“You really think I didn’t see my name in there, Xena?”
I watched her freeze mid-equation, pencil hovering above the paper like it had suddenly turned into a live wire. The tutoring room felt smaller than usual, the afternoon light slanting through the tall windows of the Voltaire estate library, catching on her flushed cheeks. She looked up at me with those wide, stormy eyes that always pretended to challenge me but betrayed something softer underneath. Damn, she was infuriatingly beautiful when cornered.
Xena Voltaire, the hotel empire princess who could buy half the city without blinking, sat there in her designer blouse and perfectly tousled hair, acting like the ground wasn’t shifting beneath her. I leaned back in my chair, arms crossed, fighting the smirk that threatened to break f
