Samuel tried to work.
For nearly twenty minutes, he managed to keep the spreadsheet open without reading a single figure. The cursor blinked in an empty cell while he continued seeing Eugenia walk into the boardroom.
He had never seen her dressed like that before.
The dress she had chosen hugged her figure unapologetically, ended above her knees, and, under the right light, revealed the shape of her legs and the outline of her proud breasts. It wasn't a scandalous garment. On another woman, it would have looked simply elegant, even understated. On Eugenia, whom he guessed was used to hiding behind high-necked blouses and far more demure skirts, it seemed like a statement.
Or perhaps it only seemed that way because he had spent the entire morning waiting to find one.
Samuel closed the file and leaned back in his chair.
He remembered the moment she crossed the door. The restrained surprise in his own muscles. The effort it had taken not to follow the pattern of the dress over her waist with his eyes. The way Eugenia had noticed the effect and, despite it, had taken a seat across from him with the folder open and a calm expression.
It hadn't been an invitation.
That was what made the image more dangerous.
He wanted to assume she had dressed that way to feel different. To find out what happened when she stopped completely obeying the prudent woman everyone expected to see. But clearly, Samuel didn't know whether she had thought of him when she chose the dress. He wanted to believe she had, but the possibility of being wrong attracted him almost as much as the possibility of being right.
He stood and walked to the window.
The city stretched out beneath the glass, covered in the white light of afternoon. Somewhere, Eugenia would be in the company car, on her way to the hotel. Maybe she was still thinking about the meeting. Maybe she regretted accepting dinner. Maybe she wasn't even considering the matter.
And maybe she was thinking about him.
Samuel imagined what Eugenia would look like arriving at her hotel room and taking off that dress. The idea appeared without permission, first as an incomplete image: her hands releasing her hair, the hem of the fabric sliding slowly downward, the same reserve with which she had chosen every word transforming into an intimacy only he would be able to witness. Would she keep her underwear on, or would she take all of it off too?
The image became more precise.
Far too precise. The imagined body of Eugenia took over his mind and appeared in all its splendor, completely naked, looking at herself in the mirror and even running her hands over her soft curves, beginning to caress herself all over...
Samuel looked away from the window.
“Enough.”
He wasn't a man who confused imagination with entitlement. He had seduced many women, but he knew how to distinguish desire from possession. Eugenia had offered him nothing more than dinner. Even that still wasn't guaranteed. The words returned: “Just dinner.”
Besides, there was one difference he couldn't ignore: he was her superior.
For that reason, any advance had to leave her a real way out. He couldn't use his position to corner her or turn an invitation into a test of loyalty. If Eugenia came closer, it would have to be because she wanted to, not because she feared the consequences of refusing.
The reflection didn't lessen his desire. It only gave it a form that was harder to bear.
He returned to his desk and tried to review a contract. He read the first paragraph three times. On the fourth, the words disappeared from view and he heard Eugenia's voice again.
“Not everything depends on preparation.”
She had been talking about a budget margin. Samuel had heard something else. A possibility. A crack in the order with which she had built her life.
He picked up his phone and checked the time.
There were still several hours before their agreed dinner date.
The phrase returned then, Eugenia's voice and his own mingling in his memory:
Dinner.
Just dinner.
Samuel smiled without humor.
“Really? Just dinner?”
He hadn't expected an answer. Even so, the question no longer seemed rhetorical.
He had started the morning thinking about how to move closer to her without frightening her. Now he found himself calculating what to say, what not to say, and how much he could show that night without breaking the delicate balance Eugenia seemed to protect so seriously.
That wasn't normal for him.
Before, the uncertainty of a conquest had entertained him because he knew he could walk away at any moment. With Eugenia, uncertainty didn't make him want to leave. It forced him to remain in front of a door that still hadn't opened.
Work was definitively forgotten.
Samuel took off his jacket, loosened his shirt collar, and went into the private bathroom beside his office. He wasn't looking for a dramatic solution. He simply needed to cool his head before meeting her.
He turned on the shower, stripped completely, and stepped inside. He let the water begin to fall over his shoulders.
For a few seconds, the steam seemed to erase the office. Then Eugenia appeared again, not as a distant memory but as a presence he had carried with him: the fitted dress, the steady gaze, the slight change in her breathing when he had asked why she had decided to dress that way.
Samuel closed his eyes.
His body reacted before his will did. The accumulated tension concentrated in him with uncomfortable clarity, a physical response that didn't disappear beneath the water or through the effort of thinking about something else. His manhood began to rise, apparently with a will of its own.
He braced one hand against the wall.
The temptation to seek relief was immediate. So was the certainty that, if he gave in, his imagination would take him too far. He could masturbate and would probably arrive at dinner with a clearer head, without that insistent urgency that made it difficult even to breathe normally. It was a simple, private, familiar solution.
But he thought of Eugenia sitting across from him.
He thought about the way she had accepted dinner, the condition she had set, and the dignity with which she had made it clear that the formality of work would remain intact. He didn't want to meet her after satisfying himself and releasing the tension. He wanted to preserve the anticipation.
He wanted dinner to matter to him. And he imagined Eugenia now sitting in the restaurant at dinnertime. An Eugenia who would be different from the Eugenia he had seen at work. An Eugenia who would be... freer? Looser? More herself? Or, he finally thought, perhaps all of that was nothing more than the result of his own desire for it to be true.
He took his hand from the wall and breathed slowly until he regained control.
“Not now.”
The words weren't a denial of desire but a decision.
Samuel turned off the hot water and let only the cold water fall over him. He remained under the shower until the tension subsided enough for him to think. Then he turned off the water, dried himself, and, though he was still half-erect, returned to his office with his shirt and pants in his hands.
The mirror's reflection showed him a composed face. Only he knew how much effort it had taken to recover that appearance.
He dressed again and asked someone to bring him coffee. While he waited, he opened the expansion file and reviewed one last time the documents they would discuss the following day. This time, he managed to concentrate for a few minutes.
Not because Eugenia had disappeared from his thoughts.
But because he decided to give her a specific place in them.
Dinner would be a test. Not to make her give in, as he might have thought in another era, but to discover whether the attraction could hold when there was no boardroom, hierarchy, or professional excuse between them.
Even so, Samuel didn't deceive himself.
He wanted to conquer her.
He wanted her close. He wanted her to stop looking at him like a dangerous man and start looking at him like the man she had chosen. He wanted to be the reason for the unease she tried to hide and, at the same time, protect her from the consequences of feeling it.
The contradiction didn't stop him.
It only told him that he would have to move carefully.
Without rushing her. Without frightening her. Without turning his desire into an order.
The phone vibrated on the desk.
It was a message from his assistant: the car would be ready at eight that evening.
Samuel replied with a brief confirmation. Then he checked the time again.
There was still far too long to wait.
He moved closer to the window. The city remained spread out beneath the sun, indifferent to his impatience. Samuel rested two fingers against the glass and remembered Eugenia's last look before she left the room.
It hadn't been a promise.
But it hadn't been a rejection either.
“Tonight,” he murmured.
The word filled him with an anticipation that no unfinished work could dispel.
Samuel De La Hoya had spent years turning desire, especially for the women he wanted to conquer, into a game he controlled. With Eugenia, for the first time, he didn't want to win in a rush or by biding his time.
He wanted her to choose to open the door.
And when she did, he decided he would be there.