“These are lovely, Miss Rose,” he said. “Quite lovely.”
“Thank you.”
“What do we have here? A tiara? It almost looks familiar.” He picked up the final page, the one she was the most nervous for him to see.
“That’s intentional. It’s a modernized version of the tiara that once held the Drake Diamond.”
He grew very still at the mention of the infamous jewel.
Ophelia continued, “As you know, the original tiara was worn by Natalia Baronova. My collection calls for the stone to be reset in a new tiara that would honor the original one. I think it would draw a great number of people to the store. Don’t you?”
He returned the sketch to the stack of papers and nodded, but Ophelia couldn’t help but notice that his smile had faded.
“Mr. Drake...”
“Call me Artem,” he said. “After all, we did nearly sleep together.”
He winked, and once again Ophelia wished the floor of his lavish penthouse would open up and swallow her whole.
She cleared her throat. “I want to apologize. You’ve been nothing but kind to me, and I jumped to conclusions. It’s just that I was involved with someone at work once before, and it was a mistake. A big mistake. But I shouldn’t have assumed...”
Stop talking.
She was making things worse. But she wanted to be given a chance so badly that she was willing to lay everything on the line.
“Ophelia,” he said, and she loved the way her name sounded rolling off his tongue. Like music. “Stop apologizing. Please.”
She nodded, but she wasn’t quite finished explaining. She wanted him to understand. She needed him to, although she wasn’t sure why. “It’s just that I don’t do that.”
He angled his head. “What, exactly?”
“Relationships.” Heat crawled up her neck and settled in the vicinity of her cheeks. “Sex.”
Artem lifted a brow. “Never?”
“Never,” she said firmly. “I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just not something I do.” Since my diagnosis...
Maybe she should tell him. Maybe she should just spill the beans and let him know she was sick, and that’s why she’d been so adamant about not adopting the kitten. It was why she would never allow herself to sleep with him. Or anyone else. Not that she’d really wanted to...until now. Today. In this room. With him.
She should tell him. Didn’t she have an obligation to be honest with her employer? To tell the truth?
Except then he’d know. He’d know everything, and he wouldn’t look at her anymore the way he was looking at her now. Not like she was something to be fixed. Not like she was someone who was broken. But like she was beautiful.
She needed a man to look at her like that again. Not just any man, she realized with a pang. This man. Artem.
He gazed at her for a long, silent moment, as if weighing her words. When he finally spoke, his tone was measured. Serious. “A woman needs to be adored, Ophelia. She needs to be cherished, worshipped.” His gaze dropped to her mouth, and she forgot how to breathe. “Touched.”
And, oh, God, he was right. She’d never in her life needed so badly to be touched. Her body arched toward him, like a hothouse orchid bending toward the light of the sun. She wrapped her arms around herself, in desperate need of some kind of barrier.
“Especially a woman like you,” he whispered, his eyes going dark again.
She swallowed. “A woman like me?”
Sick? Lonely?
“Beautiful,” he whispered, and reached to cup her cheek with his hand.
It was the most innocent of touches, but at that first brush of Artem Drake’s skin against hers, Ophelia knew she was in trouble.
So very much trouble.
It took Dalton less than a minute to confirm what Artem already knew.
“These designs are exceptional.” Dalton bent over the round conference table in the corner of their father’s office—now Artem’s office—to get a closer look at Ophelia’s sketches. “Whose work did you say this was?”
Artem shifted in his chair. “Ophelia Rose.”
Even the simple act of saying her name awakened his senses. He was restless, uncomfortably aroused, while doing nothing but sitting across the table from his brother looking at Ophelia’s sketches. He experienced this nonsensical reaction every time she crossed his mind. It was becoming a problem. A big one.
He’d tried to avoid this scenario. Or any scenario that would put the two of them in a room together again. He really had. After their electrically charged meeting in his suite at the Plaza ten days ago, he’d kept to himself as much as possible. He’d barely stuck his head out of his office, despite the fact that every minute he spent between those wood-paneled walls, it seemed as though his father’s ghost was breathing down his neck. It was less than pleasant, to say the least. It had also been the precise reason he’d chosen to meet Ophelia in his suite to begin with.
He’d needed to get out. Away from the store, away from the portrait of his father that hung behind his desk.
Away from the prying eyes of his brother and the rest of the staff, most notably his secretary, who’d been his dad’s assistant for more than a decade before Artem had “inherited” her.
Not that he’d done anything wrong. Ophelia was an employee. There was no reason whatsoever why he shouldn’t meet with her behind closed doors. Doing so didn’t mean there was anything between them other than a professional relationship. Pure business. He hadn’t crossed any imaginary boundary line.
Yet.
He’d wanted to. God, how he’d wanted to. But he hadn’t, and he wouldn’t. Even if keeping that promise to himself meant that he was chained to his desk from now on. He needed to be able to look at himself in the mirror and know that he hadn’t become the thing he most despised.
His dad.
Of course, there was the matter of the cat. Artem supposed animal adoption wasn’t part of the ordinary course of business. But he could justify that to himself easily enough. Like he’d said, the kitten had been an early Christmas bonus. A little unconventional, perhaps, but not entirely inappropriate.
If he’d tried to deny that he wanted her, he’d have been struck down by a bolt of lightning. Wanting Ophelia didn’t even begin to cover it. He craved her. He needed her. His interest in her went beyond the physical. Beneath her strong exterior, there was a sadness about her that he couldn’t help but identify with. Her melancholy intrigued him, touched a part of him he seldom allowed himself to acknowledge.
Any and all doubt about how badly he needed to touch her had evaporated the moment she’d told him that she didn’t allow herself the pleasure of sexual companionship. Why would she share something so intimate with him? Even more important, why couldn’t he stop thinking about it?
Since their conversation, he’d thought of little else.
Something was holding her back. She’d been hurt somehow, and now she thought she was broken beyond repair. She wasn’t. She was magic. Hope lived in her skin. She just didn’t know it yet. But Artem did. He saw it in the porcelain promise of her graceful limbs. He’d felt it in the way she’d shivered at his touch.
If he’d indeed crossed a forbidden