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“Really,” I echo, a step already creating distance between us, like my body knows this moment is over. “And now I should get back to my friends before they assume I've been abducted.”
“Of course.” Caleb smiles. “Enjoy your evening.”
I glance at Bennett one last time. His face is neutral again. Back to business.
“Goodnight, Mr. Mercer.”
“Ms. Carmichael,” he replies with a nod.
I walk away, pulse racing, cheeks hot, head spinning. The tequila's buzz has nothing on the intoxication of his touch, his proximity, the memory of his body against mine on the dance floor.
He believes me. Or he's starting to.
And for one suspended moment in rooftop air, I really think he was going to kiss me.
The terrifying part?
I would've let him. Worse, than that. Iwantedhim to.
BENNETT
“It’s done,” Caleb says from the doorway. “Carmichael’s board accepted the offer.”
He delivers it like he’s announcing the weather, not the win we’ve been engineering for months.
I nod, eyes still on the quarterly projections. “Good. Start the integration process immediately. I want a full team assembled by?—”
“Already done.” He steps inside, closing the door behind him. “Meeting's set for two. Initial team is you, me, Vicky from operations, and Jenna to coordinate.”
“Add Logan,” I say, finally looking up. “We’ll need someone to evaluate their technical assets. I need an understanding of the prototype that got mentioned during our pitch.”
“Ah, the ‘market disruptor’ your tractor beam brought up. Neuro-something, I think it was called.”
I don’t rise to the bait. Just flip to the next tab in the projections like my pulse didn’t just kick at the mention of her. Even secondhand, her name hits harder than it should.
“Yes. NeuraTech.” I lean back. “Robert’s moonshot. We need to know where they are with it.”
“And by ‘they’ you mean the engineers?” Caleb settles into the chair across from me and looks directly at the thick report spread across my desk. “Or the COO you’ve been obsessing over? What even is this?”
I glance down at Jenna's twenty-three-page background analysis on Layla Carmichael. “The report Jenna put together about her. Due diligence.”
“Due diligence.” He leans forward, scanning the top page. “All this research for just one person? I've seen your background checks on Fortune 500 CEOs that were half this detailed.”
“She's involved in every part of the operations. Looking into her background was just smart strategy.”
“She heads a mid-sized medical device company.” His lawyer eyes are sharp now. “But whatever you need to tell yourself. Did you manage to find what you were looking for?”
Every fact in that report confirms what I already knew on Saturday night. That she's exactly who she claims to be. No hidden agendas. No corporate espionage connections. Just a brilliant woman trying to do a job while her father was less than truthful about the state of the company.
“Nothing alarming,” I say.
“Amazing!” Caleb tilts his head. “So no reason she can’t stay on to help smooth the handover. Unless there’s another issue you’re not disclosing? Maybe something that happened on the weekend?”
I keep my expression neutral. “The Tokyo deal finalized as expected. Dominic’s and my call with them went well, and they accepted our terms.”
“I meant the other thing that happened over the weekend. You know, when I stepped away for five minutes and came back to find you two engaged in what looked suspiciously like vertical foreplay on the dance floor.”
My jaw tightens. “We danced. It's what people do at bars.”