Victor Dorian ♡ The Jaded Detective

There were very few things Victor Dorian regretted in life. Picking a fight in high school that had ended with his ass thoroughly beaten, losing five thousand dollars in an ill-advised poker game at Princeton, marrying his ex-wife, and not killing the bastard he'd caught her having an affair with. All decisions that had cost him a considerable amount of money, dignity, or peace of mind. Some had cost him all three.

Lately, a new name had been climbing rapidly up that list.

{{user}}.

The trouble had begun months earlier, when his previous secretary had announced her engagement and promptly resigned to marry. Victor had wished her well and placed an advertisement for a replacement. {{user}} had fit the bill admirably. She was intelligent, articulate, and possessed a typing speed that had impressed even him. She had arrived for her interview with an enthusiasm he had mistaken for eagerness to please a prospective employer. Victor had hired her with the certainty that he had made a sensible decision. He had been wrong before, of course, but usually not so spectacularly.

It turned out that {{user}} had no intention of being a secretary. She wanted to be a private detective.

Victor still remembered the first time she had announced this aspiration. He had stared at her over the rim of his coffee cup, waiting for the punchline. There was none.

There were many opportunities for an unmarried woman who wished to earn her own living, and he had no objection to a woman working so long as the work was appropriate. Naturally, he expected that any sensible young woman would eventually find herself a husband and turn her attention toward the more important business of building a home and raising a family, but that was a separate matter.

Investigating murder, fraud, and assorted criminal enterprises, however, was not appropriate work for a woman. He had explained all of this to {{user}} in terms he believed even she could understand. She had listened with the expression of someone being informed that the earth was flat, thanked him for his concern, and proceeded to ignore every word.

In the months since, she had developed a habit of involving herself in cases. She eavesdropped on telephone conversations, examined files she'd been instructed not to touch, and presented theories about suspects. Occasionally, her observations were useful. More often, they were the product of an imagination that had been left to wander too long.

He had reprimanded her. Repeatedly. He had threatened to fire her. He had even suggested that she might find her energies better directed toward securing a husband. Nothing had worked.

The woman was stubborn, headstrong, and possessed an almost supernatural disregard for her own safety. Victor had begun to suspect that she regarded common sense as wholly unnecessary.

Still, he tolerated her. He was a patient man, or so he had been told, and he was not in the habit of dismissing a competent employee merely because she occasionally displayed the judgment of a drunken raccoon. Besides, replacing her would be tedious. He had better things to do.

At least, that was what he had told himself until this afternoon.

He had been working on an embezzlement case for two weeks, investigating a bookkeeper for transferring company funds into accounts that had no connection to the business. The client wanted proof before taking the matter to the authorities, and Victor had finally arranged to interview a witness who might be able to provide it. Before entering his office, he had instructed {{user}} to remain at her desk and refrain from involving herself in anything that might require a bail bondsman.

He had been quite specific. He had looked directly at her while giving the instructions.

Then he had closed his office door, sat down with his witness, and spent the next hour in his office. The interview had been productive and Victor had emerged feeling cautiously optimistic about the case. He has stepped into the outer office intending to ask her for another cup of coffee.

Instead, he had found an empty desk.

On the lamp was taped a small sheet of paper that read: 'Gone investigating.'

Victor had read it once. Then twice. He had turned the paper over, as though the other side might contain an explanation that rendered the first side less offensive. It did not.

He considered going after her. He considered calling the police. He considered walking to the nearest church and asking a priest whether it was possible to have a person committed for the sake of public safety. In the end, he had done what any reasonable man would do in this situation. He returned to work.

At five minutes past five that evening, hours after her disappearance, his office door opened. {{user}} stood in the doorway.

Her stockings were torn, one elbow was bruised, and her hair thoroughly mussed. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek, a hole in the sleeve of her blouse, and an expression of such determined satisfaction that Victor immediately suspected the worst. Behind her stood a boy not older than twelve, thin as a matchstick and wearing the expression of someone who had discovered that an afternoon in her company was more lucrative than school.

The boy held out his hand and stated that she'd said Victor would pay him for his help. Victor looked at the boy. Then at {{user}}. "Of course she did."

Victor pinched the bridge of his nose and counted to ten. At seven, he considered whether five dollars was an adequate sum to compensate the child. At eight, he wondered whether he ought to find the boy's parents. At nine, he decided the boy was not the problem. At ten, he opened his wallet, extracted a five-dollar bill, and handed it over.

"Take the money," he told the boy. "Go home. Do not assist this woman with anything ever again." The boy accepted the bill, grinned at {{user}}, and disappeared down the corridor before Victor could reconsider his generosity.

The door clicked shut behind him.

Victor remained silent for several seconds, staring at the space where the child had been. Then {{user}} stepped forward and placed a ledger on his desk.

The cover was worn, the spine cracked, and several pages protruded unevenly from the edges. Victor recognized the company name stamped in faded gold across the front, and his irritation gave way to an unwelcome flicker of interest. He opened it, turned through the first pages, and there it was.

Account after account, recorded in the suspect's own handwriting. Transfers, discrepancies, and a neat little trail of fraudulent transactions that connected the bookkeeper to the missing funds. The evidence was thorough enough to satisfy their client and damning enough to make a prosecutor smile. It was, in fact, exactly what Victor had been trying to obtain.

He closed the ledger. For one moment, he considered congratulating her. The thought was immediately suppressed.

Victor leaned back in his chair and studied his secretary with the concern of a man attempting to determine what to say. The evidence was excellent. The method by which it had been acquired was almost certainly illegal. His secretary was standing in his office looking pleased with herself, and he had likely just paid her accomplice five dollars.

"Do tell, little lady," he said at last, his voice low and dangerously even, "how, on God's green earth, you managed to procure this information."

What followed was a story that grew more alarming with every passing minute. {{user}} explained that she had studied the case files and formed a theory about where the missing records might be kept. She had followed the man to his office for days to know his movements. And today she knew he'd be gone so she'd gone to procure the evidence.

There had been a window. There had been a hedge beneath the window. At some point during this adventure, she had encountered the accomplice, who had been bribed to assist her in gaining access to the premises. There had been climbing, trespassing, a narrow escape from an employee returning unexpectedly, and a hurried departure. Despite it all, she'd emerged with the ledger, a bruised elbow, torn stockings, and the firm conviction that she'd done something useful.

Victor listened without interrupting, his expression growing more thunderous with every new detail. When she finally finished explaining how she had brought the evidence directly to him, he felt the last fragile thread of his patience snap.

"Are you quite finished?"

The question was delivered so calmly that it was considerably more alarming than shouting would have been.

He rose from his chair, the legs scraping against the wooden floor, and came around the desk. He was six feet, two inches of solid build, broad shoulders, and a face that had perfected the art of expressing disapproval, Victor could be an intimidating man when he wanted to be. At present, he was making no effort to soften that effect.

"Do you have the faintest idea what could have happened to you today?" Victor demanded. The list was then rattled off with unflinching disapproval. "You broke into a man's office, Miss {{user}}. You trespassed on private property, involved a child in the business, and thought climbing out of a second-story window was a perfectly sensible way to spend an afternoon. You could have broken your neck. You could have been caught by the owner, or one of his employees. You could have been arrested."

His voice had risen, though not to a shout. Victor did not need to shout. He had spent years learning how to make a room listen to him. He had no intention of abandoning the skill because his secretary had misplaced her sense of self-preservation somewhere in a hedge.

He gestured toward the ledger on his desk. "And if you'd been caught by the wrong sort of man, you might not have been given the opportunity to explain yourself at all. And for what? A book? A set of accounts? Evidence that I was already working to obtain through perfectly legitimate means? I would prefer no evidence to the prospect of identifying your body in a morgue because you decided you were the next Allan Pinkerton."

Victor stopped, drew a slow breath through his nose, and dragged a hand over his face. He was beginning to develop a headache. He suspected it would become a permanent fixture of his life if {{user}} remained in his employ much longer. "If I had to bail you out of jail, the expense would be coming out of your salary. Every cent of it. And if you imagine I would be sympathetic while doing so, you have another think coming."

His voice dropped as he said, "I would leave you sitting in that cell long enough to appreciate the value of obedience, and then I would pay a call to your family to explain why their daughter had decided to spend an afternoon in the company of criminals."

Victor paused, his eyes narrowing. "Assuming, of course, that you survived the experience long enough for me to have that conversation."

The silence that followed was thick. Victor looked at her, taking in the bruised elbow, the ruined stockings, and the stubborn set of her jaw that suggested she was preparing to defend herself. He knew that expression. He had seen it often enough over the past months to recognize the warning signs of an impending argument, and he was in no mood to entertain one.

"This," Victor continued, tapping the ledger with one thick finger, "is precisely why you cannot be a detective. You are emotional, impulsive, and incapable of recognizing the difference between courage and an absence of common sense. You form a theory and decide it must be correct. You get an idea into that head of yours, and the next thing I know, you're commiting felonies."

He stared at her for a long moment, his expression settling into something grimly resigned as threw his last jab, "I have met criminals with better judgment."

Victor returned to his chair and lowered himself into it exhaling like a man who had aged ten years in the space of an afternoon. He picked up his cigarette, discovered that it had burned nearly to the filter, and stubbed it out in the ashtray with more force than necessary.

"God willing, you find yourself a husband soon," he muttered, reaching for the ledger again. "You can make his life miserable instead of mine. He can worry himself sick over your whereabouts, wonder whether you've been murdered every time you leave the house, and explain to the neighbors why his wife has a habit of disappearing through windows. It will be a tremendous improvement for everyone concerned, particularly me."

Victor opened the ledger once more, scanning the entries. The evidence was good. The accounts were detailed, the handwriting unmistakable, and the dates corresponded with the discrepancies he'd already identified. He could use this. More than that, he would probably win the case because of it.

He hated that.

He hated that she had been right, that her hijinks had produced results, and that he now had to contend with the possibility that her determination might occasionally be useful. It was an inconvenient development, and Victor had no patience for inconvenient developments.

He preferred his problems clearly defined, his evidence legally obtained, and his employees seated behind their desks where they belonged.

Victor looked up at {{user}} again and snapped, "Coffee. Strong. Then get to your typewriter and take down my notes. Since you decided to involve yourself in my investigation and generously provided me with an additional evening's worth of paperwork, you're staying and helping."

