But with great power comes great scrutiny. The LA tabloids aren’t satiated with stalking celebrities and public figures. They stalk us wealthy families too, with almost as much vigor as they do the movie stars and singers. They covered my disappearance with joy—or so I hear. I was too busy getting shitfaced in Las Vegas by the time the papers started to mock my family back home to notice.
Now that I’m back, I’ve seen my face plastered across tabloid stands more than once—usually, at this point, with one arm wrapped around Sammy. If I’m going to get photographed by some scumbag looking to make a quick dime off the gossip-mill, I’ll at least use my powers for good—namely to get her family to back off trying to force her to find a husband.
Still, it’s made me almost as paranoid as I was back when I was being stalked by hired killers. I turn my jacket collar up and keep my face angled away from the windows as I stride into the building, through the enormous 20-foot-high doors that gild our entrance and across the hard marble floors. My shoes clack against it, echoing up the arched 30-foot ceilings, all of it done in a style that would make Wall Street traders jealous. That was the 1920s for you—they built their buildings with panache.
But it’s due to my keeping my head down and away from any possible pap viewpoints of me that I barrel headfirst into someone halfway across the atrium. On instinct, I grab the person’s arm, and all at once, a staggering, dizzying shock of déjà vu hits me.
For a second, I think I’m imagining this. It’s all too familiar—the collision, the startled look in those baby blue eyes. The way her lips part in a gasp, as she does the same double-take I’m doing.
“Daisy?”
“Bronson?”
We stare at each other. All at once, seeing her here, every excuse I had for not keeping her in my life flees my mind. All I can think about are those sexy, luscious curves of hers. That pert little mouth, parted in an O of surprise. Her hair’s done up in an elaborate bun, and she’s wearing way more professional-looking attire than I’ve ever seen her in—a narrow pencil skirt and frilled blouse that make me want to tear it right off her, and heels that look like she could spike a few small mammals with them.
She, meanwhile, is staring at me like she’s seeing a ghost. “What the hell are you doing?” she manages, right around the same time that I burst out with, “How’d you end up here?”
We both pause. I’m tempted to laugh. But the look on her face is quickly morphing from shock into anger. She yanks her arm from my grasp. “I see you haven’t gotten any better at avoiding trampling on women,” she says, taking a step back from me. The distance just makes it easier to see what I’ve been missing.
God, she’s even more fucking irresistibly gorgeous than I remember. My eyes catch on her hips, and I have to forcibly tear them back to her face. “What are you doing here?” I ask her, ignoring the dig.
She plants her hands on her hips. “Me? What are you doing?”
“I work here,” I reply.
“Yeah, well, so do I. Apparently.” She tosses her head to glance around the lobby, which is slowly starting to fill up with other people trickling in through the broad open doors of the bank. Everyone who passes us is squinting at pieces of paper or directions they’ve clearly saved in their phones. Because it’s everyone’s first day today, nobody seems to have recognized me. Yet.
Small favors.
“Were you transferred here too?” She frowns up at me. Then does a double-take, studying my outfit.
“Not exactly,” I reply. “Wait, transferred. You’ve been working at Burke Bank?”
“At the branch downtown,” she confirms. “For the last three months. But then my manager told me everyone out at this branch was let go, and they needed to restaff it, so here I am.” She narrows her eyes. “You’re wearing a suit.”
“I’ve been told I clean up nicely,” I reply. “Though clearly not as nice as you.”
She rolls her eyes at the compliment.
“Seriously, though, Daisy, I had no idea you were out here in LA.”
“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t, would you?” She plants a hand on one of her ample hips. “You made it pretty clear you didn’t want to keep in touch, so.”
The words sting. Mostly because they’re true. But I ignore the sting, because I still can’t bring myself to believe that she’s here. “If I’d known you were so close…”
“You’d have tried to hook up with me so you could callously dump me without a word of explanation again?” she cuts across me, furious. But her voice has dropped to a whisper, because more people are filling the lobby, and while some have begun to follow the instructions I sent to meet in the large conference room through the back, more than a few have stopped to eyeball us, clearly wondering what kind of a show we’re about to put on.
I make the mistake of side-eying one of the milling people a heartbeat too long, and the guy takes it as an invitation.
“Mr. Burke?” he asks, striding across the atrium toward us with one hand extended like a sword. “I’m Callum Briggs, from the Echo Park branch. Pleasure to meet you, sir.”
I shake his hand and force a bland expression onto my face. “Callum. And don’t call me sir. It sounds too much like my father.” I glance over his head toward the doors at the back of the atrium and nod in that direction. “I’ll speak to you soon.”
He keeps pumping my hand, ignoring the dismissal, until I e my fingers from his and turn a cold shoulder toward him.
“Daisy,” I begin, but she’s staring at me with fresh horror now, her eyes so wide I can see twin images of myself reflected in them.
“Mr. Burke?” she says, her voice a stiffly-contained whisper. “Your name is Bronson Burke? As in the same Burke of Burke Bank?”
“My father owns this company,” I say.
“Then you must know how terribly your father’s employees are being treated in this company.” She crosses her arms and scowls at me. “How badly everyone at the bottom here is treated.” She clenches her jaw and shakes her head. “But then, how could you know that? Why would you bother to learn what anyone down here at the bottom feels like, when you’re sitting up at the top of the pyramid reaping all the rewards?” With a groan she spins away from me to follow the crowd that’s meandering slowly toward the main conference room. Then she whirls back, as though deciding something, fists balled. “I can’t believe you were some crazy billionaire family heir the whole time we knew each other. This is why you never told me your last name? Why you never talked about a future? You couldn’t imagine a future with lowly little me, because you had a banking empire to come home and run, is that it?”
“Daisy, I—”
“Forget it,” she snaps. “See you in the office, boss.” Then she storms away, into the stream of people, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from chasing after her.
6
Daisy
The whole meeting in a conference room large enough that two of my entire LA apartments could fit into it, Bronson keeps trying to catch my eye. Every time he does, I stare determinedly at the ceiling. That, or I lift my informational introduction packet in front of my face to block the view.
Even if it’s hard to make myself look away from that face of his. And that body…
Dammit, why couldn’t he have gotten fat or something? But he looks as smoking hot as ever. All chiseled jawline and sharp, piercing gray eyes that seem to hone in on me every time I so much as peek in his direction. And in that suit, with his hair artfully tousled like he just rolled out of bed perfect somehow…
Ugh.
He drones on and on about employee retention, about how everyone in this room is an important cog in the machinery of this company. At least his words remind me how pissed I am. Because I call bullshit. He wouldn’t have fired two whole offices full of employees if he gave a damn about us cogs in his big expensive gears.