The billionaire's off-limits obsession

Chapter four

Damien didn't sleep much after Antoine's, and when he did, he dreamed of Elena's hand turning beneath his, the exact weight of her fingers curling into his palm like something he'd been missing without knowing its shape.

He told himself it changed nothing. The company still needed him at his desk by six. The Detroit plant still needed a solution that didn't involve four hundred layoffs. His uncle Richard still wanted him gone, quietly, efficiently, replaced by someone the board found easier to control.

None of it mattered the way it should have. All he could think about was the careful, unsteady way Elena had said however long we get, like she already knew the clock was running on whatever this was before it had properly begun.

He was still turning that thought over when Richard appeared in his office doorway without knocking, the way he always did, treating the top floor like it still belonged to him rather than the nephew who'd inherited it.

"You had dinner with the board's consultant last night." Richard said it flatly, no question in it, which meant he already knew and was only waiting to see how Damien would handle being caught.

"It was a working dinner."

"At Antoine's. In the private room." Richard crossed to the window, hands in his pockets, the posture of a man who'd spent thirty years believing the company owed him more deference than it currently offered. "The maître d' is a friend. He mentioned you two looked considerably closer than a working relationship generally requires."

Damien kept his expression even, the same discipline he'd used in a hundred board meetings, though his pulse had picked up in a way that had nothing to do with quarterly numbers. "Careful, Richard. That sounds like you're accusing me of something."

"I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm telling you what it looks like, which matters more than what it is, in case three years running this company hasn't taught you that yet." Richard turned from the window, eyes sharp. "That woman was sent by the board to determine whether you're fit to lead this company. If it comes out that you're involved with her, it won't matter what her report says. It'll look like you compromised her, bought her verdict with dinner and whatever else happened after."

"Nothing happened after."

"Then nothing had better happen at all." Richard's voice dropped, low and deliberate. "You have one job right now, Damien. Convince the board you're your father's son in the ways that matter and none of the ways that don't. A relationship with the woman evaluating you does the opposite of that. It hands them exactly the excuse they're looking for to bring in someone they can control."

Damien said nothing, jaw tight, because there was nothing he could say that wouldn't confirm exactly what Richard already suspected.

"I built half of what this company is," Richard continued, quieter now, which was somehow worse than the sharpness before it. "I watched your father build the rest of it with his bare hands, and I am not going to watch you hand it away because you couldn't keep your hands off a consultant for six weeks."

"Get out of my office, Richard."

"I'm trying to help you keep it."

"Get out."

Richard studied him a moment longer, something unreadable behind his expression, and then turned and left without another word, the door closing softly behind him in a way that felt more threatening than if he'd slammed it.

Damien stood alone in the silence afterward, hands braced against his desk, and let himself feel, for one unguarded moment, exactly how much danger he'd put both of them in with a dinner he hadn't been able to talk himself out of wanting.

His phone buzzed. A text from Margaret. Ms. Voss is here for the ten o'clock. Should I send her in?

He looked at the message for a long moment, weighing every warning Richard had just handed him against the memory of Elena's hand beneath his, the low, unsteady way she'd said his name like it belonged to her now too.

Send her in, he typed back, and told himself he was still in control of what happened next, even as some quieter part of him already knew that wasn't true anymore.

The door opened a moment later, and Elena stepped inside, composed, professional, dressed like nothing at all had changed since last night. It was a good performance. He recognized it because he'd been giving the same one all morning.

"Mr. Cross," she said, and the formality of it landed like a blow he hadn't braced for.

"Ms. Voss." He matched her tone, though it cost him more than it should have. "Close the door."

She did, and for a moment neither of them spoke, the space between them charged with everything they weren't saying out loud.

"Richard knows," Damien said finally. "About dinner. About the room. He has a friend at Antoine's."

Something flickered across her face, quick and controlled, though he caught the way her hand tightened on the folder she carried. "How much does he know?"

"Enough to threaten me with it. Not enough to have proof of anything, because there's nothing to prove yet." He watched her carefully. "He thinks I'm compromising your report. He's not entirely wrong to worry about it."

"I haven't written anything I don't believe is true," she said, voice steady, though something underneath it wasn't. "Whatever's happening between us hasn't touched what I put in that file. It won't."

"I know." He crossed the room toward her, close enough to catch the same quiet scent from the corridor two days ago. "That's not what worries me."

"Then what does?"

"That I don't care as much as I should about what this costs me, as long as it doesn't cost you anything." He reached for her hand, and she let him take it, the same unsteady warmth as the night before, dangerous now in a way it hadn't been across a candlelit table. "Richard's right about one thing. This is a risk. For both of us, but especially for you. Your entire reputation is built on being someone the board trusts to be objective."

"I know what I'm risking, Damien." She didn't pull her hand away. "I decided that at Antoine's, with a clear head, knowing exactly what it could cost. That hasn't changed because your uncle has a friend at a restaurant."

Something in his chest loosened at that, relief he had no business feeling given everything Richard had just laid out. "Then we're careful. No more private rooms with maître d's who talk. Nothing that gives Richard proof of anything more than professional dinners."

"And what we actually have?"

"Stays exactly what it is." His thumb traced slow warmth across her knuckles, an echo of the night before. "Ours. However long we get."

She nodded, though something uncertain moved behind her eyes, some awareness neither of them said out loud that Richard's warning was only the first crack in a wall that was going to keep closing in the longer they let this continue.

For now, it was enough that she hadn't pulled away.