The email arrived at 8:17 that morning.
Eugenia read it twice before accepting that there was no ambiguity in the instruction: Samuel De La Hoya wanted to personally review some details in the cost report for the regional office expansion. The meeting would take place that same day, at eleven, in the small boardroom.
It didn't say he wanted to see her.
It didn't have to.
“Are you going to reply, or are you planning to keep staring at the screen until the message feels guilty?” Laura asked from the adjoining desk.
Eugenia closed the email.
“It’s a work meeting.”
“I didn’t ask what it was.”
“Then I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Laura spun around in her chair and rested her arms on the back. She had that expression Eugenia knew far too well: the look of someone who had reached a conclusion and was enjoying the time it would take the other person to catch up.
“Is it him?”
Eugenia glanced toward the chief accountant’s office, as though the man might appear behind her simply because they had mentioned him.
“He’s the National Director.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“Yes.”
Laura smiled.
Eugenia reopened the email. Samuel’s signature was at the bottom, simple and free of any unnecessary phrase. There was something irritating about the confidence behind that request. He didn’t seem to be asking permission; he seemed to assume things would find a way to happen.
“There’s nothing strange about his wanting to review a report related to a project he just opened,” she said.
“Of course.”
“And I’m the chief accountant’s assistant. It’s normal for me to participate.”
“Of course.”
“Laura.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
That was precisely why Eugenia knew she had said too much.
She spent the morning trying to work with her usual concentration. She checked invoices, corrected two inconsistencies, and prepared a folder with the documents Samuel had requested. The numbers fell into order beneath her hands with their usual reassuring obedience. A misplaced figure could be corrected. An outstanding balance could be tracked down. A mistake had a cause and, almost always, a solution.
The unease Samuel provoked in her followed none of those rules.
At 10:40, she went to the bathroom to check her appearance. She wasn’t wearing anything different from usual: an ivory blouse, a knee-length straight skirt, and her hair pulled back in a low braid. Even so, she smoothed the fabric over her waist and applied a little lip balm.
She stopped when she realized what she was doing.
The gesture was insignificant. It was also an admission.
“You’re not going on a date,” she told herself softly.
The woman in the mirror didn’t look convinced.
Just in case, she ran a hand over her chest and felt that her bra—the usual kind, secure and full-coverage—was still there. It was a way of telling herself that her life was still the same as always. And that facing the man her thoughts had been returning to so frequently lately was nothing out of the ordinary.
When she reached the boardroom, Samuel was already there. He stood beside the window, a folder tucked under his arm and his phone in his hand. When he heard her, he looked up.
His reaction was barely perceptible.
But Eugenia saw it.
His eyes traveled over her face, paused for an instant at her lips, and descended far enough for her to feel heat rise up her neck. Then Samuel regained his composure and indicated the chair across from him.
“Ms. de los Santos.”
“Mr. De La Hoya.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“You requested the meeting.”
“And still, you could have sent someone else.”
“It’s my job.”
The hint of a smile touched Samuel’s mouth.
“You seem to say that often.”
Eugenia set the folder on the table.
“Because it’s usually a sufficient explanation.”
He took a seat. The room was too small for the distance they were both trying to maintain. Between them sat a wooden table, two glasses of water, and a stack of documents that could become a shield if Eugenia used them well.
For the first few minutes, they discussed costs, deadlines, and budget adjustments. Samuel asked precise questions and listened to her answers without interrupting. That should have reassured her. Instead, his attention was more unsettling than his arrogance.
He didn’t seem to be pretending to care.
“There’s a discrepancy here,” Samuel said, pointing to a line in the report.
Eugenia leaned over the table.
“It’s not a discrepancy. The supplier applied the discount to the final invoice, but the system recorded the original amount. The adjustment appears in Appendix Three.”
Samuel pulled the folder closer to her.
“Then why wasn’t it reflected in the summary?”
“Because the chief accountant preferred to keep the comparison table with the initial prices. The discount is recorded separately so it won’t alter the calculation base.”
“Do you agree with that decision?”
Eugenia looked up.
“It’s not my place to agree or disagree. It’s my place to explain how it was done.”
Samuel held her gaze for a second longer than necessary.
“You always answer like that.”