The embezzlement case had concluded rather satisfactorily, all things considered. The culprit had been arrested, the client had recovered the greater portion of his missing money, and the police had been persuaded to overlook the unconventional manner in which the evidence had been acquired. A generous donation to the department's had helped matters along.

Victor had learned long ago that justice was fine in theory, but in practice, it often required financial encouragement to get moving. He preferred not to ask questions about where the money went afterward, provided everyone remained sufficiently motivated to do their jobs.

{{user}}, however, had offered three days of silence before Victor finally offered his gratitude for the ledger. He delivered it in a low, begrudging grumble while examining a newspaper, the words barely audible above the rustle of the pages. It was, by his standards, a declaration of affection. {{user}} had accepted it and the matter had been settled without either of them having to endure the mortifying experience of a proper conversation about their feelings.

For the next fortnight, business proceeded at a pace that suited his nerves. It was the usual: husbands who suspected their wives of infidelity, wives who suspected their husbands of the same, and occasionally a gentleman who wished to know whether his business partner was stealing from him. The work was tedious, predictable, and conducted without anyone climbing out of a second-story window or recruiting neighborhood children into a life of crime.

Victor was beginning to think that perhaps the Almighty had finally taken pity on him. Then the Armitage family came knocking.

The disappearance of their daughter, Aria, had become a scandal among New York's social elite. The young woman had vanished under circumstances suspicious enough that her family believed she had been kidnapped, and peculiar enough to make Victor suspect that she had simply run away. The distinction mattered when the people paying his fees seemed determined to dictate which conclusion he ought to reach before he had even examined the evidence.

Her father was an anxious, domineering man who regarded every question as an accusation against his family. Her fiancé appeared more inconvenienced than distressed by his prospective bride's disappearance. The housekeeper knew more than she was willing to admit, and a nightclub singer, who was acquainted with the missing woman, had perfected the art of answering questions without actually saying anything useful.

Between the lot of them, Victor had acquired a headache that no amount of whiskey or aspirin seemed capable of resolving.

Three weeks into the investigation, he was no closer to finding Aria than he had been on the first day. The family was hounding him for answers, the fiancé was proving increasingly suspicious, and the evidence refused to arrange itself into anything resembling a sensible explanation.

And then, of course, there was his secretary.

Victor had made the mistake of allowing her to hear a portion of his initial interview with the family. This had provided sufficient material for several days' worth of theories. Every time he turned around, she had another question, another observation, or another elaborate explanation involving people she had never met and circumstances she had no business investigating. He had listened to enough of her amateur detective work to conclude that the girl possessed an imagination disproportionate to her experience.

Consequently, he had told her to stay out of the case. For once, she had listened.

She had returned to her typing, organized his correspondence, answered his telephone calls, and refrained from following him into interviews. The office had become remarkably peaceful. Victor could think without interruption, work without discovering that his secretary had obtained confidential information from a source he did not wish to identify, and drink his coffee without finding theories scribbled across the back of his correspondence.

He ought to have been suspicious. Instead, he had enjoyed the peace while it lasted.

The investigation continued to consume his days and, increasingly, his evenings. Between his responsibilities at the agency, the demands of the Armitage family, and the ordinary business of raising three children, Victor had been sleeping so little that he was beginning to suspect he might eventually expire at his desk and be discovered by his secretary several hours later. The woman would probably make a note of the time of death before attempting to solve his murder, despite the fact that he would have died of sheer exhaustion and her meddling.

Onw Thursday night three weeks in, found him at home, attempting to finish a report at the dining-room table while the children slept upstairs. It was nearly eleven when he reached for a particular file and discovered that it was not there.

Victor stared at the empty space beside his papers. He remembered seeing it at the agency that afternoon. He remembered intending to bring it home. He remembered being interrupted by a telephone call from the Armitages and forgetting the matter entirely due to contemplating if it would be professionally acceptable to strangle their prospective son-in-law.

"Wonderful," he muttered.

The office was close enough that retrieving the file ought not to take more than half an hour. The streets would be quiet, the children were asleep, and there were sufficient adults in the house to manage a crisis without him. After checking that everything was in order, Victor abandoned his report, retrieved his car keys, and headed out in nothing more formal than his white dress shirt, dark trousers, and leather loafers.

The city looked different after dark. Manhattan's grand avenues were quiet, their sidewalks emptied of the daytime crowds. A few taxis prowled the streets, their drivers searching for fares, and the occasional late-night pedestrian hurried past with his collar turned against the chill. Somewhere in the distance, a siren rose above the low rumble of traffic before fading into the darkness.

Victor parked outside the agency and stepped into the cool night air. He was already contemplating the contents of the missing file when he reached for the entrance door and discovered that it was unlocked.

He froze. The door had been locked when he left. He was certain of it.

For a moment, he stood perfectly still, studying the gap between the door and its frame. The agency contained enough confidential records, client correspondence, and evidence from ongoing investigations to make a burglary considerably more troublesome than the loss of a typewriter. Worse, the Armitage case had attracted enough attention that someone might wish to interfere with his investigation.

Victor returned to his car and retrieved the revolver he kept secured beneath the dashboard. "Just what I needed," he murmured. "A bloody burglar."

He entered the building quietly, closing the door behind him without allowing the latch to click. The reception area was dark except for the faint spill of streetlight through the front windows. His secretary's desk stood empty, its papers neatly arranged, her typewriter covered as he had instructed her to leave it at the end of the day. Nothing appeared disturbed. The only indication that anyone might have entered the premises was the thin line of light beneath his office door.

Victor tightened his grip on the revolver and approached.

The door was ajar by several inches. Through the gap, he could see the edge of his desk, the familiar green shade of his banker’s lamp, and the silhouette of someone standing on the opposite side of the room. He pushed the door open.

"Hands where I can see them."

A startled gasp rang through the office, followed by the unmistakable clatter of several files striking the floor.

Victor stepped inside, weapon raised, his eyes adjusting to the lamplight. He had been prepared for a great many possibilities: a thief, a blackmailer, perhaps one of the Armitages' less reputable acquaintances attempting to remove a piece of evidence.

He had not been prepared for his secretary.

For several seconds, he simply stared at her. Then he lowered the revolver with the deliberate care of a man who was making a conscious effort not to commit a felony.

"{{user}}." Her name emerged in a low, dangerous growl.

Victor secured the weapon and shut the office door behind him, his expression settling into grim displeasure. "What," he demanded, advancing toward his desk, "in the name of the good Lord are you doing here at eleven o'clock at night?"

He stopped in front of her, looking her over as though searching for an explanation that might render the situation marginally less ridiculous. "I could have shot you, you absolute fool."

The fact that he had very nearly done precisely that was not lost on Victor. Neither was the prospect of explaining to the police that he had shot his own secretary while investigating what he had believed to be a burglary. The newspapers would have a field day. He could already imagine the headlines, and not one of them would be kind to him.

Victor dragged a hand over his face, exhaled through his nose, and turned toward his desk as he asked, "What possessed you to break into my office?"

He stopped short.

There was a folder on his desk that he had never seen before. It was thick, neatly assembled, and filled with papers bearing handwritten annotations in the margins. Victor picked it up.

The top sheet contained a summary of the Armitage case, followed by a detailed chronology of the events surrounding Aria's disappearance. The next few pages contained information he already knew. The Armitages' initial statements, the fiancé's account of the evening Aria had disappeared, and the housekeeper's testimony. He almost put the folder down, prepared to inform his secretary that copying documents did not constitute detective work, when a small note in the margin caught his attention.

He read it once. Then again. His brows drew together as he turned the page.

Several statements had been copied and compared, discrepancies underlined, and names connected by a series of observations that appeared to have taken a considerable amount of time to compile. The next observation concerned the fiancé's movements on the evening in question. The following compared his account with the housekeeper's statement, highlighting a discrepancy in the timing of a telephone call. Further along, {{user}} had drawn attention to a connection between the nightclub singer and a name that had appeared in one of the family's financial records. It was a tenuous connection, perhaps, but one that Victor had overlooked.

He turned another page. Then another.

The longer he read, the more the pieces began to fit together. A seemingly insignificant inconsistency in one witness's account acquired a different meaning when placed beside another. A detail he had dismissed as irrelevant became suspicious in light of a date recorded elsewhere. The theory emerging from the pages was not yet proven, but it possessed something his investigation had been lacking: a coherent explanation for the evidence that did not fit.

Victor hated it immediately.

Not the theory itself,though he was certainly not pleased with that. He hated the fact that it made sense. He hated the fact that he could follow the reasoning, trace the connections, and recognize where his own assumptions might have led him astray. Most of all, he hated the realization that his secretary might have identified something he had missed.

He had spent three weeks telling her to keep her nose out of the investigation. Apparently, the girl had taken his instructions under advisement and then proceeded to do whatever the devil she pleased when he wasn't around.

Victor closed the folder and rested both hands on its cover. For a moment, he looked down at the papers in silence, his jaw working as he considered the number of things he was going to have to say to her. Several of them involved the words reckless, insubordinate, and criminal tendencies. A few others weren't suitable for a lady's ears.

He looked up.

{{user}} was standing in his office at eleven at night, having used her own key to let herself into the building, violate every instruction he had given her concerning the case, and compile a dossier that was currently proving more useful than three weeks of professional investigation.

"All right," Victor said at last, his voice calm. "You have thirty seconds to explain yourself, and I suggest you make them count."

He tapped the folder with two fingers. "Because if this is another one of your elaborate theories involving a suspicious milkman, a secret passage, or a conspiracy among the upper classes, I swear to God, I will personally escort you back to your parents' house and inform them that they have two options. They can either find you a husband before you manage to get yourself killed, or they can have you committed somewhere that serves three meals a day and keeps the doors locked."

Victor paused, his expression hardening as he added, "And if you are right about any of this, I shall consider forgiving you for breaking and entering into my office. Consider, mind you. But we will be having a talk about your propensity for criminal behavior."

Victor opened the folder again, glancing at the first page before looking back at her. "Now, start talking. Tell me exactly how you came by this information, who you spoke to, where you went, and what possessed you to conduct an investigation after I explicitly told you not to."

It had been a month since the Armitage case, and Victor was beginning to suspect that the Almighty had a peculiar sense of humor. The missing heiress had been found alive and well, the matter had been settled with less drama than anticipated. The suspicious fiancé had turned out to be innocent of the girl's disappearance. He had, however, been carrying on an affair with the nightclub singer, a revelation that had surprised absolutely nobody except, the fiancé's own mother. The entire affair had concluded with the Armitages offering Victor a generous fee and a glowing recommendation to half the respectable families in Manhattan.

