Another laugh, a flush of her cheeks. I thumbed one, dotted with cake.

Really, she was a mess. Icing had dried in flecks in her eyebrows, little chunks of cake peppering her neck, her cheeks. Her shirtfront was a crimson explosion in the shape of a V, the rest of her shirt, which had been protected by her coat, incongruently pristine.

My hands moved to the buttons, unfastening one with a snap.

“I’m sorry you had a shitty day,” I offered, unbuttoning another.

“Knowing you’d be here to make me forget all about it is the only reason I didn’t commit homicide in a cake shop today.”

With a tug, I freed her shirt from her pants. “Is it always this bad?”

“Cake fight bad? No. Getting permanently banned from a church? Never.”

“No, I mean … is it always this hard? It seems too much to ask to work with people like them every day.”

“It is. Want to know something?”

“I want to know everything,” I answered too honestly, sliding my hands into her shirt, around her waist.

“I hate my clients, and I hate my boss. But I love my job.”

“That’s confusing.”

“I’m very conflicted.”

My hands trailed up her ribs, traced the curve of her breasts, slipped over the caps of her shoulders, taking her shirt with them.

“If you hate them, why not quit?”

“I just told you why. I love my job.”

“But you don’t have to work for assholes.”

She paused, seeming to consider. “I’ve worked my whole adult life for this. To work at this firm, with high-profile clients. We all have to put up with things we hate to be successful.”

“True,” I said as her shirt fell to the ground in a whisper of silk. “But at what cost?”

Lila frowned up at me. “It’s temporary. Someday, I’ll be in charge. That is the goal. Put in my dues and collect big later.”

“But there are other firms. Other kinds of clients.”

“But I don’t want those,” she insisted. “I want this.”

“Even though you hate it?” My hands paused in the space between her pants and her ass, which sat firmly and roundly in my palms.

Her frown deepened, but she didn’t speak.

“If you hate it, change it.”

A scoff, coupled with a roll of her eyes. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can.”

“No, I can’t.”

I smirked down at her. “How come?”

An impatient huff. “Because for the last decade, it’s all I’ve dreamed of. Because I’ve busted my ass to prove myself, put myself through all the bullshit associated with that. Because this is my dream, hard or not. Because reasons, Kash, volumes and hoards of reasons.”

I kept on smirking despite the pause she expected me to fill.