By 8:17 a.m., the office printer had jammed three times, my inbox was quietly on fire, and I was already sweating through my blouse.
Mondays at Fairmont Marketing were special like that.
“Good morning, Hannah! The coffee machine’s dead again,” someone called over the low buzz of keyboards and phones.
Of course it was.
“I’ll perform last rites after I fix the printer,” I answered without looking up, wedging my shoulder against the temperamental Canon like we were having a lovers’ quarrel.
Paper rasped, the smell of hot toner thick in the air. My fingers were already dusted gray. I bent, stuck my arm in up to the elbow, and tried not to think about the fact that my job title was "Office Manager" but my actual role was "human duct tape."
There was a thud and a muffled curse from behind me.
“Whoa—sorry, didn’t see you there.”
A warm baritone, unfamiliar. Definitely not one of my usual codependents.
I straightened too fast, banging my head on the open printer tray. Stars exploded across my vision.
“Yep. That’s my brain. Didn’t need that,” I muttered, pressing my hand to the sore spot.
“Are you okay?” The voice was closer now, full of genuine concern, not the performative kind I usually got from senior managers who thought my name was Heather.
I blinked and turned.
He was tall. That was my first thought, which was ridiculous because our cubicle farm leveled everyone into the same gray rectangle. But somehow he made the space feel small. Tall, broad shoulders under a pale blue dress shirt rolled at the forearms, dark hair a little too long to be corporate and curling slightly at the ends. There was a faint stubble on his jaw, like he’d either rushed this morning or wanted to look like he hadn’t tried.
His eyes were the worst part. Or the best. Warm hazel, ringed in darker brown, focused entirely on me as if there wasn’t a chaotic office humming around us.
“I’m fine,” I said, because that was my default setting. “Printer and I are just in couples therapy.”
One corner of his mouth curved up. “Do you take new clients? I have a deeply unhealthy relationship with spreadsheets.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. That alone was suspicious; Mondays usually wrung the humor out of me by 8:05.
He extended a hand, palm wide, fingers calloused in a way that didn’t match his pressed shirt. “I’m Liam. They told me to find Hannah, keeper of all knowledge and forms.”
Of course they did. New hire.
I wiped my toner-stained hand on my skirt, winced at the gray smear, and shook his anyway. Warm. Steady. Not too firm, not patronizing soft. He held my gaze when he smiled, like we were sharing a secret joke I wasn’t aware I’d made.
“Hannah Wilkes,” I said. “Unpaid therapist to printers and coworkers alike. You’re the new…?”
“Assistant analyst,” he supplied quickly, with the faintest grimace, like the words tasted wrong. “They said I’d be sitting next to you.”
I blinked. My brain did a short, dangerous list: Sitting. Next. To. You.
That would be the empty desk on my right — the one that had been a rotating door of interns and flight-risk hires for the last year. It gave me just enough buffer from the rest of the open floor to pretend I had some privacy. My little moat.
“You sure you want that?” I asked before I could stop myself. “It comes with full access to my meltdown soundtrack and a front-row seat to passive-aggressive emails.”
His grin widened, and there was a flicker of something like relief across his face. “Sounds perfect.”
He said it like he meant it.
I tugged my hand back before I could think too hard about the warmth traveling up my arm. “Okay then, Perfect. Let me unjam this thing and I’ll show you where we hide the decent coffee. It’s a classified location.”
“Appreciate it.” He crouched beside me without waiting for instruction, peering into the open cavity of the printer. “You’re trying to clear it from the feed roller, right? It’s probably stuck higher up.”
I frowned. “What are you, a printer whisperer?”
“Used to fix the ones at my—uh, old office,” he said, reaching in past my tentative fingers with practiced ease. “Here.”
He braced a hand on the frame—dangerously close to my hip—and tugged. A crumpled wad of paper slid free with a protesting crackle.
“Teamwork,” he said simply, offering the mangled sheets like a trophy.
Something in my chest did a quick, traitorous flip. Those hands did not look like they belonged to someone who got precious about toner.
“Careful,” I replied, taking the ruined papers. “If you get too competent, they’ll have you running this place before you know it.”
