Closer (7 page)

I know you hate heels, but Sven’s right…you can’t wear a high-slit dress with Mary Jane ballet flats.  I spent three-thousand dollars on these beauties.  I compromised—three inch stilettos instead of five.  I promise you won’t even feel them
.  ~E

Inez sighed, unable to stomach the note or the shoes. 
At least Cinderella was smart enough to ditch her heels
.  She held the strap of the slingback heels between her teeth, dangling them like a dog while transferring her belongings from her crochet purse into her new clutch.  Searching for a safe place to deposit her clothes, breast pump, and bottles, she rummaged through all the seamless compartments of the floating vanity, but stopped when she uncovered something unexpected in its top drawer.

There, preserved like a precious memory, was a framed photograph.  But not just any photograph.  A recent photograph of Sven—handsome, smiling and relaxed—posing for the camera on the deck of a yacht with his arms affectionately embracing a young, attractive woman. 
And brunette
, Inez noted.  Then, she narrowed her eyes as she studied the photo, noticing the one thing missing from Sven’s face.  It wasn’t the glare of derision she had come to know so well in such a short time; it was the lack of his black eyepatch and the way he stared into the camera with boyish joy.

“Inez, please…” He groaned her name like it was his final plea for mercy.

“Coming,” she replied, her voice muffled by the heels, stuffing the photograph back into the drawer.

Barefoot and disheveled, she shuttled down the spiral staircase, expecting to see Billions, fuming and enraged, at its base.  She was only greeted instead by eerie silence.  She crossed the living room and listened to the wind whipping along the high rise’s panoramic windows; she shivered, as if the natural draft within the expansive penthouse chilled her exposed shoulders and neckline.  She glanced into the exercise room and Sven’s study before pushing forward down a private corridor towards the master bedroom.  She shivered again; the cool marble floor chilled her bare feet.  Without a proper coat or shoes to protect her against the merciless Chicago wind, she was certain she would freeze to death.  Not even a fancy scarlet dress and naughty lingerie could make hypothermia look sexy.

She approached the bedroom door.  “Sven?”

She slid it open without waiting for his response, her gaze immediately falling on him.  Fresh from his shower, he stood naked, with only a black towel wrapped around his waist, and his hands on his hips, scrutinizing the new black suit lying flat across the king-size platform bed.  Steam wafted off his sculpted shoulders while water droplets flecked his pecs and biceps.  As he ran his hand through his hair, slicking it back from his high forehead, she tried to ignore the way his towel barely clung around his tapered waist. 

The exercise room
.  Inez had just seen it.  Clearly, he used it. 
Everyday—without fail
.

“I’m sorry to be late,” she said loudly, announcing her entrance without a formal invitation.

He turned towards her, the menace of his eyepatch stopping her in her tracks. “It doesn’t matter,” he replied sternly.  “I can’t make sense of these damn Luxembourg buttons.”

She started to slip into aggression as a form of defense, but then thought better of it. The edge in his voice told her that he had already lost his patience; now, he was fighting to keep from losing his pride.

“Well, it can’t be rocket science.  It’s just a suit.  And that’s what I’m here for.”

He cast his gaze off the suit and onto her, as if the casual toss in her voice surprised him. The piercing glint in his unpatched eye relaxed into something softer—something unguarded and informal—something more like an unexpected gaze of interest.

“Is that the infamous scarlet dress?” He nodded to her with his chin, his voice low and husky.

“Yeah, pretty infamous.”

She spread her hands across the form-fitting bodice, then rotated her hips towards him, granting him an unobstructed view of the cinched curve of her waist.

Without smiling in return, he lifted his eyes from her waist to her neckline, deliberately scanning the forbidden contours of her cleavage. Then, he pushed forward and seized her by the hand, drawing her towards his hard bare chest.  His grasp tightened around her wrist, pulling her closer. Like a moment frozen in time, he studied her face, as if he was taking in the fresh hue of her red lips, just as he had done earlier that morning during their interview.

“Ebony was right,” he finally whispered.  “Scarlet does complement your eyes.” 

He slid his hand back down the curve of her hip, and for a fleeting moment, she thought she felt his hand testing the smoothness of her leg through the thigh-high front slit of her dress.  But then she realized it was only the hem of the dress, brushing against the back of her knee. 

“But you’re missing an important part of the ensemble.”  He looked down at the pair of high heels in her hands.

Maybe it was his calm voice, or the way he stood almost naked in front of her, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, but she was suddenly inspired to confess her biggest fear. 

“Please tell me you’re not going to put me on display in front of all your wealthy snobby friends and let them ridicule me over the rims of their champagne flutes for my inability to strut around like a model in high heels.”

“If I wanted a model, I would have hired one through a casting agency.”

It was true, and they both knew
.  Why he ended up hiring her she still could not fathom, but here they were—together now—and they both seemed resigned to the fact that there was no going back.

He lowered himself to the floor and unexpectedly encouraged her to slip her foot into the first heel.

She acquiesced, touching his bare shoulders with her fingertips to steady her balance.  “You can unbuckle a woman’s slingback heels, and yet you need me to help you figure out the buttons on your new suit?”

“I’ve had plenty of practice removing women’s high heels.” 

She rolled her eyes. 
Of course he had.

He nudged her into the second heel before rising to meet her gaze. Boosted by three extra inches, she stared straight at him, her mouth almost level with his chin. 
Almost his equal
.

“See…heels have their advantages,” he quipped, taking in the proximity of her lips to his own.

“That advantage cost you three thousand dollars”

“I would have paid one hundred thousand.”

