The Billionaire's Assistant

Chapter 67

She leaned against the mirrored walls of the elevator, the adrenaline that had carried her through her task leaching out of her. Kat had a precinct sense of being left behind, as if she'd stayed with the previous night to collect her thoughts and the rest of the world had moved on without her.

She actually had no idea if Jove was in the office or not, she realized. She'd almost stepped out on the floor but hadn't actually checked his office, the door had been closed. She sighed and trodded to his door, pressing her ear against it for a split second before throwing it open. Empty.

She sighed again and returned to her desk, folding both arms on the table and resting her head within the divet they created. A long day of waiting lay ahead of her.

"Kat?"

She felt herself being gently shaken to wakefulness, sleep slipping off her shoulder like a silken decorative throw.

She lifted her head slowly, blinking in the light with the new awareness that her eyes had been devoid of it, devoid of it for longer than she knew. She blinked again, the fluorescents making her tired eyes ache slightly, and stifled a yawn before remembering that she'd been woken by something, that she'd heard a voice call her name. She turned to the right with a start to see Jove looking down at her, a bemused smile on his face.

"Were you dreaming about me?" he teased. "C'mon, we gotta get to work."

Kat blinked again, more slowly this time, determined to take him in for once without losing control of her reaction.

"Hi," she squeaked lightly, failing in her endeavor.

"C'mon," he said again, still looking down at her and not yet walking away as he typically did, an air of certainty around him that she was following. Instead he waited for her, waited with eagerly anticipating eyes. "We gotta get writing."

Kat nodded and stood shakily, stretching a bit as she stifled a yawn.

"I was tired," she explained sheepishly.

"I mean," Jove said, not stepping back from her chair despite how close it put him to Kat once she'd stood. "We can just chill today. We could go to the floor with the gym. I'll ask my masseuse to come over."

"You have a masseuse?": Kat asked in a voice made flat by recent wakefulness, rolling her eyes playfully.

"Not in-home!" Jove protested, and Kat laughed, feeling the trademark spark of lively energy that Jove always brought about in her.

"I wasn't even thinking in-home, most people don't have one period" she retorted, and Jove joined in her laughter.

"Well, I'll just tell him you don't want one then."

"I don't really wanna get massages," said Kat. "And I don't wanna write."

"I mean, It's your job, but whatever," he interjected with a grin.

"Shut up," she acknowledged lightly, pointing at him in mock warning then continuing to speak as if he'd never interrupted her. "I wanna do something fun."

"You wanna do something fun?" he repeated with a raised eyebrow.

Kat nodded, feeling herself, her true self, come back to bloom in his presence as if in springtime.

She knew this would be her last day with him, the last time she could feel this way, could enjoy time in his company without any guilt. Or at least, she thought, no more guilt than I already feel.

Kat was determined to take full advantage of the situation, to forge a memory that could help sustain her as she stared down a lifetime of days without him, without his light.

"What should we do?" she asked with a grin.

Jove's grew to match hers and they stood there like that for several beats, grinning at each other, a reflection of the other's happiness but Kat's tinged with the knowledge of what was to come.

"I dunno," Jove finally said, a nearly goofy expression plastered on his face.

Kat could've cried at the sight of it, how handsome he looked, how lovable. She felt the sudden, inexplicable urge to bite him, and giggled uneasily at her own strange predilections.

"Something fun," Kat repeated. "You pick, come on. Anything.

Jove looked up, thinking.

"Oh," he intoned. "We could go to Buttermilk. Great time of year."

"Buttermilk?" Kat asked with bunched eyebrows

"In Aspen."

"Colorado?" she clarified incredulously.

Jove laughed.

"Last time I checked, yea."

"No," Kat said with a laugh to match. "No. I have to be home early today."

She thought for a moment, trying to calculate the time she and Jove would need to leave the office for her to guarantee that he'd be out in enough time for her to return and steal the badge from Thomas's desk.

"I have to be home by 4."

"Alright," said Jove, pulling his phone from his pocket. "All right, let me see what I can do."

"What?" Kat teased. "Are you gonna pay someone to bring Colorado closer?"

They were still standing at Kat's desk, a bit too closely together as she'd stood up nearly directly into him when he'd awoken her, and he gave her another grin, the unreadable look returned after a long hiatus.

"Maybe," he replied coyly. "You'll see."