They never traded numbers. Never asked for last names or birthdays or favorite songs. No calendars marked with dinner plans. They simply appeared where the other was most vulnerable—like predators scenting blood in the water.
The first black silk tie appeared on Sally’s desk one Tuesday morning. No envelope. No note. Just the tie coiled neatly beside her keyboard, the same deep midnight shade as the one he’d worn loosely around his neck the night of the opening. She knew it was his. The faint scent of cedar and smoke clung to the fabric. She slipped it into her drawer without a word, pulse already quickening.
Three days later she found another. Then another. Always left anonymously—slipped under her office door before she arrived, tucked between catalog pages on her desk. She started wea
