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He didn’t expect the look of relief on her face when she saw him—nor did he expect his instant reaction, which was an answering satisfaction. She knew who she belonged to. Then her gaze slid by him to his security, and she frowned and looked back at him uneasily.
He didn’t say a word, merely extracted her from her seat. She looked up into his eyes. ‘Serge, you didn’t need to do this.’
‘You made it necessary with your actions, Clementine.’ His voice was clipped. ‘I’m sure you’ve got an explanation as to what you think you’re doing, but I haven’t got time to hear it.’
He put his arm around her. From a distance it might seem a tender gesture but Clementine knew when she was being frogmarched.
Trying to defuse the situation, she laughed uneasily. ‘Geez, Slugger, what are you going to do? Arrest me or something?’
‘I’m going to put you somewhere safe and you’re going to stay there. I don’t have time to babysit you, Clementine. This isn’t a local gym and a controlled environment.’
Clementine felt a pang as she remembered her embarrassing reaction when he had taken her, on her insistence, to watch the sparring. She had interrupted his working life. His important working life. And she was doing it again—only on a grander scale.
She hadn’t meant to. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. If he hadn’t come and plucked her out of the crowd she’d still be sitting up there, him none the wiser, nothing disrupted.
It was his problem with her, and she wasn’t going to take the blame.
As they approached the glassed-in owners’ box she hissed, ‘Maybe if you’d just issued an invite instead of shutting me out I wouldn’t have had to buy a ticket.’
‘Kisa, if you ever pull a stunt like this again there won’t be any invites. Anywhere. Period.’
And with that he pushed her in front of a group of strangers and said to the nearest woman, ‘Kim, this is Clementine—Clementine Chevalier, Kim Hart.’ And around they went—introductions, handshakes. Hard men and heeled-up women with big hair. Clementine felt quite demure by comparison. She wondered if anyone else could hear the edge in Serge’s voice or if it was just her own private horror show. Then he plopped her down in a central seat and had someone put a glass of white wine in her hand. And was gone.
Clementine watched him leave, trying not to look too panicked. He would come back for her? What had he meant, no more invites? Had she crossed some sort of relationship line she didn’t know about?
A blonde whose name Clementine had forgotten leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder. ‘So what’s it like being flavour of the month?’
‘Ignore her,’ said another voice to her left, and the woman Serge had introduced as Kim slid into the seat beside her. ‘First event?’
‘Yes, I’m looking forward to it,’ she responded, a little blindsided by Serge’s words and then by the ‘flavour of the month’ comment. Doing her best to shrug it off, she switched on her job brain and queried, ‘So what’s the deal here? How is everyone connected with the Marinov Corporation?’
Kim was the chatty type, and she seemed to have a comprehensive knowledge of the business. She rolled off the fighters’ agents, the sponsors present, pointed out different key staff, then settled into the nitty-gritty of the fighters, their stats. None of which interested Clementine in the slightest, but as Kim chatted she was able to look around, soak in some of the atmosphere.
About thirty-plus people circulated in the luxurious environment of the glassed-in box, milling with drinks and nibbles. There were little screens everywhere, with different matches being broadcast from outside the arena. Outside the glass windows rock music was pumping, but it was only a rhythmic thump that came to her faintly.
She was suddenly glad to be in here.
‘When it gets going we wander down and take ringside seats,’ explained Kim. ‘Jack, my partner, number-crunches at the top of the tree for the corporation. Completely unglamorous. This is the only exciting part of his job—getting ringside seats.’
‘Where’s Jack?’
‘Over there.’ Kim pointed him out, a rangy-looking guy in his mid thirties wearing jeans and a jacket and somehow contriving to make them look like a suit. Clementine knew the type. She looked at Kim. ‘Do you think I could have a chat to him? I’m interested in how everything works.’
Serge returned to fetch Clementine for the fight. He found her with a male audience—what was new? Two accountants and Liam O’Loughlin, his deputy head of promotion. She’d pushed back her jacket and had her hands on her hips, and whatever she was saying the guys were riveted to her.