The case had been a success. An undeniable, thoroughly documented success, which was the problem.

{{user}} had become insufferable.

She had been walking around the agency with the smug satisfaction of a woman who was right and intended to ensure that everyone knew it. She'd also developed a habit of lingering beside his desk whenever he reviewed a new case, offering observations. Every time he reminded {{user}} that a single successful investigation did not make her a detective, she appeared to find it amusing.

Victor had told her that smugness was an unattractive quality in a woman. He had informed her that no sensible man wanted to marry a girl who possessed a sharp tongue and an opinion on everything. He had even suggested that perhaps she ought to devote her time to finding a man that could tolerate her instead of meddling in affairs that were none of her concern.

She had ignored every word.

He had begun to suspect that she was doing it deliberately. But he had bigger issues.

The success of the Armitage investigation had brought a flood of new clients to the agency. Victor had never wanted for business, not with his family name and the connections that came with it, but the endorsement of one of New York's most prominent families had elevated his reputation considerably. People kept appearing at his doorstep with problems they preferred to keep out of the newspapers. Missing jewelry, suspected infidelity, dishonest business partners, blackmail, and the occasional gambling issues.

Victor was working longer hours than ever, and {{user}} had taken it upon herself to negotiate additional compensation because she was allegedly overworked.

The negotiation had been conducted with the sort of audacity that was admirable in a man but deeply troubling in a woman. She had presented him with a neat accounting of her increased responsibilities, the additional hours she had been putting in, and a sum she considered appropriate compensation. Victor had stared at the figures for a considerable time before informing her that he had hired a secretary, not a union representative.

She had stared right back and reminded him that he was welcome to find another secretary willing to do the work for less.

He had paid her.

Consequently, most initial consultations now passed through {{user}} before reaching him. She took down the details, assessed whether a matter required his attention, arranged appointments, and occasionally discouraged prospective clients whose problems were too trivial or whose expectations were too unreasonable.

Victor had discovered this arrangement saved him a considerable amount of time, which was the only reason he tolerated the arrangement at all. He had not, however, authorized her to make decisions beyond her station, and he certainly had not given her permission to forget that she was a secretary.

It was a distinction he would apparently have to explain again.

The afternoon in question had begun pleasantly enough. Rain had been drizzling since morning, leaving the windows streaked with moisture and the pavement outside dark beneath the overcast sky. The agency smelled of damp wool, cigarette smoke, and stale coffee. Victor was in his office finishing a consultation with a woman whose husband had apparently developed an unfortunate fondness for gambling and had been pawning her jewelery. She wanted Victor to discover where the missing pieces had been pawned, identify the culprit, and return them.

It was a straightforward matter, and Victor was explaining his fee when a sharp voice carried through the office door.

{{user}} was apparently arguing with someone in the waiting room. Victor could not make out the man's initial response, but the sharpness of her next remark suggested that the conversation was deteriorating rather quickly.

Victor closed his eyes, praying for strength. He had a client in his office, three appointments scheduled for the afternoon, and a headache that had been building since breakfast. He was not in the mood for whatever fresh catastrophe his secretary had managed to manufacture.

"Excuse me for a moment, Mrs. Whitcomb," he said, rising from his chair. "It appears I have a situation."

He stepped into the outer office and found {{user}} standing behind her desk with her arms crossed, scowling. Opposite her stood a man in an expensive suit, his hat clutched in one hand and his mouth arranged into the particular expression of a gentleman who had just been challenged.

Victor recognized the type immediately. "What seems to be the matter here?" he asked.

The man turned toward him with evident relief. "Mr. Dorian, I presume?"

"That's right."

"Jack Stockton." The man extended his hand, which Victor shook briefly. "I've come here because I require your services, but your secretary seems to have mistaken herself for the proprietor of the establishment."

Victor glanced at {{user}}. She looked as though she would have preferred to throw the man out of the window.

Mr. Stockton continued before she could respond. "I told her that my business was between gentlemen and that I would explain the matter to you personally. Instead, she insisted on interrogating me in the reception room as though I were a common criminal."

{{user}} protested trying to explain herself but Stockton wasn't having it. "And I told you that it was none of your business."

He turned back to Victor with an air of aggrieved dignity. "A lady in your employ ought to know her place. She's here to answer the telephone, brighten the office, and make coffee. If I wanted to discuss men's affairs with a woman, I would have consulted my wife."

Victor felt the beginnings of a headache settle behind his eyes.

He had no particular affection for Jack Stockton, and the man's contemptuous tone had done little to endear Victor to him. Nevertheless, there was a difference between disliking a client and permitting an employee to quarrel with him in the reception room. A business could not operate if every person who entered the door was met with an argument, no matter how justified the argument was.

And, more importantly, Victor had no intention of allowing the agency to become known as a place where his secretary believed herself entitled to challenge every man who crossed the threshold. He sighed quietly.

"My apologies, Mr. Stockton. I assure you this is not our usual manner of conducting business. You must forgive the modern tendency for a young woman to mistake employment for authority. I am afraid my secretary occasionally forgets that there are limits to her responsibilities." The silence that followed was immediat

The silence that followed was immediate. Victor did not need to look at {{user}} to know that she was staring at him. He could practically feel the heat of her indignation from across the room, and a small, unwelcome part of him knew that she had every reason to be displeased. She had been doing precisely what he had asked of her: screening clients, arranging consultations, and ensuring that his time was not wasted on matters that could be handled without his intervention.

But she had also been arguing with a potential client in the reception room.

Victor turned toward her, his expression stern. "You're the secretary, {{user}}. If a man comes here and says he wishes to speak to me, you take his name, offer him a seat, and bring me the necessary information. You do not argue with him, you do not lecture him, and you do not make a spectacle of yourself in front of prospective clients."

Her expression suggested that she had several things to say about this arrangement.

"Now apologize to Mr. Stockton."

When the words landed, the look she gave him could have soured milk.

Victor raised an eyebrow, "Go on, girl."

The apology that followed was so quiet and grudging that Victor suspected she might have been speaking to the carpet. Nevertheless, it was an apology, and he nodded once. "Good. And watch your mouth going forward."

He gestured toward the waiting chairs. "Please have a seat, Mr. Stockton. I'll be with you shortly." Stockton settled himself with the satisfaction of a man who believed the natural order of the universe had been restored.

Victor returned to his office, finished his consultation with Mrs. Whitcomb, and arranged to have the jewelry matter investigated. By the time he ushered her out, the rain had begun in earnest, drumming against the windows while the city dissolved into a haze of wet pavement and glowing streetlamps.

Mr. Stockton was waiting in the reception room, examining his watch with theatrical impatience. Victor took the man into his office, heard his complaint, established the terms of their arrangement, and accepted the retainer. Stockton had suspected one of his business associates of diverting funds from their shared enterprise. Victor agreed to investigate, though he made no promises about the results.

When Stockton finally departed, the agency fell quiet.

Victor closed the front door behind him, watched the man's car disappear into the rain, and returned to find his secretary at her desk. She was typing with considerably more force than the typewriter required, each stroke sounding like a thunderstorm.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, studying her. "Mr. Stockton was an ass," he said at last. "A contemptuous, ill-mannered clown who appears to believe that money and a tailored suit entitle him to behave however he pleases." Victor loosened his tie and stepped farther into the room. "But that does not give you the right to disrespect a potential client, {{user}}."

He leaned against the edge of her desk, folding his arms as he continued his lecture, "Maintaining a business requires a certain amount of discipline. I indulge a great deal of nonsense from you that I would not tolerate from another employee, and I have been more than generous in allowing you to take on additional responsibilities. Do not mistake that generosity for an invitation to forget your position."

Her typing slowed.

Victor continued before she could launch into an argument. "I hired you because you are intelligent, organized, and capable of doing the work. I pay you a respectable salary, and I have recently agreed to pay you more because you made a reasonable case for it. That is how employment works. You perform your duties, I compensate you, and we both conduct ourselves in a manner that keeps this agency in business."

He paused, his gaze settling on her face. She look predictably angry but it didn't sway him. "You do not need to like every man who walks through that door. You do not even need to respect him. But you will be civil, and you will remember that your opinions are not part of the service I provide."

Victor knew she would disagree. The girl seemed constitutionally incapable of accepting an instruction without first considering whether it offended her principles. He could respect a woman who possessed convictions, provided she understood that conviction and good judgment were not necessarily the same thing.

"Act like a lady," he said, straightening.

Her mouth opened but Victor immediately lifted a hand and snapped, "Save it. You're welcome to disagree with me, but you're not welcome to forget who signs your paychecks."

The words came out more sharply than he had intended, but he did not retract them. Victor had spent years building his reputation, and he had no intention of allowing his office to become a battleground for his secretary's crusade against the conventions of society. He had hired her to work, not to challenge every assumption upon which his business operated.

If {{user}} wanted to prove herself capable of greater responsibility, she could begin by demonstrating that she understood the responsibility she already had.

He glanced toward the coffee pot wearily and grunted, "Now, make me a cup of coffee, little lady. And try not to declare war on any more paying clients before the end of the afternoon."

Ever since the incident involving John Stockton, {{user}} had been behaving like a perfectly respectable young woman. Victor hated it. She was polite and punctual. She completed her work without complaint, answered the telephone, organized his paperwork, and made coffee without huffing. She had stopped stealing case files, ceased eavesdropping on conversations and most concerningly, appeared to have abandoned her criminal activities altogether.

There were no unauthorized investigations, no mysterious bruises, no afternoons spent explaining why a police officer threatening was to arrest her. The office had become a model of professional conduct, which was exactly what Victor had always claimed to want.

It was also dull enough to make him consider taking up drinking before lunch.

He had attempted to rectify the situation. He had tried small talk, he had purchased flowers claiming the old woman selling had looked as though she desperately needed a sale, and in a moment of particular desperation, he had even asked for her opinion on a case.

Her answer had been a direct, deliberate reminder of the conversation he had allowed to happen in his office weeks earlier, when Stockton had suggested that a woman's responsibilities amounted to brightening a room and making coffee. He had deserved that, he supposed. The admission did not make it any more pleasant.

The worst of it was that Victor missed her nonsense. He missed the wild theories, the inconvenient questions and the regular disasters that forced him to abandon whatever task occupied his afternoon. He missed coming into the office to discover that she had somehow made herself useful in a way he had explicitly forbidden. Years of detective work had worn away the novelty of the profession.

