Page 54 of The Heart of Winter

"I never said that," he muttered.

Then, as if realizing the implication of his own words, he abruptly stood, grabbed his tray, and swept up his unfinished meal.

"Have a good day," he said tersely before striding away.

Unease clung to his energy, even though his face remained fairly impassive, obviously a well-trained expression. But he couldn’t hide his heartbeat, galloping like wild horses.

Well, well.

Something was going on—on his end of this strange connection, too. I was pretty sure of it now. And that realization made me shiver slightly, with disbelief and elation.

It wasn’t much, what had happened. How could I interpret it?

The start of something that had no right to exist? Or just a glimpse of his more playful side, with no real consequences in any other aspect?

I shouldn’t read too much into it, since I knew all too well what the reality of our situation was. And it was rather unpromising.

***

Two days later, Manager Lorens told me to accompany him to a meeting. I had no idea what it was about, and he didn’t explain anything.

We took the elevator up one floor, where the conference rooms were. When we stepped inside one of them, I was surprised to see several people already seated, among them, Winter.

Why the hell was I invited to a meeting like this? I was a nobody, just a regular graphic designer who had been working at this company for barely two months, churning out icon after icon.

To my absolute astonishment, there were two empty seats, one of them right next to Winter. Manager Lorens looked like he was about to take that spot, but no fucking way, I wasn’t going to let that happen. Moving with lightning reflexes, I swerved around him at the last second and dropped into the seat beside Winter.

Again, I caught his scent. It was puzzling, since it really didn’t seem like shower gel, no soapy undertone. So what could it be? There was something incredibly subtle about it. A delicate note, like wind over a lavender field, with a fresh hint of lime… intoxicating.

For the briefest moment after I sat down, our eyes met.

I don’t know why, but two specific memories hit me at once: the cupcake incident in the cafeteria, and… the moment when he mentioned his sexual preferences. These situations had carried a message, that Winter did, in fact, have a sexual side. He wasn’t just an ice-cold, untouchable prince. There was more beneath the surface. A side of him that had peeked through the cracks in his frozen façade, if only for a moment.

If he knew those things about himself, then at some point, he must have been in those kinds of scenarios before.

Maybe with that guy, Finn?

Goddamn it, I didn’t want to think about him. My gaze skimmed over Winter’s smooth, clean-shaven face and that alabaster neck. Why was I picturing Finn’s lips gliding over Winter’s skin? A wave of jealousy rose in me while I was imagining Winter moaning under his touch… or maybe he didn’t? Maybe he was the quiet type in bed. Not that I knew much about it myself, but I’d heard that people could be either loud or silent when they orgasmed.

For fuck’s sake. What a madhouse, obsessing over sex again, while sitting next to my director during a goddamn business meeting. Just perfect.

The door opened, and whatever excitement had been brewing inside me instantly deflated. I let out a slow breath.

It was my father.

The gamemaster had entered the chat. This had to be something big.

He ignored me completely, didn’t even spare me a glance, just sat down and got straight to business.

"As you all know, we’re going to be developing a Japanese market version of the BA application. This won’t be a massive challenge, since we already have a working beta version for our market," he said. "That said, the project is in an advanced stage, but still not finished."

His gaze swept over the room. It skipped right past me.

"The main task will be localization for the Japanese market. We’ve also received some guidelines from our partners, who expect certain modifications and optimizations tailored to their recruitment process."

He clicked to display a bullet-point list on the projector.

"The app’s interface will, of course, need a redesign, it can’t be a one-to-one copy of our version. As you know, the application also has different access levels available after logging in, and we’ll need to make a few adjustments there as well…"

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