at the edge of something vast — and both of them knew it.
Then he looked away.
She exhaled slowly, forcing her hands to keep moving, heart steadying itself against her ribs.
Just colleagues, she told herself.
Just friends.
Just two people who understood each other too well.