His eyes flickered, something unreadable passing over his features so fast I almost missed it.
“I’ll risk it,” he said quietly.
I shoved the jam into the recycling and shut the printer with a decisive snap. It purred back to life, spitting out overdue reports like it hadn’t been trying to ruin my day.
An email notification bloomed at the corner of my screen like a threat. Mom.
Subject line: Reminder for Friday!!!
My stomach dipped.
I clicked it open because I’m a masochist.
Hannah,
Just confirming you’re coming for dinner FRIDAY at 7. I told everyone you’re bringing that special someone you hinted at last month. Don’t chicken out at the last minute again. Your cousin Emily’s fiancé is a surgeon, and it will be nice not to have you alone for once.
Love,
Mom
P.S. Wear the navy dress. The one that doesn’t make you look tired.
Heat rushed to my face in a slow, humiliating wave. I hadn’t hinted at a special someone. I’d tried to change the subject and mumbled something about "someone from work" to get her off the phone.
“I need a new identity,” I muttered.
“Printer not cooperating again?” Liam asked lightly as he straightened, rolling his sleeves a little higher. The tendons in his forearm flexed. Distracting.
“Worse.” I dragged a hand through my hair, then dropped it when I remembered the toner. “My mother.”
He leaned one hip against the edge of my desk, interest sharpening. “That bad?”
“You have no idea.” I debated closing the email, then sighed. He was new. I’d probably never see him again after he realized this office was built on unpaid overtime and passive aggression. What was the harm in venting?
“She thinks my life is a group project she forgot to assign the right partner to,” I said. “She’s on this quest to marry me off before my ovaries spontaneously combust. And apparently, I told her I was bringing a date to family dinner on Friday, which I did not.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “That’s… ambitious of her.”
“She’s very goal-oriented.” My voice went dry. “Unfortunately, so is guilt. If I show up alone again, she’ll—” I broke off, the familiar mix of dread and loyalty clogging my throat. “It’ll be a lot.”
“Can you tell her plans changed?” he asked, genuinely curious, not just making conversation.
I snorted. “And admit I don’t have a date? Then she’ll invite some friend’s son ‘as a favor’ and spend the entire night asking me why I’m not more like Emily.”
“Emily the surgeon fiancé’s other half?”
“Emily the walking LinkedIn profile,” I corrected. “I love her, but if I have to hear about her destination wedding one more time, I might elope with this printer.”
Liam’s laugh was soft and surprised, like maybe he hadn’t expected me to have teeth under all the office politeness. “Sounds like you need a decoy.”
I dragged my eyes off my inbox and met his gaze fully. It was a mistake; he was too focused, too present. Like this wasn’t some throwaway first-day chat.
“Yeah,” I said, the word slipping out more raw than I meant. “But decoys are hard to come by.”
He studied me for a heartbeat. I watched his chest rise and fall, slow and deliberate, like he was making a decision.
“I could do it.”
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. The clatter of keyboards faded around us, or maybe my brain just forgot to register them.
“You could… what?” I asked.
“I could be your decoy,” he said easily, as if he were offering to carry a box instead of throwing my entire personal disaster off its axis. “Your date. For Friday.”
I stared at him, certain I’d misheard. “You want to meet my mother.”
“Want is a strong word.” His smile flashed, quick and self-deprecating. “But I don’t mind pretending to be your boyfriend if it gets you through one dinner.”
If my heart did that little lurch again, that was just caffeine and stress.
“That’s…” Ridiculous. Suspicious. Too kind. “You don’t even know me.”
His expression sobered, though the warmth in his eyes didn’t dim. “I know what it’s like to have family expectations feel like a full-time job.”
The sincerity in that simple sentence nudged at something tender in me.
“Also,” he added lightly, “you did save me from a lifetime of wandering this floor looking for the legendary Hannah. Consider this me paying it forward.”
“You’ve been here twelve minutes,” I protested weakly. “I doubt I saved you from anything.”
“Don’t underestimate first impressions.” His voice had gone quieter, almost intimate, and it sent a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the office air conditioning.
I swallowed. “My mom is… intense. She’ll interrogate you. And then she’ll probably fall in love with you and start planning our wedding before dessert.”
