I heaved myself up off the sofa, feeling weary and decidedly unenthusiastic. Marie, however, looped her arm through mine and all but dragged me onto the dancefloor. My vision was starting to swim, and I was losing my ability to maneuver and maintain control—a feeling I did not like at all.
On the dancefloor, Marie didn't waste any time in making her intentions clear. She started dancing suggestively, putting her hands all over me and grinding heavily against my body, moving sensually to the music.
I couldn't deny that I was starting to feel aroused and part of me was starting to really get into it. But, at the same time, despite the drunkenness and the gorgeous, scantily-clad lingerie model grinding her body against mine, I couldn't get the thoughts of Lilah out of my head.
/> We weren't together. I didn’t owe her anything. Hell, we’d only shared one kiss that she had made rather clear was a poor judgment call—but even so, something inside me felt as if I was cheating on her. And that was something I would not do.
I stepped away from Marie.
“I really have to go to the bathroom, all right?”
“Shall I come with you?” she asked, smiling suggestively.
“No, no,” I replied with a nervous laugh. “I'll be back soon. You wait here.”
I hurried off the dancefloor to the back of the club where the bathrooms were—but just before I got to them, I veered off to the right, and headed through to the storage area. I pushed through a door that said “Staff Only” in French—I could understand that much, at least—and hurried through the storeroom, surprising a waiter, who started babbling at me in French.
“Exit?” I said in English, but he seemed to not understand me.
I ignored him, and he ran off, presumably to fetch a bouncer or manager. I found a door at the end of the storeroom which led through a narrow passage, and then there, at the end of it, I managed to find an exit that led out into an alley.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I stepped into the dark alley and paused to inhale a few deep breaths of the cool night air before heading through the alley to the main street where I hailed a cab. I told him the name of my hotel, and we took off into the night.
I pulled out my phone and texted a quick apology to Anton explaining that I'd become ill and had to rush back to the hotel. Yes, I lied. But it was a little white lie that would save a lot of hard feelings in the long run. I put my phone away and leaned back in the seat, watching Paris fly by my window as thoughts of Lilah swirled through my drunken mind.
Chapter Ten
Lilah
Asher had been away in France over the weekend for a business trip and, to be honest, I felt a little relieved to have had some distance between us. I'd been doing my best to keep him at arm's length all week at the office—and succeeding. However, I felt that my strategy was backfiring big time. It seemed as though my attempt to avoid conversation with him left him more determined to get closer to me.
A large part of me wanted him closer, but that wasn’t the part focused on keeping my job separate from my personal life. I was beginning to understand how the government felt when it tried to separate church from state.
Keeping Asher Sinclair at arm’s length was definitely among the greatest challenges I'd faced in my life. I'd finally landed my dream job, and I was on track to make a name for myself. I had set up a career characterized by power and success—yet, coupled with my goals to make it in my field was a burning desire, a hungry yearning for another human being that I hadn't felt since my ex-fiancé had left me a month before our wedding.
It didn’t help that this person was the CEO of my firm. He was the person who, quite literally, held the key to my career's success and failure in his hands.
I knew that, eventually, he would respect my wishes to keep everything professional and put my career first. He was cut from the same cloth as me, even if our backgrounds were vastly different. What we did share was a driving ambition, tireless work ethic, and almost crippling aspiration for perfection.
Since I have always been a rational person—who knows that mixing work and pleasure could easily turn into a recipe for catastrophe—I could see how things might end terribly if I decided to walk the path leading to a romantic relationship with Asher.
But another part of me was wondering if it would be a risk worth taking. A man like Asher Sinclair didn’t come around often. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that, perhaps, a relationship with Asher was a bona fide, once in a lifetime opportunity. He'd already revealed, in a number of ways, that he was nothing like the billionaire playboy stereotype that others made him out to be.
He was grounded in reality, even with his vast power and billions of dollars, was extremely disciplined, and surprisingly kind and gentle, despite his physical prowess and penchant for violent sports. He was, in many ways, a man of contradictions—an enigma, revealing small pieces of himself to me.
But why me?
That was the question I hadn't been able to shake.
I mean, sure, I was a fairly attractive woman who knew how to work a sexy business suit, and he seemed to be impressed by my drive and creativity. But was he only pursuing me to satisfy his own ego, or was there something more at play? My gut kept gnawing at me that it was the latter.
I pulled into the parking lot of the Sinclair Building and parked my car. A quick check of my watch confirmed that I was early. There were still a good 20 minutes left before I was required to be in my office.
I'd only just gotten my car back from the mechanic, and since I had spent the entire weekend relaxing with Meg while trying to temporarily forget about work—going to the spa, getting a mani-pedi, treating myself to a massage, and eating at a couple of new restaurants we’d been planning to check out—I hadn't had the chance to give over the car the once over to make sure the mechanic had done a good job.
“Well, there's no time like the present,” I said aloud, and popped the hood.
I stepped out of my car and walked around to the front of it, raising the hood. I examined the motor just as my dad had taught me, checking over fine details that the average person wouldn't have thought to look at. It seemed, thankfully, that the mechanic had done a very thorough job. I was about to close the hood when I heard the deep, raspy rumble of a sports car booming through the underground parking lot.