Trusting the Billionaire

Chapter Eleven: Dancing

Audrey...

By the weekend, Audrey was so tired and frustrated, working on the different best solutions, but none was as good as King's Capital intervention. It would have been a swoop in, one solution, while others would drag on and Bellamy Trust might not even make it through the deadline set by the Central Bank.

She called Tracy, her best friend, to pour out her frustrations. Both of them had been very close from second year of college and fortunately, Tracy got a job in the same city where Audrey had to work with her family.

The moment she heard Audrey say "I don't even know what to do anymore," she dropped whatever she'd been doing.

"Say less," Tracy said. "I'm coming over. And then we're going out."

She knew Audrey to always be on top of her game, but being out of sorts, is not usual for Audrey. She has to cheer her up.

"Tracy, no, I have work tomo..."

"Audrey Bellamy. You have been living inside boardrooms and spreadsheets for more than a year, to save your father's Bank. And you've done a fine job so far, then comes a billionaire who wants you to pretend to be his fiancée before he will go into partnership with you, to completely save the day. The guy is an Asshole, he doesn't know a good business deal, even if it hits him on the head. I wonder how he became the billionaire he his today.

You have been slaving for too long, you need a break. This is the weekend and it is time to 'get dressed and forget your name all through the night"

Audrey laughed, the first real laugh in days. "I hate that you're right."

"I'm always right. Wear the wine dress. I'll be there in forty minutes."

By the time Tracy arrived, Audrey had gone through every argument about staying home and lost each one to the exhaustion sitting behind her eyes. She let Tracy zip her into the dress, an wine colored, cut to skim every curve she usually hid under blazers and didn't recognize the woman in the mirror. Not the CEO. Not the daughter trying to save her father's legacy. Just Audrey, for one night.

"There she is," Tracy said, satisfied, tugging one more inch off the hem. "The woman I actually recognize."

Marshall...

"I didn't come here for a role in a play, Mr. King." Her voice had dropped, quiet and edged. "I came here for an investment."

"And you'll have it. This is simply the shape it needs to take." he had said

She stood before he finished the sentence. "Bellamy Trust would do just fine without your investment. I suggest you find another candidate for your role play." Marshall played the end of the meeting over in his head again.

She had walked out with her head high after that statement, and he sat there longer than he wanted to admit, staring at the door she'd shut behind her, genuinely stunned. Women did not walk away from him. They found ways to stay in the room, to keep the conversation going, to angle for whatever came next. She had simply left.

He told his board the deal was still pending, that Miss Bellamy wanted more time to consider the terms. It wasn't quite a lie. It also wasn't quite the truth, and he was aware of the difference every time he said it.

By Friday, he still hadn't come up with a way forward. He turned the problem over the way he turned over every deal that stalled, looking for the angle nobody else had found yet. Perhaps a private meeting, on her own turf this time, not his. Perhaps a separate arrangement entirely, compensation for her time and trouble, that had nothing to do with Kings Capital's stake in her bank, so the two things wouldn't feel so tangled together in her mind. Money solves most problems. It was worth trying.

He was still turning it over later that evening sitting at a private table with a drink he'd barely touched, half listening to Francis and Mark argue about trivial things as usual, they always argued, but it was always just fun for them. Marshall is beginning to think it's an hobby for them.

"You've checked out on us twice in the last ten minutes," Mark said, waving a hand in front of him.

"Work," Marshall said, which was true in the way most of his half truths were true.

He looked past Mark toward the dance floor, and a woman caught his attention.

The woman was dancing alone, unbothered by the crowd around her, moving like she'd forgotten anyone else was in the room. Something in the tilt of her head, the line of her shoulders, pulled his attention before his mind had even caught up with what he was looking at. Then the lights shifted and he saw her face properly.

Audrey...

It knocked the breath out of him for a second, absurdly, the way it always seemed to when he saw her somewhere he didn't expect her. There was something about her, an aura she carried without trying, that reached across a room and pulled him toward her whether he wanted to follow or not. He couldn't look away. Francis said something to him that he didn't catch at all. He kept his gaze on her, taking in the curves of her body as she moved in a dress that made him imagine her without it.

Then a man stepped up behind her on the dance floor and reached for her waist.

Marshall was on his feet before the thought had fully formed in his head.

Audrey....

Audrey let herself be dragged, mostly because arguing took more energy than she had left. The floor was crowded, bodies moving under shifting light, and for a few minutes it actually worked.

She stopped thinking about Marshall King's cold grey eyes laying out his terms like a merger clause, stopped thinking about the bank, about her father's legacy, about anything at all.

Then, somewhere in the middle of the song, she felt a prickling awareness crawling up the back of her neck, the unmistakable sense of being watched. Not the ordinary drift of eyes across a crowded floor. Something more deliberate than that, something that found her and stayed. She turned her head instinctively, scanning the crowd, half-convinced she'd imagined it.

She hadn't managed to place the feeling before a hand closed hard around her waist from behind.

She jolted, every muscle going rigid at once, her pulse spiking so fast it left her lightheaded. For one disorienting second she thought hoped, absurdly that it was Tracy. Then the grip tightened, pulling her back against a body that wasn't Tracy's, and warm breath landed against her ear. "Relax. Just one dance."

"Let go of me." She twisted hard, but his arm didn't loosen, and panic flared bright and sudden in her chest, the club noise receding into a dull roar, her own heartbeat the only thing she could hear. She shoved against his chest and got nowhere. "I said no.."

The hand was gone before she finished the sentence.

She heard it more than saw it, a sharp crack of knuckles against bone, a grunt of pain, the stranger stumbling back into the crowd clutching his jaw. Marshall stood where the man had stood a second earlier, chest heaving, one hand curled tight enough to whiten the knuckles, eyes locked on the stranger with an intensity that made the people nearest them step back on instinct.

"Touch her again," Marshall said, low and flat, "and it'll be more than your jaw."

The stranger took one look at his face, decided the night wasn't worth it, and melted back into the crowd, one hand still pressed to his mouth.

"Are you all right?" Marshall's hand was at her elbow now, steadying, his eyes moving over her face like he needed to confirm it himself, the anger still simmering just beneath his skin.

Audrey pulled her arm free the moment she'd found her footing, her heart still hammering. "I had it handled."

"You didn't look like you had it handled."

"I don't need you playing hero, Mr. King. Especially not you." The words came out sharper than she meant, all the frustration of the last week riding out on the back of them. She turned to walk away toward the bar, toward air, toward anywhere he wasn't, but yet he followed.