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"What do you need?" The tremble that hadn't been present in my hands relocated to my voice instead. Heat warmed my cheeks. I seem destined to embarrass myself in front of the only billionaire I was ever likely to meet.
At least I was consistent.
Zander considered me, steppling his fingertips beneath his chin. "I need someone to organize my public engagements for the next year."
“You’re going to do public engagements?”
“Yes.”
Was that the hint of a smile?
"Me?" Why did I have to squeak? Why?
"You." The faintest hint of a smile, the one I’d seen before, curled at the corners of his lips, changing his face into that blazing glory.
"You're going to speak in public." I made it a statement, not a question. Zander said nothing at all, still watching me in that way of his that left my stomach curling back in on itself. I had the damndest urge to reach across and smooth his hair, tuck the long, dark brown strands out of his face. "You. Zander Klauss is going to actively speak in public, without any prompting."
His laugh was as harsh as his smile was sweet. "I wouldn't call itnoprompting. Five days... You've done a number on me, Miss Blackthorne."
I took a step forward and realized I was back at his desk. My fingers traced the edges of the blackened glass, leaving fingerprints there that would no doubt be horrifying to him the moment I pulled away. "What brought this change on?"
His nose twitched. I swear. "I think you know the answer to that."
"Yes," I persisted, “but what I mean is, why?"
"Because it's time. And because you're right."
I blinked. “Say that again."
"You. Are. Right." Zander pushed back from his desk and ran his fingers through his hair, tussling it into something unintentionally stylish that matched the eccentric billionaire look that hung around him. His finger slipped over one button on his jacket, opening and sliding it from broad, muscular shoulders that strained his tailored shirt. He slung the jacket around and hung it over the back of his chair, lopsided.
My eye twitched, though the billionaire’s level of chronic neatness was something I never cared about until I met Zander Klauss.
"In less than a week, you've told me there are people out there I am missing in life, shown me there are people I can help. Parents who laugh at jokes. Your lovely Jennifer at the soup kitchen.” Zander rounded the corner of his desk and stopped just short of me. "You."
"Why does everything you're saying include me and you?” I whispered as my body naturally twisted to face him.
Or maybe he was orbiting me.
What's the line from Jules Verne? ‘Throw two planets into space, and they will fall one on the other. Place two enemies in the midst of a crowd, and they will inevitably meet; it is a fatality, a question of time; that is all.’Zander Klauss was the celestial body I was destined to crash into.
"You tell me." The corner of his lips curled up a little more as he reached forward, catching his palm around the back of my neck. My breath halted somewhere in my throat as he drew me a little closer, stroking my cheeks with his thumbs and grazing them over my skin.
I was surprised to find callouses, but I wouldn't expect it from such a soft man who rarely left his inner city apartment. "Why would a billionaire choose to live in San Diego? You have the world is your clamshell—or oyster or cuttlefish, or whatever," I stumbled over every word as he dipped his head a little closer to mine, giving me every chance to retreat.
New spoiler alert: I stayed put.
Bonus round; my feet weren’t even frozen to the ground. I stayed because...well, for the same reason I stupidly invited a billionaire for cheap coffee in rundown apartment I could barely afford prior to working for him after hours in a soup kitchen dressed as Christmas characters.
None of that stopped me from staying, and if he read it in my face or my eyes, it didn’t deter him, either.
"Why would a billionaire fall for a cheeky little elf in the space of five days?" Zander whispered, closing the space where our breath mingled.
His lips touched mine in a gentle, sweet kiss as my mind turned on over what he said.
The pressure of his lips increased, insistent as he slanted his mouth over mine, his sluicing tongue across my bottom lip, tracing its curves and testing its softness. A gasp left me as he slid his tongue inside my mouth, dancing alongside mine. Searing heat shot from my shoulders to my toes, leaving me aching and needy.
My hands closed gently around his wrists where they held my cheeks, but I didn't pull away. I didn’t want to break the moment, despite a growing desire to wrap my body around his and feel if all of him burned like his kisses did.
