Isa sat in front of her computer in Eli’s dining room-slash-living room, staring over the laptop’s screen at the blustery day beyond, her thoughts circling one undeniable fact.
Tomorrow night was a bad idea.
When she’d invited Eli, she’d thought she had the arm candy part handled, but as the days lurched on and they circled each other at a distance, she’d begun to lose her nerve.
Not that she could un-ask him. That would be rude. He might be A-okay with eschewing common decency in his world, but in hers there were rules and one was: don’t renege an invitation. Plus, she needed him.
To thwart Josh, to be present and impress the suits. Lord knew she could use an “in,” and “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Cranes” seemed as good an intro as any.
The tailor had brought the altered tux back yesterday and Eli had disappeared into the back bedroom to make sure it fit. Isa chatted with the man—or tried, as he wasn’t much of a conversationalist—before Eli opened the bedroom door and bellowed he was “good to go” with the tuxedo.
He hadn’t shown a single inch of himself wearing the suit—not even a peek of an elbow at the doorway, and Isa had been watching closely. She did know he was wearing a white shirt with a black bow tie and the kerchief in his jacket pocket was going to be bright, almost hot pink to match her dress. The tailor had taken an inch off the length of the skirt and had fashioned some of the material into a matching kerchief. Short skirts were her signature, and she planned on showing up at the banquet dressed to impress.
Eli hadn’t asked for further details and she hadn’t offered, like both of them were choosing to ignore the fact they had a date at all. Which seemed safer considering ignoring the date and the matching-kerchief-to-dress also meant not bringing up the kiss that was so long ago it was beginning to feel like a mirage.
She’d commissioned a webmaster for the Refurbs for Vets website, and Eli had done the work for this week’s board of directors meeting, handing over the notes so Isa could call in and be present in his place.
By five-thirty, she was finished with her work for the week, and there was nothing to do save for leaving. Just get up. Grab her jacket and go…
But she should say something to him first, right? Since they would see each other in a little over twenty-four hours and need to play the part of a couple who at the very least liked each other. A lot.
Surely she knew him well enough to have a drink with him at a fancy party. Did he drink?
Sigh.
Well, she knew he was vegetarian. Who ate seafood. That had a name, but she’d forgotten what it was. Presbyterian? Something like that. Isa chewed on the side of her finger for a few seconds before noticing and stopping. No need to ruin her manicure over the man.
She pushed away from the dining room table and stalled by packing her laptop, planner, and the rest of her office implements into her Kate Spade tote. Then she mentally pulled on her big girl panties and walked to Eli’s office. No sense in acting like the girl who’d been asked to prom for the first time. It was a business arrangement, for goodness’ sake.
With a guy whose kiss sears like a brand.
Before she breached the door, she started speaking, determined to say her goodbyes and leave with as little awkwardness as possible.
“That last e-mail marked the end of—” She cut herself off when she barged into his office to find his cell phone to his ear. He raised one finger into the air to signal her to wait a moment.
“Uh-huh,” he said into the phone, casting her a glare.
She mouthed the word sorry because, Seriously, Isa, rookie move!
“How much?” he asked the caller, grabbing a pen to jot down the answer on a yellow legal pad.
While he wrote the figure, she followed the line of his strong forearm, dusted with dark hair, up to impressive biceps, and a rounded shoulder, every inch of his arm decorated in a myriad of tattoos. She allowed her gaze to trickle along his mussed hair, neatly trimmed facial hair, and down the thick column of his neck. Dark whorls of hair sat at the very edge of his V-neck T-shirt, and a memory of the way he’d looked out of it stung her brain like the snap of a rubber band.
Rippling abs and strong pecs, glistening with sweat as his chest expanded to take in oxygen…
“Earth to Sable,” interrupted a silky, deep voice.
She blinked and noticed he’d put the phone down, his expression bordering on confusion.
“Sorry. I’m…tired.”
And hopelessly attracted to a Marine with a beard and a complicated reasoning system.