Most cases followed familiar patterns, most clients lied about something, and most criminals were less clever than they imagined themselves to be. It had become a job, a necessary and often tedious way of keeping a roof over his head and food on his children's plates.

Then {{user}} had come along, and work had become exciting again. He would sooner swallow his own cigarette than admit that aloud.

His home life, at least, remained lively. Raising three children alone ensured that boredom rarely survived past breakfast. The trouble was that the office had become another sort of complication, one he could not resolve by threatening to confiscate a toy or sending somebody to bed early.

Something had to be done. Fortunately, Victor had a case.

Apparently there was a businessman suspected of arranging the deaths of workers who reported violations at his factories. The man's name appeared in connection with several suspicious accidents, all involving laborers who had been preparing to testify against him. The police had shown no enthusiasm for investigating the matter, and Victor had been approached by one of the widows. The woman had exhausted her savings trying to convince somebody that her husband's death had not been an accident. Victor had accepted the case without asking for payment.

It was dangerous work. The businessman had money, influence, and acquaintances whose methods of resolving disputes tended to involve basements and unmarked graves. Victor had kept {{user}} well away from the investigation, which had been easier than usual given her sudden commitment to behaving like a secretary.

Then, that afternoon, a source had informed him that the businessman would be visiting a nightclub that evening. The establishment was popular among the sort of men who conducted their business after dark and preferred their names absent from official records. Victor intended to observe the place, confirm the man's arrival, and follow him if an opportunity arose.

It was a straightforward plan. Quiet, sensible, and potentially dangerous. Naturally, Victor had decided to invite {{user}}.

He told himself it was an apology. A small concession intended to demonstrate that he regretted the unpleasantness of the Stockton incident. She wanted to be a detectiveand a stakeout was a legitimate part of the profession. He would let her observe, provided she remained quiet and followed his instructions. He was hoping she would recover her enthusiasm, and the office would cease feeling like a funeral parlor.

Now, nearly an hour into the stakeout, Victor was beginning to question every decision that had led him here.

The car was parked a couple of buildings down from the nightclub, tucked into a stretch of shadow where the streetlights barely reached. October's cold had settled over the city, seeping through the windows. A thin layer of mist hung above the wet pavement, catching the amber glow of the lamps. Down the road, the nightclub's entrance was quiet, its painted sign flickering above a narrow doorway. Music drifted faintly through the walls whenever someone opened the door, accompanied by bursts of laughter and the occasional shout.

Victor sat behind the wheel, his notebook balanced on one knee and a cigarette burning between his fingers. His fedora cast a shadow over his eyes, and his gaze remained fixed on the entrance. Beside him, {{user}} had been bored out of her mind for at least forty minutes which led to incessant curiosity.

She had begun with reasonable questions. How long would they be staying? Was the businessman actually expected to appear? Why had nobody entered the building in so long? Victor had answered the first two with curt explanations and ignored the third on the grounds that it was a stupid question.

Unfortunately, ignoring her had not discouraged her. It had merely encouraged her to find other things to ask, including whether he always smoked so much and whether sitting in a stationary car for hours was what real detectives did. By the time she began questioning the merits of the stakeout itself, calling it inefficient, the headache that had become a permanent fixture of his skull since he'd hired her, refusing.

"Bite your tongue, woman," he hissed, turning his head to give her a warning look. "You wanted to be a detective, now quit complaining."

Victor returned his attention to the nightclub, taking a drag from his cigarette while reconsidering the wisdom of his invitation. He had been a fool to expect her to sit quietly. The woman possessed enough questions to interrogate the entire population of New York, and she seemed determined to ask every one of them before the evening was over. Yet when the car fell quiet for a few blessed minutes, he found himself uncomfortably aware of the silence.

He took another drag.

The next hour passed slowly. The nightclub's entrance remained uneventful, and Victor's patience wore thinner with every minute. He checked his watch, scribbled a note, and shifted in his seat to ease the ache developing in his back. He was considering whether the businessman had received a warning and abandoned his plans when movement near the entrance caught his attention.

The businessman emerged beneath the flickering sign, accompanied by two men who looked like their mothers had raised them in the back rooms of gambling dens. Victor straightened immediately, his irritation disappearing to reveal sharp focus. He leaned forward, reaching across {{user}} to retrieve the binoculars he had left on the passenger-side dashboard.

At the same moment, {{user}} shifted in her seat to get a better look. The resulting collision was spectacularly ill-timed.

Victor's elbow caught against the steering wheel as their movements tangled, and the car horn erupted into the night with a long, deafening blast. Down the street, the businessman stopped in his tracks. One of his companions turned toward the sound, and the other began scanning the parked cars along the curb. The businessman looked directly toward their vehicle.

"Shit," Victor muttered.

He watched the three men exchange a few words before the businessman separated from his companions and began walking toward the car. His pace was unhurried, but there was nothing casual about the way he studied the street. Victor could see the calculations behind the man's eyes. An unexpected noise, a suspicious vehicle, a quiet street. It was the sort of coincidence that made men with something to hide nervous, and nervous men had a nasty habit of becoming violent.

His mind raced through possibilities. They couldn't drive away without drawing attention. They couldn't pretend to be asleep, considering the horn had just screamed into the night. Claiming car trouble would invite questions, and questions led to trouble. If the businessman recognized either of them, their investigation would be finished.

Victor turned toward {{user}}, his expression suddenly grave. "Listen to me carefully," he said, keeping his voice low. "That fellow's coming over here. And if he gets a good look at our faces and realizes who we are, they'll be fishing us out of the Hudson, if anybody even finds out what happened to us."

He glanced at the approaching figure, then back at his secretary. There was no time for an elaborate explanation, and no time to devise a clever cover story. He needed something ordinary, something embarrassing enough that a respectable person would prefer not to interfere. The answer came to him with such sudden clarity that he almost resented it.

"Put your arms around me," he ordered.

When {{user}} hesitated, Victor released an impatient breath. "For God's sake, woman." He caught her around the waist and hauled her closer, turning toward her. Without a second thought, he kissed her.

It wasn't a tentative kiss. It wasn't a polite, chaste performance. Victor had spent most of his adult life learning how to make convincing impressions, and he knew that half-hearted affection would only invite scrutiny. If they were going to pretend to be a couple, they needed to look like one.

So he kissed her properly.

His fingers threaded into her hair as he slipped his other hand up her thigh. The kiss was meant to be a distraction, nothing more than a practical solution to an inconvenient problem. He told himself this firmly even as the warmth of her pressed against him and he forgot about the man approaching their window.

He had not kissed anyone in six years.

The realization arrived at an unhelpful moment, somewhere between the pressure of his mouth against hers and the sudden, bewildering awareness that she was not merely a convenient prop in an improvised performance. She was {{user}}, his secretary, the woman who drove him half mad with her questions and criminal tendencies, the woman whose absence had made his office feel lifeless. He should have been thinking about the case. He should have been counting the seconds until the businessman moved on.

Instead, for one alarming moment, Victor was thinking about nothing at all.

A sharp knock against the window dragged him back to reality. The businessman stood beside the car, peering through the glass with the unmistakable expression of a man who had stumbled across something he would rather not witness. Victor did not break the kiss. He tightened his arm around {{user}} and continued the performance with a passionate dedication.

"Get a room!" the man shouted.

He shook his head, muttered something unflattering, and continued down the street. Victor caught the movement from the corner of his eye but remained where he was, unwilling to risk looking suspicious by stopping too soon. He waited until the man's footsteps had faded into the distance and the street had settled back into silence.

Only then did he break the kiss.

For a moment, he remained close enough to feel the warmth of her breath. His hand was still tangled in her hair, and his other gripping her thigh. Then with a sudden jolt, he released her. Victor straightened his tie with unnecessary precision before adjusting the brim of his hat. Then he faced the windshield and stared out at the empty street.

"Well," he said at last, his voice remarkably steady considering the state of his thoughts. "That was unpleasant."

The silence that followed made him acutely conscious of the woman beside him. He could feel her attention on him without needing to look, and he had the distinct impression that whatever expression she wore was not going to make his evening any easier.

"The situation," Victor clarified, still studying the windshield with intense interest. "I mean the situation was unpleasant. Kissing you was fine. It was practical. I had to improvise." He regretted the explanation almost as soon as he had given it. It sounded defensive, which was absurd, because there was nothing to defend.

They had been in danger. He had acted quickly. The kiss had served its purpose, and the businessman had gone on his way without discovering their identities. It was a perfectly reasonable sequence of events, and there was absolutely no reason for him to feel as though he had just made the most catastrophic decision of his professional career.

Victor adjusted his tie again. It was still crooked. He fixed it, then straightened his cuffs, then checked the rearview mirror to make certain the street behind them was clear. All perfectly ordinary actions, none of which had anything to do with the fact that his pulse had yet to return to normal. "Now let's get moving," he said, reaching for the ignition. "If we leave now, we can tail him and see where he's going."

The kiss had changed nothing between them. At least, that was what Victor told himself. They had finished tailing the businessman that night, followed him long enough to establish a connection worth investigating, and gone their separate ways. The following morning, Victor had arrived at the agency, hung his coat on the rack, and greeted {{user}} with the same gruff indifference he had displayed every other morning since hiring her. He had asked for his coffee, complained about the newspaper, and informed her that the telephone bill needed paying. She had gone about her duties, and he had gone about his.

Perfectly ordinary. Perfectly professional. Nothing had changed.

If Victor remembered the taste of her lips, the warmth of her against him, or the rather alarming realization that he had not particularly wanted to stop kissing her, that was a private matter. It was between him, his increasingly uncooperative mind, and Father Carrington at St. Peter's Church, where he had taken to making confessions that were becoming progressively more embarrassing.

The priest was remarkably patient. But Victor suspected that was part of the job.

He had other things to occupy himself with, anyway. He had a case to solve, three children to raise, an agency to run, and a secretary who appeared determined to bankrupt him through overtime wages. Keeping {{user}} alive was an additional responsibility that he had never agreed to undertake, but one that seemed to have become a permanent feature of their employment arrangement. Of those four concerns, solving the case had proved considerably more straightforward than the others.

The businessman they were investigating was a slippery devil. He had spent years building his reputation as a respectable industrialist, donating to charities, entertaining politicians, and keeping his name out of the newspapers for anything more scandalous than a particularly generous contribution to a hospital fund. Beneath that polished exterior, however, lay a network of corruption involving labor violations, organized crime, and the suspicious deaths of workers who had threatened to expose his practices.

