Page 38 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

I say something nasty under my breath, and Callum ignores it. “Stay home.”

Yeah, because I just live to obey him.

Jackass.

❦ ❦ ❦

The Vance Dynamics lobby is four stories of glass with a water feature in it, and I have never in my life wanted more to be wearing a different coat. Everybody here is dressed to match the building. The woman on reception has a blowout that somebody is probably paid to maintain. Two women crossing the atrium are in heels I couldn’t stand up in, let alone walk in. Nothing on this floor has ever been worn twice in a week. I’m in jeans, my good sweater, and boots that have been resoled once. None of that bothered me until about eleven seconds ago.

I tuck my hands into my armpits and make myself smaller. This is new. I’ve worn thrift-store coats into national auditions and told myself the panel was watching my feet. It never bothered me once. Today the marble is very shiny, my boots make no sound on it at all, and I’d like to go home.

“Should I wait in the lobby for you two?”

Callum stops at the elevator. “You want to wait in the lobby for the whole day?”

“I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Come sit in my office with Luca.”

Nineteen floors, and the doors open onto a floor quiet enough that the vents are the loudest thing on it. Every head we pass comes up. I can hear the whispers, the quiet laughs, the lingering looks on my outfit. I am the most underdressed person here, and I couldn’t be more mortified.

The desk outside his office is bigger than my kitchen table, and the woman behind it is on her feet before we reach it. She’s about my age and beautiful with perfectly styled hair, a bright red silk blouse, and a black pencil skirt that shows off her stunning figure. She looks at me for exactly as long as it takes to price the sweater, then smiles at Callum with her perfect teeth.

“Your nine o’clock is in the conference room, Mr. Vance.”

“Thank you, Camille.”

He opens the door and holds it. The office on the other side is a corner with glass on two sides and the whole city underneath, and there’s a desk in the middle of it with a closed laptop and a phone on it. Two chairs face the desk. A low couch sits against the only solid wall. There are no photographs anywhere, no plants, nothing hung up, not one object in this room that says a person spends eleven hours a day in it.

“Come, Luca.” Callum lays his coat over the back of a chair. “Ariela, wait in here.”

Luca checks my face, gets a thumbs up, then goes off after his father with his shoulders squared. The door shuts behind the two of them.

It opens again a minute later without a knock. Camille comes in with a folder she could have left on her own desk, sets it down on the corner of his, and takes her time squaring it against the edge.

“Can I get you anything?” She asks it with her eyes on the folder. “Water. Coffee.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

“There’s a seating area downstairs, if you’d be more comfortable.” She moves the folder half an inch. “It’s a long morning to sit through up here.”

“I’ll manage.”

She looks at me then, and although her expression is steady, her eyes betray what she thinks of me. “Of course.”

I manage to sit still for an hour and play with my phone. After a while, I try to practice some dance steps, but I’m feeling too cooped up. So I go for a walk instead, deciding to find a coffee machine.

I end up finding one, but it’s a black slab with no buttons on it. There’s a panel where buttons ought to be. When I touch it, the panel lights up and asks for a thumbprint. I stand in front of it a while, going back through the decisions that put me here.

Three women are at the nearest desks, Callum’s secretary among them, and I bite the bullet. “Sorry, could I get a coffee? I can’t work the machine.”

“Of course.”

All three of them come over. Camille puts her thumb on the panel, and the machine wakes up under it. The other two arrange themselves on either side of me while it runs, near enough that I have to turn my shoulders to keep both of them in view.

None of them speak to me, and the silence is awkward. Camille lifts the cup out of the machine and holds it out to me in both hands. I’m about to take it when she suddenly smirks and turns her wrists over.

The coffee goes down my front, and it’s hot enough that I let out a pained cry. Quickly I use two fingers to pull the sweater away from my skin.