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sleeper.
    Shaking herself back to reality, she quickly dressed in her
mostly unscathed clothes. Her panties were a lost cause, and a strap was torn
on her bra. She didn’t even know where her scarf had landed. But her dress was
intact. She could make it out in that, at least.
    Something raged inside her, clawing at her to turn around
and crawl back into bed with Ethan. She stuffed a sock in that part of her
brain, and slipped on her heels.
    She quickly punched out a text message to her best friend while
waiting for the elevator. Jessa would be awake, and likely on her way home from
her overnight hospital shift. Lena needed to talk, and text just wouldn’t cut
it.
    Meet me at Feng’s ASAP?
    The aloof Ethan had grown up to be anything but. Lena
pressed fingertips to her bee-stung lips and smiled. Her cheeks flushed to
remember all the ways he took her the previous night. Once hadn’t been enough
for either of them. She pushed him away after the fourth time, rightly claiming
a deep ache in spots she didn’t know existed. He’d massaged her entire body
after that, using a lovely lotion that smelled of lavender and tingled on her
skin. The scent would never be the same.
    If only he wasn’t her boss. Or, would have been her boss.
There was no chance she was taking the position now. She’d collect her box of
things on her way to her walk of shame. Maybe the private elevator would go all
the way to the ground floor, and she could avoid the hall of glass-walled
conference rooms.
    Maybe when she was less mortified about being an indecent
hussy, she’d look Ethan up again. Just because she wasn’t banging him for a job
didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy some more nights together. She’d feel entirely
more comfortable about it then. Why, oh why, couldn’t she have met him in a
normal way, like in a bar or on a dating app? The idea of Ethan needing to use
a dating app made her chuckle.
    The elevator door dinged open, and she surprised the woman
inside. Lena recognized her as the receptionist from the lower lobby, and her
smile turned sour. The woman looked utterly comfortable journeying up to
Ethan’s private apartment.
    Lena eyed the stick thin woman, and felt revulsion boiling
in her stomach. At the woman for throwing herself at Ethan, at herself for
doing the exact same, and at him for using his too good looks on anything that
moved.
    “Leaving, Miss Jeffries?” The woman asked coolly.
    “Yes. I don’t think I’m cut out for the position after all.”
She tried to step by the woman and into the elevator, but was blocked.
    “Oh. We’ll hate to see you go. Should I inform Mr. Sanford
when I deliver his morning coffee?”
    Lena wanted to deck the perfect blonde woman and bite Ethan,
to boot. She looked anything but displeased. She delivered him coffee in bed?
Lena did not want to get involved in that complicated tangle of messed up, no
matter how much her body screamed at her to put the woman in her place.
Downstairs.
    “I think he’ll understand, thanks.” She dodged the woman and
stepped into the elevator just as the doors started to close. She bristled at
the triumphant look on the woman’s face.
    Lena almost squealed when her phone screen lit up with
Jessa’s response. There was so much to talk about now.
    You got it, babe.
     
    ***
     
    Feng’s was a brisk walk toward the hospital. She and Jessa
had found it to be almost exactly in the middle of their jobs, and would meet
for lunch anytime Jessa’s ever changing schedule allowed. It was done up as an
old timey saloon, complete with swinging double doors that led to the bathrooms
and steer skulls mounted on the walls. It also had some damn strong coffee,
which was a requirement for both Lena and Jessa.
    She’d barely stuffed her box of items into the booth before
a plate of bacon and a cup of coffee appeared on the table. She felt a new
affinity for the hazel-eyed fry cook that raised his spatula in salute. She
wasn’t going to question anyone slinging