“I’m sorry. I’m juggling two jobs today. If you don’t mind—” She turned away and gestured. “The Chamber of Doom will begin over here.” With quick steps, she put distance between them.
He didn’t want to talk about the damned gala. He wanted to grab her, to shake Ms. Grayson loose. To kiss Lexie.
“Did Bradley give you the set of plans I left yesterday?” she asked.
Bradley. His friend’s face rose before him, filled with concern. She knows more about Legend Quest than anyone outside this organization. Nonsense. Lexie couldn’t be the inside source.
But Bradley had warned him once before, with Celia. Dominic had ignored him, had let the matter drift too long, not wanting to believe his lover could be his betrayer.
And then it had been too late. Poseidon had been damaged, and Dominic had had to fight his way back to save the people who trusted him from losing their jobs.
He thought about Bob Carlyle the security guard, about Mrs. Murray, about Wally the janitor.
He thought about how he’d never suspected Ariana’s mother until she and her lawyer boyfriend had swindled him out of his inheritance. For the sake of the father he had loved, he’d trusted a woman he should have watched.
No matter how sound his judgment was in business, how skilled his instincts, his track record with matters of the heart was deeply flawed. He couldn’t afford to be wrong again.
So he simply followed Lexie and resigned himself. “Yes, I read the plans. Show me where the chamber will be.”
Dominic walked up the auditorium steps, wishing he were anywhere but at the Starlight Ball tonight, no matter how important the charity. He’d already paid his money and agreed to escort a date who was only a business contact. He felt anything but sociable.
But even so, the surroundings made him take notice. The entrance fed into a tunnel of sorts, a glistening blue-black swirl with enough lighting at floor level to see one’s steps, but otherwise giving the sense that one had entered some sort of almost-liquid night. Soft, ethereal music cast an other-worldly spell on the journey. The tunnel curved, and at the end, the faint glow of light beckoned.
“Who did this?” his date murmured. “This benefit has never been done with such imagination.”
Dominic remembered Lexie’s eagerness to leave to finish another job. He remembered a dome ceiling filled with clouds and tiny stars.
Then they reached the end, where darkness led them into an explosion of starlight.
And he smiled. He’d bet money this was Lexie’s work.
The woman beside him gasped. “This is stunning.”
It was. The design work was fantastic. Looking at preliminary drawings or pictures of her finished work hadn’t done any of it justice.
The Starlight Ball was being held in a star field. Except for the earth beneath their feet, they could have been floating in space, surrounded by a silken net of deepest ink-blue, punctuated by the icy white of millions of stars.
“Incredible.” His date shook her head. “Whoever designed this is a genius.” She looked up at Dominic. “He should be doing your gala.”
She is, Dominic wanted to say. And she is incredible. He glanced around, wondering if she were still here.
“Dominic, I’ll be right back. I need to speak to that man over there about a deal we’re doing.”
He was only too happy to oblige. “You go ahead. I will get us drinks.”
He headed for one of the bars dotting the room and smiled as he neared. Each bar was an asteroid, seeming to float above the floor.
Lexie was amazing. She had a gift for whimsy, for seeing things others missed. He’d been wondering again if he’d made a mistake, insisting on keeping her on the Poseidon gala, but tonight answered that question for once and for all. His desire to keep her near, given Bradley’s suspicions, might be less than logical, but there was no question that she could do the work they needed. Legend Quest needed her, even if Dominic Santorini couldn’t afford to.
He turned, drinks in hand, and headed back, stopping several times to greet fellow executives, trying to not obviously scan the room, but wondering if Lexie was here. Trying to not wish she were.
And then he saw her.
Lexie was still out of breath after a near fall from a ladder while rescuing a cluster of stars that had come unhinged. Climbing a ladder in heels wasn’t the smartest move she’d ever made, but it was her design, after all. She didn’t want to be out front, anyway. Behind the scenes was fine with her, but as the charity’s executive director had pointed out, she could make valuable contacts here by mingling.
