“Nope,” she said. “Look at the way Luke looks at her.”
Ophelia peered up at Luke, wondering if she’d see what Addison saw.
“He’s got it bad,” Addison said. “No woman can do better than a man who looks at her like that.”
Fox chuckled. “Like what?”
“Like that!” She gestured at Luke’s face. “You can tell he’s totally crazy about her.”
Ophelia knew exactly what Addison was talking about. She’d noticed it with him before. Luke watched her like she was his world. Like nothing and no one would ever be more important. She loved him for every little damned thing, but knowing he loved her back—really, really loved her—was the best part.
“Am I crazy about you?” Fox asked his fiancée.
“Yup,” Addison answered. “And once a guy is crazy for a girl . . . that’s it. He’s done for.”
Luke peered down at Ophelia, proving Addison exactly right. Her father used to say “Marry a man who looks at you like a starving man at a feast.” She hadn’t understood it at the time, but now it was clear. Luke was exactly the kind of man her dad would have wanted for her. The kind who made her laugh, challenged her, protected her, and believed in her. That his profession required questionable morals wouldn’t have mattered to her dad. If the love between them was powerful enough, they could find a way around anything.
He could pretend to be her personal protection agent forever for all she cared, if it meant they could be together. And now that she’d been spending most of her time behind a desk rather than wearing haute couture to parties, the paparazzi had grown bored with her. A year from now, no one would know, or care, who she was anymore.
“Maybe she could do better than a tattooed criminal,” Luke rasped, still gazing down at her. “But nobody could love her as much as I do.”
A girl could get used to this.
She reached for Luke’s hand under the counter and he grasped her tiny one in his, curling his fingers around hers as if shielding her heart in his hand.
Maybe she’d give things a second chance.
Chapter 20
The heavy wooden door closed. He flipped the latch.
“Serena, can you check what time my lunch meeting with the Chapmans is tomorrow?” Ophelia sat at the long boardroom table, her long blond hair pulled back in a severe bun that made her look older and terrifyingly self-possessed.
Her bloodthirsty-businesswoman facade only went so deep though, and only Luke knew how to flip her switch to get her to submit. In the sunlight that filtered through the windows that overlooked the small, manicured park, she was beyond lovely.
He watched her reading and making notes, his gaze tracing her stubborn jaw and the graceful column of her neck. There were no visible bruises on her, but he knew she sat on a few he’d left the night before. The memory of earlier that morning, when he’d bent her over her kitchen counter and taken what he’d wanted, made him want her again. Now.
His dick was already hard for her and she didn’t even know he was in the room.
He strolled two steps closer to her, and she fumbled, dropping her pen, just as an excited whimper escaped her.
“Luke,” she whispered, her gaze went from his face, traveled down his body to linger on his arms, then down farther, talking stock of his erection, then shyly fastened on his boots, “I thought you were Serena. We can’t. Not here.”
“No?”
“No.”
He laughed quietly, loving the way it made her shiver. “Then you’d better be very quiet.”
She mewled, and he unbuckled his belt, slipping it free from his jeans.
“No! That’s going to be too loud!” She stared at the black leather belt folded over in his hands and squirmed
in her seat.
“No, it won’t. Do I need to shove something in that pretty mouth of yours to keep you quiet?”
“Hey, mister. I’m the boss around here.” Her brown eyes narrowed in an attempt to gain the upper hand. He said nothing, only moving behind her to slip his fingers into her tightly bound hair and yank her to her feet. She gasped, then moaned quietly as he rolled her chair aside and bent her over the files on the table.