I’m fucking bereft, and my smile is crumbling off my face.

“You could head up Strategy here.”

Kara laughs but shakes her head, still scanning my mail. I wasn’t joking.

“What’s that? Oh, the Titan piece.” She spins one of the pages to face her, brown eyes zig-zagging back and forth as she reads. A sly smile curls her plump mouth. “I seriously think they had a thing for you, Galen. This profile is downright breathless. Although—hm, I’ll send them a correction on that. They make it sound like you’re some incorrigible bachelor.”

I was, before I met Kara. Too busy with work to date, and happy that way. Now I’m a heartbeat away from ordering bridal magazines to her apartment, laying my hints on thick. Now that would well and truly drive her away.

“Tell them I’m taken.” I’m rewarded with a shy smile, and my stomach swoops. Fuck, the things this girl does to me. I’m going to miss her so much.

Silver Fox. My hand twitches on top of the cover page, the paper crinkling and drawing Kara’s eye.

“Oh, is that the front page? Here, let me see—”

“No.” I drag the paper away, a side tearing. God, I am acting insane, but I can’t seem to stop myself. “Don’t look at that.”

The look Kara gives me could shrivel my balls at twenty paces.

“Galen. They’re going to sell this magazine in every corner shop and paper stand. I’m going to see it eventually, and if you don’t show it to me now, I can’t fix any problems.”

Curse her logic. Curse her perfect brain.

Curse my own fucking arrogance at thinking I could ever keep such a gorgeous young woman. I can’t even keep her on my staff, let alone in my life.

But Kara doesn’t wait for me to get my head out of my ass: she pinches the corner of the cover page and pulls it from beneath my rigid palm.

“Oh.” The paper is creased as she holds it up, tilting it this way and that. A frown puckers her forehead, and it deepens as she scans all the wording. “I… don’t see it. What is the problem, exactly?”

Silver Fox.

I clear my throat, but the words won’t come.

“The Silver Fox of the Studios,” Kara murmurs, and it’s so much worse hearing it in her soft voice. “The rest of these are placeholders, and the photo is great—”

She cuts off, pressing her lips together.

Brown eyes flick to me. To my fucking hair.

“Don’t,” I rasp. “I’m an old man. You don’t have to say it.”

And for the record, I have never once cared about my age before. Never bothered with a midlife crisis. I figured sneaking up on fifty meant experience and wisdom; a strategic edge that younger competitors don’t have. I figured it made me level-headed when others lose their tempers. It lent me authority.

But that was before Kara. Before I fell in love with a girl nearly half my age.