Page 9 of Filthy Rich Silver Foxes

I don’t respond. I just lift my glass and take a measured sip of bourbon.

He doesn’t need confirmation. Dominic Castillo is my right-hand man and has been with me long enough to read silence like a second language.

“She’s competent,” I say eventually.

Dom’s mouth twitches. “That’s one word for it.”

It should be easy to ignore her. She’s too young, too tightly wound, too transparent in the way she tries to hold herself together. Her control is paper-thin. She over-prepares. Over-thinks. Overcompensates. I’ve worked with hundreds of planners—most of them older, seasoned, jaded enough to play the game without blinking.

But her?

She’s trying so hard not to blink that she’s practically vibrating with restraint.

And the worst part?

It’s not her competence that has my attention.

It’s her mouth. Soft, pink, and slightly parted every time she loses her train of thought mid-sentence. It’s the way her eyes widen when she’s flustered. It’s the curve of her legs in that pencil skirt she keeps smoothing down like it might betray her at any second.

It’s the way sheshouldn’tbe affecting me at all.

“She’s young,” Dom says, unprompted. “And anxious. Probably high-strung in bed, if she’s ever even?—”

I shoot him a look sharp enough to cut the rest of that sentence in half.

He holds up both hands in mock surrender. “Just saying. If you’re thinking of crossing that line, maybe remember what happened the last time you mixed business with?—”

“I’m not thinking of anything.”

“You’re thinking about her right now.”

I don’t answer.

Because he’s right.

The first time I saw her, I thought she’d fold in the first five minutes. Most people do. The ones who don’t usually spend the rest of the meeting trying to impress me or flirt their way into a contract. She did neither. She stumbled. She panicked. Sheflushed.But she didn’t run. She stayed. Shepresented.

And then she doused me in coffee.

I should’ve walked away then. Hired someone else. Made a call and brought in a team I’ve worked with before.

But I didn’t.

Because something about her made me pause. Something about the way she tried to recover. The way she stammered and blushed and kept going like her dignity hadn’t just burst into flames.

She’s trying to prove herself. To me. To the world. Maybe even to herself.

And I want to know how far she’s willing to go.

“You know what I think?” Dom says, following my gaze as she moves across the patio to double-check a centerpiece. “I think she’s trouble. Sexy trouble, sure. But you’ve got a soft spot for wide eyes and pretty disasters.”

“She’s not a disaster,” I say quietly.

Dom snorts. “She projected her own lingerie photo onto your boardroom screen and faceplanted right onto you.”

I manage to choke on the laugh that very nearly escaped. It was certainly a memorable first meeting.

“She got the job done,” I say instead.