His Inspiration

by Ava Lore

  He held my gaze for a little longer than I would have liked, but after a moment he turned back to Dominic and spoke again in rapid French. Dominic smiled and laughed, left and then returned almost immediately bearing a loaf of crusty bread, olive oil and vinegar, and a smattering of herbs on a plate. With a flourish, he poured out the oil and vinegar onto the plate, somehow managing to create a pool of oil with a perfectly-formed black-vinegar heart in the middle. Malcolm shook his head, but it was indulgent.

  “Dominic claims we are destined lovers,” he said as the old man bustled off, presumably to get the rest of our meal ready.

  “You said that we might be the day after we met,” I said. “Don't you remember?”

  His eyes softened. “I do, but I said it was the red thread of fate, which ties together those who are destined to meet, not necessarily become lovers. So the red thread of fate connects us, perhaps, and even if it were to designate us as destined lovers that is not necessarily a good thing. Often lovers in Eastern mythology are tragic figures.” His eyes twinkled, as though he thought being a tragic figure would be quite a lark. “Dominic doesn't mean it that way, but he's a remarkably optimistic man.”

  I tilted my head, “And you aren't?”

  He seemed surprised that I had misread him so badly. “Me? Oh, no. I'm far more fatalistic. The Buddha himself tells us that suffering is inevitable. It must be true.”

  He was getting mystic on me again, and I was no longer in the mood for his whimsies. “I know you're not crazy,” I blurted suddenly.

  Silence fell across the table.

  Me and my stupid drunk mouth.

  His eyes hardened and he leaned back in his chair, and I suddenly realized that there was another side to him. The side I'd seen when he commanded me to submit to him. The side of him that had made him a formidable businessman and a billionaire at a relatively young age. Mastery. Dominance. Implacability.

  I gave an involuntary shiver and forced myself to not look away.

  He steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, every inch the CEO. “And how would you know that, Sadie?” he asked. “Does it have anything to do with the scars hidden beneath the ink on your skin?”

  I stiffened, inhaling sharply. The strictures of the corset restrained my ribs, and I became lightheaded. “That's none of your business,” I said. “But yes. Yes it does. Now don't change the subject.”

  He blinked, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. He hadn't expected me to admit anything. “What subject?” he said.

  “The subject where I tell you I know you aren't crazy, so why do you act the way you do?”

  He tilted his head. “And what way is that?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You know exactly what I mean. Skipping the country with a woman you barely know and buying her thousands of dollars worth of clothes.” God, tens of thousands, probably. The thought made me slightly sick to my stomach. Eschewing decorum, I nibbled on a piece of bread to settle my stomach before continuing. “Declaring yourself to be a tortured artistic genius. Singing with homeless men on the subway and then giving away a thousand dollars just because. Spouting off religious aphorisms in every day conversation. You know. That sort of thing.”

  He was silent for a moment, and we stared at each other as Dominic emerged from the kitchen with our first course, a delicate display of fresh mussels with a drizzle of cream sauce. The bread had settled my stomach and it smelled heavenly, but I didn't want to be the first to look away. Dominic, clearly sensing something had gone awry with his fated lovers, faded back into the kitchen.

  Finally Malcolm picked up his fork and deftly pried a mussel from its shell. “Who was that on the phone, Sadie?” he asked me. He didn't exactly sound like a disapproving father from a sixties sitcom, but it was close.

  “Why?” I demanded. “What does it matter?”

  “Because the moment you came out of the bathroom after speaking to them, you acted differently. Whoever it was told you something about me, or warned you against getting involved with me, or something else to that effect, and I would like to know what it was, and who told you such things.”

  I pressed my lips into a line. He didn't have a right to know. But then again, I didn't have a right to interrogate his personal secretary.

  And I really liked Malcolm Ward. He was weird, but he wasn't trying to be. He was just a guy who had removed his social filter and decided to do whatever the fuck came into his head. The only reason he wasn't singing on the subway as a homeless person himself was because he was so goddamn rich. Why he'd decided to do that was the question.

  Surely it didn't have something to do with the fact that he was being investigated by the FBI, could it?

  It was all the wine, I swear. And I guess some of it was my own bad judgment, but mostly it was the wine.

  “Your secretary called me,” I confessed at last. “Don Cardall, or whatever.”

  That surprised him. His eyebrows nearly shot into his hairline. “Don called you? How did he know your number?”

  Now I had to look away, worrying my lower lip with my teeth. “He sort of called you on your cell phone about a thousand times while you were asleep and I answered, thinking it might be important.”

  I sneaked a glance at him from the corner of my eye, and was relieved to see he looked more puzzled than anything. I'd expected him to be angry. I pressed on. “I asked him what he wanted, and he said he needed to talk to you. I tried to wake you up, but you were passed out. Like, drugged passed out.”

  “Mm,” he said. “I do sleep fairly heavily. And I haven't been sleeping much in the past few weeks.”

  Few weeks? So not just since he'd met me. Interesting. “Anyway, he was really rude to me, so I was rude back, and by the time you woke up I'd had too much wine and watched too much Croatian television to remember that he wanted you to call him back. So he got my number from somewhere and called me to yell at me for not informing you that he'd called.” I thought for a moment. “And now that I say it out loud, it's all very high school. I also told him I'd accidentally drop your phone in the toilet if he wasn't nicer to me.”

  “He was rude to you?” Malcolm asked.

  “God, yes. Swearing and everything. And he called me a gold-digger.” That last part came out without my consent. Wine. Seriously. I'll never drink wine again, I vowed. I was absolute shit at keeping things under wraps when drunk. In the hopes of delaying any further embarrassment or confessions, I set about attacking my mussels, which is hard to do when expensive wine has given you the fine motor skills of a penguin on crack.