She hated mingling. Not with ordinary people, of course. She loved that. But these weren’t ordinary people, these were fat cats who could afford ten-thousand-dollar-a-person tickets. None of these people drove old pickups or lived in geodesic domes. Little old Lexie Grayson, who’d never had two pennies to rub together much less two nickels, was out of her league.
She squeezed her hands into quick fists, then forced herself to shake off the nerves and suck in a deep breath. Then she slipped between the panels of the draping and entered a world where she didn’t belong.
And she couldn’t help smiling.
It really did look pretty terrific, if she said so herself.
“You did a stunning job.” The deep voice of her dreams spoke.
Lexie whirled and brushed one of the glasses Dominic held in his hand.
“I am sorry. I frightened you.” He held out one glass. “You look out of breath.”
She ran one hand through her short hair, the nerves she’d battled off returning and bringing reinforcements. “I—I just got off a ladder,” she babbled. “A cluster of stars was in the wrong place.”
One dark eyebrow rose. He glanced upward. “One cluster? You could tell that?”
“The creator of any heaven should know where all her stars are at any given time.”
That slashing pirate’s grin sent her pulse skipping. “A good caretaker as well as a gifted creator, I see.” He lifted his glass and gently clinked it to hers. “If I had doubts about the fate of Legend Quest in your hands, tonight would dispense with them. To A. Grayson, designer extraordinaire.”
He took a sip, but she didn’t. “Have you had doubts?”
Shadows returned to his midnight eyes, and she was sorry she’d asked. “Never mind.” She glanced around them, desperate for a distraction. “Where is your date?”
The eyebrow rose again. “You are so certain I have one?”
“I might not have known you at first, but I’ve done some reading since then. There are pictures of you everywhere, if only I’d ever taken the time to read the papers or magazines. And you’re usually accompanied by some gorgeous, sophisticated woman.”
“If you had known who I was, would you have stopped to help, Lexie?”
She didn’t want to have this discussion. Remembering that night edged too closely to things she couldn’t bear to consider, questions she didn’t dare ask. Her dearest friend was now faced with the impossible task of tackling Goliath, when he didn’t even have David’s slingshot. The man who stood in front of her was Goliath, not Nikos. She had to keep that in mind.
Dominic studied her. Clad in a slender drape of deep purple from neck to toes, a dainty gold chain circling her hips, she was a knockout. Too easily, he could remember the skin beneath that gown, feel her breasts in his hands, feel the heat of her around him. She was a breathtaking mystery, a woman of many faces.
He pushed at her silence. He had to know. “Will we ever discuss that night?”
Haunted green eyes looked up at him, terror and guilt mingling, and he realized he would never be ready to know that it had all been a ruse, that she had felt nothing of what he had.
“It was a mistake,” she whispered. “I can’t—I don’t want to talk about it.” Her gaze pleaded with him. “Let’s just forget it, Nikos—Mr. Santorini. I’m your employee, and I have a very big job to complete in a very short time. I need to focus my full at
tention to do justice to your gala, to give Legend Quest the launch you want.”
“Lexie—” He moved a step closer, needing to pull her close, to taste her again, to remind her of magic so explosive that she couldn’t possibly believe he’d ever forget it.
Then tears spilled over her lashes, stopping him in his tracks. “Lexie, I—”
“Please,” she whispered. “Please—I have to go.” She thrust her wineglass in his hand and escaped, quickly lost in the crowd.
Dominic shoved the glasses at a passing waiter and prepared to charge into the crowd after her, ready to throw bodies aside to get to her, to make her listen, to make her see—
What? the voice inside him queried. What is it that she needs to see? That you have a company in trouble, a sister in need, an old enemy who’s jeopardizing them both?
She’d said, I need to focus. On more than the gala? On her efforts to dig out information? To help his enemy hurt him?
No. The man who’d been in her magic kingdom cried out that the Lexie he’d made love to could do no such thing.