“I came in to tell you I’m done for the day. I forwarded you a few questions I couldn’t answer for the webmaster. Aesthetic stuff. He is asking whether you want this color or that, this font or that.” Isa threw a hand, feeling more uncomfortable the more she talked but unable to stop.
Working with Eli was one thing, but the idea of being at his side, her arm in his, introducing him to her parents…She probably should broach that topic, but the more intensely he watched her, the more she lost her nerve.
“So…I’ll see you tomorrow.” She lifted her hand in an awkward wave.
“Sable.”
At the soft pronunciation of her nickname, chills trickled along her arms under her sleeved blouse. She smoothed her damp palms down her slim skirt and turned to face him.
“Yes, Eli?”
His eyes warmed when she said his name. The air between them didn’t crackle so much as hummed. She enjoyed the quiet, amicable moment of shared appreciation. It was rare and had been absent from her life for years. Even when she and Josh were dating, she hadn’t felt this particular pull. With Eli, there had always been a buzz, hum, or crackle between them. Being near him was like slipping into a really warm bath.
Mmm.
“Where am I picking you up?” he asked.
“Oh no. That’s not necessary.” This wasn’t a date so much as an arrangement. “I can meet you at the event. I e-mailed you the address. It’s really easy. It’s the Vancouver Hotel on—”
“I assumed you wanted me to pretend to be a romantic date, not a colleague.” His face broadcasted sincere curiosity.
Her parents would assume he was a romantic date. Isa was hoping Eli would play the part of both boyfriend—thwarting Josh’s advances—and colleague, acting as a go-between while she mingled with wealthy business owners. She hadn’t told him that part yet. She hadn’t really told him anything.
“A date would pick you up where you live.” Eli hadn’t let up in his assessing stare. “A date would know what you expected of him.”
Right.
“We should talk about how the evening will go,” he said. “Specifically what you need me to do.”
She swallowed thickly, not wanting to admit she needed him to stand in the way of her ex.
“Is this supposed to look like a romantic coupling?” he sort of repeated.
“I guess so.” Eli was to be the big ole scary buffer between her and her parents’ machinations to get her and Josh back together. “But also a professional one.”
Eli stood, walking toward her on steady legs, which was more than she could say for her own. “Then I’m arriving with you.”
“It’s not necessary.”
“It is.” He took a step closer to her. “Your place?”
It was like she’d been hypnotized by his dark blue gaze—the way he moved toward her with purpose and control. Before she knew what she was doing, she felt her head jerk up and down in a nod.
“I’ll need your address,” he said, his voice warm.
“I’ll text it to you.” She watched his tempting, contoured lips when he spoke next.
“And this is a…wedding? Dinner?”
“It’s a business thing,” she hedged, snapping out of her stupor.
“A business thing. Thanks for clearing that up for me.” His dry joke caught her off guard and the heat between them bloomed into something friendlier.
“A…uh…former employer of mine is naming a new president of their company.” She was fudging for a very good reason: she didn’t want Eli to back out. Mentioning him meeting her parents might result in just that. Plus, picturing the look on Josh’s face when she arrived on another man’s arm was a pleasant thought. “It’s pretty dry, really.”
“And you need me because…?”
She couldn’t tell Eli she was looking to him to help her schmooze. Not until he learned she wasn’t an employee of Sable Concierge—she was Sable Concierge.
“Because if you’re with me, I can avoid being hit on all night,” she said.
“I’m not surprised.” Eli said, then floored her with a compliment. “You’re someone I would have hit on in a former life.”
That made her giggle. “You kissed me, Eli. That was you in this life.”
The moment it was out of her mouth the air between them shifted again—less friendly, sexier. Especially when his gaze snaked down to her mouth.
“Is kissing you in my marching orders for tomorrow night?” he asked, his eyes picking up a trace of heat.
She wasn’t going to pass up this opportunity. No way. No how.
“Yes,” she answered. “Need to practice?”
In one motion he wrapped an arm around her and tugged her close, resting his forehead on hers. “What do you think?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” she murmured, gripping his biceps and giving him the permission he’d never asked for.
