The CEO's Obsession

She lost the argument before she walked into the building. That is what she tells herself in the lobby, standing under oil paintings of old men who look as though they discovered gravity and fiscal responsibility on the same Tuesday. *You don't have to do this.* Devon's voice comes low and slick, the kind of concern that costs him nothing. He leans against the marble reception desk like he owns it, which, Tess supposes, he soon might. The smile is practised and easy, the sort that works on the accounting team and the junior architects alike. *I'm the lead designer on the project. If I'm not in the room, they'll notice.* *They'll notice you're the one who can't keep her mouth shut.* *Good. Then I'll be memorable.* She adjusts the strap of her bag and feels the calloused ridges of her fingers catch on the leather. The building smells of engineered lavender, pumped through the vents by somebody who read a study about it. At the head of the table sits Jasper Kane, whose face she has seen in the business press. Lean, sharp, the kind of handsome that arrives with a price tag. In person he is thinner than the photographs, and he is watching her the way you watch weather coming in over water. What follows: a mirror she breaks every morning, a glass she keeps filling, scales she never manages to balance, a bridge burned twice by the same two people, a gambit played by somebody who does not lose, a kiss that already knows too much, and a debt she genuinely cannot repay. *Jasper, I need to tell you something about my past.* *She's not there.* *She died when she found out you lied.* *I didn't lie. I withheld the truth. And I'm sorry.* *Sorry doesn't bring her back.* What Tess finds in the last quarter of this book may permanently alter everything she has believed about the year she lost, the person she lost it to, and which of the two men in that lobby was actually telling her the truth.