"Do you always say exactly what you think?" "Do you always pretend you don't?"
— ◆ —
The employment contract for Zara's new position was four pages long and contained, among other things, a non-disclosure clause, a social media restriction, and a paragraph about appropriate professional distance that she read three times.
She signed it anyway.
The fifty-second floor operated like a separate country. It had its own kitchen — stocked, she noted, with nothing she'd actually eat, all protein bars and green juices arranged with geometric precision. It had a conference room that could seat twenty and usually seated two. It had an adjoining office that would be hers for the duration, smaller but still larger than her entire apartment, with a view that made her dizzy if she stood too close to the glass.
Marcus Webb, Ethan's head of security and the closest thing he had to a friend, handed her an orientation packet and watched her with open curiosity.
"You're the one from the elevator," he said.
"I prefer 'the new temp.'"
"He called down personally. He doesn't do that." Marcus tilted his head. "He doesn't do a lot of things he did this morning."
Before Zara could respond to that particular land mine, Ethan appeared in the doorway between offices. He was on the phone — he seemed to always be on the phone — but his eyes tracked to her the moment she moved.
He wrapped up the call in under thirty seconds. Zara filed that away: he could end conversations that fast when he wanted to. He simply usually chose not to.
"Mitchell," he said.
"Kingsley," she replied.
A beat. Marcus made a sound that might have been a suppressed laugh and excused himself with suspicious speed.
"My previous assistant had a system," Ethan said, sitting at his desk without further preamble. "I'll need you to learn it. Calendar is primary — I have four conflicts on Thursday that need to be resolved before noon. The Hong Kong call takes precedence. The charity gala does not."
"Which charity?"
"The Kingsley Foundation Gala. My mother's event." He said it the way one says 'root canal.' "She's already called twice this morning. I've returned neither call."
"That's a choice," Zara observed.
"It's a strategy." He glanced up from the file he'd opened. "Do you always say exactly what you think?"
"Do you always pretend you don't?"
The air shifted. Zara felt it — the way a room feels before a thunderstorm, pressure dropping, atmosphere rearranging.
Ethan Kingsley set down his pen. Looked at her with those dark eyes that the Forbes photographer had called 'unreadable' and that Zara was beginning to suspect were simply used to not being read by anyone who tried hard enough.
"The previous assistant lasted eleven months," he said.
"What happened to her?"
"She cried. Twice. I don't handle that well."
"I don't cry," Zara said. "I get annoyed. Fair warning."
"Noted." And there it was again — that almost-smile. "The Thursday calendar. Start there."
She started there.
By noon she had resolved three of the four conflicts, pushed the Hong Kong call to a better time zone window, and discovered — by accident, while cross-referencing his archived emails — a series of messages from someone named Daniel Harlow that Ethan had marked unread and never opened, going back eight months.
She didn't mention it.
But she thought about it for the rest of the day, the way you think about a door you're not supposed to open.
That evening, as she gathered her things, Ethan said without looking up: "You're efficient."
"I know."
"That wasn't a compliment. It was an observation."
"I know that too."
This time, she was almost sure she heard him laugh — quiet, surprised, like a sound he'd forgotten he could make — as she walked out.