I closed my eyes, letting my imagination whisk me off to a beach somewhere.
“Hey, Marek?” I heard Viktor call out to the bartender and opened my eyes. “The lady said you did a good job on her drink.”
“Gee, thanks!” Marek beamed like he’d won the lottery, and my heart melted at Viktor’s small act of kindness.
“These bartenders.” Viktor leaned closer again, the ghost of his breath sending shivers down my spine. “They work too damn hard and get cursed way too much.”
“You’re right about that,” I said softly.
In that moment, I hated every cocky guy I’d been on a date with, who blew a fuse if they had to wait five minutes too long. Seeing this man, this full-grown, clearly successful man, judging by the Patek Philippe he wore, be so patient and humble, solidified my decision to linger for some more conversation.
Viktor was still talking to Marek. “Can you bring me some water, please? Sparkling, with lime.”
I felt a strange relief, a sense of security around him. Most men I met in clubs were three shots deep before they even approached me.
Once Marek brought over the water, we moved slightly away from the bar, finding some quiet against a wall. Every atom in my skin prickled with the awareness of how he positioned himself—angle perfect to shield me from the jostling crowd, close enough to hear me over the music but not so close to be called creepy.
“So, Beatrice,” he started. “What do you do when you’re not being escorted around by your seven bodyguard brothers?”
I laughed. “I actually work for the family business. Accounting department.”
“A beautiful woman who’s good with numbers. One hell of a dangerous combination.”
His voice lowered to a husk of a whisper toward the last of that sentence, and I felt the heat crawl down my neck at the way he looked at me. In that moment, for the first time around a man interested in me, I felt seen.
Truly seen.
And it made my legs go all wobbly.
“What about you? What are you working on so hard tomorrow?” I asked, feeling giddy in my chest, needing to steer back to safe territory before I did something stupid like ask him to dance dirty with me.
“I run my own business,” he said. “Tomorrow, there’s some real estate to be looked at.”
“Sounds boring,” I teased.
“And accounting is so much fun?” He hitched his eyebrow, and we both laughed.
It was so easy being around him, something so freeing about speaking my mind and being heard.
“Honestly?” I confessed. “Sometimes, I wonder if there’s more I should be doing with my life other than working in the family business.”
“What do you mean?” He frowned, tilting his head.
“I mean, I love my family. I love working with them. But they can get…too much at times. It’s the same thing day after day. The same conversations. The same rules and they’re so very overbearing…”
“It’s hard to discover yourself when there are people constantly reminding you of where you come from,” he said.
“Exactly!” I said, too loudly, then laughed at myself. “Sorry. It’s just… no one gets it. They think I’m ungrateful because I have everything and still complain.”
“Well, everything you have isn’t because you worked for it. It was a path laid out, and it’s normal to wonder what would’ve happened if you’d chosen your own.”
I stared at him, startled by how easily he’d distilled my entire existential crisis into one sentence.
“Yes,” I whispered. “That’s right.”
Viktor’s eyes darkened, and he stepped close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body.
“What would you do with it?” he whispered. “If you had one night of complete freedom with just you and your desires.”
