My lips had curved up in a small smile when he mentioned his dad because it was unexpectedly adorable, but they pressed together in a tight line when he compared my reactions to him and Drew. Julian was correct, I didn’t have any issues with my boss’s wealth. Maybe it wasn’t entirely fair to Julian that I was holding him to a different standard, but Drew was only my boss while he was…more. It was time for me to stop lying to myself and admit that no matter how hard I’d tried to fight my attraction, I hadn’t succeeded. And if I wanted to move forward like Julian said, then I needed to open up to him about why I’ve been fighting this thing between us so hard.
“I don’t care how wealthy Drew is. He seems cool enough, but he’s Autumn’s problem. Not mine.”
Julian’s eyes filled with male satisfaction at my admission. “You can’t say the same thing about me, can you?”
I dropped my forehead against his chest and mumbled, “No, darn it. Even with as hard as I’ve tried, I can’t.”
His arms tightened around me, pulling me closer before he brushed a kiss against the top of my head. “Thank fuck you’re finally willing to admit it. That means you’re going to stop fighting what’s happening here and tell me why you’ve been avoiding me this whole time?”
I heaved a deep sigh and nodded, keeping my face buried in his broad chest as I answered, “My very first job was with a public relations firm with a lot of celebrity clients. Nobody expected me to handle any of them directly because it wasn’t in my job description. I was basically a glorified gopher, but then one of their biggest clients took…a shine to me, I guess you could say.”
Julian was close enough for me to feel his body tense as he growled, “I’m sure he did.”
“I didn’t see it at first. As far as the whole world knew—me included—the guy was happily married to his equally famous wife. My boss grumbled about it when he insisted that I be assigned to the team who handled him, but she didn’t hesitate to give in to his request because she was all about keeping the client happy. I didn’t start to second-guess my luck until she made an odd comment one day about how much easier her job would be since I signed a non-disclosure agreement when I started working there.”
“That fucking bitch,” he bit out, tilting my head back to look into my eyes. Whatever he saw there made him swear some more before he walked me over to the couch and settled me on his lap. “Let me guess, the celebrity client’s marriage wasn’t as happy as everyone thought because he was a cheating bastard.”
“Yes.” I thought about everything I had learned back then. “But also no since it was more of a case of them having an open marriage as long as they didn’t publicly embarrass each other. She had apparently had just as many lovers as him from what he told me when I turned him down flat. He thought I’d be more open to his advances if I knew his marriage was a sham they’d gone through with to help their careers before they were A-listers.”
“He didn’t understand you at all.” His hand stroked up and down my spine. “If he had, he would’ve known you have too much integrity to do something like that, no matter what the situation.”
My head jerked up, and I searched for any sign of deception in his gorgeous face. All I found was utter sincerity, though. “How could you possibly know that? We never even really spoke to each other until you pulled your kidnapping stunt during your show yesterday.”
“Sweetheart.” He quirked a brow as though that one word was an actual answer, but I needed more.
“No, really. How did you know?”
His lips curved up in a smug grin. “While you’ve been trying to avoid me, I’ve spent the past month watching and learning about you.”
“I should probably be worried that you just admitted to basically stalking me and followed it up by kidnapping me.” I laughed softly and shook my head, feeling flattered instead.
“You don’t ever have to worry about me hurting you.” Julian ran his fingers through my hair, twirling a lock around his index finger and tugging on it gently. “So finish telling me the story.”
I refused to think about what his promise meant until I got through the rest of what had happened before I came to Vegas and took my job at the Lennox. “Stuff blew up in the client’s face when the woman he was sleeping with while he was hitting on me turned up pregnant. She got an abortion, but she wanted to go public about the whole mess—probably because she was an aspiring actress and figured having her name linked with his, even negatively, would give her career a push. She was probably right about that, but my job wasn’t to worry about her. It was to protect the client’s image, no matter what.”