Trusting the Billionaire

Chapter Five: Business partner

Audrey swirled the drink in her glass, watching the amber liquid catch the light, and wondered again why she had let Tracy drag her here. Her best friend had been relentless about it, insisting that after everything Audrey had put into keeping Bellamy Trust afloat, she deserved one night where the only numbers she thought about were the ones on a wine list.

Tracy had even picked out the dress. A deep wine red that clung in all the right places, with a neckline that made Audrey cautious of bending over. Tracy asked her when was the last time she went out on a date, jokingly telling her she needs a man. She could only laugh at her friends concern.

Now, as she sipped her drink under the low gold lighting of the bar, she laughed again at the memory. Who in their right mind worried about being wined, dined, and given a good time when their house was on fire.

And yet here she was. Not thinking about numbers, not thinking about the Central Bank or bad loans or her father's legacy attached to a bank that might not survive the year. The music was soft, the kind of high end lounge sound that seemed to wrap around her shoulders instead of demanding her attention. It was, she had to admit, refreshing.

Tracy had excused herself to the ladies' room a few minutes earlier, leaving Audrey alone with her drink and her thoughts. She caught herself watching the small dance floor near the back, a handful of couples swaying to the music, and tried to remember the last time she had felt carefree enough to be one of them. College, maybe. Before the bank. Before her father died and left her holding a legacy that was slowly cracking under her hands.

She felt something then, but she couldn't place what it is, until she realized she is being watched. A prickling awareness crawling up the back of her neck, the unmistakable sense of being watched. She turned her head, scanning the crowd, but the lighting made it impossible to pin down where the feeling was coming from. She told herself it was nothing. People watched people at clubs. It didn't mean anything.

The bartender leaned in while he refreshed her glass, telling her she looked ravishing tonight, the kind of easy compliment bartenders were paid to give. She laughed it off just as Tracy slid back onto the stool beside her.

"What did I miss?" Tracy asked, already reaching for her own drink.

"Just telling Audrey here how gorgeous she looks tonight," the bartender said before moving off to the next customer.

Tracy watched him go, then turned to Audrey with a grin. "He's right, you know. You outshine every woman in every room you walk into. If only you would stop wearing the weight of that bank on your shoulders everywhere you go."

Audrey opened her mouth to argue, but before she could, another bartender appeared at her elbow with two fresh drinks, setting them down with a knowing smile. "Compliments of a gentleman in the VIP section," he said, and then he was gone too.

Audrey stared at the glass, puzzled. Tracy, on the other hand, lit up immediately, twisting in her seat to scan the room, already halfway to matchmaking. "A gentleman with taste and money. This could be exactly what you need. Someone to make you forget your sorrows for one night."

They both looked toward the VIP section, but all they caught was the back of a man in a dark suit disappearing through a side exit, tall, broad shouldered, gone before either of them could make out his face.

"Well," Tracy said, disappointed, "we'll never know now."

But Audrey did know, or thought she did. A face flashed through her mind uninvited, the memory of an intimidating man she had sat across from three days ago, the same man she had tried, and failed, to convince to save her company. She shook the thought away almost as quickly as it came. Marshall King had no reason to send her a drink. If anything, he probably hadn't given her a second thought since she'd walked out of his office.

"Come on," Tracy said, tugging her off the stool before she could dwell on it any longer. "We didn't come here to sit and stare at strangers' backs. Dance with me."

Audrey resisted for exactly three seconds before letting herself be pulled toward the floor. The bass line settled into her chest, familiar in a way she hadn't expected, and for the first time in what felt like years she let her body move without calculating the next step. Tracy laughed beside her, spinning once, hands in the air, and Audrey found herself smiling in a way that didn't feel forced.

It was easy, for a little while, to be nobody. Not the CEO fighting to keep her father's bank from collapsing. Just Audrey, dancing under soft lights with her best friend, feeling the music instead of thinking through it.

......

Marshall sat with his cousin Francis and the rest of the gang at their reserved table, the one that overlooked the dance floor and gave them privacy.

Martin started first, the way he always did.

"So when's the drought ending, King?" he asked, swirling his glass. "A month, Marshall. You've never gone past a month without a woman since I've known you, and you sure don't date them for more than one month"

The table laughed, and Greg picked it up from there, reminding everyone how Marshall's rule wasn't even the strangest part. It was the paperwork. Every woman who got close enough to share his bed first had to understand, in plain terms, that nothing about him would ever reach the press. No interviews, no leaked texts, no tearful confessions to a gossip blog when it ended. And it always ended.

