by Amelia Wilde
32
Dominic
I should be over the moon.
I should be beside myself with satisfaction, with joy, because last week with Vivienne was amazing. Beyond amazing—it was on a plane I never thought I’d witness with any woman. An absolutely intoxicating mix of submission and freedom, and all of it seamless, all of it transitioning without a hitch.
Vivienne is so open with me in those moments, so vulnerable about what she wants from me, what she needs from me, and it’s like we don’t even have to speak to understand each other.
But when I woke up this morning, all the calm was gone.
What if there’s some other…motive for being so open?
The reality is that I need to focus on work. Vivienne and I have our evenings, have our nights, but while I’m at the Wilder Building my attention needs to be here one hundred percent.
“Mr. Wilder, everything’s in place for the meeting.” Emily stands in my doorway with a leather folio in her hands, the last item I’ll need to take with me into the conference room.
“Thanks, Emily. I’ll be right there.”
It’s the first meeting of the day, and already I can feel my mind wandering off into places it’s definitely not supposed to be. But there’s no other alternative. I square my shoulders, slide my phone into my pocket, and go.
It’s almost four o’clock by the time I’m able to exhale all the jittery energy that’s followed me around all day. I wonder what the hell Chris O’Connor and his team are doing right now. I wonder who the undercover agent is. I want to go stalk the floors until I find him, but how will I be able to tell?
I bend my head over a sheaf of contracts waiting for my signature.
Stop thinking about this shit.
A gentle knock at my door makes my jaw clench with irritation. How am I supposed to get this done if I’m interrupted every five seconds? I look up, ready to dismiss whoever it is with a cutting remark, but I can’t.
Because it’s Vivienne.
Her face is a little pink, like she’s been thinking of what we did last night and getting ashamed in retrospect, but her smile makes me smile back. “Ms. Davis.”
“Mr. Wilder—could I come in for a minute?”
“Of course. What do you need?”
Behind her back, I see Emily move down the hallway and get on the elevator. She’s undoubtedly going down to the seventh floor, where Wilder Enterprises maintains a state-of-the-art copy center. If you wanted, you could bind an entire book down there and sell it on the street outside.
But book binding is the last thing on my mind.
Vivienne steps up to the edge of my desk and looks down at a folder in her hands.
“Do you have something for me, Ms. Davis?”
When she looks up again, her eyes are sparkling. “It’s a decoy.” She opens the folder and shows me that it’s empty. “I thought—listen, maybe this is a stupid idea. I’m regretting coming up here more than a little right now.”
“Tell me.” My heart aches when I see her, aches and grows warm and beats hard, and right now is no exception. The warring thoughts are taking place only in my mind. I should get back to work. Vivienne should get back to work. We should save this for later.
“I thought we could…go on a date.”
I look at her with narrowed eyes. “A date?”
“Yes. A date to somewhere we’ve never been before.”
I look past her once more to see if Emily has returned. She hasn’t. “We could go Saturday.”
“What about right now?” She’s smiling tentatively, but with every moment the conversation lengthens, the smile gets dimmer. “I thought I could tempt you outside for the last hour of the day. I wanted to…return the favor from last week.”
“Last week?”
The smile flickers. “You took me home with you on a Monday afternoon, a little before the day was officially over. I thought…” Her voice lowers, and two bright spots of color appear on her cheeks. “You know what, this was a mistake.” She wrinkles her nose. “A mistake. Let’s do something on the weekend. It’s only two days away.” She clears her throat, glances over her shoulder. “Thank you, Mr. Wilder,” she says in a voice meant to carry, and then she turns away, toward the door.
I’m out of my seat in an instant, my entire chest aching, and I catch her by the wrist. I lower my own voice. “Do you know something, Vivienne Davis?”
“What?” Her eyes are wide and searching, but her body is still half-turned toward the door, like she can’t wait to get out of here.
“I love you.”
The smile comes back to her face, wide and pure. “I love you.”
“I’m—I had a lot to do today.”
“The weekend,” she says again, sounding calm and assured. “The weekend will be fine. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Then she laughs. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“No. We’ll go now.”
“Dominic, we don’t have to—”
“Be waiting for me in the Town Car in five minutes.”
Vivienne’s eyes sparkle. “I’ll be there.”
She hustles out of my office and back to the elevators.
I take a deep breath in and stifle a wave of paranoia.
Get ahold of yourself, Wilder.
This isn’t some crazy ploy to get me away from the office, to destabilize Wilder Enterprises. That’s coming from someone else, someone who wants to benefit the Chinese government and betray the confidences of my company. It has nothing to do with Vivienne, and neither does the fact that I need to concentrate on my work.
I can give in to her. This once, I can take an hour off in the afternoon and be with my gorgeous girlfriend.
Girlfriend.
The word, even as a thought, makes my chest feel light at the same time that a cold knot forms in my stomach. At some point, we’re going to have to—
No. I’m not going to get into all that now. Yes, at some point we’ll have to make some decisions about what this means for her job, for my company, but we can get to those later. For now, all I have to do is love her.
