She looks at me from across the room with the conference table and twelve feet of carefully maintained distance between us, and she is quiet for a moment.
"Okay," she says finally.
"Okay?"
"Apology accepted." She closes her hands in her lap. "I'm sorry, too. For Friday and for today. I find you attractive, Bennet, and clearly you feel the same. I pushed too hard, and that won't happen again. Thank you for reconsidering keeping our contract."
"Of course."
She stands and I follow, hands in my pockets because apparently that's where they live now when she's in the room. "We're scheduled for dinner at Noctra tonight. Do you want to give it a couple of days and reschedule?"
I won’t say that I’m the one who could use a couple of days. And I thought what happened Friday fucked with my head.
She shakes her head. "No, I'm fine if you are. We should get the public time in since we won't have another chance until the weekend."
"Sure. Then I'll see you tonight."
"See you tonight." She smiles, not the professional one, and walks out of my office.
I stand there for a moment after the door closes, hands still in my pockets, looking at the conference table across the room.
Safe distance, she said.
I'm not sure any amount of distance is going to be enough at this point.
Fuck you, Blaire Alexander.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BLAIRE
"Dracu. Bennet fucking Sullivan."
The voice arrives before the man does, and the man is enormous — a chef's jacket straining across shoulders that belong on someone who lifts cars for sport, the name Monroe embroidered across the chest, and an expression suggesting he's deciding between a greeting and a felony. "What the hell are you doing in my restaurant, you son of a bitch?"
My eyes go wide. My napkin is suddenly in both hands, gripped like a weapon.
Bennet is already on his feet. "Couldn't tell you, Samson. The food here is shit. When are you going to hire a real chef?"
Samson makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a growl, and then simply bends down, wraps both arms around Bennet, and lifts him clean off the ground in a bear hug that could restructure vertebrae.
"Fucking hell, put me down, you bastard—"
But Bennet is laughing.
I stop breathing for a second.
Bennet Sullivan is laughing, and it transforms his entire face into a boyish charm I wasn't prepared for.
Samson sets him back on his feet and claps both hands on his shoulders and pulls him in properly, the way men hug when they mean it.
"It's good to see you, mate." He releases him and turns to me, and the shift in his expression is immediate — from gleeful menace to considerably more charming.
"I'm sorry if I frightened you." He has an accent I can't fully place, something Eastern European beneath the British cadence. "You should really evaluate the company you keep." He winks and extends a hand the size of a dinner plate. "Samson Monroe."
I take it. "Blaire Monroe." I pause. "No relation."
He stares at me for a beat and then lets out a laugh so big it turns heads at the surrounding tables. "No relation. Bennet, I like her already." He pulls out the empty chair at our table and drops into it like he's been invited, which apparently he has because Bennet sits back down without comment. "What are you drinking, Blaire Monroe, no relation? Whatever it is, it's not enough."
