I stopped and twisted around to get a look at him. “Did you just ask me out on adate?”
“If you have some objection to the nomenclature, we could call it a businessdinner.”
It took a moment for the situation to sink in. My boss—the man who owned the theater in which my first international production would show and the man who had been following me around town for weeks—had just asked me to dinner. “Is this some kind oftest?”
He had the grace to look offended. “No, why would I need to testyou?”
“I don’t know. You’ve been following me, and now you ask me out. I don’t know what’s next, a proposal of marriage or a pinkslip.”
“Pinkslip?”
“Firing, Mr. Gray.” I rolled my eyes. “Sorry, I forget my American colloquialisms sometimes don’ttranslate.”
“I have no intention of firingyou.”
“Then what are your expectationshere?”
“To take a beautiful woman to dinner. Why do there need to beexpectations?”
“Do you expect me to sleep with you?” I intended to catch him off guard with the crass question, but he didn’t bat a single perfecteyelash.
“I never expect a woman to do anything. But if you want to go to bed, I’mamenable.”
There it was, that playboy smile I’d seen him wield with deadly accuracy several times. It was different turned on me, and I realized Mr. Gray was a lot more dangerous than I’d originallybelieved.
“I’m sorry Mr. Gray, I don’t sleep with myemployers.”
“You object to myemployment?”
“I object to losing my job if things go south betweenus.”
“I’m perfectly capable of separating business andpleasure.”
“That’s just it, Mr. Gray. I am all business and no pleasure.” I turned back, climbed the rest of the way to my office, and slammed the door in hisface.
That smile was imprinted in my brain. It said he got what he wanted and be damned the consequences. But I had no intention of becoming a consequence to DorianGray.
* * *
Dorian
I stood at the threshold of her office. It was nothing more than a shoebox situated above the staff quarters, but she’d made it her own by bringing in her scripts and pieces of feminine décor. I caught a peek before she gave me a face full of wood. Rejection was a new sensation for me, and novelty always gave me reason tosmile.
When I left home this morning and fell in step behind her, I hadn’t expected to beconfronted.
Perhaps I had overestimated my ability to blend in. Maybe the designer suits were too much? Regardless, I let out a sigh of relief. I’d grown weary of the subterfuge a couple weeks into the game. She turned me down now, but it wouldn’t remain so. One hundred and fifty years of practice meant I usually got what I wanted, and Isobel Vale was at the top of thelist.
I headed back down the stairs to my own office toward the front of the building. Decorated in the same turn of the century style as the theater itself, it made me feel more at home than the modern accoutrements that populated some of the other offices in the building. As the owner, of course I could pick andchoose.
My secretary Mina sat at her small desk in my office’s antechamber. “Good morning, Mr. Gray,” she offered as I sweptthrough.
“Bon Jour, Mina. Anymessages?”
“Not yet, Mr. Gray. But your meeting with the contractors about the theater’s west wing renovations was moved to afterlunch.”
I gave her a nod, went into my office, and closed the door. Mina, while a sweet girl, was so young. Her presence grew tiresome for me in minutes. I could only tolerate her in smalldoses.
After she read that God's forsaken book about the sadist who shared my surname, she couldn’t look at me without snickering for a week. It made my entire office unproductive for much longer. I’d had to ban the book and its sequels from the building. And we weren’t even going to acknowledge the other book. Whomever deemed The Picture of Dorian Gray classic literature should beshot.
