Tyler’s hands wrapped around my waist just as the alarm clock on my phone began to go off, reminding me of the time. His eyebrow rose as my expression changed to something close to panic.

“That’s the alarm I set, so I’d know when it was almost time to leave,” I said, my voice becoming higher with each word. “I’d be late.”

The fear so clearly written all over my face didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest.

“First lesson of becoming a New Yorker, everyone is late. Just blame it on the subway or a crazy cab driver.”

I pulled away from him, searching for my shoes in one of the many boxes all over the room. “Did you know the subway used to accept coins as payment, and when they switched over to passes, there was a surplus of over sixty thousand coins? Where do you think they all went?”

“In these boxes?” he joked, stopping me once again.

I turned toward him, and another droplet of water fell down his chest.

Who needed breakfast when I had him?

I was a New Yorker now.

What were a few minutes now that I had everything I wanted?

“You’re late,” the polished young woman at the front desk announced sternly after I’d politely told her my name. She tapped her perfectly manicured nail on the desk, looking up at me, as she waited for a reply.

“Um, yes, well… the subway, and the, uh…” I stammered, trying to find any decent excuse, anything at all, but all I could come up with was a mishmash of words that made my cheeks flare to life as I remembered the real reason I was late.

I am going to kill Tyler.

Miss Perfect leaned over the counter, wrapping her fingers with the impeccable red nails around the crisp glass edge, and smiled. “Just moved here?” she asked.

I tried not to let my attention wander.

It was the first time I’d been to Cavenaugh Investments, landing the job based on my résumé alone. Going through a temp agency had been a last-ditch effort on my part, but it was the only one that had actually paid off. Had I not received a call from their Human Resources department last week, asking me to fill in for the CEO’s administrative assistant who was out on mandatory bed rest, I probably would be searching for waitressing jobs, like the rest of New York.

Nodding, I answered her question without a sound, and I watched her grin grow wider.

“Well, let me give you a bit of advice, sweetheart, okay?”

As her ruby-red lips turned cold, I opened my mouth to respond, but she quickly cut me off, “Don’t be late. Ever. Mr. Cavenaugh likes his assistants to be punctual, and he doesn’t give second chances.”

My heart raced as her words hit home.