“So, you have a crush on the intern.”
I jerked my gaze away from Alexandra leaving my office to a smiling Carina.
“What? No,” I denied a little too adamantly. Carina stopped packing her briefcase to deliver a dubious stare.
“Okay.”
“Don’t patronize me,” I growled. Carina and I had formed a friendship of sorts. Our meetings were no longer about just the marketing plans, but also business in general. I respected her. I liked that I could talk to her without feeling like she was trying to get somewhere with me. Talking to her almost felt like talking to Ian. She was straightforward and didn’t hold any punches. Hence why she was currently calling me out on my staring at Alexandra’s ass.
“I’m not,” she said, holding up her hands. “I’m just pointing out the obvious.”
I scoffed instead of trying to answer.
“Fraternizing at the office can be hard. You have to make sure it’s worth the effort.”
“Aren’t you engaged to your business partner?” I remembered hearing it at a meeting somewhere. The Wellington and Russo company would officially be a family company, rather than just partners.
“And now he’s engaged to his boyfriend.”
My eyebrows rose slowly as I took that all in and refrained from commenting.
“Yeah.” She laughed, pulling the bag over her shoulder. “Well, I have to go. If it makes you feel better, she seems to have a crush on you. Even though she also seems to be trying to light you on fire every time she looks at you. So, maybe you’ve already fraternized.”
“Let me walk you out,” I grumbled, ignoring her knowing smile.
When I walked past Laura’s desk to head back into my office, she let me know she was leaving for the day.
“Can you take Alexandra home? I’ve still got work to do and won’t be leaving until late.”
“Of course.”
I closed my door behind me without looking Alexandra’s way, even though I could feel her gaze doing exactly as Carina claimed: trying to burn me to the ground with her look alone.
The sky faded from the orange of sunset to night and my eyes blurred from staring at the computer screen for so long. I was shutting it all down when a soft knock came before the door slowly opened.
“Hey.” Hanna leaned through the cracked door, her long hair falling over her shoulder.
“Hey. What are you doing here so late?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” She pointed an accusing finger at me and narrowed her eyes like her small frame would intimidate me. We all looked so much alike with our dark hair and green eyes. Hanna had gone through a phase when she was a teenager and hated looking like Sofia, so she dyed her hair, cut it, used self-tanner to darken her pale skin. Anything to differentiate herself. Her short pink hair had been how I’d known she was alive and not Sofia when I’d finally found them.
Now she wore her hair long and naturally dark, just like Sofia had.
“I always work late.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She sighed and fell into the chair in front of my desk and I moved to sit in the chair next to her. “So what are you working on?”
I hesitated telling her about cases but decided to confess. Hanna hated when I held back, accusing me of coddling her. “I was just looking over a report from MacCabe from last week.”
Even though she insisted on being strong enough to handle information about others, she still had a moment of honest reaction. Her eyes dropped to her lap and she swallowed. Her hands curled around the leather arms of the seat, but then she forced herself to relax, her shoulders dropping back with her slow exhale. “You do good work, Erik.” Her eyes lifted and she gave a hard stare. “But don’t run yourself into the ground paying for sins you didn’t commit.”
My jaw clenched and I cocked my head to the side, not openly pretending I didn’t know what she was talking about, but not confessing either.
“I know you blame yourself for not being there. You think if you were, you could have stopped us from being taken. But you’re being ridiculous thinking your presence on vacation would have changed anything. You know Sofia and I would have ditched you no matter how hard you’d try to keep an eye on us.”
We rarely talked about what had happened. We’d each done therapy with Hanna to help with her recovery, but we still never talked about it. I wanted to shut it down now, but she had brought it up and I wouldn’t deny her the right to discuss what she needed.
Looking down, I swallowed. “I miss her,” I confessed.
“Me too. Every day.”
The tears I heard in her voice had me scooting forward to the edge of the seat and reaching for her hands. Gripping them tight, I waited for her to look up. Her eyes, glazed over with tears, shined like emeralds. I ran my fingers under the thick cuff of her bracelets, feeling the thick ridges that circled each wrist. The scars from rope a constant reminder that she’d fought through it and had never given up.