Page 93 of Dial F for Finance

“Not the worst thing,” he repeats. “I think I want that engraved inside my ring.”

CHAPTER 23

Jenna

Two weeks into our sixty-day trial, my husband sends me a calendar invitation titled CANFIELD / NAKAMURA IMPLEMENTATION REVIEW with a location of MY OFFICE. It’s highly irregular. Almost all of our Nakamura meetings have been held in one of Mercer Capital’s conference rooms.

There is no agenda attached. Whatever this is, it’s not for optics or cross-team politics. It’s for privacy.

I accept under protest.

By the time I take the elevator from Mercer’s lobby up to Cruz Financial on the top floor, it’s five twenty-eight. Most of the floor has emptied for the evening. Roz’s desk is abandoned, her computer dark and her chair pushed in neatly.

Dominic’s door stands open.

He’s behind his desk with his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled to his forearms, studying something on his monitor. His tie has been loosened just enough to suggest a hard day while remaining perfectly aligned, which is typical. Even his disarray is curated.

“You’re late,” he says without looking up.

“It’s five twenty-eight.”

“I started missing you at five twenty-six.”

“That sounds like a personal failure.”

His mouth curves. “Come here.”

“Is that how you address all external consultants?”

“Only the ones I married in Japan.”

I close the door behind me and cross the office, placing my laptop and the Nakamura file on the opposite side of his desk. “Is anyone else joining us for this review?”

He doesn’t answer. He just stands, the movement fluid and predatory, and rounds the mahogany acre of his desk.

Before I can offer a professional opening statement regarding the South Korea supply chain audit, his hands are on my waist.

“I said, come here.” He pulls me into the space between his knees and the desk, his touch heavy and sure, grounding me in the quiet of the high-rise evening. He wraps his big hand around my neck and tilts my head back with a thumb under my chin and kisses me—a slow, thorough greeting that has me whimpering into his mouth.

I let myself lean into him for exactly three seconds before I pull back just far enough to reclaim my breath, though my pulse is currently performing a hostile takeover of my common sense. I keep my hands flat against his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heart through the expensive cotton of his shirt.

“Dominic,” I say, my voice slightly lower than its usual boardroom register. “The invitation was very specific. The Canfield implementation. The Nakamura review. Is there an actual status update waiting for me, or is this just a logistical ploy to get your wife into a locked office after hours?”

He doesn’t look even remotely guilty. He just smiles, that slow, devastating curve of his mouth that suggests he’s already three steps ahead of whatever defense I’m trying to mount. “I’d call it an optimization of corporate resources. You were twelve floors away. I had a vision of you in this light, wearing that burgundy lipstick, and decided the quarterly projections could wait.”

“Abuse of administrative privilege,” I mutter, but I don’t move away. My thumb traces the gold band on his left hand—the twin to the one currently weighing on my own finger. “Bennett was mid-sentence when the notification popped up on my watch. He looked at the invite, looked at me, and then sighed as though he’s accepted his fate as a third wheel in his own firm.”

“Bennett will survive,” Dominic murmurs, his hands sliding lower to the small of my back, drawing me flush against him. “I, on the other hand, was suffering from a critical lack of Pemberton-related data. How was your day, Jen?”

I study him—the sharp, handsome lines of his face, the way his eyes haven’t left mine for a single second. He’s a man who deals in certainty. And I’m slowly coming to accept I’m part of that.

“My day was a sequence of manageable crises until my husband decided to commit a calendar violation,” I say, though my resolve is softening with every inch of proximity. I reach out and adjust his tie, pulling it a fraction tighter before smoothing the silk. “Now, are we going to look at the Nakamura file, or did you bring me up here to waste forty-five minutes of billable time?”

Dominic’s eyes darken, a flash of something heat-mapped and hungry moving through his expression. He leans down, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear, his breath hitching just enough to tell me exactly how much he’s been thinking about this.

“I have a much more pressing implementation to review.”

Just as his teeth close around my earlobe, the screen on the wall lights up with a call. We spring apart.