Page 5 of Sweet (Chicago Underground 7)
He grinned, the tilt of his lips somehow boyish on his lined face. “So I’m pretending now. You’ve gone from shy to aggressive in the blink of an eye, but I’m the one being disingenuous?”
Point taken. I scoffed anyway. “I’m not shy.”
“I don’t think so,” he agreed in a musing tone. “But you sure do a good impression.”
“Oh, I see. You think you know me.” Just like my brother thought he had me figured out. She’s frightened. She’s fragile. Let’s cover her in plaster and set her on the mantel beside the other unfeeling artwork.
Drew shook his head slowly, his expression thoughtful. “Probably not.”
He leaned forward, closer than I was expecting until I had to restrain myself from jerking back—or latching on to him. His heat caressed my cheek, his breath brushed against my neck. We touched nowhere at all, but I felt him on every taut nerve of my skin.
“But I want to know you,” he murmured.
“Then why?” I closed my eyes, adrift in his nearness. “Why haven’t you done anything?”
“I don’t make a habit of harassing women in their homes, especially when…”
My indignation rose. “Especially when their brother is paying you enough money to keep your hands to yourself.”
His voice was softer when he said, “When I’m not sure she would welcome it.”
My retort caught in my throat. Would I have welcomed him? Not at first, certainly. He would have been just like every other man who wanted to sneak behind Philip’s back, too stupid to know what was good for him.
Maybe I had needed this, his restraint like an incubator for my burgeoning lust. Like he said, I’d gone from shy to aggressive, only it hadn’t happened in a second, it had been minutes, days, years of waiting for a moment when it would be safe to reach out.
“So you do want me,” I said, and despite my assertiveness earlier, it came out uncertain.
He regarded me for a moment, impassive.
Finally he said, “You would run from me screaming if you knew all the ways I want you.”
Shock raced down my spine, followed by a wave of pure lust. Part of me wanted just that—to know everything, to feel him everywhere until I was so wrapped up that I never suffered the chill of loneliness again. The other part of me was exactly as naive as his slightly amused expression proclaimed me to be.
Philip strolled back into the room, tossing his phone on the desk.
“Jesus,” he said. “Does no one have any fucking loyalty anymore?”
My stomach flipped over. Could he see the tension between us? Of course he could. Drew was a daunting cloud of wicked intent, and I was a puddle at his feet. I raised my eyes.
“Maybe you should go,” Drew murmured.
“Yes,” Philip agreed absently, thumbing through a stack of papers on the side table. “I’m sorry, Rose, but it looks like it will be a long night. Don’t wait up for me for dinner.”
Philip hadn’t been talking about us, I realized. How he was blind to the situation, I had no idea, but I would take the reprieve with both hands. From my brother and his anger. From Drew and the unknown things he inspired me to do.
Just like he’d said I would, I fled the room—and ran from him.
Ran upstairs to where my familiar ballerina slippers hung on my bed. A grown-up size but a childish comfort. Once upon a time, my only comfort.
The classes at the YMCA had been guises to keep us off the streets, the teachers merely minimum-wage babysitters. Ms. Anastasia thought she was the lost Russian princess, despite the fact that the ages never lined up. But she had been classically trained in her country, and she was willing to teach me in her off hours. Each night my thighs were bruised yellow and black from her whipcord pointer as she corrected my posture, but damn, I learned. In that dimly lit gymnasium with the basketball hoop with no net, I got a dance education upper-crust families paid thousands for.
Teaching ballet was more than a retirement plan for my career with the company. It was paying back a debt. Paying it forward. That mattered more than a possible fling with my brother’s lawyer. Even if that fling felt like everything when I was near him.
Chapter Three
True to his word, my brother kept Drew shut in the office late into the night. I walked by the closed study doors on the way to steal a bowl of oatmeal for dinner. The window in my room overlooked the garage and courtyard, so I could see Drew’s car and keep tabs on him that way.
I pulled the plush armchair to the window and read up on the different types of business structures. Sole proprietor, S-Corp, C-Corp.