He dipped his lips to hers for a brief taste. Nothing like the intense, fiery, button-slashing kiss, but a tender, gentle meeting of the mouths before he backed away…
Too soon.
He released her, leaving her with a husky farewell. “Be safe driving home.”
She took an unsteady step backward before leaving his office. She didn’t look over her shoulder as she gathered her tote and opened the elevator, but she did angle her head to the upstairs warehouse window when she unlocked her car.
Her billionaire employer was framed by the panes, one hand leaning on the wall as he watched her leave. His face was partially hidden by the reflection of the overcast sky.
She swiped her tongue along her bottom lip, his flavor lingering there, and found herself looking forward to more.
* * *
One of the first changes Eli had made once he could walk on his new carbon-fiber leg was to adapt his car so he could drive. Took some doing to learn how much pressure to apply to the pedals now that he operated the vehicle with his left foot. At first, he’d driven with a series of herky-jerky stops and gos, but eventually, he’d found his rhythm.
It’d been like that with the leg, too.
After kissing Isa again and feeling firsthand the fire between them, he knew sex was an eventuality. Tonight, specifically, could usher in the perfect excuse to invite her home with him. There was only one problem. He needed it to go off without a hitch the first time. “Herky-jerky” wasn’t exactly the calling card of a good lover.
He didn’t doubt Isa would be out the door if he failed at pleasing her. It wasn’t like she was a girlfriend who would patiently wait until he found his new rhythm. Crystal hadn’t stuck it out with him—though to be fair, she hadn’t been a girlfriend when he’d returned. She’d already bailed.
Driving his black Mercedes-Maybach, he felt like a better version of himself: capable and independent. The car had been a splurge considering he’d taken it out for test runs alone and never had a passenger.
Until tonight.
There was no way he was letting Isa show up to the function alone. She hadn’t offered details on the evening, but he had pried out of her that he was supposed to be her romantic interest. They wouldn’t have a problem faking the charge between them—given his family’s reaction, it was obvious they liked each other as more than boss and assistant.
And now he was considering having sex. With his PA. He’d never been in a position to mind his manners or the corporate handbook. As a soldier, even the smallest decisions were life and death and never anything less. In the professional realm sleeping with his assistant was considered taboo, but he couldn’t get himself worked up about the dynamic. What bothered him was that he was woefully out of practice at wooing a woman.
Women were the final frontier. He’d rehabbed his physical body and he was well on his way to resolving the emotional hurdles of losing his friends. But dating? Even driving to a woman’s house to pick her up for an event was as foreign as if he was navigating his prosthesis anew.
He felt like a clumsy, shaky-legged fawn…trying to swim.
But Isa didn’t look at him like that, did she? She didn’t pity him or censor herself or try to be gentle with him. Every PA he’d had prior to Isa had been female, save one, and every one of them reacted to him professionally and courteously, but there had always been a touch of pity in their eyes.
Until Sable Concierge sent Isabella.
She was strong-willed. Drop-dead gorgeous. Sharp and intelligent. But she didn’t yield to his belligerence. She didn’t wilt at his commands. Under his hands and lips, she became pliant, but never had she looked at him with an ounce of pity.
Not a single damn drop.
He didn’t know much about her, but he guessed by her demeanor and her dress that she’d been raised in a middle-class home, with hardworking parents. Isa wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, and he’d bet she was from a matriarchal family, considering she wasn’t intimidated by a billionaire Marine with a short temper.
He’d bellowed and growled at her and was rewarded with a raised eyebrow that seemed to ask, Is that all you got?
Honestly? Yeah, it was all he had.
Isa knew about his injury—and now knew about the incident behind it since she’d found his journal entry. And yet, where he should have raged at her for spying and fired her immediately, he hadn’t. He was glad she knew and touched when she’d asked who they were. She felt like a safe space in that intimate moment, and he’d opened up to her—definitely something he hadn’t done in a long, long time.