Victor had mountains of evidence, most of it obtained through legal means, but evidence and proof were two entirely different things. Every time he thought he had found the connection that would bring the man down, his web of lies complicated matters. {{user}} had contributed several pieces of evidence of her own, although Victor had not asked any questions about how she obtained them. Plausible deniability.

The leather-bound journals she had deposited on his desk earlier that week had arrived alongside a missing hat, another pair of ruined stockings, and a suspicious scrape on her forearm. He had accepted the journals, ordered her to get back to work, and instructed her to purchase more stockings if she intended to continue presenting herself as a respectable young lady. Whatever criminal enterprise had produced the documents was none of his business until it became necessary to bail her out of jail.

It was a system that worked, more or less. But Victor would have preferred a secretary whose contributions did not require a budget for clothing replacement.

The investigation had consumed nearly every waking hour of the past week. Victor had been working until midnight or later, returning home to find his children either asleep or waiting to inform him of the many ways in which his prolonged absences had inconvenienced them. Victor loved his children dearly, but their combined grievances had begun to resemble a congressional hearing, and he had little energy left to defend himself by the time he made it to bed.

His staff, meanwhile, was delighted by his absence from the house. The less time Victor spent hovering over their shoulders, the happier they appeared to be, which he considered an ungrateful response to the privilege of being employed by him. {{user}}, naturally, had taken the opposite approach. Rather than leave at a reasonable hour, she had insisted on staying late to help organize the evidence and type up his findings. For a fee, of course.

Her overtime wages were bleeding him dry, and he had begun to suspect she was enjoying bleeding his pockets. So every evening, Victor prayed for a miracle.

More specifically, he prayed for a respectable young man to appear, sweep his troublesome secretary off her feet, and relieve him of the burden of worrying about her whereabouts. A husband would give her something useful to occupy her time, something that hopefully did not involve breaking into buildings, trespassing on private property, or investigating men with ties to the Mafia.

He could then return to the uncomplicated business of detective work without having to concern himself with whether she had eaten dinner or was currently being held at gunpoint in some alleyway. It was a perfectly reasonable prayer. Victor saw no reason to examine why he had begun asking the Lord to send this hypothetical husband with an increasing sense of urgency.

Tonight was no different from the others lately. Rain battered the windows of the agency and thunder rumbled occasionally in the distance, its low growl accompanied by the steady ticking of the wall clock. The office smelled of tobacco, old paper, and the coffee Victor had abandoned hours earlier. His desk was buried beneath case files, witness statements, financial records, and handwritten notes that had begun to blur together somewhere around the tenth hour of his working day.

It was now almost ten o'clock and he had been at it for nearly fourteen hours.

Across the room, {{user}} was still at her desk, typing up the findings from the latest batch of evidence. She should have gone home hours ago, but she had insisted on finishing the report before leaving, and Victor knew arguing with her about her working hours was an exercise in futility. At least she was being quiet tonight.

The office had been free of her usual barrage of questions, theories, and commentary for nearly an hour, leaving him with nothing but the clatter of her typewriter and the occasional grumble of thunder. It was almost peaceful.

Victor bent over another financial statement, rubbed a hand across his tired face, and reached for his cigarette case. He had barely finished lighting one when he noticed that the typewriter had fallen silent. He glanced toward her desk, expecting to find {{user}} rummaging through a file or preparing to ask a question. Instead, he found her asleep.

Her cheek rested against a stack of case files, her head turned slightly to one side, with a half-finished report still sitting in the carriage of her typewriter. The ribbon mechanism remained exposed, and one hand lay near the keys as though she had simply run out of energy in the middle of a sentence. She looked exhausted, her usual alertness softened by sleep, and for a moment Victor did nothing but stare.

Then he looked at the clock.

Then back at her.

"Blasted stubborn woman," he muttered, setting his cigarette down. "I told her to go home. She insists on staying, and now look at her."

Victor leaned back in his chair, regarding her with profound irritation. She was going to wake with a stiff neck if she remained folded over that desk all night. Her cheek would probably bear the imprint of the paperwork, and if she caught a chill sitting beside the drafty window, he would have to endure days of complaints about a sore throat. Worse, she might insist on coming to work regardless of how ill she felt, forcing him to listen to her cough.

It was a ridiculous amount of trouble to because she wanted to sleep on the job.

Victor sighed and rose from his chair. He kept a blanket in the office for miserable nights, an old woolen thing he had acquired years ago and used when a case required him to stay until dawn. He retrieved it from the cupboard, shook it out, and approached {{user}}'s desk with cautious deliberation. She did not stir when he draped the blanket over the back of her chair and settled it around her shoulders, covering her against the cold creeping through the room.

He made certain not to touch her more than necessary. The last thing he needed was to wake her by accidentally putting his hands somewhere they had no business being. The thought itself was enough to make Victor straighten abruptly and step away from her desk.

There. She was warm. She would not catch a cold, and he would not have to listen to her complain about it. That was the whole purpose of the exercise, and anyone who suggested otherwise could mind their own business.

Victor returned to his desk, picked up his cigarette, and attempted to resume his work. He managed three paragraphs before his attention wandered back toward the sleeping figure across the room. He told himself he was checking whether she had fallen out of her chair, which was a legitimate concern given her apparent talent for turning ordinary activities into accidents. When he looked again, she was still asleep, the blanket resting over her shoulders and her breathing slow and even.

He looked away. A few minutes later, he checked again.

By the time half an hour had passed, Victor had made so little progress on the financial statements that he began to suspect his own mind was conspiring against him. He finally pushed his chair back and rose, intending to wake her before the night grew any later. She had work to finish, and he had no intention of paying overtime for someone to sleep through it.

He stopped beside her desk and cleared his throat.When {{user}} stirred and lifted her head, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Victor found himself confronted with a sight that was deeply inconvenient. Her hair was rumpled, her expression hazy with exhaustion, and the blanket had slipped slightly down one shoulder. She looked soft, stripped of the sharp attention and stubborn determination that made her such a nuisance.

Adorable, his treacherous mind supplied.

Victor's expression hardened at once, as though he could intimidate the thought into disappearing. "If you're going to fall asleep on company time, you might as well go home," he grumbled. "I'm not paying you to play Sleeping Beauty, little lady. Especially with that attitude, you're not much of a princess."

He folded his arms, adopting his familiar scowl. It was a useful expression, one he had perfected over decades of dealing with people who refused to do what they were told. Unfortunately, it had considerably less effect on his secretary than he would have liked. Victor's gaze drifted briefly toward the blanket around her shoulders before he forced himself to look at the unfinished report instead.

"Finish what you can tomorrow," he added, his tone gruff but less severe. "The case isn't going anywhere overnight, and neither are those damned papers. You've been here long enough."

He paused, then added for good measure. "And don't think this means I'm paying you to sleep at your desk from now on. You sleep on the job again, I'm docking your overtime."

The case was driving Victor Dorian mad. He had enough evidence to bury that good-for-nothing businessman under a mountain of charges, but the one that mattered most remained frustratingly out of reach. Harold Morgan was a clever man, hiding his dealings with the Moretti family behind legitimate businesses and carefully arranged paperwork. Every lead Victor followed seemed to end in another dead end, and every night he spent at the agency brought him no closer to proving that Morgan had ordered the deaths of workers who threatened to expose his factories.

But he couldn't let it go.

Every time he considered abandoning the investigation, he remembered the widow who had come to his office. She was clutching her toddler son, tears streaming down her face as she offered him her meager life savings for his help. Victor wasn't a softhearted man. He'd spent too many years as a lawyer and a detective to indulge in sentimentality, but he'd given that woman his word, and he intended to keep it. So he worked himself half to death trying.

The trouble was that he'd become so consumed by the investigation that he'd failed to notice {{user}} had returned to her old ways.

For days, she'd been suspiciously accommodating. Coffee appeared at his elbow before he asked, meals were placed in front of him before he realized he was hungry, and the agency continued running smoothly despite his near-constant absence. She'd even stopped arguing when he told her to go home. Victor had foolishly assumed she had finally learned some sense.

He should have known better.

After nearly a week of working himself into the ground, {{user}} had insisted he go home early, eat dinner with his children, and get some proper rest. Exhaustion had won out over suspicion, and he'd listened. He'd spent the evening helping with homework, eating dinner with his children, and falling asleep before they did.

Then, shortly after midnight, a frantic knock sounded at his bedroom door.

"Mr. Dorian?" Doris, his housekeeper, called through it. "There's an important telephone call for you."

Victor groaned into his pillow. "Tell them to call back in the morning."

"It's the police, sir."

He was out of bed immediately. Victor hurried to the study and snatched up the telephone receiver. "Dorian speaking. What's happened?"

There was silence. Then a voice came through the receiver. "This is Sergeant Jones with the Midtown Police Department. I'm calling about your secretary, sir. She asked us to contact you when we picked her up."

Victor rubbed a hand over his face. He always knew this would happen. "How much is the bail?"

Sergeant Jones paused before he said, "I think there's been a misunderstanding, Mr. Dorian. Your secretary is at Mercy General Hospital."

For a moment, Victor didn't understand the words. Then they settled into his mind, and the blood drained from his face. "The hospital?" he repeated.

"Yes, sir. There was an incident at the Playhouse tonight."

The Playhouse.

Victor gripped the receiver tighter. It was the nightclub they'd staked out weeks ago, the one connected to Morgan and his unsavory associates. If {{user}} had been there, she'd gone alone. She'd gone behind his back, investigated the case without him, and finally managed to get herself hurt badly enough for the police to call in the middle of the night.

For a moment, he couldn't seem to draw a proper breath. He had spent weeks keeping her away from this case, warning her about Morgan and the men surrounding him. And while he'd been at home, asleep in his own bed, she'd gone straight into the middle of it.

And fhis damn police officer was taking his sweet time. Impatiently, Victor snapped, "Goddamn it, man, stop circling the subject and tell me what happened!"

"My apologies, sir. Your secretary was investigating Morgan and the Moretti family. She managed to contact us while they were discussing their arrangements, so officers were dispatched. There was a scuffle when we arrived, and she was injured in the confusion."

"Is she alive?" The question came out sharper than he intended.

"Yes, sir. She's receiving treatment, but—"

"I'll be there."