She could smell the scent of his aftershave—crisp and elegant—nothing like the edgy scent of cigarettes and painter’s varnish that permanently stained Enzo’s skin.

“You’re still missing one more thing,” he teased her. 

He turned away and she actually heard herself sigh with disappointment. 

He approached a small, square wall safe above the nightstand, punching in numbers on the keypad, and pulling open the door.  When he turned back, something glinted in his hands like diamonds and emeralds the size of ice cubes.  Dangling it from his fingers by its clasp, he displayed a sparkling necklace for her to view. 
Holy hell
.  Those
were
diamonds and emeralds the size of ice cubes in an intricately-designed platinum choker setting.

“Turn around.”

In a daze, she obeyed and turned her back on him, whimpering the moment the cold prick of platinum slid down her neckline.  Goosebumps tingled along the nape of her neck as he swept away her long hair to allow the necklace to settle around her throat. 

“It must be nice to be able to buy anything you want,” she whispered, touching the necklace like it had robbed her of her voice.

“I didn’t buy this,” he replied, coaxing her to face him. “It’s a priceless family heirloom from my mother.  It was part of her historical jewelry collection that her mother—my grandmother—smuggled out of Amsterdam after the Nazis invaded the city.  It was a gift from Prince Alexander of the Netherlands to his nurse who cared for him after he was almost killed by a tree during a storm.  The fable says that Alexander’s forbidden love for her was the reason why he never married.”

He stared at her face and neckline with intensity.

“That story almost makes you sound like a hopeless romantic.”

He smiled, as if it was the honest truth. “My mother knows that emeralds are my favorite gemstones.  She would prefer I give it to my future fiancée, but very little in life works out as one plans.”

He traced the square-cut emeralds with his fingertip, admiring the way they glinted against her olive skin.

“And no…I don’t believe that I can buy anything.  In fact, when you have enough money to buy everything, you quickly realize that the most important things cannot be bought at all.”

Like beads of sweat, water droplets still dripped off his firm pecs.  He gazed at her, intently, daring her to be the first one who turned away.  She challenged his gaze, wondering if his stern temperament and menacing eyepatch concealed more than just physical injury.

“I think it’s your turn to get dressed.”

“Probably,” he agreed, but he did not turn away.

Finally, she caved, sensing he was more than happy to remove his towel and test whether or not she was as tough and unshakeable as she pretended to be. 
Clearly, she was not
.

Evading him, she drifted to the glass door leading to an open patio, realizing she could see his ghostly reflection in the window as he slipped on his black tight-knit briefs.

“So who’s going to be at this dinner anyway?” she asked, watching his blurred reflection, waiting for him to slip on his pants before she rotated back to him.

“One of my business partners who financed The Spire.”

“Sounds like a dull dinner.”  She noted how he was holding up his black dress shirt, inspecting its front seam, searching for a way to unbutton it.

“And my younger brother and his new fiancée,” he abruptly added.  “Who also happens to be my ex-girlfriend.”

She crossed her arms and stared at him.  He avoided meeting her eyes.

“So the real reason you need me tonight is not to help you see.  It’s to make your ex-girlfriend jealous?”

He neither confirmed nor denied it.  “There’s going to be more to this dinner than you realize, Inez.”

She absorbed his warning, but ignored its implications with silence.  Instead, she moved towards him and took the dress shirt out of his hands.  “Here,” she said, encouraging his cooperation.  “There’s only four cross-over buttons at the top and a weird, European Metrosexual Mandarin collar.  So you’re right.  You’ll never get this on without me.”

He sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. 

“Arms up,” she ordered him.

Guarding his eyepatch, he obeyed, allowing her to slip the shirt over his head.

“You never take that off, do you?” she asked while smoothing out the folds of the shirt across his broad shoulder and firm chest.

“No.”

“Not even when you shower?”

“Never.”

She knew better than to press it.  He lifted his sharp chin as she fastened the four black enameled buttons along the Mandarin collar.  Finally, she pulled away and tried not to notice how handsome he looked in all black. 
At least his eyepatch matched the whole ensemble
.

“You know, since this dinner is going to be our first test as a couple, don’t you think we should establish a few ground rules?”

“Ground rules?” he repeated.  “What kind of ground rules?”

“Like how much we can touch each other.  You know, like holding hands is fine, but not if your palms are sweaty.”

He snorted. “What about if your palms are sweaty?”

She ignored him.  “But no hugging, fondling, or touching of my ass.”

Sven arched his brow, as if he hadn’t considered it—until now.

“And this is an important one,” she asserted.  “No calling me, ‘baby.’  I don’t wear a diaper and I definitely don’t suck anything except chocolate milkshakes.”

He rose from the bed and stalked towards her. “That’s quite a list, Miss Sanchez,” he said, his voice menacing and rebellious.  “Do you give all your boyfriends that many rules?”

“Maybe.” She pushed against his masculine chest, clad in his black dress shirt, crowding into her personal space. “Just blind billionaires paying me to act like their girlfriend in front of their ex-girlfriends.” 

“Well…let’s review my ground rules, shall we?”

He drew her closer against his body like a punishment and traced the contours of her chin with his fingertip.  “Tonight is extremely important for me, so the only thing that I expect from you is for you to support me in every way.” He clenched his jaw and focused on her face—her lips, her eyes, her hair.  “Do you understand?”

He peered into her eyes, holding her steady.  His mouth hovered over her lips, emitting a faint heat, testing her willingness to accept or defy him.  She absorbed his lingering gaze and unyielding embrace, and responded with a sigh. 
No kissing
—she had forgotten that in her ground rules.  Clearly, he didn’t care about her ground rules.