I hugged him. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome. But tell me this much. Why are you doing all this? Working for this man? Running yourself ragged for pennies? If you came home, you’d have access to more money than you could spend in a lifetime, Juliette. You know that.”
“If I returned to my cage, you mean?”
He chuckled, watery eyes turning down. “It’s a shame how it works out. Every parent wants their children to have more than they did. The ones who succeed beyond their wildest dreams give their children the world. But when the world is already in your palm, what’s left to dream for?”
I nodded. “Leaving let me try to look for my purpose. Maybe when this is all over, I can tell him where I am and let him see that I was more than he realized. But for now, I’m enjoying living for me. If I prove him wrong, it’ll just be a bonus.”
Mr. Krause smirked. “Somehow, I think you’ll wind up proving exactly that.” He gave me a one-armed hug, then pointed toward where a woman was calling for his flight to board. “That’s me. Good luck, Juliette.”
16
Juliette
Mr. White had a driver waiting for us outside the airport. He was already in the car when I arrived. As usual, it was a luxury car with a pristine interior and more than enough leg room. Mr. White looked composed but pissed.
“I’m really sorry,” I said as I got into the car. I took a seat beside him in the back. “I had no idea they were going to take what I said and use it as an excuse to strip search you.”
“I bribed him. It was fine. He held me in the room for ten minutes so it would look legitimate and then let me go on my way.”
I breathed out in relief. “Thank God.”
He grinned. “Were you really that worried about me getting embarrassed? I’d think you would want that for me given some of the things I ask of you.”
I felt myself blushing. “Under normal circumstances, yes. I’d say you deserve to be brought down a peg. But I didn’t want to be the reason it happened to you.”
“That’s a confusing sense of morality you have, Miss Adams.”
“You know, you can just call me Jules.”
“And you can call me Adrian.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’ve never corrected me before.”
“And now I have.”
“Okay,” I said, running my tongue over my lips.
“How did the presentation with Krause go?”
“Good. He seemed really impressed and said he’ll reach out.”
Mr. White—Adrian—drew his eyebrows together. “You’re serious?”
I tried to hold back my smile as I did a nonchalant little shrug of my shoulders. “It was nothing. You seemed like you really wanted me to be confident with the presentation, so I studied it last night until I could give it myself. That’s exactly what I did. He was impressed that your assistant was so prepared and that you were ballsy enough to send me after him at the airport. I kind of told him about the TSA thing, but not the butt stuff.”
Adrian pulled me in with both arms and gave me a quick, very surprising hug. My eyes popped wide open at first, but then I decided to enjoy the few fleeting moments of contact. For once, it wasn’t turbulence or sleepy stumbling pushing our bodies together. It was his choice, and I had to admit it felt far, far too good.
He smelled incredible, as always, and I didn’t want it to end. But he pulled back, looking like he felt a little awkward. “I think this calls for a celebration.”
“How does Adrian White celebrate, exactly? Do you schedule extra meetings for your evening? Fire an intern? Or maybe you sacrifice a virgin?”
“Are you volunteering?” he asked with a dangerous glint in his eyes.
My breath caught. I wasn’t sure how to answer, especially considering that, to my deep shame, I was a virgin. Being in the Coleton bubble for my whole childhood hardly lent itself to canoodling. As gross as it was, I was fairly sure my father was keeping a close lock on my virginity so he could toss it in for whoever he married me off to like a wedding gift.
“I’m sorry,” Adrian said. “That was inappropriate. I didn’t think about how that would come across.”
“Are you sorry enough to buy me lunch?” I asked. “It already feels like breakfast at the hotel was forever ago.”
“It’s a deal,” he said.
“And are you sorry enough to promise not to talk about work at lunch?”
“Don’t push your luck,” he said.
I’d nearly forgotten I was in a new and exciting city until Adrian asked the driver to take us to find some food trucks.
“Food trucks?” I asked.
“I can only tolerate one to two fancy meals per day.”
I grinned. The man was finally speaking my language.