And I love her. I love her more than anything. Even Wilder Enterprises.
I repeat it to myself as I leave a note for Emily, close the door behind me, and go to meet Vivienne, my mind still behind my desk.
33
Vivienne
It’s a bad idea, and I knew it the moment I saw Dominic’s face. And for some reason, like an idiot, I kept pressing the idea until it was crystal clear that he does not want to be out on some spur-of-the-moment date with me during business hours. I can’t stop thinking about it, a week later.
It’s a strange position to be in, because last week was a real breakthrough for me—for both of us. It’s not conventional, what we have, and I know that it isn’t. It’s not conventional on many levels, beginning with the fact that he’s my boss and ending with the fact that I’m not really his employee, and sooner or later it’s a house of cards that’s going to come crashing down.
But in his arms last night, I felt none of that—and maybe it was a mistake to let it go.
Maybe it was a mistake to think I could separate the two things, keep a wall between them that would let me do my job while also letting me fall in love.
Because I have fallen in love. I’ve spoken the words out loud. I can’t even think of Dominic without thinking of how he makes me feel, how secure, how steady.
Except today.
Today, the look on his face makes me feel like I’m on a ship but I haven’t gotten my sea legs and I might never get them at all. There’s a strange energy between us.
I haven’t slept well lately. Maybe that’s what it is.
When he climbs into the Town Car next to me, I do my best to pretend that everything is fine, and Dominic grins at me. I’m careful not to notice the strain in his eyes—for a moment. But when Craig pulls the car away from the curb, I can’t help myself.
“Dominic, are you all right?”
&n
bsp; He looks into my eyes, taking my hand in his. “I’m fine. A long day, that’s all.”
“You know—” It seems disingenuous to say this to him when I can’t breathe a word of what’s causing me stress. “You can talk to me, if something is going on. I won’t say anything at work, if you’re worried that—”
He raises my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles. “I’m not worried about you spilling company secrets.”
My heart leaps into my throat. It’s such a random choice of words.
The blood is draining from my face, and it’s going to be a disaster if I can’t get myself under control right this second.
I force a laugh, and it sounds genuine enough. “I’m not digging around for secrets, Mr. Wilder. I meant that I wouldn’t reveal how you feel to anyone at the office.”
He gazes into my eyes, the corners of his own crinkled. “What if how I feel is the most valuable company secret?”
I nod solemnly. “I’ll never tell.”
He kisses my cheek, then wraps one arm around me, pulling me in close as Craig steers us through the traffic. “Why don’t you tell me where we’re going? I’m assuming you’ve conspired with my driver on this.”
“Only a little. But I’m not telling.”
He teases me, and I tease him back, and the words fall like raindrops around me, barely making an impression. Can he feel my heart beating hard against my rib cage? Can he sense the way my throat keeps going tight when I remember his words?
Does Dominic know?
No. I tell it to myself over and over again, like a silent prayer. Dominic doesn’t know. He made a joke about corporate secrets, and that’s all that was.
Craig pulls into Central Park, and Dominic straightens up. “You’ve never been to Central Park before?” He looks at me skeptically, and this time, my laugh is a real one.
“I’ve been to Central Park. There’s someplace inside it I’ve never been to.”
“What kind of place?”
“You’ll see.”
We step out of the car into the blinding summer heat, and I frown. Dominic takes a big breath and strips off his coat, tossing it back into the car. He leans in. “Be ready for us, Craig.” Craig nods and pulls away, probably to park somewhere in the shade.
Dominic rolls up his sleeves, and I raise a hand to my eyes to shade them from the harsh sun. “Where are we going?”
“It’s not far. You can hear it from here.”
There’s carnival music wafting through the air toward us, faint at first, and getting stronger while we walk through the park, every step on the sidewalk taking us closer to the skating rink. My hands feel shaky—this is seeming like a bigger and bigger risk with every moment that goes by—and I glance up at Dominic. His forehead is wrinkled, but he’s clearly trying his best not to look confused.
When the rink comes into view, his face cracks into a smile. “An amusement park?”
“I read—” I swallow down my nervousness. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, planning this little outing. I wanted a little more normalcy squeezed into my day, a little less of the prickling anxiety that’s filling more of my hours every day that I can’t make headway on this investigation. “I read online that they turn the skating rink into an amusement park in the summer so that they can use the space all year round instead of leaving it empty.”
Dominic is grinning at me.
“I thought we could enjoy ourselves for an hour or two and—what?”
“You know, there are other ways to enjoy ourselves that don’t involve dying of heat stroke.”
We’re nearing the booth at the entrance of the little amusement park—Victoria Gardens—and I slip a bill out of my purse, ready to pay the attendant. “They have ice cream inside. I’ll even buy you a soda, if you want.”
