Page 53 of Secret Heir For The Billionaire Twin

The car begins moving again.

I slide my fingers back slowly, and she picks up the phone without looking away.

When the driver pulls to the curb outside her hotel, neither of us reaches for the door immediately.

“Have dinner with me tomorrow,” I say.

Her expression shifts, caught between surprise and something warmer.

“Another group dinner?” Sophie asks.

“No.”

The answer settles between us.

“Just dinner,” I add. “You and me.”

She studies me for a long moment before a faint smile touches her mouth.

“All right,” she says.

I open the door and step out first, then offer her my hand. She takes it, and the pressure of her fingers brings back the heat from the car.

“I’ll send the details,” I tell her.

“I’ll be waiting.”

Sophie turns toward the hotel entrance, but before she walks inside, she looks back at me once. I remain at the curb until the doors close behind her.

Chapter Eight

Sophie

By the time I arrive at the restaurant the following evening, most of the dinner crowd has already thinned. The hostess leads me through a dimly lit dining room toward a corner booth set apart from the remaining tables, where Julian is waiting with one hand resting beside a glass of amber liquor.

He stands when he sees me. The gesture is simple, but my body remembers the back seat of his car before my mind can interfere. His hand over mine. The warmth of his palm. The way neither of us moved until movement became unavoidable.

“Hi,” I say as I reach the table.

“Hi,” Julian replies.

His eyes travel over me once, slowly enough that I notice and restrained enough that I could pretend I don’t. I slide into the booth before either of us has to acknowledge it.

“You chose somewhere quiet,” I say.

“I thought we’d had enough board members for one trip.”

I smile as he takes the seat across from me.

“I survived.”

“You did more than survive.”

There is something in the way he says it that brings Nathan immediately to mind. Julian crossing the room without any believable reason to do so. The flat look he gave Nathan. His admission in the car that he hadn’t liked the way another man was looking at me.

What unsettles me most is not Julian’s reaction. It is mine; I liked it. The realization has bothered me since I woke this morning because there is nothing particularly enlightened about enjoying a man’s possessiveness. I know that. I also know Julian never treated me as though I needed protection, never told me who I could speak to, and never questioned whether I could handle Nathan myself. He simply wanted the distance between us closed. Apparently, some reckless part of me liked being the person he crossed the room for.

A server approaches before I can examine the thought any further, and Julian looks toward me.