Darryl Lawrence’s eyes almost fall out of his head when he sees me. The only reason his teeth aren’t flying out of his head, too, is because we’re in a public place and Sarah is watching.

“You have no business here!” he shouts.

“Lower your voice,” I say evenly as I close the door behind me. I can hear people starting to murmur in the outer office as it thwacks shut behind me. “I apologize for my language, Sarah. Everything all right?”

The look on her face tells me everything obviously isn’t all right, but I’ve already said I’m not going to meddle in her business. Sure, every part of me wants to toss this creep down the elevator shaft, but I’m going to bite my tongue and let her deal with it.

For now.

She clears her throat. “Mr. Lawrence was just leaving, Justin. I’m ready for our lunch.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Lawrence snipes. “This is far from over.”

“Do I have to call security?” asks Sarah.

He rolls his eyes. “I’m on the board, remember? No one’s going to remove me from this place.”

“I’d be more than happy to,” I offer. “On the assumption that security won’t, that is.”

Lawrence quails and holds up his hands in mock terror. “Oh, no, the incredible Justin Lucas is mad at me! Whatever will I do?” The look vanishes, replaced by his trademark sneer. “I said it before, Lucas, this is none of your concern. Why don’t you go find a nursing home to close down or something? That’s what you do, isn’t it? Ruin people’s lives for profit?”

Sarah lets out an exasperated sigh. Now that she’s had a chance to compose herself, she’s back in the fight.

“You’re not talking to him, Darryl, you’re talking to me. And I say we’re done.”

He ignores her, which is somehow worse in my eyes than anything he’s said so far, and keeps his eyes fixed on me.

“You think you’re some sort of wunderkind, don’t you?” he asks. “The upstart billionaire who figured out how to predict when companies are vulnerable. Except here’s what you don’t get, Lucas: in this city, people aren’t just in it for the money. It’s the responsibility that comes with knowing that your money puts food on the table for thousands of people. That those people look up to you and respect you. And that you’re one of the truly important people who stand above it all, running the show.”

“You must be talking about your father,” I say. “Because you sure as hell aren’t talking about yourself.”

That gets him going. “You’re nothing but a motherless white trash computer geek who found a secret key to the back door and made off with the safe! What do you produce, Lucas? Nothing! You deal in misery. You buy it low and sell it high and pocket the difference. You can point to any spot on the skyline and you’ll see a building my family built. What can you point to in this city and say ‘I did that’?”

“I could toss you out the window and point at you while you fall,” I shrug.

“You cocky little bastard,” he hisses. “I’ll tell you what the real power brokers in Manhattan say about you: they say you need to be put down like a rabid guard dog. That you’re nothing but a cancer on this city, eating things from the inside. That you always have been and always will be low-class trash. Your mother didn’t want you, and neither does New York.”

“Thanks for the heads-up,” I say. “I’ll make sure to leave them off the guest list for my next social gathering.”

“Speaking of that,” Sarah chimes in, “the Preston family was pretty impressed with him at their party this weekend. I don’t recall seeing any Lawrences there, though. They must have been too busy saving the Big Apple from ruin.”

I grin as her fists dig into the top of her hips. That’s my girl.

Lawrence rounds on her. “My family owns this town!” There’s honest-to-God rage in his face now. “You think you can waltz into New York from whatever little shit-splat you crawled out of in Indiana and be taken seriously by the movers and shakers here? Don’t make me laugh!”

“Your family owns it,” she says. “Not you. All you own is debt and a failing company. And I’ll be damned if I let you use my company to shore up yours.”

“Your company?” he laughs. “You honestly believe you and your dyke friends are anything more than window dressing? You’re just a pair of tits and a smile, honey. Trust me, if you and your so-called ‘gang’ were plain-looking, this joke of a company would never have gotten off the ground, and you would have been crawling back to your weird little family with your tail between your legs. You’d be churning butter right now instead of talking back to one of the biggest names in Manhattan.”

I see Sarah’s face drop, and suddenly my teeth are clenched. I worked for years to tame the temper that was a result of the life I lived growing up, but it’s still there under the surface. And if what I’m about to do upsets Sarah, then I guess I’ll just have to deal with that later. No one is going to talk like that about her when I’m around.

“That’s it,” I growl. Instantly my hand is grabbing the collar of his jacket. “You’re outta here.”

The look of horror on his face is priceless. I’d bet a billion dollars that no one has ever laid hands on him like this in his life. The fact that I get to be the first makes it that much more satisfying.

I pull him out the door and into the main office, where everyone suddenly scatters away from the area outside Sarah’s office and pretends to be busy. A few can’t help themselves from watching the spectacle, though, as he struggles in vain and shouts curses like a duck quacking into the wind.

“You’ll all pay! I know every one of your names! Oh, you’ll regret this! I’ll sue!”

As we reach the reception area, I see a pair of uniformed guards arriving. Evelyn must have called them when the shouting started. They’re big, burly guys, and they’re about to pull us apart when I yank Lawrence towards me so that his nose is only inches from mine.

“If you ever try to get in a room with Sarah alone again, you’ll pay in every way imaginable,” I hiss. “I’ll break your company, and then I’ll break you.”

The color drains from his face as the guards grab us each by the shoulder. I throw my hands up and put on a smile.

“A misunderstanding, officers,” I say amiably. “Mr. Lawrence was late for a meeting and I was helping him out.”

They watch him pull down his collar and smooth his jacket, trying to regain his composure.

“Is there a problem, sir?” they ask.

“No,” he says, fixing me with a cold glare. “Nothing I can’t take care of, anyway.”

They walk beside him to the elevator and get in with him when it arrives. I turn to see Sarah standing behind me, her eyes glimmering, and my stomach drops. I’m in for it. But I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Everything inside me was pushing me to defend her, even though I knew she didn’t need me to do it for her. I’ve—I’ve never felt that way about a woman before. This is all new territory for me.

I take a deep breath and steel myself for what’s to come.

What’s to come turns out to be her warm, wet lips against mine, her palms on my cheeks, her breasts pressing into me. Her scent in my nose, making me high like a drug. The tentative applause that breaks out around us is nice, too. We pull apart to acknowledge it and share a cathartic laugh with everyone who was forced to witness the drama.

“Show’s over, everyone,” Sarah giggles. “That’s lunch.”

People begin to file away around us and I feel her hand slip into mine. She pulls me out into the elevator, still smiling. But once the doors close on us, I can feel her hand trembling in mine.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “That was awful.”

“You don’t need to thank me,” I say, stroking her arm. “You were handling him perfectly well on your own. I lost my temper, and I’m sorry about that. I just hope what I did doesn’t blow back on you instead of me.”

“I don’t know if there is a separate you and me when it comes to this. At least not in Darryl’s mind.”

I look into her baby blue eyes. “I’ll stand beside you through anything that comes out of this,” I say. “That’s a promise. We’re officially a team now, Sarah. I mean, if that’s okay with you.”

She pulls me tight and I wrap my arms around her, surrounding her with my body. I feel her lips at my ear.

“It’s so okay you can’t even imagine,” she sighs.