Isobel joins me in the meeting room at five PM on the dot with another round of coffees.
"Uhh, I could kiss you."
She places the coffee in front of me. "Save it for your hot housemate,"she teases.
"Hot housemate?" Danny chimes, walking into the room with Liliana and Morgan. He practically melts at the sight of the takeaway coffee cups, blowing a kiss to Isobel as he lifts his from the cardboard cup holder. "I thought you lived in a flat?"
"I've been staying with my brother and his housemate," I tell them as we take our seats.
"Yeah," Isobel laughs. "A housemate who is six foot four of pure muscle, sex appeal and fuck-me eyes."
I slap her arm whilst the others laugh.
"He's my brother's friend," I add
"Which just makes it sexier, kenzie. He's forbidden fruit," she says, still laughing with the others.
He is. It doesn't occur to me until she says it, but maybe that's why I've been feeling so attracted to him. I can't have him; Cam has made that perfectly clear.
Noah Romano is off-limits. He's sweet, and hot, and completely out of reach to me.
It's not like I'm used to getting every guy I've ever wanted. There have been crushes that have amounted to nothing. Boys that I liked that didn't quite like me back.
During my first year of university, I'd even had my heart broken by a boy named James. Seriously. James. His name wasn't enough of a red flag for my young eighteen year old heart. He was one of my assigned flatmates, with boyish good looks and too much charm for his own good. Blonde hair, blue eyes - a surfer boy from a beach town.
I'd fancied the pants off of him. Literally.
We'd gotten drunk and slept together within the first month, and then for a few weeks after that we were inseparable. I'd considered us dating. He'd considered us friends with benefits.
The flat had felt claustrophobic when I realised he felt differently and avoiding him for those last nine months of our tenancy felt like a second job.
So it's not like I've had every guy I've ever wanted, but I've never been forbidden from trying.
"We need to work," I remind my colleagues.
Noah needs to leave my thoughts so I can focus.
Danny raises an eyebrow, smirking. Liliana and Morgan are grinning too, pretending to look through the papers in front of them.
"What?" I ask, Isobel chuckling at me.
"You're not kidding anyone, Kenz." she says.
I dramatize rolling my eyes at her, pointedly picking up my tablet, turning it around so the others can see tomorrow's schedule splayed across my screen.
"Shit, right," Danny mumbles, scrambling to take a few more sips of his coffee before sitting at the head of the table. "Let's do a mock run-through of our sections and we'll fill in the gaps as we go, alright?"
I take a shaky breath.
I'd volunteered to head the TV advert at the start of the week in a flurry of fleeting confidence. It's beginning to feel like a lot of pressure and I now realise why the others hadn't tried to wrestle me for it when I'd jumped at the opportunity to take the lead on it.
My fingers tighten around the tablet, the PowerPoint presentation I'd spent all week gruelling over ready to pop out at me in the left-hand corner.
"Would you want to start,Kenz?" Danny says, giving me a comforting smile. "Come on, we won't bite."
"And we'll make sure they don't tomorrow," Morgan adds with a laugh. "You've smashed it already though, I bet."
Their confidence in me feels reassuring, so I gulp down a quarter of my latte and open the presentation with jittery fingers.
Isobel scoots closer to me as I begin talking them through my ideas.
They politely tear the advert apart, which I'd expected. But we rebuild it bigger and better, and the bones of the ideas are still my own.
There's no judgement from anyone, not really, because we've been working together for long enough to be considered friends. Unlikely friends, because we don't really have a shred in common except our apparent love for sports marketing, but I feel more confident than ever about the advert when we've finished with my section of the campaign.
I continue to add their changes to my notes as the meeting goes on.
Noah: I hope you don't plan to sleep at work tonight.
Isobel continues talking about our analytics, so I flash a smile at her before reading over the text a second time.
We're two hours in and I'm exhausted, but Noah's text still sends a wave of butterflies into my stomach.
Mackenzie: I thought you'd be thrilled to get your
sofa back for the evening?
His reply comes instantly, despite his first text being over ten minutes old.
Noah: Absolutely not. When can I pick you up?
"Kenzie?" Danny asks. My head snaps up from my phone. "We'll be finished soon. I'm sorry it's dragging on."
"No, no - I'm sorry," I place my phone face-down. "You guys have my full attention. Let's get this over with."
They all smile at me. The meeting continues.
I try to give them my full attention for the final half an hour of our meeting, but my body tingles with the knowledge that there's an unanswered text from him on my phone the entire time.
As soon as it's over, I flip my phone back over.
Two unanswered messages, both from Noah.
Noah: If you're actually sleeping at work then no
you're not.
Noah: I'm on my way there.
I quickly gather some of the empty wrappers and my tablet and attempt to wave goodbye to everyone as I depart from the meeting room. An empty packet falls from where I balance it on the flat of my arm, I make eye contact with Danny as it happens.
"Sorry," I squeak. "Gotta run."
I spin around and falter at the half-open door.
Noah is sitting at my desk, spinning a stapler around with one finger. His back is to me, but I can see his slightly damp, signature messy hair, the sleeveless shirt that leaves nothing to the imagination with those muscly tattooed arms.
"Are you okay?" Isobel asks from inside the room.
