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Inside, the room is full and everyone stands as we enter.
Ace is there and for a moment, all I can see is him. He looks more gorgeous than I’ve ever seen him, a stormy-eyed Adonis in a perfectly-cut suit. His wild ferocity, contained as it is in his business suit is…unbelievably hot.
Even from across the room, I can detect his relief. He’s so happy to see me. The realization opens some little fissure inside my heart. Now that I’ve had the few hours of distance my addled mind needed, I can see it as much as I can feel it. We need each other. Equally.
He’s standing there at the head of the table.
I’m sorry, I want to say. Something about his expression tells me he already knows.
“Dusty,” he says, almost coolly, but his gaze is fiery and his deep voice is edged with a husky, controlled joy. He gestures to the empty seat to his right. He wants me to sit next to him.
“Mr. Maddox.” It sounds weird and overly formal, but some of the most powerful people in New York are in this room.
Noah’s here, and Colton. Alexander is here too. And Evan, as well as the rest of my team. Patel, who I haven’t spent much time with. And Lacey, who’s smiling at me. Guaranteeing that whatever happens in this room is soon going to become office folklore.
Emma and Penelope take the two empty seats between Alexander and Evan.
And I take a seat next to Ace.
Everyone sits except for Ace.
“Thanks, Emma,” he says, “for escorting Dusty this morning. And it’s nice to meet you.”
“You too, Cash.” Emma is lapping this up. “And it was a pleasure.”
Ace is quiet for a few seconds as he surveys the room.
It’s been twelve or so hours since I’ve seen him and his effect shoots straight to the pit of my stomach. I love him so much. I love the little wave in the thick silk of his hair. I love that I know how it feels in my hands. The smoothness of his recent shave is underlaid by a barely-detectable roughness. I love how it feels when it scratches against my thighs.
My craving for him is pulsing in me, along with the beat of my heart.
“Thank you all for being here,” Ace says, all business this morning. “I know this is somewhat unexpected but I have some things I need to say, and since you’re all going to be a part of what happens next, you need to hear them.”
Ace glances down at me, his eyes a resolute, unholy blue.
“A few months ago, I took a trip to Hawaii to meet with Ty Dyson about the fund of his we purchased. After our meeting, I was sitting out on the hotel patio having a much-needed drink. It was the day after the insider trading emails were detected. And that was when I first saw Dusty. She was on the beach. She smiled and walked right past me that day, and as soon as she did, I decided to stay an extra day.”
Alexander leans back in his chair and folds his arms, enjoying this. He elbows Colton. “You were right. I needed to cancel all meetings to be here.”
“Told you,” Colton whispers back. They both wait for Ace to continue.
Which he does. “The next night, I happened to run into Dusty at the beach bar. I really couldn’t believe she was real. She seemed to me like a dream come true.” It sounds romantic and it is, and I’m reminded of something he said to me over the weekend.
I’m a hard-ass numbers guy without a romantic bone in my body—until that moment. You turned me into someone who wanted to fall in love. Like, hard. Deep. For real.
Even so, I’m relieved when he’s light on the details of what went down that night in Hawaii. “In the morning, Dusty left without saying goodbye. She was gone and she made it very difficult for me to find her.”
I glance up at him and he gives me a naughty-girl look, which makes my heart beat faster.
“The next two months were both a nightmare and a feverish quest. I couldn’t concentrate on the impending implosion of my company—and I have to both apologize to and thank my brothers for picking up the slack—because I was too distracted by the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, who’d vanished into thin air.”
Lacey’s eyes get shiny and she blinks at Ace like she can’t believe the guy she always thought was an arrogant prick is gushing all these love words.
“So you can imagine my surprise,” Ace continues, “when our newest junior analyst was shown to my office on Friday morning. What do you know, my Hawaiian fever dream had materialized into a living, breathing employee.”
Another nudge between Alexander and Colton. “The boy is whipped,” Colton says under his breath.
Ace slides them a glare but there’s no heat in it. “I’m telling it like it is, and I wanted you to know at least some of our backstory, because I’m going to be making some changes here at IE and I want you all to know why. First things first, nothing that I say here today goes any further than the walls of this room.” His question is pointed at one person in particular. “Is that understood?”
