Page 209 of Boss of the Year

The endearment sent shivers down my spine and joy bubbling through my belly. Until Lucas, I’d never been anyone’s anything. I’d been the youngest sister. The overlooked wallflower. The shy kitchen maid. The unassuming cook.

But the way Lucas said my name made me feel like the most important person in the world. More than that, it made me feel likehis.

“Tell me you love me,” he said, pulling back to look at me with those eyes that would never look like sunny skies, but were so much brighter now. “Tell me that, and I’m yours.”

I pushed the lock of hair threaded with just a touch of silver from his face.

“You need a haircut,” I said as I pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“Tell me.”

“And a shave.” Another kiss.

“Tell me.”

I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help but grin at the playful look on his face, even mixed as it was with hope and vulnerability. This man, who had commanded boardrooms and built empires, was asking me—me—for reassurance.

“I love you,” I told him, the words as true as anything I’d ever said. “More than a fantasy. More than even my wildest dreams.”

Pure, radiant joy that transformed every harsh line of that face into something beautiful.

And what do you know? Lucas Lyons and I both got another first that day as we traded those words back and forth for each other and no one else.

I had a feeling I’d be giving him many, many more firsts in the years to come.

EPILOGUE

Two weeks later

“That tie is really unnecessary.”

Lucas Lyons scowled at his reflection in the mirror hanging over the door of Matthew and Nina Zola’s guest room, trying to get his tie to sit properly. No matter what he did, the Windsor knot looked crooked.

In his twenty years at the helm of Lyons Corp, he’d faced down hostile takeovers, congressional hearings, and boardrooms full of people who would have happily destroyed him. But the thought of walking downstairs to meet Marie’s family on Christmas morning had his hands shaking like a child’s on the first day of school.

“Mattie will probably be in his robe,” Marie said from where she sat on the bed behind him.

“You said your brother likes vintage suits that he buys from Kate, right?”

“Sure, but he won’t be wearing them at eight in the morning on Christmas. My bet’s on an undershirt and some flannel pajamas.”

Lucas sighed, then ripped off the tie and turned to face his girlfriend.

It was such an inadequate word, girlfriend, for what she was to him.

At almost five months pregnant, Marie was more beautiful than ever in a deep green sweater that brought out her eyes and a pair of dark wool pants that accommodated her growing curves. Her hair had gotten long enough to brush her shoulders since moving to France, and Lucas’s fingers twitched with the desire to run his hand through those silky black waves whenever he saw her.

But it wasn’t just her looks, of course, that made him stare.

It was her kindness, her patience, her wit, and so much more. Calling her his girlfriend was like calling Beethoven’s Fifth a jingle. She was his everything.

“Honestly, they’ll probably like you more without the trappings of wealth,” she said, standing to fix his collar herself. Lucas caught the familiar scent of her perfume—something light and floral from a parfumerie she liked in Paris. “No one likes a story about bootstraps and grit more than Zolas. Tell them you gave up everything, and they’ll be kittens.”

Lucas managed a weak smile. “I mean, it wasn’teverything. I gave away my shares of the company, not every one of my assets. That takes a bit more time, so right now, our net worth is still about?—”

“Yournet worth. I told you, I don’t want to know.”

He caught her hands in his and trapped them over his heart. He knew it overwhelmed her when he talked in terms of “we” and “our.” It had, after all, only been two weeks since he’d found her in France. But he couldn’t help himself. Marie struggled with dreaming the same way he did—probably because enough hypotheticals had disappointed her from such a young age. Shedidn’t like talking about futures that might not materialize, didn’t trust possibilities that seemed too good to be true.