I pay the woman sitting on a tall stool behind the bench and pull Dominic forward. He laughs, shaking his head. A billionaire and an undercover FBI agent, visiting an amusement park full of ridiculous attractions and rides, vendors selling pink and blue puffs of cotton candy and balloons, all of it soaked in the late afternoon heat.
“I’m going to take you up on that,” he promises, squeezing my hand, and my heart resumes its regular rhythm.
Everything is okay, I tell myself firmly.
And I almost believe it.
At the last moment, I look across at Dominic one more time. He’s looking at me, eyes serious and hard, like he’s trying to make a decision. I smile, and the expression is gone in a flash, but I see it.
“Do you know what?” I break the silence. I have to. The cold anxiety glides down the back of my neck.
“What, Vivienne Davis?”
“I love cotton candy. Let’s get some.”
The sweetness doesn’t cover my fear.
34
Dominic
We stay at the amusement park for two hours, careening between the kind of innocent good time I haven’t had since I was a child and a taut tension that I can’t quite explain.
No. I can explain it, and that’s what’s putting me on edge.
I don’t know what made me bring up company secrets. I wasn’t planning to interrogate Vivienne about why she really applied for the job at Wilder Enterprises. I was planning to be over it, over it completely, and to continue on with my life until we’re forced to make an actual decision about us.
But I felt how her body froze when I said it.
I did feel it. I’m not making it up. I wasn’t imagining it—at least, I don’t think I was.
It’s hard to tell.
My stomach goes tight with the indecision rotting my core.
I felt her tense up, but I saw her laugh without hesitation. I saw her pick up the thread of the conversation like she had no idea what I might be talking about, like there’s no feasible reason on earth why she would ever steal company secrets.
There are times at the amusement park that seem completely sublime, like when she licks a stray drop of ice cream off of my chin in full view of everyone, in public, laughing at the sweetness, her dark hair pulled up in a clip at the back of her head. Or when she leans into me as we move through the crowd, screw the heat, and I run my hand down her back, feeling the light dampness from the humidity at the small of her back. Or when she sighs, slipping her hand into mine, and smiles up at me.
But there are also moments when I don’t know who I’m looking at, when I can’t be sure that the person in front of me is really who she says she is at all.
I need to get my head in order, and make a decision about this, because it’s eating me alive. More than once, I catch her staring at me, brow furrowed, a frown turning the corners of her lips downward. When she sees me looking, she smiles again, and I think—what if she’s worried that I’m not enjoying myself? What if it’s as simple as that?
It could be as simple as that.
It could be.
We tumble into the back of the Town Car exhausted from the heat, and Craig glances into the rearview mirror. “Did you two kids have fun?”
“Enough fun to last a hundred years,” Vivienne says, kicking off her heels. “Why didn’t I wear more sensible shoes?”
“Why didn’t you plan a more sensible outing?” I tease, leaning in to kiss the side of her neck below her jaw and tasting the fine salt that’s collected there.
“I didn’t want a sensible outing,” she cries, leaning back into the seat while Craig pulls into traffic. “Everyone always wants a sensible outing.” Then she shakes her head. “Things that aren’t sensible have been happening for a while now. Why not make them fun?”
“What do you mean?”
I reach over to the dial that controls the temperature and up the air conditioning several levels.
Vivienne considers me from across the seat. “For one, I met you. It’s hardly sensible to run into a billionaire on the sidewalk carrying an oversized box of doughnuts and then end up…”
Her voice trails off, but a blush rises to her cheeks.
“I wanted to—” She makes a face, looks out the window. “I wanted people in the department to like me.”
“And you thought you’d bribe them with doughnuts?”
Vivienne shrugs. “It’s worked before.”
“Oh? Where at?”
She looks back at me, smiling with closed lips. “Wilder Enterprises isn’t my first job, you know.”
“I can’t imagine that it would be. You’re far too—” I give her a cocky look.
“Are you about to call me old, Dominic Wilder?” She drops her mouth open in faux outrage.
“No. You’re far too delicious to be old. But even if you were—” I lean in for another kiss. She tastes like cotton candy somehow, still. “I’d still want you.”
Vivienne pushes me away playfully. “Don’t be vulgar.”
“Age isn’t vulgar.”
“Let’s not go down that road,” she laughs.
“Okay. Where did you work before this, then? Tell me which companies in town are so easily swayed by a beautiful woman with doughnuts to pass around.”
I don’t know why I’m pushing her like this. I don’t know what I’m hoping to get out of this, other than some inkling of proof that she has nothing to do with this absurd FBI investigation, that she’s not holding out on me, that I haven’t loosened my grip on the business that’s been my pride and joy for years only for someone who—
She rolls her eyes. “I worked at a publishing company for about a year. The other women in my department loved sweets, but especially the managing editor. She was the one who gave out assignments, and after that I always got the best one.”
I nod. Was there a publishing house on her resume?
No. I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to fact-check her. I’m not going to try to catch her in a lie.