He pinched the bridge of his nose, making a visible effort to maintain his strained control.
“Trella—Trella Bella as we call her, or Bella—has a particular struggle. Partly it’s due to the attention we draw. I make myself available to her when she needs it. We all do. If she had called Ramon, your friend Vera would be the one feeling slighted. Trella’s situation is a fact of my life. That’s all I’m saying on the topic and you can believe it or not or post it to your damned news feed if that will make you feel better.”
“Of course I wouldn’t,” she said crossly. “Why would I deliberately hurt someone I don’t even know?”
Now she would dwell forever on the struggles of that poor girl who had surely been through enough just from being kidnapped. No public statements had ever been made about what had really happened to her during the five days she was missing. Terrible things had been theorized, though. Cinnia dearly hoped none of them were true, but judging by Henri’s grim expression, his sister had a lot to deal with.
She had such an urge to reach out to him in that moment, she had to clench her fingers together in her lap.
“Has the attention been bad?” he asked. “Are you being harassed by cameras outside your home? It’s so rare I meet anyone who feels like I do, I didn’t imagine it would be a burden for you.”
She shrugged. “Mostly just friends and family are asking about it. I didn’t say much and that’s not out of character because I keep a low profile as a rule.”
He glanced inquiringly, so she explained further.
“My kind of work is like banking or the law. Clients expect confidentiality and no one wants to give their portfolio to a woman who’s posting party photos or running with a sketchy crowd, so I live quietly and don’t put much online. But as you say, people put a lot of stock in the Sauveterre name. I realize it’s not really a detriment to be associated with it. It would shatter my ego completely, however, to have people say I only succeeded because of who I know. And to have my boss pressure me like that? I was really annoyed.”
“Did you report him to your HR?”
“There’s no point.”
“There is. Speaking as the president of a huge company, I can’t fix what I don’t know is broken. I need reports of that sort of thing so I can take action or it will keep happening.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way, only that she was leaving soon. “Fine. I will.”
“Good.”
Great. Annoying-boss issue resolved. “Can you take me home now, please?”
“I would like to have dinner with you.”
“You don’t want dinner, Henri.” That damned crack was back in her voice, betraying that she was still feeling slighted because even if he hadn’t been cheating when he’d made love to her, it had been nothing more than a casual hookup. “You want to go to bed with me.”
“I do,” he said baldly, face tightening at her tone. “Tell me you’re not interested and I’ll take you home. Be honest.”
She wanted to look away, but his intense gaze held hers, peeling back her layers of defensiveness as the streetlights flashed by. She knew she was flushing with guilty anticipation. She had managed to hate him for weeks because he had taken his girlfriend’s call after their lovemaking, but that’s not what he’d done. Her best reason for resisting him was nullified.
She jerked her head around, staring blindly at the passage of headlights and darkened shop windows.
“Ça va?”
“You could have called,” she muttered. “You’re not going to call tomorrow if I sleep with you tonight.”
“Since you’ll be with me at breakfast, there will be no need.”
She snorted at his arrogance.
“You were not planning to sleep with me that night.” Something in his quiet tone made her listen. It was as if he was reflecting fondly and it gave her a small shiver of pleasure because she was part of a memory he was recollecting warmly. “At first I thought it was your game to resist, but you really were intending to leave. You didn’t. You were carried away by a kiss and didn’t even take one of those silly gift bags on your way out. Yes, I took note of that detail,” he said as she swung a scowl at him.
As if she would have sex for a BPA-free water bottle and the latest reality star’s brand of lip gloss!
“You went away feeling ill used and I regret that,” he continued. “But I am used by women all the time. Put yourself in my shoes and imagine how singular and exciting it is for me to have met a woman who not only responds so strongly to me she lost her willpower against herself, but doesn’t want to write a damned online diary about it. Yes, I want to experience that again. You’re damned right I do.”