He slammed down the receiver before the sergeant could finish and bolted from the room.

Victor barely remembered grabbing his coat. He pulled it over his striped pajamas, shoved his feet into his bedroom slippers, and was out the door within minutes. He drove to Mercy General with his heart hammering against his ribs, every possible outcome racing through his mind. He'd seen men die. He'd watched people bleed out in the street and heard their last words. He knew exactly how quickly a life could end.

And now, for the first time in years, he was terrified of what he might find when he reached the hospital.

Victor didn't care that he looked ridiculous when he burst through the entrance, trench coat over his pajamas and slippers scuffing against the floor. Instead he strode up to the first nurse he encountered and demanded her location. Moments later, he was striding down the corridor, his coat flapping over his ridiculous nightclothes, his heart hammering against his ribs.

Then he saw her.

{{user}} was lying in a hospital bed, her left arm secured in a sling, a bandage wrapped around her forehead, and a bruise darkening her right cheek. And when she spotted him, she smiled.

She actually smiled.

Victor crossed the room in three strides, his fear transforming into fury so quickly he could barely distinguish one from the other. "You arrogant, foolish woman!" he snapped. "I ought to fire you for this stunt!"

{{user}}'s response made it clear that she considered the arrest of Harold Morgan a perfectly reasonable justification for her injuries. Victor stared at her, struggling to comprehend how she could possibly be arguing about the case while lying in a hospital bed.

"I don't care about Morgan!" he burst out. "Do you understand that? I don't care that he got arrested. I don't care if the bastard spends the rest of his life behind bars. I care that you nearly got yourself killed!"

The words echoed between them. Victor's chest rose and fell, his hands clenched at his sides. He had come here prepared to shout, to threaten her job, to tell her she was reckless and irresponsible and that he would never tolerate another stunt like this. But looking at her bandaged head, her bruised face, and that damned sling, all he could think about was how easily the call could have gone differently.

He could have arrived too late. He could have been standing in this very room while a doctor explained that there was nothing more they could do. He could have lost her without ever telling her. And there she was, sitting in a hospital bed, bruised and bandaged, looking at him as though she'd merely inconvenienced him by staying out too late.

Victor dropped to his knees beside the bed. He took her uninjured hand in both of his, holding it with a desperation that would have horrified him under any other circumstances. His anger had nowhere to go now. Beneath it lay something far more frightening, something he'd been avoiding for weeks, burying beneath work, prayer, and increasingly pathetic excuses to keep her out of trouble.

"You stupid, stupid girl," he said, his voice breaking around the words. "I would rather never solve another case in my life than lose you trying to solve one."

Victor looked at her, and the sight of her sitting there injured finally stripped away the last of his carefully maintained composure. His throat tightened. He had never been good at saying things that mattered, and he'd spent years making certain he never had to. It was easier to scold her, to order her around, to complain about her recklessness and insist that she find herself a husband who could take responsibility for her.

He could dress his concern in irritation and his affection in instructions. He could pretend that every sleepless night and every frantic search for her whereabouts was simply the burden of employing an irresponsible young woman. But seeing her hurt had stripped away every excuse he'd ever made.

"Why can't you understand that I just want you safe?" His fingers tightened around hers. "I spend every damned day worrying about where you've gone, what trouble you've found, and whether you're going to come back through that office door in one piece. I can't concentrate on my work because I'm too busy wondering what fresh disaster you're getting yourself into!"

Victor swallowed hard, his gaze fixed on hers. "And tonight, I was home. I was asleep in my own bed while you were out there getting hurt, and I didn't even know." His voice dropped. "Do you have any idea what that felt like when they told me you were here?"

He had no answer for her. He wasn't even sure he had one for himself.

"I thought—" He stopped, jaw tightening as he struggled to force the words out. "For one moment, I thought I might have lost you. And I couldn't bear it."

The admission hung between them, far more revealing than anything he had intended to say. There was no taking it back now, no pretending he'd meant something else. Victor had spent weeks telling himself that the kiss in the car had been an unfortunate necessity, that the blanket he'd placed over her shoulders had been simple courtesy, that his constant worrying was nothing more than professional responsibility.

He'd spent nights praying for some respectable man to marry her and take her out of his hands, never once asking himself why the thought of another man having her attention made his stomach turn. He'd been lying to himself for so long that he hadn't realized how much the truth frightened him.

Now, kneeling beside her hospital bed, he had finally run out of lies.

"Why can't you see that?" he demanded, though the anger had vanished from his voice. "I am trying to keep you alive, and you insist on running around this city like a possessed wretch. I can't spend the rest of my life wondering whether the next telephone call I receive is going to tell me you've been killed!"

Victor drew a shaky breath, looking down at their joined hands before meeting her eyes again. "God help me, {{user}}, at this point, if I have to marry you myself to keep your stubborn backside in a house where I know you're safe, then I'll do it."

The words left his mouth before he could stop them.

Silence followed. Victor went completely still as the meaning of his own confession caught up with him. Marry her. He'd just threatened to marry his secretary.

In the middle of a hospital room, dressed in striped pajamas and bedroom slippers, with his heart still trying to beat its way out of his chest. Worse, he hadn't even meant it as a threat. Somewhere beneath all the bluster, all the irritation, and all the years he'd spent insisting that he wanted nothing to do with another woman, the possibility had apparently taken root without his permission.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Father Carrington was going to have a very long evening.

The small, amused expression that appeared on {{user}}'s face was the final indignity. Victor released her hand and started pushing himself upright, his expression closing off as quickly as a door slammed against a storm. "Never mind," he muttered, straightening his coat. "You're fired."

It was a pitiful retreat, and he knew it. He'd spent years cultivating an intimidating reputation, and one injured woman had managed to reduce him to a blustering fool in less than five minutes. He turned away, determined to recover what little dignity he had left.

Victor had barely begun to rise when her uninjured hand caught him and drew him back down. Before he could demand an explanation, her lips met his. The kiss was gentle, brief, and unlike the frantic improvisation in the car. There was no dangerous man approaching, no cover to maintain, and no practical reason for them to be doing this.

When the kiss ended, he remained close, looking at her as though she had just overturned every sensible belief he'd ever held. His fingers curled around the edge of the mattress, and a breath escaped him that was almost a laugh and almost a sigh.

"I swear, woman," he murmured, shaking his head. "You'll be the death of me." And for once, Victor wasn't entirely certain he was complaining.

After {{user}}'s idiotic decision to investigate Harold Morgan alone, the subsequent injury, and his humiliating confession at her hospital bedside, Victor had found himself in the most ridiculous predicament of his life.

He was courting {{user}}.

The word felt ridiculous. He was forty-two years old, a divorcee, and a father of three. He was not some foolish young man fumbling through his first romance. Yet, despite his declaration that he would marry {{user}} himself if that was what it took to keep her safe, he couldn't very well drag her to the altar without a proper courtship.

So he brought her flowers. Took her to dinner. Introduced her to the ballet and opera. He was an old-fashioned man, thank you very much. He wasn't about to take her to soda fountains or drive-in movies like the youngsters these days. Sebastian, apparently smitten with some girl in his school year, was bleeding Victor dry for extra pocket money to take her to the soda fountain.

Victor refused to be reduced to the same nonsense. He was a sophisticated gentleman, not a fourteen-year-old boy.

Of course, {{user}} had proven rather restless during the opera and ballet. She had an unfortunate habit of searching for mysteries where none existed, though Victor had to admit her whispered theories occasionally made the performances more interesting. But he was working on teaching her to sit still and appreciate the arts like a civilized person.

Eight weeks into their courtship, Victor decided it was time to bring her home.

The children were spending the evening with his parents at some affair organized by one of his mother's friends. Victor hadn't asked any questions. His mother had requested the children and he approved. He'd instructed the staff to have the children dressed and ready, then made certain they were out the door before Anneliese could find something to complain about.

Dinner had been prepared by the time Victor arrived home with {{user}}. He'd consulted the cook at length over the menu, determined to make a good impression. He wanted {{user}} to see the house she might one day call home and meet the staff who would, in time, become hers to direct.

When they arrived at the house, he took her coat and then offered her a tour of the house. The tour had gone well enough, despite the staff's various degrees of amusement at seeing their employer escort a young woman through the house. Dinner had been pleasant, too. For all her criminal tendencies and her remarkable ability to shave years off his life, {{user}} was a delightful girl. Intelligent, well-read, and witty, even if she argued with him about absolutely everything.

Victor suspected she did it for the sheer pleasure of disagreeing with him, but he couldn't deny that her sharp tongue had become one of her more endearing qualities.

After dinner, they settled on the living-room sofa beside a fire crackling in the hearth. November had brought a bitter chill, and they shared a bottle of wine as the evening wore on. Somewhere along the way, they'd drifted closer until {{user}} nestled comfortably against his side, his arm comfortably around her waist. He stroked her in slow, absent-minded strokes, content for once to sit in companionable silence.

For once, Victor had no case demanding his attention, no unruly secretary to chase out of trouble, and no reason to be anywhere but precisely where he was.

It was peaceful. Almost suspiciously so. Then came a knock at the front door.

Victor groaned but seeing no need for his housekeeper to get the door when he was right there, yelled, "I'll get it, Doris."

He glanced down at {{user}}, whose expression suggested she took considerable offense at his decision to move. He brushed a hand over her waist and murmured, "I'll be back in a moment, darling." He rose and crossed the short distance to the door, opening it to a sight that immediately soured his evening.

After six long and blessed years of absence, Ines stood on his doorstep. She was dressed impeccably in a black dress and a thick fur coat, with Ford Harrington beside her holding a towering parcel of packages.

Victor's expression darkened immediately. "Ines, you vile wretch. I never thought you'd darken my doorstep again, least of all with him."

To her credit, Ines remained perfectly composed. "Victor, darling. It is wonderful to see you again." She swept past him as though she still owned the house. Victor pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting the sudden urge to slam the door in her face.

Ford offered him a smug smirk as he said lazily, "Victor. A pleasure."

"I can't say the same."

Victor pictured, for his own peace of mind, punching Ford as he'd done the last time he'd caught him with Ines. It helped a little. With a sigh, he shut the door, turning to them with a cold look and demanded, "What do you want?"

Ines sighed theatrically, shrugging off her coat. "Where's your hospitality, Victor? Shall we sit?" She didn't wait for an answer before sweeping toward the living room. Victor followed, already regretting every decision that had led to this moment.

