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I’d only taken a single step for the door when a man sailed across the polished floor directly in front of my hidden alcove, arms windmilling wildly. His face—snub-nosed and freckled and sort of weirdly…angelic—was frozen in terror until he managed to grab a support column like a drowning sailor grabbing a life preserver and swing himself into the shadows directly in front of me, where he landed on his feet.
Well.Thiswas different.
“Good. Fucking.Fuck,” the man said succinctly and a bit breathlessly, bending over at the waist to catch his breath.
I resisted the sudden urge to laugh out loud. For someone who looked like he’d walked out of a Botticelli painting, he had a hell of a mouth on him… and the curve of the ass he was inadvertently displaying in his black pants wasn’t bad, either.
“Impressive dismount,” I said mildly, startling the angel into jumping nearly a foot. “But I’m afraid you’re going to need to find your own potted plant to hide behind. This one’s taken.”
He gasped and spun toward me, and his face morphed into an expression not unlike a disgruntled kitten—adorable and cranky.
“You sawnothing,” he informed me with a glare. “Now back off—uh…” He hesitated as he belatedly looked me up and down, then from shoulder to shoulder. His eyes widened, and he wet his lips, seemingly unconsciously. “…please?”
A knot of anticipation coiled in my gut.
A stray curl chose that precise moment to flop directly in the center of his forehead, and I bit my cheek, torn between amusement and a burning desire to pull the man against me—
Whoa. No.Bad Sebastian.
Clearly, I’d had too much champagne because I didnothook up with strangers I met at fundraising galas. In fact, I’d rarely hooked up with anyone at all recently, and for very good reason.
But even knowing all that, I couldn’t stop myself from returning the man’s up-down look with a slow, appreciative appraisal of my own. Shiny brown curls, doe eyes, plush lips, fair skin. His tux was a size too big, but I could still see hints of the toned body it hid. And for the first time in a while, I felt a pulse of desire and challenge that reminded me a lot of the feeling I got when I prepared to scuba dive into a Mexican cenoteor paraglide off a Turkish mountain.
Yes, this evening had definitely gotten considerably more interesting.
Still staring at me, the man swallowed and made a strangled noise, then swallowed some more, like he was experiencing a powerful reaction as well. Either that or going into anaphylactic shock.
“You alright?” I asked, concerned.
“Me? Oh, ha! No. Yes.No.” He clapped a hand to his mouth and stared at me in horror, like the words had babbled out against his will.
Curiouser and curiouser.
My lips twitched. “Enlightening. Thank you. Blink twice if whatever you have is life-threatening, three times if it’s contagious, Mr.…” Belatedly, I glanced down to read his name tag and froze. “Wait. Sterling Chase?” I lifted an eyebrow. “You work there?”
That idea doused the flames of attraction in an instant.
Sterling Chase wasmycompany. My baby.
It had begun as a way for me and my four closest friends to market the software we’d come up with our senior year at Yale—the Emergency Traffic Control software—but had grown into a billion-dollar startup incubator that helped other technology developers bring their big ideas to market. It was the place where I spent most of my time and all of my energy.
If this delectable stranger worked for Sterling Chase, that made him utterly off-limits. But… I couldn’t imagine how I could have failed to notice this man if he worked for me. He was nothing if not memorable.
Emotions flitted across his expressive face as he wrestled with the answer to what should have been a yes or no question. Fear. Nausea. Determination. He straightened his spine.
“Workthere?” The man chuckled with excessive enthusiasm. “Ha! Do Iworkat Sterling Chase? No, my good man. No, indeed. I own the company.” He tapped his name badge proudly. “I… IamSterling Chase.”
I blinked in disbelief. Beneath the freckles that dotted his nose and cheeks like a kaleidoscope of tiny butterflies, a blush of color crept across his face. A kind of nervous, excited, defiant energy rolled off him in waves… and no wonder. This Not-Sterling person was an angel-faced, sexy-as-fuck, lyingliar. And he wasn’t even attempting to be subtle about it.
Despite rumors to the contrary, there was no Sterling Chase. Not a human one anyway. In fact, as only maybe five other people on the planet knew, my friends and I had named the company after their college pets: Silas’s iguana, Chase, and Zane’s ridiculously hairy, pain-in-the-ass Peruvian guinea pig, Sterling.
But even as I stared at the man, waiting for him to back down or equivocate, Not-Sterling set his jaw, threw his shoulders back so forcefully his shirt buttons would have popped if the garment had fit properly, and attempted to look down his nose at me—no mean feat since I was six foot one, and he was at least six inches shorter.
Logic said I should contact security about this man immediately. But a fun-starved corner of my brain reminded me that it had been a hell of a long time since I’d been so intrigued by anything—not by a scientific breakthrough, or an extreme adventure, or the men who occasionally warmed my bed. So when that part of me whispered that I should fuck with the man instead, I listened.
“Sterling Chase.” I gave him a broad smile. “I must say, you’re not at all how I pictured you.”
“I bet.” He coughed lightly. “I mean… I bet you imagined Sterling Chase was old and crotchety?” He nodded to himself. “And you probably thought since Sterling had more money than god, he’d be all high-and-mighty, too, but no. Sterling Chase is down-to-earth. One might even say… quirky. You know, the sort of billionaire who smells like corn chips on purpose.”
