“You’re late,” Hugo booms at me, strolling in from the far side.

“If you need ancillary research on this thing, I’ve got space this afternoon,” Brenda says.

“Just hold my calls.” Hugo stalks back down the other way.

I follow, feeling shitty.

“Brenda’s a little hurt,” I say, closing the door, pleased to note that he’s wearing the cautionary-tale cologne.

Hugo comes to me and cages me against the door. “Why should Brenda feel hurt?”

“Her favorite vegetable is chia. If you’re doing a chia project, she wishes you would have involved her.” I set to work on his belt buckle.

He presses against me and kisses my ear. “How do you know?”

I sigh and lay off the belt. “From the way she talked about it. Brenda admires the shit out of you. She would love to impress you. I think she wants you to treat her as a protégé.”

“Brenda’s an extremely capable, up-and-coming quant. She wants my name on her résumé, that’s all. It’s about my name, not about me.” He undoes my top button.

“How can you be so clueless? She wants to work with you in a real way. She wants to understand how you think about all this gobbledygook.”

“Skipping over the part where you call my whiteboard gobbledygook…” He kisses me and then pauses. “She did show me a data model that had promise. I wonder if she wanted commentary.”

“Hugo.” I grab his collar and look into his eyes. “Why do you think she took a job as your assistant?”

Hugo frowns. “This is why I don’t get involved with people.”

“But you knew her perfect gift. How is it possible that you know her perfect birthday gift but not why she’s here in the first place and what she most wants from you?”

“I only know gifts.”

“Knowing gifts is like knowing people. I mean, how did you know gifts?”

“It’s a specific muscle that I deliberately developed for a specific reason.”

“Really?”

“You’re ruining sex,” he grumbles, kissing my neck. “What happened to a no-strings, no-info tawdry affair? What happened to not asking each other personal questions?”

“You ruined it when you fed me polenta, and now you have to tell me.”

“So you want to break that rule now?”

“I want you to tell me.”

“It’s not even interesting.” He kisses my neck. “It was a childish scheme to repair my family.”

I push him off me. “A scheme involving gift-giving skills?”

“If you’re that desperate to ruin sex.” He buckles his belt back up. “Early on, Mom and Dad would get perfect birthday gifts and Christmas gifts for each other and me. We made a big deal out of holidays as a family. Unlike you Woodwards with your gift cards.”

I snort. Our family went the logical route on holidays. “Right? Why not just cash?”

“And at some point after we moved in, the money ran out, but the partying kept on.”

I nod, amazed he’s telling me about his family. Hugo’s traditionally private about his parents.

He strolls to the window and looks out. “As soon as the money ran out, gifts became an afterthought if not completely forgotten. And of course, I was terrible at gift giving. I didn’t know how my mom and dad did it. I can be oblivious to people.” He pauses, silently scanning the city streets.