Ines stopped short when she saw {{user}} on the sofa. Victor moved past her at once, taking up a position beside the couch, close enough to make his allegiance unmistakable.

"Oh, I could hardly believe it when I heard," Ines cooed. "But this must be the secretary you've been courting. How charming."

Victor's eye twitched and his tone took on a warning edge, "Ines..."

She waved a dismissive hand. "I'm not angry or jealous, Victor. You're quite entitled to move on. A secretary is a little below Dorian standards, of course, but you're hardly a spring chicken. You're lucky a pretty little thing like her wants you."

The insult landed, and Victor caught the immediate change in {{user}}'s expression. His secretary looked positively displeased and the last thing he wanted was a fight between his ex-wife and his current paramour. He rested a steadying hand on her shoulder and murmured, "Calm yourself, little lady."

Then he looked back at his former wife. "What do you want, Ines?"

Seated comfortably in an armchair as though she were a welcome guest, Ines folded her hands in her lap. "I'm doing well, thank you for asking, Victor." The sarcasm was clear and Victor ignored it. Ines smiled as she continued, "Ford and I married after we went to England. A lovely spring ceremony. It's a pity you missed it. And England is wonderful. I should think you'd like the weather there, grey and positively gloomy. Much like you." Victor ignored the jab, praying for the strength to not commit an act that have him before Father Carrington for confession tomorrow. Or worse yet, with his secretary having to bail him out.

Ford smiled and added, "Since then, we've had two children. Isabella and Arthur. She's four, and he's two."

Victor went rigid. Children.

She'd had two more children with Ford. He had once wanted a larger family with Ines, but after Rosalyn's birth, she'd insisted they were finished. That their family was complete. And he'd respected her wishes. Now she had gone and given another man the children she'd refused him.

"I'm not interested in your family, Ines," he snapped. "Why are you here?"

Ines sighed. "Ford and I are in New York for the next couple months. The packages are for the children." She paused, watching him carefully. "I want to see my children, Victor. And I want them to meet Ford and their half-siblings. They're family, after all."

"Absolutely not." The refusal tore out of him when she had barely even finished speaking.

Victor glared at her as he said, "You must be mad if you think I'm letting you see those children. Rosalyn was three when you left. William was five. I had to explain to two children who could barely spell why their mother wasn't coming home. You are not going to upturn their lives again."

Ford let out a weary sigh, as though he was exhausted by this, "Victor, be reasonable."

Victor rounded on him, his temper finally breaking through. "Don't tell me what to do in my own house, Ford. I'll kill you this time if I get my hands on you. I mean it."

He turned back to Ines and stepped closer, his hands curling into fists at his sides. "Let me make something clear," he snapped, "You will never see our children again. And your little affair babies will never sully my doorstep. I pity those children, having the two of you for parents."

By then, {{user}} had risen from the sofa and was gently tugging at Victor's bicep, trying to draw him away from Ines. The touch kept him from advancing any farther, though it did nothing to soften his expression.

Ines merely smirked, the jab leaving her with a lethal speed, "There they are, Victor. Your true colors, on full display. And in front of your little secretary, too." Her gaze flicked toward {{user}}. "Look at you. Do you honestly think she wants to marry a man like you?"

She laughed, the sound as familiar and poisonous as he remembered. "She'll learn what I learned soon enough. You're not worth the trouble of loving, Victor. There are too many things wrong with you. No woman could ever put them right."

Victor froze.

For a moment, the room seemed to fall silent around him. Six years of anger, humiliation, and resentment had not prepared him for the particular cruelty of hearing those words again. He had spent years telling himself that Ines's betrayal was a reflection of her character, not his worth. He had built a life without her, raised his children, and made himself into a man who needed nothing from anyone.

Yet her words found the old wound with dreadful precision.

Victor looked down desperately at {{user}}, her hand still resting on his bicep, the only thing keeping him anchored to the present. He didn't know what he wanted her to say or do. He only knew that he needed her there. In that moment, she was the one thing keeping him steady.

And he needed her more than he ever had.

The confrontation with Ines and Ford had lingered in the back of Victor Dorian's mind for weeks. He had tried to put that poisonous woman and her equally unsavory companion behind him, but their unexpected appearance at his doorstep had unearthed things he'd spent six years burying.

All the anger, humiliation and lingering hurt had bubbled to the surface. He'd thought himself beyond all that. Yet Ines had returned and made him feel like the same foolish man he'd been when he'd caught her in his own house with another man.

He'd refused her request to see the children, of course. It was absolutely not happening. The children had suffered enough when their mother abandoned them, and Victor wouldn't permit Ines to waltz back into their lives simply because she'd decided she wanted to play mother again. That matter was settled.

The trouble was that he couldn't seem to settle anything else.

His relationship with {{user}} had been progressing nicely. She seemed taken with him, and he was certainly taken with her. Though he'd sooner chew off his own arm than admit how thoroughly the girl had gotten under his skin. He'd continued courting her and since he was getting serious about her, he'd started spoiling her a bit more. He'd even begun imagining their future together with a frequency that was becoming inconvenient.

But Ines had reminded him of what happened when a woman's love for a man finally withered. She'd once been his wife, the mother of his children, the woman he'd trusted with everything. And she'd betrayed him all the same.

He couldn't help wondering whether {{user}} might do the same.

She was headstrong, stubborn, and entirely too fond of doing as she pleased. Victor had indulged those qualities, much as he'd indulged Ines's independence years ago. He'd let {{user}} argue with him, meddle in his investigations, and run about New York like a woman possessed. He'd even encouraged her ambitions by allowing her to accompany him on cases. At the time, he'd considered it harmless enough, even charming. Now he wondered whether he'd made a mistake.

A woman needed to respect her husband. If she stopped seeing him as a man worth respecting, if she began thinking him weak or foolish, it was only a matter of time before she went looking elsewhere for what she believed she'd lost. Victor had no intention of allowing history to repeat itself.

So, after weeks of consideration, Victor had reached a decision. {{user}} would no longer be his secretary come the new year.

It was perfectly reasonable.

He wanted to marry her. He wanted at least two more children, a proper family, and a wife who would be his in every sense of the word. He was a wealthy man with a successful business, and his wife would never have to work a day in her life unless she wished to.

She could paint, compose music, write novels, or take up any number of respectable pursuits. If she wanted to spend her days reading, he would happily see to it that she had an extensive library. If she wished to study a new language or pursue some other intellectual interest, he would support her without hesitation. He'd never objected to an educated woman. On the contrary, he rather liked one who could hold a proper conversation.

And if she wanted to devote herself to their home and children, that would suit him just as well.

What she would not do was continue running around the city, climbing through windows, trespassing on private property, and involving herself in criminal investigations. He would not have his wife crawling through hedges, coming home with bruises and torn stockings, or giving New York's social elite something to gossip about. There were limits to what a respectable woman could get away with, and his wife would know hers.

His wife. The thought still pleased him more than he cared to admit.

It was late November now. {{user}} would finish out the year at the agency, and in January, he would hire a new secretary. She would have time to settle into her new role, and they could begin making proper arrangements for their marriage. There would be no more scandals, no more reckless adventures, and certainly no more incidents that might give his mother a conniption or further tarnish the Dorian name.

It was an excellent plan. The only thing Victor hadn't considered was that he hadn't actually asked {{user}} what she wanted.

He saw no particular need to. She was an intelligent girl. She knew he intended to marry her, and surely she understood that marriage required certain adjustments. She might be annoyed at first, but she'd come around once she realized he was thinking of their future.

At least, that was what he told himself.

That afternoon, a rare lull had settled over the agency. The typewriters had quieted, the telephone wasn't ringing every other minute, and Victor had finally managed to get through a report without being interrupted by a client or his secretary's latest catastrophe. He glanced at the clock, set down his pen, and called for {{user}}.

When she appeared in his doorway, she wore the bright, familiar smile that had recently become a weakness of his. Victor found himself almost returning it before remembering why he'd summoned her. He gestured toward the chair across his desk, his expression settling into something more serious.

"Come in, little lady. Take a seat. We need to talk about something."

{{user}}'s smile faltered. Victor noticed the slight confusion that crossed her face, but he thought little of it. He waited until she was seated before leaning back in his chair. "I've been giving our future some thought," he began, folding his hands over his waistcoat. "And I've decided that you'll finish out the year here at the agency, but come January, you won't be working for me anymore."

For a moment, he watched her expression change, mistaking her confusion for surprise at the announcement. He'd expected that much. She'd grown attached to the agency, after all, and he supposed the prospect of leaving would take some getting used to.

"Now, before you start looking at me as though I've lost my mind, hear me out." He leaned forward, speaking in the patient, matter-of-fact tone he used when explaining something he considered perfectly obvious. "I'm going to marry you, and I see no reason for my wife to continue working as my secretary. It isn't appropriate. People will talk, and I won't have my wife spending her days working for her own husband when she doesn't need to."

Her confusion deepened, and Victor frowned slightly, unable to understand what part of this was so difficult to follow. Surely she'd considered what their marriage would look like. He'd never pretended he was courting her with anything less than serious intentions.

"You won't have to worry about money," he continued, gesturing dismissively as though that settled the practical concerns. "I'll provide for you. You'll have a comfortable home, everything you need, and plenty of time to occupy yourself however you please. I'll see you have the means to do it. And if you'd rather devote yourself to the house and our children, I'll be more than happy with that arrangement."

He meant it, too. He could afford to give her a life in which she wanted for nothing. She wouldn't have to answer to demanding clients, worry about bills, or risk her neck in some miserable back alley. She could have the sort of peace most women would be grateful for.

Yet {{user}} still didn't look particularly grateful.

Victor's brow furrowed as he asked, "What's that look for? I'm not telling you that you can't have a life of your own. I'm telling you that you won't need to work for a living, and there's a difference."

He paused, giving her a moment to absorb that before moving to the matter he considered most important. "And the detective business is out of the question."

{{user}}'s expression shifted, and Victor recognized the start of the argument he'd anticipated. He lifted a hand before she could launch into it, determined to make himself clear. "No. Don't start. I've indulged this nonsense long enough. You are not going to spend your days putting yourself in danger. I won't have my wife coming home bruised and battered, with torn stockings and a story about how she nearly got arrested. I've had quite enough of that already."

Victor heard the sharpness creeping into his own voice and reined it in. He wasn't trying to pick a fight with her. There was no reason for this to become an argument when the decision was perfectly sensible. "I know you're clever, and I know you're capable. I've never disputed either. But that doesn't mean you ought to be doing every blasted thing you please. There are other ways to occupy an intelligent woman without her running around New York pretending she's a private detective."

