“Did you report him to your HR?”
“There’s no point.”
“There is. Speaking as the president of a huge company, I can’t fix what I don’t know is broken. I need reports of that sort of thing so I can take action or it will keep happening.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way, only that she was leaving soon. “Fine. I will.”
“Good.”
Great. Annoying-boss issue resolved. “Can you take me home now, please?”
“I would like to have dinner with you.”
“You don’t want dinner, Henri.” That damned crack was back in her voice, betraying that she was still feeling slighted because even if he hadn’t been cheating when he’d made love to her, it had been nothing more than a casual hookup. “You want to go to bed with me.”
“I do,” he said baldly, face tightening at her tone. “Tell me you’re not interested and I’ll take you home. Be honest.”
She wanted to look away, but his intense gaze held hers, peeling back her layers of defensiveness as the streetlights flashed by. She knew she was flushing with guilty anticipation. She had managed to hate him for weeks because he had taken his girlfriend’s call after their lovemaking, but that’s not what he’d done. Her best reason for resisting him was nullified.
She jerked her head around, staring blindly at the passage of headlights and darkened shop windows.
“Ça va?”
“You could have called,” she muttered. “You’re not going to call tomorrow if I sleep with you tonight.”
“Since you’ll be with me at breakfast, there will be no need.”
She snorted at his arrogance.
“You were not planning to sleep with me that night.” Something in his quiet tone made her listen. It was as if he was reflecting fondly and it gave her a small shiver of pleasure because she was part of a memory he was recollecting warmly. “At first I thought it was your game to resist, but you really were intending to leave. You didn’t. You were carried away by a kiss and didn’t even take one of those silly gift bags on your way out. Yes, I took note of that detail,” he said as she swung a scowl at him.
As if she would have sex for a BPA-free water bottle and the latest reality star’s brand of lip gloss!
“You went away feeling ill used and I regret that,” he continued. “But I am used by women all the time. Put yourself in my shoes and imagine how singular and exciting it is for me to have met a woman who not only responds so strongly to me she lost her willpower against herself, but doesn’t want to write a damned online diary about it. Yes, I want to experience that again. You’re damned right I do.”
“I don’t like that I was carried away like that. It makes me feel cheap.”
“Cheap! Why?”
“Because you expected it. You expected me to behave that badly and I did.”
“I wanted you to make love with me. I didn’t expect it. And there was nothing bad about it. You have a real hang-up about when it’s permissible to have sex, don’t you?”
“Yes, all right? I do! I’ve had two lovers and I thought I loved both of them. I don’t have sex with random strangers for whom I feel mostly annoyance.”
He blinked once, taking a moment to pick apart her words. She expected him to take issue with her calling him annoying, but he only repeated, “Thought you loved.”
She looked away, aware of tension in the hands that had become fists on her thighs, and said nothing.
“Tell me about this boyfriend you were exorcising.”
“No.” She craned her neck to look past him. They were pulling up in front of a posh hotel. “What are we doing here?”
“We have dinner reservations.”
She had eaten exactly one stuffed mushroom cap at the engagement party. She was starving. Nevertheless, she glared at him.
To hide the fact she was scared.
And shamefully thrilled they weren’t parting ways yet. This man utterly fascinated her and it was so dangerous. Like swimming in petrol under a rainstorm of flaming comets.
“Why?” she asked, stalling.
“It’s a date, Cinnia. Surely that doesn’t go too harshly against your precious rules for how to behave with a man?”
She looked at her nails. “No, but I have one about providing the lion’s share of sarcasm in a relationship. I suggest you take it down a notch or things could become quite scathing.”
He tsk-tsked and started to open his door. His guard finished the job, but Henri held out his hand himself to help her out.
Then he kept his fingers firmly entwined with hers as he walked her through the glittering gold-and-glass entrance of the hotel, across the marble tiles and around the lobby fountain, up the red-carpeted staircase and into a restaurant where a harpist played. The maître d’ exclaimed delight that she could join them when Henri introduced her.
The moment they were alone, she said drily, “And I won’t feel obligated after this to go upstairs to the room you’ve booked.”
“No,” he assured her. “You won’t feel obligated.” He gathered her hands across the white tablecloth and gave her a slow and anticipatory smile. “But I hope very much you’ll feel inclined.”
CINNIA WOKE TO a room that was nearly pitch-black, Henri’s arm heavy across her waist. They were naked, front to front, legs entwined. She wanted to press her lips into the smoothness of his shoulder and kiss his skin.
What the hell was she doing?
Succumbing to hormones. And charm. Henri was very engaging when he wanted to be. He smoothly deflected from anything too personal, but he was keenly intelligent and had exchanged lively opinions with her on everything from world politics to pop music. He had asked her advice about a point of estate law, which she had thought was pure pandering, but she soon realized he was serious and had to tell him he was better off consulting someone who specialized in international trusts.
Then the evening’s trio had arrived and he had taken her to the dance floor and seduced her, right there in front of the world. Not that he was obvious about it. Henri was far too subtle for that. No, it had been a light brush of his chest against her breasts, a whisper that she smelled delicious, a brief contact with his hips so she knew he was aroused.
“I can’t help it, chérie. You have that effect on me,” he had said without embarrassment.
Dessert had arrived, a caramel flan they’d shared,