But the man who had a company to save shook his head, cleared his eyes of the fog of desire, of longing too strong to trust. He’d seen the nerves, felt her unease. He couldn’t dispel the sense that there was something going on with her, something more than this job, more than that night.
It would be irresponsible to ignore that simply because every cell in his body ached for a woman who might not exist.
He needed to focus, too. Every moment around her, his concentration suffered, yet she drew him like a moth to flame.
Somehow he had to resolve this without taking a foolish risk. He had to be sure that his desire to believe her to be the tomboy he wanted back so desperately wasn’t overruling his instincts, his vaunted logic.
Dominic Santorini had taken a lot of risks in his life, but never had he wanted to take one more than now. This was not his risk alone, however, so he would have to approach it with caution. He needed to get to know Lexie better, needed to peer inside her many faces.
He would invite her to the company picnic day after tomorrow. He would watch her closely, observe her interactions with his staff, see if there was a single slip, a sign that she knew anyone too well.
And if inviting her meant that he might also spend more time with her himself, give them a chance to become more at ease around one another—
He would not complain.
Chapter Six
Lexie glanced again at the map Mrs. Murray had given her when she’d conveyed Dominic’s invitation to the company picnic. Mrs. Murray had made it clear that attendance was not considered optional, however.
Command performance was more like it.
She didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to see him again—no, correction. She wanted to see Nikos, wanted to find her way back to that night. It was Dominic Santorini she didn’t want to see. He was too big, too powerful, too rich, too…there. So strong a presence that all the air in the room vanished when he was near.
And he confused her. She shouldn’t have felt the shivers from the mere brush of fingers when he’d handed her the wineglass. She should be able to keep it straight in her head that he’d stolen Max’s work. All right, maybe he hadn’t stolen it himself, but if she’d learned one thing from spending time at Poseidon, it was that there was nothing too small to escape Dominic’s attention. Everyone from the janitor up could detail personal encounters they’d had with the man at the top—and not just him giving orders.
The sense of teamwork at Poseidon was remarkable—everyone at whatever level had a sense of shared mission, had a stake in the company’s success. He’d set up a child-care center that was both warm and stimulating, had even created an adult day care for those with aging parents. Both were right on the premises, along with a state-of-the-art fitness center and a cafeteria with food as good as anything she’d ever had.
So somehow he knew—had to know—about Max’s software. Yet his manner with her did not smack of guilt.
And now he wanted to discuss that night?
Lexie shook her head violently. She would never be ready to have that discussion. She’d lived down to her mother’s worst expectations, thrown caution to the winds—and she’d paid.
Now all that could be done was to pick up the pieces and learn from her mistakes, to go on with as much grace as possible given that Dominic Santorini had seen her lose her mind in his arms.
Lexie looked up too late to catch her turn. Shaking her head, she glanced around for a place to turn.
Please…let there be about a million people here so I can hide and not see him.
Where was she?
“You okay?” Bradley asked.
“Why do you ask?” Dominic continued to scan the resort he’d leased for the day. Sand for beach volleyball, tennis and basketball courts, a small carnival for the children. Horseback riding, croquet, big clumps of shade trees to escape the heat. A dance floor for later.
“You seem preoccupied.”
“We do not have ample reason for concern?”
Bradley’s jaw hardened. “Of course we do. But you’re prowling like a caged beast. Is it Ariana?”
“I wish I could have convinced her to come. She needs to get out more.” Dominic turned to his friend. “How was your dinner?”
A muscle in Bradley’s cheek ticked. “It was fine.”
Dominic remembered that she’d come home early. “Give her time.” His own jaw tightened. “That bastard. I will pay him back for what he did. She is a shadow of who she was.” His gaze narrowed. “But she will come back, if it is the last thing I accomplish. Lexie made her laugh. It was so good to hear.”
“She’s very fond of Lexie. Perhaps too fond.” The edge in Bradley’s voice sliced into Dominic’s conscience.
