If he wanted her forever.
Please let him want me forever…
“You’re too beautiful,” he chided. “We should go, or I’ll take you back upstairs.”
Perhaps he’d given her the bracelet so she would fit in better, Joy thought when they arrived. She’d never seen so many designer gowns and extravagant jewelry—real diamonds and emeralds and sapphires—outside of watching a red-carpet event on TV.
The wearers were celebrities and high-level politicians, filling her with awe as she recognized them.
Axel seemed comfortable around all of them. Unimpressed, which amused her into relaxing. He introduced her, and most people were polite if not effusively warm. A few were genuinely nice, like the Canadian woman Joy chatted with as they left the powder room.
“I love your bracelet,” the woman said. “Can I ask where you found it? I’m looking for something for my sister-in-law’s birthday.”
“Let me ask Axel.”
He was watching for her and approached the moment he saw her looking for him.
The woman introduced herself as Quinn Gould. She was a wholesome-looking redhead with freckles, which wasn’t to say she lacked sophistication. Not at all. Her gown was a gold confection that suited her slender figure, and she didnotlook as though she needed advice on where to find good-quality jewelry. She wore emerald earrings and a choker with a square-cut emerald at its center.
“Your husband is Micah Gould?” Axel asked. “We’re acquainted. I’ve been wanting to catch up with him, actually.”
“He’ll come find me,” Quinn assured him. “I ditched him when he was dragged into a conversation about microelectronics. He knows my eyes glaze over when he talks shop,” she confided.
Quinn was in the middle of offering tips on where Joy could take language lessons when an older couple approached the three of them.
Axel introduced them, mentioning the husband ran a company that had been a longtime supplier of steel to Vorstoben. Joy could see him eyeing up the man, trying to discern whether the couple were being polite or if the man’s loyalty to Otto was fading.
“I hear you’re a dancer,” the man said to Joy, cutting though the small talk with the delicacy of a sledgehammer. “Is it true you were stripping in a club when Axel met you?”
Joy heard Quinn’s indrawn breath. Maybe it was her own. Adrenaline spiked through her while a heavy blanket of mortification encased her. She wasn’t ashamed of dancing at Martini’s, but she was sorry her previous line of work had chased her to the other side of the world and was being used to stain Axel’s hard-won image.
Especially as he was trying to establish his new company.
“You did not just say that.” Axel’s voice was positively lethal.
“Am I mistaken?” The man feigned surprise, looking around. “I’ve heard it from several sources. These things have a way of getting around.” He flicked a disdainful look toward Joy as though she was one of those things that got around.
“I think—” Quinn started to say.
Axel stepped right into the man’s space and said something in German that had Quinn gasping again.
The other man’s wife wore a stony expression, not looking at any of them, but her eyes flared with shock.
“Axel.” Joy touched his arm, still feeling stabbed in the lung but not wanting to make this scene any worse than it already was.
“Do not tell me it’s fine. It’s not,” he growled at her.
“No, but I’ve dealt with this before. Men like him come into the club all time.” She let that statement land before adding, “They think I’ll put up with being put down, but I don’t. You shouldn’t, either,” she said to the man’s wife, startling the other woman into a look of wide-eyed entrapment.
The man’s patronizing smirk faded into his own shock.
“I know how hard it is to leave.” Joy continued speaking to the wife. “Even when you’re being treated poorly. But it’s worth it. Reach out to me if you need help. I promise I’ll do everything I can to assist you.”
“Who thehelldo you think you are? You—” The man lurched toward her, but Axel fully blocked him, shoving his chest right up against the other man’s, pushing him back a step.
“I will rip you in half,” Axel assured him.
At that moment, a server came up to ask urgently, “Is there a problem?”
