We walked down three flights of stairs—the elevator had been "temporarily" out of service since I'd moved in two years ago—and emerged onto the street. His car waited at the curb, sleek and dark, with understated luxury that whispered money rather than screamed it. Not a sports car. A sedan. But a sedan that was shipped to the buyer and never spent a day in a showroom.
A far cry from my Honda Accord, parked in its usual spot three spaces down. I'd had that car since I was sixteen—a hand-me-down from my older cousin that had seen me through high school, my college years, and every shift at Brew & Bean since.
There was a French fry lost somewhere under the passenger seat that I'd been meaning to find for approximately six months. The whole car had taken on a distinct eau de McDonald's—that particular post-midnight stale grease aroma, the kind you got when the cleaning crew forgot to dump the old fryer oil.
Callum's sedan probably had never seen a French fry in its life.
He opened my door, waited until I'd arranged myself and my dress in the passenger seat, then closed it with deliberate care. Very gentlemanly. Very un-Callum.
Or was it? I'd spent a year assuming I knew him based on coffee orders and verbal sparring. Turned out I'd barely scratched the surface.
The interior was all leather and wood accents, immaculate in a way that suggested regular detailing. I felt vaguely guilty, as though my presence might somehow contaminate his pristine vehicle with the ghost of stale fries.
The drive to the gala took twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of sitting in a confined spacewith a man who made my pulse do stupid things, trying to remember all the details we'd rehearsed and failing to concentrate on anything except him. His cologne. The way his hands looked on the steering wheel. The sharp line of his jaw in profile.
I did not lean closer.
"Richard Ashford," Callum said, breaking the silence. "What do you remember from the information I emailed you?”
"Sixty-two, self-made billionaire, three ex-wives, no kids. Built his fortune in real estate, made the real money in tech investments. Values loyalty and authenticity above everything, which I find hilarious given that he’s cycled through three wives already,” I ticked off the facts he'd drilled into me. "His current wife's name is Eleanor. They've been married four years. She used to be an interior designer before she became a philanthropist or as I like to call them, ‘A Lady Who Lunches’.”
"Good."
"I'm going to forget all of that the moment we walk in."
"You won't."
"You have a lot of faith in me."
"I have faith in your ability to improvise." He glanced at me, then back at the road. "You do it everymorning when customers try to order drinks that don't exist."
"That's different. Those people don't control whether your firm gets a multi-million-dollar contract. Completely different level of pressure.”
"The principle is the same. Read the room, adapt accordingly, don't let them see you sweat."
"Spoken like a man who's never sweated in his life."
"I sweat."
"Metaphorically?"
"Literally. I run five miles every morning."
"Of course you do." I turned to look out the window, watched the city blur past. "What if I mess this up?"
"You won't."
"But what if I do? What if Eleanor asks me a question I can't answer, or Richard sees through us, or I trip and fall into the champagne fountain?—"
"There's no champagne fountain."
"There's always a champagne fountain at these things."
"There isn't. I've been to Richard's galas before." Callum's hand left the steering wheel, landed on my knee. Warm and solid and grounding. "Willow. Look at me."
I looked. Oof. He was fine.Like, my eyeballs can’t handle all that hotnessin one human male.
"You're going to be fine," he said. "Better than fine. You're going to walk into that room and charm everyone you meet, and I'm going to spend the entire night trying not to stare at you in that dress."