Crystal had accused him of being “walled up,” which he took responsibility for now—too late to save their relationship, but that dab of insight could save a future one. Eli and “open” weren’t exactly synonyms.
Isa, though…she knew he was closed off and angry, that there was a part of him trying to spook her. The thing that killed him was she hadn’t shied away. Even after she’d found the journal, she hadn’t run away. He hadn’t been “more than she signed up for,” that was for damned sure.
His GPS took him to a business district and announced he’d arrived outside of Sable Concierge. A sign hung over the door, another in the window announcing, “Professional assistants for your every business need.”
He pulled into the lot, noticing one other car there. Isa’s.
What the—
He climbed from his car and caught sight of her stepping from the office in a blindingly gorgeous short, bright dress. She turned to lock the doors behind her.
“You didn’t have to get out,” she said, dropping her keys into a small clutch.
Goddamn she looked gorgeous. She wore a hot pink strapless dress that matched the kerchief in his tux pocket. The dress stopped midthigh and hugged every one of her generous curves on the way down.
“That is a dress.” His throat was almost too full to push the words out. He walked to her door and opened it and again she told him he didn’t have to. Before she lowered into the seat, he caught her elbow and tugged her closer. “You deserve to be treated well. Let me do it and stop protesting.”
Her lips curved, her long lashes dipping as she looked at her shoes. Tanned, smooth legs led to spiked heels the same shade of pink as her dress. His mouth literally watered.
He blinked out of his scattered thoughts. “You’re going to need a coat.”
“And hide this dress? Forget it. We’re valet parking. I’ll be fine.”
“You can wear my jacket.” The air had a crisp bite to it tonight. He wouldn’t let her be cold.
“I never suspected you as the chivalrous type, Eli,” she told him, her grin parting bright pink lips.
She settled into the seat and he closed the door and rounded the car, noticing he smiled during that short walk. When he angled himself into the driver’s seat and caught sight of the building in front of them, the lust-fueled smog cleared from his brain.
“Why am I picking you up at work?” he asked, but he’d already started suspecting. Isa behaved like no other assistant he’d ever had. She acted more like a boss. Or a business owner.
“Oh. Um. Would you believe I was working overtime?”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “If I hadn’t seen you with keys to the building.”
She bit on her lip and flashed him a guilty grimace. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“You own this company, don’t you?” Isabella. Sable. His brain shoved those two pieces together like twins separated at birth.
“Yes.”
“And you kept it from me.”
“I didn’t want you to view me as a challenge. You’d only fight me harder.”
His nostrils flared as he took in a frustrated breath—her spicy perfume tingling his senses.
“You would have,” she said quietly.
He would’ve. Again it struck him how she knew him and how his normal reaction to her breaching his walls didn’t occur. He didn’t want to argue about this. He just wanted to be next to her.
“I thought it’d be simpler if you thought I was an employee who wouldn’t stop showing up.”
“You mean you thought I’d underestimate you.”
Another shrug. “Happens all the time.”
He gripped the steering wheel, half pissed at the truth in those words. When he’d first laid eyes on her, he’d assumed she’d give up faster than the last assistant. He’d completely underestimated her.
He nodded out the windshield to the apartment over Sable Concierge. A pumpkin sat on the stoop alongside a potted purple mum. “Who lives up there?”
“I do.”
Just as he’d suspected.
“There’s more.”
A stunned, “Ha!” exited his lips, but when he turned to take her in, Isa looked chagrined. His smile vanished.
“What more?” he asked, the first hint of gruffness eking into his tone. He wasn’t a fan of being left in the dark.
“Tonight.” She licked her full, pink lips and he fought not to let the seductive move affect him. “It’s my parents’ function.”
“Not your ex-employer?” He hoisted an eyebrow.
“Actually…” She screwed her lips to the side, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “Both. The event is for Sawyer Financial Group.”
Sawyer. Financial. The institution was a Chicago treasure. They did planning of all kinds—taxes, retirement, business—and their roster of clients was among the most elite. Isa wasn’t raised in a middle-class family, not even close. She’d grown up as rich as he had.
