A Charitable Scandal

The Phone Call

Not long after I got settled at my desk, I heard another knock on my door and once again, I found Alec waiting for me. I took a deep breath, gave him a nod, and waved for him to come in.

"Hi," he said as he slipped in and shut the door behind him. "I hope you don't mind, but I thought we could start working on things for the dinner."

"Yeah, of course." I didn't mind at all. As strange as it was, I was actually really grateful he came as quickly as he did. Without him, there was that nasty silence, but with him, there was only work. Well, that and unresolved feelings, but work squashed those deep down for them to fester and kill me later. But, later, at least, wasn't now.

"I, uh, would have been over sooner, but Theo came knocking at my door shortly after you arrived." He stepped over to Emily's desk and grabbed himself a seat. "Apparently there are drinks on Friday."

"Oh, so he got around to asking you."

"Yeah, are you going?"

"Are you not?" I asked, turning to face him only to find he'd rolled over and was much closer than I expected. I swallowed and continued. "I don't think anyone would raise eyebrows when you're out with a whole group of people, especially when it's with the team you've been working closely with. You should take care of yourself and take a break too."

"You're right," he said with a smile. "It would be nice to give everyone a special night after working so hard. Maybe I can expense it."

"Isn't the gala our special night?" I said, laughing a little despite my efforts to stay poised and professional.

"If you think that's going to be a night off, I think you're mistaken."

"Hey, my job was to get people in the door. Colin's team can worry once they're in there."

"Fair enough," he said with an effortless smile.

Once we got to work, it all felt easy, natural. We kept our focus, working out locations for the dinner, deciding on a guest list, and so on. Even in the moments where our hands may have brushed together because we were reaching for the same pen or if we caught each other's eyes in a stray glance, we just enjoyed it for what it was and then moved on. I can't particularly say what we were doing or thinking. Emily thought we had clarity, but we instead lived in this limbo where we both knew we were attracted to each other, but we also knew we couldn't act on it so long as he was my superior. Perhaps what played out that day was a performance, a masquerade. But, it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. It felt okay. It felt like maybe we could pull this off. Yet I knew some day, those little touches, those quick glances, those sly smiles, would accumulate into something more. Then those unresolved feelings would boil over and burn through me.

But, again, that was tomorrow's problem.

"Well, I think we can call it an evening," said Alec with a stretch. "I think we've got everything under control."

And it had been such a nice evening.

His words triggered a memory. My thoughts jumped back to a few days earlier when I had recklessly stood outside that closet door and listened in on a conversation I was never meant to hear.

"I have her under control. You don't need to bring Colin into this."

"Do you really?" she demanded with a vicious growl in her voice. "I was starting to think maybe she had you under control."

"Tamara, I can handle this on my own. It's time you back off and let me do my job."

"Under control?" I mumbled, discovering how fragile my hold over my emotions truly was and how foolish I had been to think we could just go through our days, just barely touching, but constantly testing the limits, without our emotions rebelling.