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He made himself stare into his glass, doubtful she’d appreciate hearing his compliments on that front. Or rear, as it were.
“Our engagement was not official.” He’d already had his assistant cancel the order for the ring. “It was more of a business agreement anyway.”
“Really?” She glanced over, nose wrinkled with skepticism. Disapproval maybe?
He shrugged.
“Our fathers are friends.” Iris’s family was the quintessential broke aristocracy, desperate for an influx of cash. Oliver was eleventh in line for an earldom, so he considered himself a peer of the realm. He had this common, bastard son, however. One he wanted to elevate with a marriage into a titled family. “Iris is well connected socially, but I had concerns about how successful we’d be. She wants a man of leisure, whereas I’ve crafted my life around taking over DVE. I just bought a home in Greece, but she prefers London. In many ways we weren’t compatible. Hence the separate bedrooms.”
Stella paused before throwing the mushrooms into a pan of melted butter.
Yes, he had told her that deliberately. He wanted her to know.
The mushrooms began to sizzle.
The irony was, he loathed himself anytime he showed the least similarity to his father, yet he had been about to repeat Oliver’s mistake. Oliver had married the woman his parents had put in front of him, then cheated on her with Atlas’s mother. With countless women, in fact, but Oliver had learned his lesson after the first pregnancy. He took precautions after that.
Atlas wanted to believehewould never break his vows, but this hum of desire for Stella had lingered like a ringing in his ears. Now it was a cacophony crashing around his chest.
She glanced over again. “I still don’t understand—”
“My PR team wanted to issue a statement that would make all of this go away. Forme. I refused to leave you to take the brunt of it.” That was something his father would do. “Iris read my reluctance as more significant than it is.”
“What were they going to say?” she asked with alarm.
“That you’re an opportunist who orchestrated the photos for profit.”
“Why are rich people soawful?” She flipped a crepe.
“I didn’t let them do it, did I?” No, he had made a few blistering phone calls, warning his staff that Stella was not a scapegoat. Then he’d told them to find her so he wasn’t leaving her to fend for herself against the inevitable deluge of photographers and trolls.
Iris had left for the heliport in a justifiable snit, reading plenty into what she had overheard. How could he deny his interest in Stella, though? He didn’t understand why he felt so protective of her, but he was.
While Stella seemed the furthest thing from grateful for his consideration or rescue. Her profile was stiff as she went into full production with the crepes: pouring, flipping, filling, rolling… All while stirring a pan of sauce and pulling roasted asparagus from the oven.
When she began plating everything, he topped up their drinks.
“This looks really good,” he said as they took side-by-side seats at the bar. She’d drizzled a creamy herb sauce across the mushroom-filled crepes, topped them with the asparagus spears and added halved cherry tomatoes on sprigs of basil. “Are you a chef?”
“I’ve taken sous-chef courses.”
“Is that the direction you want to go?”
“No.” She took a bite, considered it, then picked up the saltshaker. “Before I left home, I thought I would go into accounting. I was shy and decent at math and I wanted to know how to handle money because we never had any while I was growing up. I had a crash course in finances when I got to Zermatt,” she said wryly, handing him the salt. “But I realized a lot of little things could add up to better pay and opportunities. Bartending, first aid, cooking…” She waved at her plate. “I also realized I like hospitality so I took my degree in it, online so I could keep working.”
“What do you like about it?” All he remembered about his time working at the taverna was late nights and a layer of sweat that felt like a crust while his mother complained about how sore her feet were.
“It makes me feel good to solve problems. Appreciated.” She used the side of her fork to separate a bite from the rolled crepe. “And people interest me. I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter if I’m shy or private. They’d rather talk about themselves anyway, so I just ask them about where they’re from or what they do for a living.” She shrugged.
“You’re not shy.”
“Because I’ve worked hard to overcome it.” She closed her mouth over a bite of food.
“No.” He rejected that. She was too confident, easily meeting his gaze—which many didn’t have the nerve to do.
She lifted her brows in challenge.
“You dress tastefully, but in a way that allows yourself to be noticed and admired. You speak plainly and clearly. My lie detector says you’re not being honest.”