Page 171 of Boss of the Year

I turned my head and kissed his temple, enjoying the salty taste of the sweat gathered there. “Lucas?”

He took several deep breaths, then he pressed back up onto his forearms to look down at me with a wearied but content expression. “What is it, sweetheart?”

Tentatively, I reached up to push a damp lock off his brow. Smooth the lines over his brow. Stroke the edge of his jaw until that tentative, almost uncertain smile of his emerged.

I wanted to tell him all the things that were flying through my mind. That he made me feel braver than I’d ever felt in my life. That by some strange sorcery, he kept me tethered and set me free at the same time.

I wanted him to know that I also understood the craving that had somehow crept into my bones and ached with emptiness when he wasn’t around to fill it.

That I could no longer deny the fact that I was in love with him too.

And that the sheer enormity of it scared me to my core.

But just when I opened my mouth to offer at least one of these truths, a loud, insistent knock battered the door of his suite.

“Lucas!” shouted an all-too-familiar voice. “Lucas, it’s Daniel! Open the door, you traitor, and let me in!”

34

VINAIGRETTE À LA MOUTARDE

*It’s supposed to taste a little too sharp.

The pounding on the door was violent enough to rattle the windows of the lavish suite. Lucas and I froze, still wrapped around each other in the bed like a double helix.

For a moment, I wondered if I’d imagined the boyish charm twisted into some kind of hideous anger. “Is that—Was that?—”

“Yeah.” Dread filled Lucas’s voice, still hoarse from our earlier endeavors. “I think so.”

Still, I couldn’t believe it. There was no way Daniel had flown across the ocean to chase us here. No world in which he would come all the way from New York to Paris just to fight Lucas.

And certainly not over me.

Right?

Guilt twisted in my stomach, although I knew I wasn’t in the wrong. Daniel and I had a brief connection, but he had all but stopped answering texts since Japan. I hadn’t heard from him at all in over a week, and before that, his replies were barely more than one-word answers.

I wasn’t his “girl”, no matter what a drunken kiss and one playful phone call might have suggested.

I wasn’t anything to him, nor, truthfully, was he to me.

But his brother and I were something real.

I didn’t want to apologize for that at all.

“Lucas!” This time, Daniel’s voice was louder, though slightly slurred. “Open the fucking door! I know you’re in there!”

“Fuck.” Lucas stamped a kiss on my forehead and then gently eased out of me so he could dispose of the condom. He then pulled on his underwear and pants with the efficient movements of a man accustomed to unexpected crises, even in the middle of his most private moments.

For the first time, I wondered just how much of himself Lucas had given up over the years to appease his family. How much had they demanded of him? How much they had taken without thanks?

I clutched the sheet around myself, suddenly aware that my clothes were scattered on the bathroom floor. As Lucas reached the door, there was no way I could make my escape now without being seen.

Lucas opened the door with preternatural calm, uncaring of his half-dressed state. “Daniel. I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment.” He gestured at his shirtless torso. “If you’ll come back in a few?—”

“You asshole.” Daniel shoved into the suite, his handsome, tanned face flushed with rage and probably hours of drinking. “You absolute fuckingbastard.”

“You’ll have to be a bit more specific,” Lucas said, pulling his brother’s attention back to him—and more importantly, away from where I lay burrowed in the bedding like a terrified rabbit. “It’s not the first time you’ve called me that, although since you’ve flown all the way to Paris to do it this time, I’m sensing it’s a big occasion.”