“I need you to do some things for me,” I say as I fasten my second cuff link.
“Okay,” she whispers, sensing the shift.
“When we get to your floor, go into your suite and order room service. You need to eat—something healthy—and it will provide a record of you being in your room.”
I shrug on my suit jacket, and she grabs her purse from the love seat while I continue, “If anyone questions what happened tonight, this is the story: You were with Cash. I found out and was irritated because I needed you to consult on a confusing translation of a legal proposal that I’d been working on with Mercy. To make matters worse, Cash wasn’t supposed to be dating employees. But true to form, he turned off your phone so you didn’t know I was texting you and provoked me until I came to the Underground so I would lose a bet with him. By that time, Mercy had gone back to the penthouse, so we needed to meet her there. We worked for a while, you hung out with Mercy and Tessa, and then you went home. Starving because you’d only had some snacks.”
“Got it,” she says with her poised composure.
But I know her better now. She’s feeling abandoned, and there’s not much I can do about that tonight.
I guide her through a passageway behind one of my bookshelves that leads to a stairwell, and we descend to her floor. As we navigate the corridors, things get twisted and challenging.
“In the coming days and until I say otherwise, you will not seek me out. We will only discuss work. We will not be alone together.”
“Right.” There’s a faint scoff mixed in with that, her etiquette training already fraying.
It’s as if my intestines were simulating that painful unraveling. My stomach spasms, but there is no way around this. “This is important. You were right when you said this was complicated. There are—”
“Lines,” she fills in.
I wasn’t planning to go in that direction, but as we keep walking, I decide to lean into that for now. “Maybe that makes you feel boxed in, but the lines I’m proposing are for your protection.”
“Like the age difference? I’m twenty-nine, so who does that protect?”
Glancing over my shoulder, I wink at her, trying to keep it light. “I think we’ve blown past that one, but it was accountability for me and protection for you. I raised children the same age as you.”
“Your siblings.”
“Yes, but … obviously, that doesn’t matter to me now.” Just before the covert entrance near her suite, I stop and find it agonizing to even look at her gorgeous face, but I don’t reveal that. “It wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”
“Then this must be the line about never being with a woman twice,” she states cooly with a venomous bite. “Who does that protect, Axel?”
“Depends on perspective,” I respond, loathing the rejection cloaking her.
She ponders that for about three seconds, in which the silence in this dank corridor is deafening, until she finally slices through it with a pronouncement that is false, but an echo of the story that might salvage this damn mess. “I’m sure. It’s fine. I enjoyed my one night. You forgot to have me sign an NDA.”
“Zara,” I warn because even if I should send her away, believing that to her core so her actions reflect it, I can’t.
“Don’t.” She raises a palm to me. “This isn’t on you. I’m … it’s hard being away from my brother this long. That’s all. And a night with your family—the music and your nephew and so much life during dinner. And then everything else … I’ve got my head on straight again though.”
“You don’t,” I protest, leaning against the wall to discourage her retreat. “And I will not leave you like this. Take a minute.”
“That’s not necessary. I need to order room service and wait to hear from you about this solution you’ll be working on.”
She starts to push against the recessed door in the wall, and it cracks a few inches, but I grab her hip.
“This is what needs to be done right now. Do you trust me?”
She laughs, though it’s cynical and jaded and full of more pain than any sound should be. “I don’t trust anyone.”
“Good,” I praise, that knot in my stomach climbing to my chest. “You shouldn’t. Don’t let your guard down here. It’s safer inside my walls, but still not safe. So, I’ll do my job, and you’ll do yours—both of us working without harming the other or their families.”
Her focus shifts to the light filtering in from her hall. “Okay. And other than that, what’s the goal?”
I rub my hand over my jaw, so goddamn frustrated. “First, we survive.”
“That’s all I ever do.” She sighs, resigned. But as she nudges the door open to go, she turns to me, her voice a delicate wisp and her eyes moonlight on a mossy oak. “Just one question. And please, give me the respect of answering honestly.”