"He runs his love life the same way he runs King Capital," Francis said, raising his glass in mock salute. "Ruthless. Efficient. No survivors."

Marshall only smirked, the kind of smirk that gave nothing away, the same one he wore across a boardroom table when he already knew he'd won. Martin and Greg, the two married men at the table, leaned in like they'd found new ammunition.

"The day you keep a woman more than a month," Martin said, pointing his glass at him, "is the day you marry her. Mark it down."

'Marriage', Marshall thought, swirling the ice in his own glass. 'That's for men who can stand a woman's company for that long.

He let them have their fun. It cost him nothing, and it was easier than explaining himself, because there was nothing to explain. He liked his life uncomplicated. He liked knowing exactly what he was getting into and exactly when it would end, before it ever had the chance to become something that could be used against him.

Then he saw her.

It took a second look to be sure, because his mind tried to talk him out of it first. But there she was, near the far end of the bar, and the sight of her rearranged something in his chest before he'd even decided to feel anything about it.

Audrey Bellamy did not belong in a place like this, and that was exactly why she stood out. Every polished, practiced woman in the club had spent an hour in front of a mirror trying to look like she does, to look effortlessly beautiful. Audrey looked like she'd walked in from somewhere else entirely.

Her hair was down, loose around the soft oval of her face in a way he had never seen, not during their meeting or in media articles, where it was always pulled back, professional, unbothered. Her makeup was heavier than the light, careful version she wore to the office, just enough to catch the low light of the club and make her eyes look like they were keeping a secret. And the dress. It wasn't flashy, it didn't need to be. It moved with her like it had been made for no other purpose than to remind him of exactly what he already suspected, that there was a body under all that tailored office wear that had nothing corporate about it.

Wow, he thought again, and hated himself a little for how far his thoughts were going.

Martin followed his line of sight and asked who she was.

"The CEO of Bellamy Trust," Francis answered before Marshall could, letting out a low whistle. "I've never seen her out in a blazer. She's finnnne."

The rest of the table agreed, loudly, the way men do when they think a woman across a room can't hear them and wouldn't care if she could. Craig, the only other unmarried philanderer at the table besides Marshall, leaned back with the kind of grin that meant trouble.

"I might have to go say hello," he said. "See if the boardroom rumors are true."

Something in Marshall went tight and territorial, fast enough to surprise him. He didn't examine it. He didn't have to.

"Don't play games with my business partner," he said, low enough that it wasn't a joke, and the whole table went quiet for half a second too long.

Francis raised an eyebrow. "Since when are you two partners? Last I heard, Bellamy Trust was circling the drain."

Marshall didn't answer that. He wasn't in the mood to explain that the deal wasn't signed yet but it will be, that the board had confirmed it in a single meeting after the acquisition team had done their job. It all didn't take more than three days because it is a solid deal as he already predicted

He was waiting to exhaust the time frame he had given her, maybe let her and her team worry some more. But she sure didn't look all bothered as she smiled to a compliment from the bartender.

He wasn't in the mood to explain any of it, least of all to a table full of men who'd use it as fresh material to tease him with by morning.

Instead he lifted two fingers toward the bartender and told him to send a round to Audrey and the friend she was with. Something simple, something that wouldn't draw attention, just enough to let her know someone in the room had noticed her without making a scene of it.

He didn't understand the impulse even as he gave the order. He didn't understand why the thought of Craig walking over there had made his jaw tighten, or why he suddenly cared what a table of men he'd known for years said about a woman he technically hadn't agreed to do business with yet. He definitely didn't want to walk over there and explain the drink himself, didn't want to stand in front of her in a club with his tie loosened and no boardroom table between them, not when he hadn't decided anything, even though he knew what his decision would be already.

So he did the only thing that made sense to him. He pulled a few bills from his wallet, dropped them on the table without counting them, and stood.

"See you all later," he said, and walked off before anyone could ask where he was going or why the CEO of Bellamy Trust had suddenly become his business partner.

Behind him, he heard Martin mutter something to Greg, low and amused, the kind of comment that would turn into a full theory by the time he saw them again. He didn't care. He kept walking, past the edge of the dance floor, past the noise, toward the exit, telling himself it had nothing to do with the woman at the bar and everything to do with needing air.

He didn't look back to see if she'd gotten the drink.