We had been so busy the past week that we hadn’t done more than feel each other through our pajamas and wrap our arms around each other every night before falling asleep; in the morning we shared a few kisses and caresses for rising to meet the day. I ached for him, but I had asked for him to wait until all this company-saving business was done before we addressed what was between us. We had to focus.
Truthfully, though, I didn’t know how much longer I could wait. With all these late nights, and sleeping next to each other, waking up every day with that hot body tucked around mine…if we didn’t do it soon, the sexual tension was going to drive me insane. Just looking at him now, with his brow furrowed in concentration, a lock of hair falling over one eye, that loosened tie, his intense gaze…I could feel myself—
“Aha!” Grant said, slapping a sheet of paper and breaking my reverie. “I’ve got her now!”
And he was on his feet, hunting determinedly through the stack of paper he had already laid aside for the other piece of the puzzle he had just found, simultaneously calling up a number on his phone, ready to make the call the second he had the evidence he could use to swing one more vote over to our side.
I watched him, momentarily sidetracked from my own secret side mission, aka Do it to me Grant, by the fire in his eyes. This was how I loved him best, hair mussed and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, passionate and invested and no longer posing for anyone, completely oblivious to the world around him, to anything except that which he was determined to track down. Tireless in the face of bureaucracy and complacency and corruption, unable to stop until he had done all he could to protect what was his, to keep it safe.
I loved him like this, and I loved working with him like this. I felt it like a low warmth settling in my chest, the embers of a fire that I knew could blaze into an inferno of passion with the slightest breath of encouraging wind. It comforted and frightened me by turns, the way I felt about this man.
Because what if he couldn’t forgive me? What if, in the end, he had to walk away from me and the hurt I had caused when I cut him off and left him behind?
“Yes!” Grant punched the air in victory as he found what he was searching for, and turned to me, eyes shining in delight. “Look at this, Lacey. Look at these figures. There’s no way Kelly Ormstrom can argue that Portia truly has the company’s best interests at heart, not after she reviews these five-year strategic outcomes—”
I let his words wash over me, and his smile, and I knew that it didn’t really matter what was coming. I loved this man. I could never walk away from him again.
I would just have to pray that he felt the same way.
? ? ?
The ballroom glittered like a snowstorm made of crystal and marble, the sounds of polite laughter and intense debate melding and echoing across the brightly lit space, the lush carpet barely absorbing any of the din.
Hundreds of people filled the space; I recognized representatives of seven different big investment funds in the thirty seconds it took to scan the room, and I wasn’t even looking hard. A screen that looked like it belonged in an IMAX theatre wrapped around the stage, cutting from one view of the room to another; later it would stream the proceedings to investors all around the world.
Waiters dodged nimbly through the crowds, offering bottled water, glasses of champagne, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. I wistfully watched the trays pass by; I was too shot with nerves to even think about eating, and alcohol wasn’t going to help me help Grant, either.
Half of the guests seemed to have gotten the memo that this was a ballroom and dressed like they were expecting their fairy godmother to pull around with the pumpkin at midnight, while the other half were dressed much more like it was a normal day at work. Here and there, a few reclusive investors darted about in jeans and T-shirts, probably hotshots who’d made big money in the dot-com boom in the nineties and gotten out quickly, before they would have lost anything or had to conform to a dress code.
“Really?” I asked Grant skeptically as he ushered me through the doors and down the split staircase. I wore a filmy white dress, and he wore a tuxedo so beautiful it could have made a Renaissance painter cry. I gestured at the grand ballroom, the chandeliers, the guests. “Really-really?”
“Due to the unprecedented level of interest, Devlin Media Corp was forced to rent out a space for the shareholders’ meeting,” Grant said smoothly, sliding my arm through his. “It is entirely a coincidence that we rented out the ballroom from the climactic scene of the spin-off of your favorite spy film.”
“If you get any smoother, scientists are going to kidnap you and run experiments to try to figure out how you transmogrified into a frictionless substance,” I informed him.