“It’s not a long story,” she continued. “I’ll tell you while we drive to the Vancouver.”
Isa liked to tell him what to do. Liked to be in charge. He wasn’t inclined to let her call the shots tonight.
“You can tell me now,” he said, taking his hands off the wheel and sitting back in his seat. To her credit, she did.
“My ex-boyfriend is going to be at this function. Because he’s the one who is accepting the position of president.” She regarded her hands. Her sounding and looking small was such a departure from what he knew of her. He didn’t like her that way—not at all.
“I was groomed for running Sawyer Financial my entire life,” she said. “My parents introduced me to Josh. We were to be the power couple that someday ran the company,” she told him, meeting his eyes. “My parents knew I didn’t want the future they’d laid out for me.”
“Sounds like an arranged marriage.”
“Felt like one,” she said, a sad smile twitching her mouth. “But without the marriage part. Josh planned on taking the position of president, and he said I could be VP or run staffing. Whatever made me happy.”
“How generous of him,” Eli said through clenched teeth, hating the jackass already. It was so obvious that Isa was a leader. The only reason her ex would have slotted her into a position less than the top—at her family’s own company no less—was his own moronic need for control.
“He’s the son my parents never had. It broke their hearts when we split. They blamed my stubbornness and my obsession with going into business for myself for driving him away.”
“They wanted you to fulfill their dreams, not yours.” He could relate. His father and brothers wanted him to be a part of the Crane legacy. If Eli had felt he’d earned it, he’d have already suited up. But that wasn’t the case with Isa. She’d earned it; she just didn’t want it.
“My parents wouldn’t care that Josh dated me only to climb the ladder. They care about appearances as much as he does. Whenever the topic of my running a firm for assistants comes up, I can see the embarrassment on their faces. I may as well have gone into trash collection or cleaning hotels.”
“Both honorable positions,” Eli said defensively. He didn’t station anyone into categories of high or low. He’d been raised to see people as equal no matter their income.
Isa’s cheeks pinked at his unintentional correction. “I’m…I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know.” He put his hand on hers, running his thumb over hers, feeling the softness of her skin and enjoying the length of time she held his gaze. Yes, Isa was beautiful. She was also complex and caring. She was more than the president of a bank, and her parents should have assessed that years ago. He could see it already and had only known her a few weeks.
“No other secrets about your vocation or parentage, then?”
“No, I think that’s it.” She smiled prettily.
“All right.” Eli reversed out of the parking lot, noting that Isa watched as he maneuvered the gas and brake pedal on the left side rather than his right. He pulled onto the road, hitting the gas pedal and taking off a little too fast. He wasn’t used to being watched so closely. He regulated his speed a second later.
“So this Josh? You want me there because of him? Or were you serious about men, plural, hitting on you?”
“Ugh. That probably made me sound completely full of myself.”
“Not completely. Only a little.” He turned right and flashed her a grin. One she returned tenfold, her eyes sparkling in the shadowed interior of the car.
“My mother believes if she can get Josh and me into the same room, we’ll fall into each other’s arms.”
“Because proximity is equal to attraction.” He’d thought he was joking but as soon as it was out of his mouth, he realized that sometimes, proximity turned up the attraction to eleven. Million.
“Sometimes,” Isa said as she watched out the window.
Eli remained silent as he turned left, then pulled to a stop in front of the Vancouver. He stepped out, but not before telling Isa, “Stay put. I’ll get your door.”
A valet with white gloves stepped forward to take the car keys from him, and predictably, Isa’s car door opened a second later. He offered a hand and helped her out, tucking her palm against his elbow.
“I see your point about the stubbornness,” he murmured as they turned for the building.
“Takes one to know one.” Her tone was teasing and he returned her smile with a narrowed gaze. Then he took one step forward and saw the staircase leading to the front doors of the Vancouver and his light mood disappeared into the ether.
“Fuck.” His voice was just below a whisper, but Isa heard him, her grip tightening on his forearm.
“Wait.”