Page 26

Ten. Thousand.

That is a hell of a lot of money to spend on a dinner outfit.

I guess Harlan changed his mind since we spoke in his office and he said it doesn’t matter what I wear.

So… not only am I getting paid for the shift I’m missing at Velvet tonight, he’s buying me an outfit for this dinner that will cost more than my entire existing wardrobe. I guess he assumes whatever I was planning to show up in won’t be good enough.

Thisisa job.

The whole thing suddenly feels so transactional, I’m disappointed and simultaneously pissed at myself. This man does not have a thing for me. He didn’t pick me because he actually likes me.

I still don’t knowwhyhe picked me; surely there are oodles of employees at his many companies who need their jobs as badly as I do, who could be paid, blackmailed or otherwise compelled to do his bidding.

But I need to remind myself that no matter how chiseled-ice-sculpture-handsome he is or how many times I’ve wonderedsince meeting him what he’s like in bed—and if he wants me inhis—that this is just business.

Businessandblackmail.

I’m tempted to get myself a fifty-dollar dress and spend the rest on my desperately outdated kitchen at home.

But that would be wrong.

So instead, as soon as I’m finished my shift at Crave in the afternoon, I call Dani while delivering a cake to West Vancouver for a wedding reception, then hustle it back downtown to meet her. Dani is a personal stylist with a social media following in the hundreds of thousands, in other words, way more qualified for this task than a woman who buys most of her clothes pre-loved and as cheaply as possible.

I spend the next two hours just trying to keep up as my most beautiful and fashionable friend—who should probably be the one going on a date with a billionaire, quite frankly—stalks through Holt Renfrew, yanking designer items from racks and tossing them into my garment-laden arms.

“What does ‘presentable’ even mean to a billionaire?” I lament as Dani stuffs me into a fitting room for the fourth time and tosses in shoes.

“Oh, we’ll make you presentable, all right,” she mutters. She sounds lowkey pissed, as if the scrawled command on the envelope was a personal slight against her.

“I’m sweating so bad, I can’t get this dress on,” I pant, my voice muffled from inside the Givenchy dress that’s stuck over my head. I glimpsed the price tag and I’m terrified of ripping it.

Dani helps me pull it on. “This is just him exerting control. It’s a power play. Don’t let him win.”

Maybe she’s right.

Maybe he’s exerting control because that’s just what he does.

Or maybe he’s more worried than he let on about my ability to pull this off, and the clothes are supposed to help.

That finger thing he did, picking at the edge of his desk? It seemed like a nervous tic, but who knows. Maybe he had an itch.

I’m nervous as hell. It’s not just the prospect of having dinner with Harlan Vance’s billionaire siblings that freaks me out. Or the part about lying to them, pretending to be this Darla person.

It’s very specifically the part about pretending to beHarlan’s lover.

Maybe because I can’t even seem to decide if I’m more afraid of him or intrigued by him. It’s not on purpose. I can’t help it if my sex parts are curious about the man.

The rest of me still finds him ridiculously intimidating.

And extremely confusing.

Though he ordered me to do this job for him like there would be no taking no for an answer, he was quick to accommodate my needs when I said I couldn’t do the dinner last night. He respected my boundaries and my cake business.

Justin never does that. He seems to think my employment at his bakery means he owns me and my time, for a fraction of what I’m worth.

The panic is real and it’s growing.

What if I actuallylikeHarlan Vance? As in, want to bang him?