“We do not know that Lexie is involved with Kassaros. The people I have searching for him have found no trace of a connection.” Dominic felt Bradley’s gaze on him.
“Do I detect a softening? Have Ms. Grayson’s very fine legs obscured your instincts?”
“Do not speak of her like that,” Dominic snapped. He met his friend’s blue eyes, then glanced away, frowning.
“Dominic…” A note of warning.
He closed his eyes for a second, wondering himself why he couldn’t see her clearly. Why his vaunted instincts had gone on holiday. He settled for the easier explanation. “I want my sister to live again, to be free. Lexie is the first person to break through to her.” He turned toward Bradley. “So it’s complicated.”
“No, Dominic. It’s very simple. The company is in trouble. Lexie Grayson is the wild card, the woman whose involvement with the company neatly coincided with the first stirrings of trouble. The woman who’s made a big fan of young Josh, our genius designer, in case you’d forgotten.”
“Enough, Bradley. It is my company, in case you’d forgotten. Poseidon is my blood and bone. I will not risk it or the welfare of its people. I will checkmate Kassaros, but to do that, the launch is critical. The gala is critical. Lexie is crucial to all of that. I am balancing all of it to the best of my ability.” He glared, knowing as he did it that Bradley’s arrows had hit their mark. “I will manage it. I always have.”
His friend’s blue eyes turned cool. He nodded. “And so you have. Just don’t let that woman take up too much of your attention.” He nodded across the way.
Dominic’s head swiveled and he followed Bradley’s nod.
There. At last. She’d come, after all.
Mrs. Murray walked over to greet her and the two began to chat as if they were old friends. Bob the security guard walked up to say hello, hand outstretched. Instead, she gave him a quick hug, and Bob beamed with pleasure.
It was the Lexie who would stop to help a stranger. Despite every assurance Dominic had just given his friend, something inside him shifted, opened. Leaned toward the beacon of her presence.
He gave a shrug he didn’t feel, for Bradley’s sake. Maybe for his own. “Keep an eye o
n her. I will do the same.”
“Hey, B.D.,” Bob said past her shoulder.
Lexie stiffened and tried not to turn to look. She knew that Dominic’s employees teasingly called him “The Big Dog” or “B.D.” for short.
“Hello, Bob. Having fun?” the deep voice answered, sending shivers down her spine.
“Oh, yeah. You sure know how to throw a party. I was just trying to convince Lexie here to try a game of horseshoes with me.”
Lexie seized on the excuse. “That’s great—let’s go.” She grabbed Bob’s arm, ready to race away.
“Want to come along?” Bob asked him.
Say no. Please say no.
“Perhaps I will. I would like to see how Ms. Grayson handles herself.” Amusement threaded through that usually very serious voice. “Do you mind?”
She knew it was addressed to her and looked up at him for the first time.
There ought to be a law against the way Dominic Santorini looked in a pair of shorts. Long, tanned, muscular legs. Trim waist, broad shoulders filling a white polo shirt that emphasized his olive skin, his dark, magnetic good looks.
A little short of breath, she summoned up every ounce of grit she possessed. “I’ve never played before. You might get bored.”
Dark eyes held hers in thrall. “I can’t imagine anything about you ever being boring, Ms. Grayson.”
She hated that Ms. Grayson spoken in the slightly accented, deep voice that had the power to make her tremble as memory swept over her. That voice. Those lips…and the things they could do to her…
“Lexie?” Bob spoke up.
She started, having utterly forgotten Bob. Forcing herself back to the moment, she summoned a bright smile, tucking her hand in his elbow. “Right here—and ready if you are.”
The older man brightened, the lines of loneliness in his face vanishing. He patted her hand on his arm. “I’ll go easy on you.” He looked back at Dominic and winked.
“Not on your life, my friend. If I can’t win honestly, I’d rather go down in flames.”
“A commendable attitude,” Dominic said, but there was something odd in his voice.
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