  “Ah, yes, he's under a lot of pressure,” Malcolm said. He seemed to relax and leaned forward again, deftly plucking another mussel from its shell before extending it across the table and feeding it to me. I accepted it gratefully. Honestly, who in their right mind serves mussels to a lady wearing designer clothes?

  The answer was, Someone who knows his mussels are so goddamn good you'd sacrifice a finger to have another one. The morsel melted in my mouth, sharp and sweet and salty, a perfectly cooked piece of shellfish. I couldn't help but moan with pleasure. For a moment, Don was forgotten as Malcolm helped me eat my portion of the appetizer, and it was only when I was done and leaning back, feeling more content that I had any right to be that I brought the subject back up again. “Anyway. Don was really rude. You should fire him.”

  “Oh, I can't fire him,” Malcolm said. “He's just feeling a bit stressed out at the moment.” He appeared to think about this as he chewed and swallowed the last mussel. “I don't blame him, really. I defied his expectations by leaving the country with you.”

  I blinked. “You did? I mean, I asked him why he didn't know where you were, and he said—”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “What, where we were? No.”

  Malcolm relaxed further. “Good. Go on.”

  Dominic came and removed our plates before returning with another course, this time a shellfish bisque. I waited until he had retreated before continuing. “W
ell, he said that you hadn't told him, but that it was really important that you come back to New York.”

  Malcolm spooned soup into his mouth. “Did he say why?”

  I looked down at my soup, embarrassed. “Yeah. I asked him, and he said you were wanted for questioning by the FBI, and that you needed to come back to New York before you got arrested.”

  To my surprise, Malcolm nodded. “Yes, that does put a bit of a kink in his plans.”

  I lifted my gaze and studied him in astonishment. “Wait a second,” I said. “You actually are wanted by the FBI for questioning?”

  He nodded. “No doubt my sudden flight forced their hand. I bet it will be all over the news soon.”

  That Don hadn't been lying to me was almost as astonishing as the fact that Malcolm seemed completely unperturbed by his status as motherfucking wanted by the FBI.

  I mean, let's be real here. That is some serious shit.

  “What did you do?” I demanded. My brain began to replay scenes from Silence of the Lambs and suddenly I realized that Malcolm was just so Hannibal Lecter, why hadn't I seen it, I was going to end up served with fava beans, oh god—

  “Oh, I haven't done anything,” Malcolm said, cutting off my paranoid fantasies. “Don is framing me for massive embezzlement of my company.”

  I stared at him some more. “What?” I said.

  Malcolm smiled. “He doesn't know I know, nor that I have proof that it is he who is doing the embezzlement. The FBI's been watching me for some time, and he's been their mole.”

  “What?” I said again.

  “Isn't it delicious?” he asked. “It's the most interesting thing to happen to me in years.” Then his eyes focused on me, and he smiled again. “Except for you.”

  I have to admit, I was not assimilating this information very well. “So wait,” I said. “You're being watched by the FBI, because they suspect you of embezzlement and fraud, and your secretary is ratting you out to them, except he's actually the one embezzling and defrauding the company, and you know this and have proof?”

  He nodded. He took another serene sip of soup.

  I put my hands to my forehead. “Are you... do you act crazy in public just to screw with the FBI? To place doubt in people's minds about your sanity?”

  “Oh no,” Malcolm said. “Not at all. Don was simply one of the closest people to me in my life. He was like a brother to me. After I found out he was betraying me, I just... didn't care any more. It didn't seem to matter much what I did. And I wasn't having any fun being the staid and stately CEO, so I decided to... not be.” He shrugged. “I've had far more fun these past few months than I ever had in my entire life, Sadie. It's definitely been worth it to go crazy. Crazy suits me.”

  None of this was making sense to me. “But... but if you have proof that it's been Don doing the embezzling, then why don't you just show it to the FBI? That would make the problem go away.”

  An expression of pure shock passed over his features. He was beautiful shocked. “I couldn't do that,” he said, and he sounded scandalized. “I told you. Don was like a brother to me. You don't just turn your brother over to the feds.”

  “But... but he's the one turning you over!” I almost shouted.

  He nodded as though he had no idea to what I was objecting. “But I couldn't do the same to my brother. We were very close. Very close, a long time ago...” He trailed off and a faraway look passed over his eyes, like a cloud over the moon.

  The betrayal cut him deeply. Far more deeply than just a friend or a business rival screwing you over. This was personal. On Malcolm's side, at least.

  My heart went out to him. “So that's it?” I asked, my voice softening. For want of something to do, I picked up my spoon and scooped up a spoonful of bisque and held it in front of me, letting it cool.“You were just going to let your best friend, the best friend you say is like a brother to you, steal money from your company and then frame you for it and send you off to federal prison?”

  Malcolm shrugged. “No, I never have any intentions of going to prison,” he assured me. “That will not happen.”

  I frowned, so confused at this point I didn't know which way was up and which way was down.“Then what did you plan to do instead? You know, before the FBI decided to arrest and charge you for a crime you didn't commit?”

  Malcolm smiled at me, and it was a sad thing. “Oh, that was easy,” he said. “I'd planned to kill myself.”

  * * *

  To be continued in His Obsession (The Billionaire's Muse, #4)!

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  About the Author

  Ava Lore was raised by wombats and lives to corrupt the innocent. When she's not writing erotic romance, she spends her time thinking about writing erotic romance and drinking enough iced coffee to kill a musk ox.

  Discover more titles by Ava Lore at AllRomanceeBooks.com.

  You can email Ava Lore at authoravalore@gmail.com or catch up with her at authoravalore.com. She yearns for your approval and always loves to hear from fans. Want more BBW? More Billionaires? More aliens? More menage? Something entirely different? Let her know!

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