Secrets In The Boardroom: A Perfect Husband / The Boss's Secret Mistress / Between the CEO's Sheets

He braked for a set of lights. “Lucas would probably be relieved if you didn’t show.”

The words were ruthless, but he had gotten used to seeing Lilah calm and businesslike, with all her ducks in a row. For two years it had been a quality that had irritated him profoundly. Incomprehensibly, he now found himself looking for ways to get her back to her normal, ultraorganized self.

Her gaze snapped to his. “What Lucas wants or does not want is of no concern to me.”

Zane felt suddenly happier than he had in days. The lights changed, he put the car in gear and accelerated through the intersection. “I can take you somewhere else to eat if you want.”

Her head whipped around, her green gaze shooting fire. “On second thought, no.”

“Good. Because we’re here.”

He watched Lilah study the elegant portico of the Michelin star restaurant as if the fluted columns represented the gates of Hades. “You’re a manipulative man.”

“I’m an Atraeus.”

“Sometimes I forget.”

He found himself instantly on the defensive. “Because I’m also a Salvatore?”

He did not voice the other lurking fear that had reared its head since his conversation with Lucas, that it was because he was only twenty-four.

She frowned, as if his shadowy past had not occurred to her. “Because sometimes you’re … nice.”

“Nice.” His brows jerked together.

She looked embarrassed. “I read the article about you on the charity website. I know that you wear those three earrings to help kids relate to you when you do counseling work. You can try all you like to prove otherwise but, from where I come from, that’s nice.”

Lilah breathed a sigh of relief when Zane pulled in at her apartment’s tiny parking area. Lunch had been just as stilted and uncomfortable as she had imagined. Thankfully, the service had been ultraquick and they had been able to leave early.

Zane walked around and opened her door. Lilah climbed out of the low bucket seat, acutely aware of the shadowy cleavage visible in the V of her jacket and of the length of thigh exposed by the shortness of her skirt. When she had dressed that morning, the suit had seemed elegant and circumspect but it was not made for struggling out of a low slung ‘Vette.

Zane’s gaze locked with hers, making her feel breathless. She clamped down on the uncharacteristic desire to boldly meet his gaze.

Arriving at the front door of her apartment with a man was what she liked to refer to as a dating “red zone.” She and Zane were not dating, but the situation had somehow become more fraught than any dating scenario she had ever experienced. After the kiss earlier, it would not be a good idea to allow Zane inside her house.

She gave him a bright, professional smile. “It’s okay, you don’t have to see me in. Thanks for the lift.”

Zane closed the ‘Vette’s door and depressed the key lock. “Not a problem. I’ll see you to your door.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She aimed another smile somewhere in his general direction as she rummaged in her handbag for her door key.

Zane fell into step beside her. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a reporter staked out over there.”

Lilah’s head jerked up. She recognized the car that had been parked outside of Lucas’s apartment the previous night. Her heart sank. “He must have followed us.”

“The car was here when we arrived. According to Lucas, you were the one who was followed last night. The press has probably been staking you out ever since you returned from Medinos. In which case, I’d better see you safely inside.”

Resigning herself, Lilah walked quickly to the large garagestyle door, her cheeks warming as she saw the down-at-heel building through Zane’s eyes. A converted warehouse in one of the shabbier suburbs, she had chosen the building because it had been cheerful, arty and spectacularly cheap. The ground floor apartment included a huge light-filled north-facing room that was perfect for painting.

Zane, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice how shabby the exterior was, a reminder that he had not spent all of his life in luxurious surroundings.

Unlocking the door, she stepped inside the nondescript foyer, with its concrete floors and cream-washed walls.

Zane slid the door to enclose them in the shadowy space. “How many people live here?”

“A dozen or so.” She led the way down a narrow, dim corridor and unlocked her front door. Made of unprepossessing sheet metal, it had once led to some kind of workshop.

She stepped into her large sitting room, conscious of Zane’s gaze as he took in white walls, glowing wooden floors and the afternoon sun flooding through a bank of bifold doors at one end.

“Nice.” He closed the door and strolled into the center of the room, his gaze assessing the paintings she’d collected from friends and family over the years.

He studied a series of three abstracts propped against one wall. “These are yours.”

Her gaze gravitated to the mesmerizingly clean lines of his profile as he studied one of the abstracts. “How do you know that?” She had gotten the paintings ready for sale, but hadn’t gotten around to signing them yet.

Faint color rimmed his cheekbones. “I’ve bought a couple at auction. I also saw your work in a gallery a few weeks back.”

A small shock went through her that he had actually bought some of her paintings. “I usually sell most of what I paint through the gallery.”

He straightened and peered at a framed photograph of her mother and grandmother. “So money’s important.”

Her jaw firmed. “Yes.”

There was no point in hiding it. Following the recent finance company crashes, her mother’s careful life savings had dissolved overnight, leaving her with a mortgage she couldn’t pay. Subsisting on a part-time wage, which was all her mother could get in Broome, money had become vital.

Lilah hadn’t hesitated. The regular sale of her paintings supplemented her income just enough that she was managing to pay her mother’s mortgage as well as cover her rent, but only just.

Her failure to present her resignation to Lucas the previous evening was, in a way, a relief. Resigning from Ambrosi Pearls now would not be a good move for either her or her mother.

A crashing sound jerked her head around. Dropping her bag on the couch, she raced through to her studio in time to glimpse a young man dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, a camera slung over his shoulder, as he clambered out through an open window. A split second later, Zane flowed past her, stepped over a stack of canvases that had been knocked to the floor, and followed the intruder out of the window.

Zane caught the reporter as he hung awkwardly on her back fence. With slick, practiced moves he took the memory stick from the camera and shoved what was clearly an expensive piece of equipment back at the reporter’s chest.

The now white-faced reporter scrambled over the fence and disappeared into the sports field on the other side.

While Zane examined the fence and walked the boundary of her tiny back garden, Lilah hurriedly tidied up the collapsed pile of canvases.

Her worst fears were confirmed when she discovered a portrait of Zane she had painted almost two years ago, after the disastrous episode on the couch. Zane had practically stepped over the oil to get out of the window. It was a miracle he hadn’t noticed.

Gathering the canvases, she stacked them against the nearest wall, so only the backs were visible. She’d had a lucky escape. The last thing she needed now was for Zane to find out that she had harbored a quiet, unhealthy little obsession about him for the past two years.

Zane climbed back in the window and examined the broken catch. “That’s it, you’re not staying here tonight. You’re coming with me. If that reporter made it into your back garden, others will.”

Lilah’s response was unequivocal. Given that Zane seemed to bring out her wild Cole side, going with him was a very bad idea.

Her cheeks burned as he stared at the backs of the paintings. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll get the window repaired. I’ve got a friend in the building who’s handy with tools.”

She led the way out of the room, away from the incriminating paintings.