Matched to a Billionaire(27)
Leo kissed her and it was long and thorough. This was the man who'd held her in his sleep. The man who'd whispered her name with gut-wrenching openness. As she'd known beyond a shadow of a doubt, this joining of bodies spoke volumes beyond the scope of mere words. And it said Leo had far more going on beneath the surface than he dared let on.
As she cradled her husband's beautiful body and stared into the depths of his hot-with-passion blue eyes, something blossomed inside. Something huge and reckless, and she tamped it down with no small effort. But it rose up again, laced with images of Leo's child growing in her womb. She imagined the tenderness of his gaze as he looked down on their newborn child and the back of her throat heated.
Suddenly, the fear of Leo tiring of her romantic foolishness wasn't her only problem anymore.
She'd traded it for the painful, diametrically opposite problem of what was going to happen if she fell in love with him and doomed herself to a lifetime of marriage to a man who would forever keep his kind heart buried beneath a workaholic shell.
* * *
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Leo blinked and glanced up. Dax tapped his pen a few more times, his face expressionless as he nodded to the laptop screen filled with verbiage regarding the proposed joint venture to finance a start-up company called Mastermind Media.
"Clause two?" Dax prompted and lowered a brow. "They agreed to extend the deadline to midnight. We don't have long. You were supposed to be telling me why you don't like it."
I don't like it because it's standing between me and a bed with my wife in it.
Theoretically, that applied to the entire proposal he and Dax had been tearing apart since four-thirty with only a short break for General Tso's chicken in bad sauce from Jade Dragon.
Leo stole a peek at his watch. Nine o'clock on a Friday night.
If he left the office now, he could be home in twenty minutes. Sixteen if he ignored the speed limit. He might even text Daniella as he drove to let her know he'd be there soon. Maybe she'd greet him wearing nothing but the diamonds he'd given her.
What started as a simple thank-you gift had somehow transformed into something else. Hell if he knew what. He hadn't intended to make love to her again. At least not this soon, not while he was still struggling to maintain some semblance of control around her.
But one minute Daniella was threading the diamonds through her ears, and the next...
The memory of last night and his sexy wife invaded his mind. Again. The way she'd been doing all day.
"The clause is fine." No. It wasn't. Leo shook his head and tried to focus. "It will be fine. With a minor tweak to the marketing expectations."
More tapping. Then Dax tossed down his pen with a sense of finality.
"Leo." Dax shrank down in the high-backed chair and laced his hands over one knee, contemplating the ebony conference table. Lines appeared across his forehead. "I'm starting to get the impression you don't think we should do this deal."
"What?" Leo flinched. No more daydreaming. What was wrong with him? "I've put in sixty hours on this. It's a solid proposal."
"Then what's up?" His friend eyed him, concern evident in his expression. "We've been looking at Mastermind Media for months. If you're worried about you and me doing business together, you should have spoken up long before now."
Hesitating, Leo rolled his neck. They'd known each other more than fifteen years-since college. Dax was the one person who'd call him on it if Leo zoned out. "That's not it."
"Is the financing sticky?" Dax frowned, wrinkling his pretty-boy face. "You're not using your own money on this because of our relationship, are you?"
"Of course not." Venture capital relied on other people's money. Leo never risked anything he didn't have to.
"I've run out of teeth to pull. Spill. Or I'm walking."
Walking. As in, he'd purposefully let the deal expire because Leo wanted to go home and sleep with his wife. He sighed. Apparently losing John Hu hadn't been enough of a wake-up call.
"I'm distracted. Sorry. It's not the proposal. Something else."
Something that needed to stop. Leo's will was ironclad and had been since he was seventeen. How had Daniella destroyed it so easily?
Dax smirked. "I should have known. You've been different since you married that woman."
He wasn't the slightest bit different. Was he?
"Watch your tone."
Friendship or not, Dax had no call to refer to Daniella as "that woman," as if Leo had hooked up with a chain-smoker in a tube top, straight from the trailer park. He'd deliberately chosen a classy, elegant woman. Not one who mirrored his childhood neighbors in the near ghetto.
Throwing up his hands dramatically, Dax flipped his gaze heavenward. "It begins. We've been through a lot of women together, my friend. What's so special about this one?"
The answer should be nothing. But it wasn't.
"I married her."
And now he was lying to his best friend. Not only was that just part of the answer, it was the tip of the iceberg. He couldn't stop thinking about her. About how beautifully she'd handled the party. Her laugh. The way she took care of things, especially him, with some kind of extrasensory perception.
When he was inside her, his world shifted. He'd never realized his world could be shifted. Or that he'd like its new tilt so much. That he'd willingly slide down Daniella's slippery incline.
Snorting, Dax glanced at the laptop screen positioned between their chairs and tapped on the keyboard. "So? It's not like you have feelings for her. She's a means to an end."
A vehement protest almost left his mouth unchecked. But Dax was right. Why would he protest? Daniella was a means to an end, like Leo had told him. It just sounded so cold from his friend's perspective. "Feelings aside, she's my wife. Not a casual date. It's important for her to be happy."
"Why? Because she might leave you? Think again. Gold diggers don't bite the hand that feeds them."
Quick-burning anger sliced through Leo's gut. "She's not a gold digger. Our marriage is beneficial to us both. You know that. Surely you don't believe it's acceptable for me to treat my wife like a dog and expect her to put up with it because I have money."
Dax quirked one eyebrow. "Like I said. This one is special."
Leo rolled his eyes. Dax saw meaning where there was none. Except they knew each other well. The Chinese food churned through Leo's stomach greasily. Or maybe that was a smear of guilt.
His track record with women spoke for itself-he wouldn't win any awards for tenderness, attentiveness or commitment. And maybe he did buy expensive presents to apologize for all of the above.
"Let's have this conversation again when you get married."
"Ha. That's a good one. There's no when in that statement. There's hardly an if. Women are good for one thing." Dax flashed his teeth. "They give you a reason to drink."
Perfect subject-change material. "Things not going well with Jenna?"
Too bad. Dax obviously needed someone in his life who could knock down all his commitment and trust issues. Jenna wasn't the right woman for that anyway.
"What are you talking about? She's great. The sex is fantastic." Waggling his brows, Dax leaned back in his chair. "Well, you know."
Leo's already unsettled stomach turned inside out at Dax's smarmy reference to the fact that she'd been Leo's lover first. Had Leo always treated women so casually, blowing it off as a necessary evil of success?
No. Not always. Daniella was special, but not the way Dax implied. Leo had treated her differently from the beginning, demonstrating a healthy respect for the institution of marriage. That's all. He was making an iceberg out of an ice cube.
Dax sat up to type out a few more corrections to the proposal. "Judging by the way you couldn't keep your eyes off Daniella at the party the other night, she must be a wildcat. Let me know if you get tired of her."
The chair's wheels squealed as Leo launched to his feet. Staring down at Dax, he crossed his arms so he didn't punch his oldest friend. "I strongly suggest you close your trap before I do it for you."