“And this is for your personal assistant?”
“Not exactly.” He braces his forearm on the wall behind me, caging me in and attempting to get me sloppy drunk on his fragrance of duplicity. “I have several assistants, none of them personal, and you’re overqualified, but you’d be working directly with me on special projects.”
I sidestep the compulsion to twistspecial projectsinto a double entendre and settle on gaining more intel. “Why don’t you have a personal assistant?”
His focus flicks to my lips. “I don’t trust many people or want them in my space.”
“And you trust me?”
“Certainly not.”
A laugh escapes me because he’s screwing with me, but honest. “You want me in your space though?” I phrase it as a question, but no matter what game he’s playing, it’s evident that’s the case. “Why?”
“I live by two rules in life, Miss West.”
“Wisdom from an older gentleman,” I quip, angling my chin so our mouths are mere inches apart. “Do tell.”
“Older, yes.” He grazes my cheek with his knuckles, an uncanny expression of melancholy mantling his features. “We both need to remember that.”
“Is that the rule?” I tease, though it’s evident our age difference is an issue for him.
“No.” He straightens, flattening his tie and allotting me some breathing room. “One is never to give someone all the information.”
“A rule I live by as well,” I admit, suspecting where he’s headed. “And the second?”
He winks, flashes his dazzling smile, and swaggers away with a wave. “Have a good evening, Zara. Bernard will get you set up.”
AXEL
I’ve lost my fucking mind. She’s eleven years my junior and probably supposed to kill me, so logically, I hired her to work in close proximity with me.
I thought I was playing her, flirting to throw her off after I caught her ogling me across the high-rollers lounge. Not even her stellar surveillance skills or her reading ploy could veil the heat of her gaze tracking me. Lust is weakness, and hers afforded me a tangible edge. But at some point, I started losing focus of the goddamn objective because I couldn’t stop touching her.
What’s worse? I was holding back with every morsel of restraint inside me because I wanted to ravish her right there in the South Tower corridor. I am never besotted. And I don’t touch. Not like that. Not in the open. Certainly not someone who isfriendlywith one of my members. What the hell does that even mean? Fuck, I don’t want to know what it means.
I’m so averse to those types of situations that my employees are instructed to intervene if someone becomes too clingy. I am always the pinnacle of control, a paradigm of remaining unaffected. They were undoubtedly at a loss for how to handleme making the advances. But she batted those thick lashes and asked if she pleased me and savored those godforsaken cherries like she was extracting the lifeblood from them. Who the fuck eats that many cherries?
I bend at my waist, dipping my head between my legs under my desk, attempting to settle my shallow breathing. It only gets worse. This is fucking embarrassing. I’m crumbling because a twenty-nine-year-old woman has emerald eyes, plump lips, and an intoxicating scent. So damn sexy. I’m too old to be thinking that.
She’s more than pretty though. She speaks thirteen languages. Magnificent. I was surprised she’d divulged that. And she reads T.S. Eliot—or does she? Maybe she’s simply learned enough about me to adopt my interests and form a bond. Like how she answered with “Eleanor Rigby.” And I fell for it. Christ, I really fell for it.
She’s fucking lethal, even without a weapon in her hand.
I can’t let her be around my family. She’ll win them all over. Who wouldn’t be swept up by her elegance and smooth retorts? Keeping her away from them should be a piece of cake since she’ll be a member of our staff in twenty minutes.
Mother. Fucker.
I’ve had three days to rescind the offer. Why didn’t I?
I should call Wells.
It’s happening again. The slow-motion descent into a pit I’ll never crawl out of. One choice at a time.
My breathing grows more erratic, my vision clouds, and I’m back there.
I jump out of my car and rush to her in an empty treed lot near our house. “What’s going on, Mom?”
She’s been struggling more than normal the past few months. She’s always been full of life, insisting that we dancein the middle of the afternoon, listen to music loud enough that it wakes the neighbors a street away, and sing till our throats are raw. She’s the kind of soul who rejoices in the rain and embraces the creativity that colors our world, even in the dark.
