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get myself devastating, though.”
    As if he weren’t already. Nathan didn’t have to keep himself looking put together on his assistant’s salary. Only son of a Manhattan ad exec and a former model, he’d gotten the job some months earlier through “connections, baby,” and didn’t seem to care too much about keeping it. Which, ironically, made him terrific at publicity. Instead of scurrying and sweating like I did, he made his calls, chatted and laughed and charmed, knew every assistant from New York to Rome, and made it all look easy.
    “Hot date?” I asked. 
    “Warmish. Old friend with potential new benefits. The only way to fly.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “So if you’re in the market…”
    “Wow. You really know how to turn a girl’s head. That’s so…special. Go away.”
    He laughed, not in the least fazed. “See you tomorrow. We’ll go out for a drink after work and celebrate you surviving, how about that?”
    “Thanks. Sounds good.” No, it sounded great. But first, I had to make it through to tomorrow. 
    He took off, and I grabbed my phone and called Karen. One last thing before I got back to the spreadsheet.
    “I’ll be late again,” I told her. “Call for takeout.”
    “OK.” Her voice was listless. 
    “You all right?” I asked. “Something happen?” Oh, no. I had to get this done. 
    “Just tired.” 
    I frowned. Karen could be so withdrawn these days. But fifteen-year-olds could be moody. Not that I knew. I hadn’t been able to afford to be moody at fifteen. But her school was tough. Were they putting too much academic pressure on her? It was so much work for a freshman, but we’d both been so excited when she’d been admitted on scholarship to Brooklyn Friends. She’d assured me she could do it, and that she wanted to. She was very bright, but it was a big change from her public school, and a huge leap. 
    “Is it school?” I asked. “The work?”
    “No. I’m fine.”
    A boy? I wondered. The other girls? She was a scholarship student, and she didn’t have the right clothes or know the right people. She couldn’t afford to go out for lattes after school like the other kids, and I knew that must sting, even if she didn’t say it.
    But I couldn’t worry about that now. I’d talk to her over the weekend. I’d have work to take home, I’d already figured out that much, but I’d steal some time. We’d watch a movie, take a walk. I’d find out what was wrong then, but I couldn’t afford to quiz her now.
    “All right,” I said reluctantly, because I really did have to get all this done, or there would be no takeout, and no apartment. “I’ll see you later.”
    “’Kay. Bye.”
    Two hours later, I was still working. I’d be lucky to be home by nine-thirty. There was nothing so silent, so lonely as an empty cube farm. Fluorescent lights lighting nothing, the doors to the coveted outer offices closed, their windows dark and blank. The janitor had been through already to empty my wastebasket and exchange a word. I was getting to know Clarice pretty well. And I was squinting so hard at a scrawled note that ran up the side of a page, the letters blurred. Or maybe that was just fatigue. 
    “How you goin’?”
    I leaped again, and—yes. I squeaked. I whirled in my chair, and it was him. Hemi. Umm…Mr. Te Mana.
    I jumped up with such haste that the chair rolled out from under me and I stumbled over the wheels, and he put a big hand out, caught my upper arm, and steadied me. Except it wasn’t so very steadying, because he was so tall, and his chest was so broad. Way too tall and way too broad for comfort.
     Tall men made me nervous anyway. I always felt so little next to them, and I could feel them enjoying being so big, and…well, it never seemed like a good idea. Just like eating dessert every night isn’t a good idea. Too much of a good thing is the very definition of a bad idea, isn’t it? 
    He wasn’t wearing a jacket tonight, just a white