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If men thought she could be bought maybe it was time to start asserting her financial independence. She earned a reasonable living. She just had an expensive clothing habit. But she was twenty-five years old. It was time to stop living like a teenager and start looking towards her future. The fairytale husband and three children might never materialise—and given her romantic history and today’s disaster it felt further away than ever. She needed to look after herself. Protect herself. And that meant settling into her career.
She was turning from one group of buyers to cross the floor to another when she saw him.
Six and a half feet of Russian male wasn’t easy to miss. He was all dressed up in a tux, his unruly hair tamed. He looked devastating, a powerful man among many lesser men, and for a moment in time she merely stared. Until she recognised the older gentleman he was speaking to was Giovanni Verado himself.
Verado was a notorious womaniser. Probably swapping notes, she thought snappily. But in her heart she knew it wasn’t true. Serge had been nothing but up-front with her, and she kept replaying his expression when she had thrown his invitation back in his face. He’d actually looked baffled.
But why was he here? He knew this was her job. She’d certainly blabbed all about it last night, revealing more than she was comfortable with now. She’d said some indiscreet things about Verado. Serge hadn’t mentioned a connection to the owner. Serge hadn’t said much of anything that was personal.
Her mouth suddenly felt very dry, her palms moist.
It didn’t fit the character of the man she believed she knew to drop her in it. Why would he? Why would Verado care about her opinions as long as she did her job?
No, what was worrying her was that she suddenly realised she knew nothing about him other than the fact he made her senses whirl every time he looked at her, and she’d felt so safe and admired in his company.
Right now her heart was leaping into her mouth because he’d come, and it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.
He’d come for her.
A rush of nerves bubbled up in her tummy like champagne. All of the tales she had told herself this afternoon about Serge Marinov being just some guy disintegrated as she entertained the possibility that she was getting a second chance, and now she could give him one.
Clementine tugged at her dress, straightened her shoulders, and headed over. She wasn’t going to make his finding her any more difficult than it needed to be.
There were a lot of people between them, and then there was a break in the crowd and she saw what she had missed before. There was a woman with him—a slender brunette in a sparkly blue dress. She was beautiful, perhaps around thirty, and she had her hand on his arm. It was that territorial display that stopped Clementine in her tracks.
Almost. She’d almost made a fool of herself.
Another woman. Well, that was quick. But what had she expected? Clearly it was exactly what he’d been thinking this morning in that fraught silence. Not, I’m disappointed Clementine won’t be coming with me. Simply, Where’s the next in line?
Her shoulders dropped. She felt as if she was getting a crash course in male mating patterns. Was it really that easy for him? She had opened herself up last night to a connection between them and she couldn’t close it off so easily. Didn’t it mean anything to him?
Clementine stuffed down the sudden sharp pain in her chest. She was such an idiot. Him and Joe Carnegie—both of them deserved flogging. Except, watching Serge now, she recognised he wasn’t really anything like Joe. He hadn’t hidden anything. He’d been up-front all the way. Probably in his world that was how these things were done. He was hardly going to be her boyfriend by any stretch of the imagination. She couldn’t imagine him dropping by on a Friday night at her flat with a pizza and lying on the sofa rubbing her feet.
He turned his head suddenly and scanned the crowd, and Clementine froze. She knew when he found her because she felt it like a jolt down to her toes. She recognised the flare of those green eyes, how her own were probably huge in her frozen face. She waited for him to dismiss her, to turn away, but instead his features firmed. He looked resolved.
She spun around before she could see anything that would make mincemeat of her feelings and made her way blindly towards the bar. She needed a drink. She needed hard liquor and fast.
If I’d said yes I could be with him now, she thought helplessly. I could be in that woman’s shoes. I could be going with him to New York.
She reached the bar and asked for a Bloody Mary. It wasn’t something she normally drank, but she needed something sharp and unfamiliar to snap herself out of this mood. Before it arrived she felt him rather than saw him. The solidity of his body; the turning of other people’s heads. There were people everywhere, brushing shoulders, bumping elbows, but she knew it was him.