“Like what?”
“As if every question were a trap.”
“The questions usually aren’t the problem.”
“Then what is?”
Eugenia felt the conversation leaving the numbers behind. She closed the folder.
“The intention of the person asking.”
Samuel didn’t smile this time.
“So you’ve decided my intention is a problem.”
“I haven’t decided anything.”
“Yesterday, at the opening ceremony, you seemed more sure of yourself.”
“There were more people yesterday.”
“Do people make you feel safe?”
“People let me remember why I’m there.”
“And now you’ve forgotten?”
Eugenia stood. She needed the air of the office, the voices beyond the walls, anything that wasn’t that room and the way Samuel managed to turn an ordinary question into something that brushed against her skin.
“The report is complete. If you need any further clarification, I can ask the chief accountant to provide it.”
Samuel stood as well, but he made no attempt to stop her.
“I don’t need you to ask for anything.”
Eugenia waited.
“I need you to tell me when an answer is yours and when you’re repeating what other people expect of you.”
The sentence struck somewhere she hadn’t protected.
“You know nothing about what other people expect of me.”
“I know you work very hard not to give them any reason to be disappointed.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Not yet.”
The silence afterward was brief, but it had the density of a threat. Not because Samuel had raised his voice. Precisely because he hadn’t.
Eugenia picked up the folder.
“Don’t talk to me again as if you know me.”
Samuel inclined his head.
“You’re right.”
His answer unsettled her more than any provocation could have.
“Is that all?”
“For now.”
She reached the door. Before she left, Samuel added, “The report is very well done.”
Eugenia turned around.
“It’s my job.”
“I know.”
This time, a smile appeared on both their faces, though neither seemed to want it there.
Back at her desk, Laura didn’t need to ask how it had gone.
“You look like you argued with someone and lost.”
“We didn’t argue.”
“Then you lost without arguing. That’s worse.”
Eugenia set the folder beside her monitor.
“He’s unbearable.”
“What kind of unbearable?”
“The kind where some men think they can look at a woman and figure out her entire life.”
Laura rested her chin in her hand.
“Did he look at you like that?”
Eugenia didn’t answer.
For the rest of the day, she tried to convince herself that what unsettled her was the conversation. The way Samuel had read her answers. The confidence with which he had pointed out something no one else had dared to tell her: that much of her life was built around not disappointing other people.
But that night, when she got to her apartment, she remembered something else.
The look Samuel had given her when she walked in.
The pause before he regained control.
The certainty that, for an instant, he had lost his as well.
Eugenia took off her shoes and set her purse on a chair. Andrés had sent her a message. He wanted to know if they could meet on Saturday to talk about the house they might buy together. She read the sentence several times.
Before, the proposal would have stirred a simple emotion in her: relief, gratitude, perhaps excitement.
Now it produced a feeling that was harder to admit.
A house with Andrés had familiar walls before it even existed. Samuel, on the other hand, represented an open door into a place that could be dangerous, wrong, and completely unknown.
Eugenia set her phone facedown.
She hadn’t done anything wrong.
She hadn’t accepted an invitation. She hadn’t touched Samuel. She hadn’t even allowed the conversation to stray from work, though he had tried to lead it somewhere else.
And yet, as she made herself some tea and waited for the water to boil, she understood that guilt didn’t always come after an action.
Sometimes it came first.
And sometimes it looked far too much like desire.
In his office, Samuel finished the last meeting of the day and asked them to cancel a dinner he had no desire to attend. He opened the cost report on his computer, even though he had already reviewed the figures that morning.
He wasn’t looking for errors.
He was looking for Eugenia’s voice hidden in the notes.
He didn’t find it. What he found was an almost stubborn precision, an intelligence that didn’t ask permission to exist, and a small handwritten note in the margin: “Verify before consolidating.”
Samuel ran his finger over the screen.
It wasn’t an invitation.
It was a warning.
He smiled anyway.
Then he wrote a message to his assistant: he wanted the regional office to send Eugenia to headquarters to participate in the final review of the expansion budget. The project required her expertise. The reason was legitimate.
This time, however, Samuel didn’t fool himself.
He wasn’t looking for the report.
He was looking for another chance to have her look at him as if she could still decide what to do with him.