QUOTE : Miss Knight.”<br /><br />She paused, her hand on the doorknob. She didn’t turn to face him, merely waited for him to say whatever was left to say.<br /><br />“I would prefer someone older. Someone less like you.”<br /><br />Now what the hell did that mean? Someone less like her?<br /><br />“You know,” he said lamely when she turned to face him quizzically. To his credit he looked as confused as she felt.<br /><br />“Nope. Don’t have a clue.” Her voice was so icy that her words practically froze as they left her lips.<br /><br />“Someone with more experience. With less personality.”<br /><br />“What?”<br /><br />“You talk too much,” he said pointedly. “Your attitude is too familiar and too sarcastic.”<br /><br />She opened her mouth to say something, and he held up a finger to stop her.<br /><br />“And that was before everything that happened in Tokyo. You’re completely irreverent and have a bizarre sense of humor. I also have no wish to hear about reality television shows, pop music, manicures, Brangelina, Star Trek, or anything that’s trending on Twitter—not even secondhand through whispered telephone conversations when my assistant thinks I’m not paying attention.”<br /><br />Well, he’d certainly been a lot more attentive during those half hours in the mornings than she’d given him credit for. But one thing struck her as odd.<br /><br />“Star Trek?” she repeated. She loved the new movies but hardly ever publicly discussed them.<br /><br />“You’re constantly talking about how sick you are of the Cardassians,” he elaborated uncomfortably. Her eyes widened and she stifled a laugh.<br /><br />“Different kind of Kardashian,” she corrected. It would be hopeless to explain it to a man who clearly had no interest in pop culture—even while every model or actress he was publicly photographed with inserted him into the very scene he was so scornful of. Quite frankly, she was impressed that he even knew about the Cardassians in Star Trek, which attested to a level of geekdom that she would never have suspected of him.<br /><br />“So you’re looking for the anti-me?”<br /><br />“It shouldn’t be so hard to find the complete opposite of you. You are quite . . .” His brow lowered as he tried to find the correct word. “Singular.”<br /><br />“Thank you,” she said, ridiculously flattered until a closer glance at his straight face told her that it hadn’t been a compliment. Her fledgling smile died, and she once again—as she often did in his presence—fought the urge to roll her eyes.<br /><br />“Okay, so you’re looking for an old, boring, and competent assistant,” she itemized, and his lips thinned but he said nothing. “I’ll get on that right away, sir.