His lips quirked. “Good. That’ll sell the act.”
I laughed, half-hysterical. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
“I am, actually.” He shifted, bracing his hands on the back of the empty chair at the desk beside mine. “You clearly don’t want to go alone. You need a buffer. I’m volunteering to be the human shield. It’s not that complicated.”
It was, though. People didn’t just offer themselves up for my convenience. Not without wanting something in return. That was one of the first lessons you learned as the eldest daughter of Margaret Wilkes.
“What’s the catch?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
His eyebrows lifted, and he seemed genuinely amused rather than offended. “There’s no catch.”
“Everyone has a catch.”
He considered that for a second. “Okay. My catch is that you have to tell me the story of the printer elopement on the way there.”
An unwilling smile tugged at my mouth. “That’s a terrible bargain.”
“I’m new,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll get better at negotiating.”
There it was again, that tiny sliver of truth under the banter: he wasn’t like the others. Most new hires flailed in the deep end, trying to impress upper management. He was focused on me like I was the whole pool.
“You really wouldn’t mind?” I asked, some last piece of pride putting up a feeble fight. “It’s a family dinner, not a networking opportunity. There will be casseroles and side-eye and my aunt’s opinions about my hair.”
“Sounds… educational,” he said dryly. “And if it makes your night less awful, then yeah. I don’t mind.”
The simplicity of that undid me a little.
Sometimes kindness hits harder than cruelty because you don’t know where to put it.
I exhaled slowly, feeling the tight band around my ribs ease a fraction. “Okay,” I heard myself say. “If you’re sure, then… yes. Thank you.”
His smile this time was softer, more contained, like it was just for me. “You’re welcome.”
“Just so we’re clear,” I added, because the last thing I needed was to accidentally give this beautiful stranger the wrong idea. “This is purely an act. My mom will relax, I’ll get through dinner, and then you’re free. No long-term fake boyfriend contract.”
“Understood,” he said. Something flickered in his eyes again, gone too fast to catalog. “One-night-only performance.”
“Exactly.” I forced a brightness into my voice that my chest didn’t quite match. “You’ll probably regret this the minute she asks you about your five-year plan and your feelings about children.”
“I’ll prepare a PowerPoint,” he deadpanned.
The laugh that broke out of me then felt unreasonably good for a Monday.
“Hey, boss,” Claire’s voice chimed from over the cubicle wall. “Is this my new partner in crime?”
I turned. Claire’s red curls appeared first, followed by her perpetually curious eyes. She clocked Liam in one sweep, and I could practically see the headline forming behind her pupils.
“Claire, this is Liam,” I said, because there was no stopping her. “New assistant analyst. Liam, this is Claire Monroe. She knows everything about everyone. Use that power wisely.”
“Nice to meet you,” Liam said, offering his hand.
Claire shook it, eyes narrowing a fraction as she took him in. “You’re too put-together. You’ll hate it here.”
“Claire,” I hissed.
He laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
She glanced between us, gaze snagging on my face, then his proximity. The speculative gleam in her eyes intensified.
“So,” she said casually, which meant it was not casual at all, “are you coming to trivia with us on Thursday, Liam? It’s a team thing. Helps with bonding.”
He looked at me instead of her. “If Hannah’s going, I’m in.”
My lungs forgot their job for a beat.
Claire arched a brow so high it nearly disappeared into her hairline. “Well then. I’ll put you on our team.”
My phone buzzed on the desk, making me jump. Mom again.
Don’t forget to send me a photo of you two before Friday!! I want to show Aunt Linda. xo
I stared at the message, pulse doing a slow, uneasy throb.
“Everything okay?” Liam’s voice had lost its joking edge, concern threading through it.
I swallowed and lifted my gaze to his. “My mom wants a picture. Of us.”
For a fake boyfriend I’d acquired eight minutes ago.
His eyes held mine, steady and unreadable. It felt like warmth pretending to be distance.
“Then,” he said easily, taking a small step closer, “we should probably give her a good one, don’t you think?”
The space between us shrank to a breath, the hum of the office fading as my heart kicked up, and for the first time in a very long time, I wondered if maybe, just maybe, I had no idea what I was about to start.