"Yup!" I sputter.
I step forward, letting the door click shut behind me. I hold my tablet to my chest and unload the rubbish I've collected into the nearby bin, but my eyes stay trained on him.
He's freshly shaven now. I can see the way the lights are hitting his cheeks and his jaw. The way his lips are pursed make him look broody.
One of the cleaners is openly gawking at him.
I walk over slowly, studying him. Staring at him. Wishing I could at least squeeze one of his biceps because they look fucking huge tonight under this crappy office lighting.
He reaches forward and pulls a bottle towards his mouth from my desk. It's his usual post-workout drink.
I look down at his legs, seeing the shorts and the tanned skin underneath them.
He's driven here straight from the gym; no wonder he looks like my wet dream right now.
"Noah?" The word falls from my mouth as I reach the desk.
The way his face lights up makes my knees weak.
"What're you…" I start.
"I'm waiting for you," he replies easily, looking around the open room. "You're right, by the way. You do look very classy in an office setting."
Jesus Christ. He's trying to kill me.
My face flushes instantly.
His gaze drops to my clutch on the tablet and rises back up to my eyes.
"I don't mind waiting some more if you still have things to do. The receptionist said you'd be in a meeting so I could sit at your desk."
"No, I'm. . ." my breath hitches. Nothing has changed - it's not like he's giving me that usual smile or smirking at me or flexing those muscles he's got on show in my office right now. But the words still catch in my throat. "I look classy?"
He stops playing with the stapler, spinning towards me on the chair.
"You look incredibly classy in that pencil skirt, Mackenzie." His voice is gruff, eyes dark.
I look down at that aforementioned pencil skirt and back to him, feeling my face burning under his gaze.
"You're in my office."
"I am."
He grins.
I feel like a stumbling mess. A high school girl with a silly little crush on the boy sitting next to me in class.
Noah brings his hands together on his lap, interlocking his fingers. My gaze loops around his body and back to his hands. They squeeze together once more, and I look back to his eyes.
"Is that alright with you?" he asks. "That I'm here?"
"Of course," I correct quickly. Then, without thinking, "you make the place look good."
That smirk graces his lips again.
Before he can say anything I reach around him, shoving my tablet into its usual place on my desk. He resumes his fiddling with the stapler, softly turning the chair side to side as I work around him to organise myself for the morning.
"Kenzie?" I hear Danny's curious call from behind us.
I turn as Noah does. He's stood in the doorway of the meeting room, eyeing us cautiously. I quickly scan the office to see Liliana and Morgan back at their desks, eyeing us too.
Isobel appears behind him and smiles wider than I've ever seen her smile.
"You alright?" Danny asks.
He outwardly looks to Noah after he asks, like he's assessing a threat and I've been caught in the middle of something terrible.
I look to Noah too. I scan from his head to his trainer-clad feet, like I'm drinking him in. He's still smirking, and gets his phone out of his pocket before spinning back towards my desk.
"I'm fine, I'll see you tomorrow". I state.
Danny's worried expression stays on me as I reach for Noah's arm. He drops the stapler as my fingers touch his skin, his muscles flexing underneath my hand.
My fingers tighten around the muscle by themselves.
The heat inside my body is instant, as if a fire has been lit deep in the
core of my stomach. My mouth waters. How do I have any liquid for my mouth when the throbbing between my legs is so instant, I'm sure that the rest of my skin dries out just to compensate for it.
Without thinking about it, I let my thumb run over the line of his bicep.
His eyes meet mine instantly. His lips part softly. There's a doe-eyed look on his face that I don't fully understand.
"Hey," Danny's voice breaks our eye contact. I recoil my touch, spinning on my heels to look at my boss. He's stood by my desk, looking between us with that same air of caution. Finally, his gaze settles on me, but I still feel Noah's stare behind me. "You'll do great tomorrow. Don't fret."
"I -" wasn't fretting. I clear my throat. "Thank you."
"Do you need a lift home or anything?"
I jerk my thumb back to Noah, shaking my head. "I've got one." He nods, slowly, so I know that he's still analyzing the situation. "Have a nice evening."
Noah stands up behind me as Danny walks back to his own desk. He pushes my stapler back to its original position and tucks my chair under my desk.
Once again; not a single flaw.
His hand is at the small of my back as we walk towards the lift.
"People stare a lot in offices, huh?" He speaks quietly. I turn and smile at him. "It's very charged in here."
"That might be because of you, Noah." his hand leaves my back as he presses the button for the lift and leans against the wall. His head tips back, elongates so his adams apple juts out and moves as he swallows. He crosses his hands in front of himself. "You don't exactly look ready for a day at the office with all those tattoos, do you?"
He bites his bottom lip to stop it, but that grin shines through.
"You don't seem to complain." he pauses, but doesn't look at me. "I think you like them actually."
The lift doors ping open. I step inside and he follows. Neither of us look back to the office. I briefly hope they aren't still staring at us, because Noah looks divine right now. Ready to be served on a plate, delicious, and I can't tear my eyes away from him.
"I think you're too sweet to look like that much of a bad boy."
"Maybe I'm bad in other ways."
The doors clatter as they enclose us in the small space.