Billion Dollar Beast - Olivia Hayle Page 0,39

The Blair who has so much lightness in her that it spills out at the seams. I doubt I’m worthy of the sight, but damn if it doesn’t warm me regardless.

“Behave yourself,” I murmur again, bending my head to press a final kiss to her full lips. She sighs into the kiss, warm, trusting, lovely. I straighten just as she steps closer.

“Not here,” I say darkly. “You’d better leave, before I completely lose my head.”

“And that would be a bad thing?”

“Oh, it definitely would.”

She heads to the door, pausing before it. Her lips are curved. “So we’ll get to know one another… better.”

And damn it, but how can I not give her what she wants when it’s what I’m dying for as well? “Yes,” I agree. “We will.”

13

Blair

“But that’s the thing,” Maddie says triumphantly. “It didn’t work! So now they’re stuck renovating the entire property regardless, and it’s not usable until spring.”

The rest of us laugh obediently, John shooting Maddie a particularly warm smile.

“So your family is out of a chalet this winter,” Tate says. “How tragic.”

“You should organize a fundraiser,” I suggest dryly. “It’s a charitable cause.”

That gets genuine laughter. Maddie elbows me playfully. “Only if you promise to be the hostess.”

As the conversation continues, my eyes sweep the fashionable crowd. The Seattle Fashion Institute has decided to celebrate the opening of New York Fashion Week remotely. A highlight reel is running on a giant projector screen, and below the giant catwalks, Seattle’s fashion-interested sip on champagne.

It’s a room that younger me would have loved being in. But ever since the fashion disaster that was my first line, I’m uncomfortably aware of what some of the experts in the room probably think of me.

Sipping my champagne, I glance around the room and the illustrious attendees.

That’s when I see him. Nick, casually leaning against the opposite wall, a glass of brandy in hand. In the dim lighting, his suit looks like poured ink on his large frame. His eyes sweep the crowd like a predator’s before they lock with mine.

What’s he doing here?

I raise my champagne glass in greeting.

He inclines his head, his lips half-curled. There’s something in his gaze, something I want to explore further, but then he looks down at a woman approaching him. Long dark hair, an asymmetric dress. I force myself to look away.

The conversation continues around me but it’s just words now, words I have difficulty following. When I glance back to Nick, he’s gone, and so is the woman he was talking to. The champagne burns pleasurably down my throat.

“Excuse me for a moment.” I weave through the crowd with practiced ease. Several people stop me to talk, and I do my best to be in the moment, but my eyes can’t seem to stop roving. Why the hell is he here?

Was this what he meant by figuring something out?

I curse my heels as I walk up the steps to the calmer mezzanine. No Amazon-sized models walking here, and no house music either. Is he here?

An arm wraps around my waist and then I’m pulled unceremoniously into a coat closet. The scent of him is what hits me first, what keeps me from shrieking.

“Nick?”

He shuts the door firmly behind us. “That’s the one.”

“Why are you here?”

“Are you complaining?”

“No.” With his arm still around me, I’m pressed tightly against his body. My hands slide up his chest of their own accord.

“Good.” He bends his head and presses his lips to mine. It’s just as heady and intoxicating as I’ve gotten used to. How can every kiss with him feel like the first?

His tongue demands entry and the deepening of the kiss opens something in my chest, something I’d already been on the verge of feeling. Affection, more of it than my stupid crush on him had ever commanded before.

“What’s this?” I tease. “What happened to Mr. I-like-it-hollow?”

“Consider this a tactical retreat,” he says, tipping my head back to run his lips along my jaw. “I have to attack first or you’d be out there, wrapped around me for all to see.”

“Oh? You’re that irresistible, are you?”

“To you, I seem to be,” he mutters. And then he’s kissing me again and all I can do is hold on and ride the sensations. Kissing him back, nipping at his lower lip, tugging at his hair and hearing him groan into my mouth.

“Why are you here tonight?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” His hands skate down the sides of my body, smoothing over the silk of my dress. “I can’t have