After Vincent and the shitstorm that had turned out to be, Nadine's new rule is that she no longer sleeps with colleagues of any kind, in any capacity.
And then Glen came along and he was so sweet and she was feeling so achingly lonely that she amended her rule — they didn't work together on a regular basis, anyway.
And then there was that gentleman she met at the state dinner with the Spanish delegation and she thought that their odds of ever meeting again were so slim that she made an exception for him, too.
She'll admit that Mike Barnow has caught her eye more than once, even though he isn't even her type. She's not ashamed of her attraction to him, but she does wish it were anybody else, because she can't make an exception for him and she knows it. They work together far too often, and he probably holds more sway over her job than she'd like to admit.
She does a good job of pushing her attraction down, for a while. She resists him and doesn't break a sweat doing it. She could fool anyone, she thinks.
Confession: she sleeps with him way before election night.
When they're at the Japanese steakhouse vetting Elizabeth's potential replacements, he propositions her so casually that it takes her a second to process what he's actually said.
"Why don't you come home with me tonight?" is what he says. Conversational. When she looks up he has the audacity to be smiling.
"What?" she says, visibly off-balance. "No." That was the last thing she was expecting him to say.
"I think you're very attractive," he says, undeterred. "I always have. And I've seen the way you are around me—"
"How I am—"
"You avoid me, but you check me out when you think no one's looking. And then you overcompensate by being very, very professional."
She narrows her eyes. "Are you insane?"
"Hey, I'm just saying. You don't treat anyone else like this. We never have conversations that are, y'know, not work-related."
"Have you ever considered that this is because we are colleagues?"
"So you only talk to your colleagues about work?" He shakes his head. "See, this is why people think you're cold."
"I like to keep my private life private," she says primly. She decides to ignore his little jab about her reputation. She knows exactly how she's perceived. In the Truman Building, she has created precisely the persona she would like for herself, thank you very much.
"I'm just saying—"
"Is your ego so huge that you automatically assume that any woman who doesn't throw herself at your feet must be fighting the urge to sleep with you at every moment of the day?"
"You know my ego isn't the only thing that's huge." He waggles his eyebrows, and Nadine can feel any attraction to him (not that she's admitting to it!) draining from her body at the speed of sound.
"You're insufferable." She knocks back the rest of the sake left in her glass. "And in case you're wondering, that is not code for 'Fuck me'."
"But I see the way you look at me too, remember," he points out. Clearly, he doesn't intend to back down.
She raises an eyebrow. "Like right now?" She bakes him with her best death glare, one that would make a lesser man shrivel in fear.
"You hide it well," is all he says, shrugging.
"Let's just get the check and call it a night." She presses her lips together to hold back the tirade that wants to escape them—that would definitely be unprofessional. She flags down the waitress so that she has something to look at that isn't Mike or his insufferably smug face and the waitress, god bless her, comes over immediately. "Separate checks, please," Nadine says, but Mike cuts her off.
"Just one check," he corrects, and he hands the waitress his card before Nadine even has the chance to argue.
The poor girl stands there uncertainly, eyes darting between him and Nadine as she waits for some clearer direction.
"Fine," Nadine affirms, stiff. She grits her teeth, fumes. The waitress nods and disappears with Mike's credit card.
"If it bothers you too much," he says, "our next date can be on you."
"This is not a date."
"That's debatable."
She turns to face him fully. "Look. I don't know what you think is going on here, but you're clearly under some delusion that we're having some deeper connection here, and I want you to understand that we have nothing of the sort."
She really means it when she says it.
If anyone were to ask her, later, how she'd ended up from there to—
"Fuck," she pants, blindly pressing her palm against the headboard as she arches into his touch. "Right there."
—well. She honestly has no idea.