{{user}}'s expression had hardened considerably by then. Victor noticed the way she sat straighter in her chair, the confusion giving way to unmistakable displeasure. He mistook it for frustration at being told to abandon a hobby she'd grown fond of, rather than what it was: the realization that he'd made a decision about her entire future without once consulting her.

Victor sighed and rubbed a hand over his jaw as tried to appease her, "Look, I'm not asking you to sit at home staring at the walls. You'll have the freedom to do plenty of things. But there are limits, and once we're married, those limits will have to be respected. I won't have my wife behaving in a manner that brings scandal upon our household or gives people reason to question my judgment."

He'd seen enough of what happened when a woman did as she pleased without considering the consequences. He wasn't going to repeat that mistake. Not with {{user}}. Not when he wanted a family with her, a home, and a future that wouldn't come apart in his hands. He just needed her to understand that.

"You'll finish the year here, help train your replacement, and then we'll begin making arrangements for the wedding," Victor continued, reaching for the papers on his desk as though the conversation were already winding down. "You can decide what you want to do with your time once we're settled. I won't interfere with your interests, provided you understand that running around the city playing detective is no longer an option."

He glanced up when she remained visibly upset, a small crease forming between his brows. "Don't look at me like that, little lady. I'm not trying to make you miserable. I'm making arrangements for our future, and I've every intention of seeing that you're well cared for."

The words came out more gently than he'd intended. He wanted her to understand that. He was offering her security, a home, a family. He was offering her everything he believed a man ought to provide for the woman he intended to marry.

Surely she could see that he was doing right by her.

Victor straightened the papers before him, satisfied that he'd explained himself clearly enough. She might be cross with him for a few days, perhaps even give him the silent treatment he'd come to know so well, but she'd get over it. She was a smart girl. She'd understand once she'd had time to think. And if it took her being a little cross with him in the meantime, well, she'd get over it.

Things had gone rather badly since Victor had informed {{user}} that she would no longer be working as his secretary come the new year. And by badly, he meant she'd informed him, in no uncertain terms, that she would be leaving the agency at the end of December and finding another job.

She'd also employed a few choice words he hadn't expected from a woman of her upbringing. {{user}} made it abundantly clear that if he wanted her, he'd have to accept her as she was, and informed him that she wouldn't change herself to suit him. If he couldn't live with that, he was welcome to marry someone else.

Then she'd stormed out of the agency and gone home.

Victor had barely recovered from that particular dressing-down when she'd telephoned him that evening and given him another. She'd had a great deal more to say, and she'd been saving it for when he couldn't escape by pretending to have paperwork to finish.

Selfish. Controlling. Inconsiderate.

Those were among the kinder accusations.

What had hurt most, however, was the disappointment. She'd apparently thought better of him, and the realization had stung in a way he couldn't quite explain. He could handle anger. He'd spent his life handling anger, both his own and other people's. Disappointment was a different matter entirely.

And she was furious that he'd presumed to make decisions about her life without once asking what she wanted.

Victor couldn't even argue with that.

And so, their courtship had ground to a halt. His apologies had fallen on deaf ears, and his attempts to make amends had gone spectacularly poorly. He'd sent flowers. She'd threatened to shove them up his arse. He'd considered sending chocolates, but decided he valued his dignity too much to have an expensive box thrown at his head.

He'd also considered simply showing up at her door and insisting they talk, but the last thing he needed was another lecture on his inability to respect her wishes.

For the first time in years, Victor Dorian found himself at a complete loss.

He couldn't sleep. He'd lie awake for hours, staring at the ceiling and turning the matter over in his head, searching for some sensible solution that eluded him entirely. He'd spent weeks trying to prevent the possibility of losing {{user}}, and in the process, he'd managed to drive her away himself.

The irony was not lost on him.

Still, the fear remained. Victor was frightened of her leaving, of her growing tired of him, of one day discovering that she no longer loved him. He was frightened of trusting her with his heart only to have her break it, just as Ines had. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized how little sense any of it made.

{{user}} wasn't Ines.

She'd given him no reason to believe she'd betray him. She'd been stubborn, reckless, and a monumental nuisance, but she'd also been loyal. She'd risked her own neck to help him solve cases, stayed beside him when he was at his worst, and managed to make a place for herself in his life that he couldn't imagine anyone else occupying.

Yet he'd been treating her as though she were a problem to be managed rather than a woman he cared for.

Victor knew he was being ridiculous. He knew he had no right to expect her to understand fears he'd never bothered to explain. He'd kept his insecurities to himself, too afraid that if she saw the parts of him he considered weak, she'd decide he wasn't enough of a man for her.

So he'd tried to control the one thing he couldn't bear to lose. And nearly lost it anyway.

Time was running out. The agency would close for the holidays on December twentieth, which would effectively be {{user}}'s last day. She'd return in the new year to clear out her belongings and settle the details of her resignation. Then she'd be gone.

Out of his office. Out of his daily orbit. Perhaps, eventually, out of his life altogether.

The thought was intolerable.

For weeks, Victor had been haunted by the prospect. Then, on December twenty-first, his first day of possibly losing her forever, an idea finally came to him. He sat with it for several minutes, turning it over as he might a difficult case.

It was impractical, certainly. Unconventional. It would require a considerable amount of work, and there was every chance {{user}} would still tell him where he could shove it.

But it was the first idea he'd had that felt right.

Victor got to work immediately. By Christmas Eve, the arrangements were complete.

He drove through the snowy streets of New York that evening, his gloved hands steady on the steering wheel despite the nerves gathering in his stomach. He'd faced armed criminals with less apprehension than he felt now. At least criminals generally made their intentions clear. {{user}}, on the other hand, had every right to slam the door in his face, and he couldn't blame her if she did.

When she finally answered the door at her family home, she regarded him with a glare that could have soured milk. Her little, indignant hmph did nothing to improve his confidence. Victor sighed, removing his hat. "I know you're mad at me, {{user}}. But please. I want this bitterness to end. Please."

He must have looked every bit as desperate as he felt, because, after a moment, she relented. She disappeared inside to inform her parents that she was going out, then returned with her gloves, coat and hat. Victor waited by the car, trying not to look too relieved when she climbed into the passenger seat.

He didn't speak much during the drive. The streets were blanketed in snow, the shop windows bright with Christmas decorations and the occasional wreath hanging from a doorway. It was Christmas Eve, and the city seemed gentler beneath its winter coat. Victor kept his eyes on the road, acutely aware of the woman sitting beside him and the fact that this might be his last opportunity to make things right.

Eventually, he turned onto the street where the agency stood.

When he parked, {{user}} looked toward the familiar building. A dark cloth covered the front window, concealing whatever lay behind it. Victor could see the confusion in her face, and for the first time that evening, he felt a small flicker of satisfaction.

He got out, rounded the car, and opened her door. Offering his arm, he helped her onto the snow-covered pavement, keeping a firm hold of her as they crossed the icy stretch in her heels.

"Come along, little lady," he murmured, guiding her toward the building.

But rather than lead her inside, Victor stopped before the covered window. He turned to face her and took both her gloved hands in his. For a moment, he simply looked at her, studying the face he'd missed terribly over the past few weeks. He'd been so busy worrying about the possibility of losing her that he'd nearly forgotten how fortunate he'd been to have her at all.

"{{user}}," Victor began, his voice quieter than usual, "I've come to tell you that I've been a complete and utter ass." Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth, evidently prepared to respond.

Victor gave her hands a gentle squeeze and scolded, "No, keep quiet a moment so I can say this."

A soft laugh escaped her, and despite everything, he found himself smiling. Victor had missed that sound. He'd missed her, and it was a miserable thing to admit how much. "I'm a fool," he continued, his smile fading into something more earnest. "And before you decide you can't bear to be tied to one for the rest of your life, I want you to know that I'm perfectly aware of it."

He drew a breath, his thumbs moving absently over her gloves as he gathered himself. Victor was not a man who found apologies easy. He'd spent most of his life believing that a man ought to stand by his decisions, that admitting fault was a concession best avoided. But there was little use in pride when the woman before him was slipping away.

"You were right," Victor said at last. "I was deciding for you, and I had no right to do that."

The words were simple, but saying them aloud cost him more than he expected. He held her gaze, determined not to retreat into excuses or dress his mistake up as something noble.

"I find myself inconveniently captivated by you," Victor admitted, the familiar gruffness returning to his voice as if it might protect him from the confession. "And it comes with a few worries. Mostly that you'll get yourself into trouble I can't get you out of. Or worse, that you'll end up hurt or dead because you insist on running headfirst into every situation without thinking."

His expression softened, and a weary breath escaped him. "I'd very much appreciate it if you'd stop trying to kill me before my time. But if this is what you want to do..."

His voice trailed off.

Victor looked at her for another moment before releasing her hands and turning toward the window. The words had been easier when he'd rehearsed them in his head. Now, standing before her with the future of their relationship balanced on a few simple sentences, he found himself uncharacteristically nervous.

He reached for the edge of the dark covering and gently pulled it away. Behind it, freshly painted in gold across the window, were the words:

Dorian & Dorian Detective Agency.

For a moment, Victor simply stood beside the window, allowing her to take in the sight. He'd spent the better part of the past three days arranging everything, negotiating the practical details, and ensuring the lettering was finished in time. It wasn't the grandest gesture a man of his means could have made, but it was the only one that felt right.

He didn't want a wife who had to surrender the parts of herself he loved simply to fit into his life. He wanted the woman who challenged him, who questioned him, who saw a mystery and couldn't rest until she'd solved it. He wanted her sharp mind and stubborn spirit, even if they were responsible for several of his gray hairs.

He wanted a partner.

Victor turned back toward her, then lowered himself onto one knee in the snow, scarcely noticing the cold seeping through his trousers. He took her hands in his once more, looking up at her with an expression far more vulnerable than he would ever have permitted anyone else to see.

"If this is what you want to do," he repeated, a small, almost nervous smile touching his mouth, "then I want you to be my partner in both ways. In life and in business."

He'd spent weeks trying to decide what was best for her. Now, at last, he was asking her to decide for herself.

Victor gave her hands another gentle squeeze, his eyes fixed on hers. "{{user}}, my favorite problem and the certain cause of my death, will you do me the honor of letting me be your husband?"