Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 40

Chapter 40

I told Pat I needed to go and review the contract documents with Veil Holdings. She nodded without question. I took a cab straight from Helix to Veil Holdings.

I saw Seraphine the moment I walked through the lobby doors.

She was in the waiting area, her posture rigid, her jaw tight, the expression of a woman who had been sitting somewhere too long and was furious about it. She looked tired. She looked, for the first time in all the years I had known her, like a woman who was not in control of something.

She saw me at the same moment I saw her.

“Celeste.”

I looked at her.

I saw the recognition in her eyes, the relief, the reaching out of a woman who needed an ally in a lobby where she had none. I saw Seraphine, who had been my sister, who had stood beside me at my wedding, who had spent six months in my husband’s bed.

I turned and walked to the elevator.

I did not say a word.

I did not look back.

The elevator doors closed and I allowed myself the small, private smile I had been holding since the moment I heard her voice call my name.

Dominic’s office was on the top floor.

His secretary met me at the elevator and walked me through a corridor that felt more like an art gallery than a place of work, all clean lines and carefully chosen pieces and the particular hush of serious.

money.

The office itself was large and spare and entirely him. Floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city. A desk that could have served as a dining table. Bookshelves that had actually been read. No clutter. No performance.

He got up when I walked in, and looked at me and I opened my mouth to say something clever about Seraphine’s face in the lobby.

Then his gaze moved down the length of me in that slow, thorough way and I forgot what I had been about to say.

He crossed the room toward me.

“Look at what you do to me,” he said.

I looked down. Then back up.

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“Let me take care of that for you,” I said, and started to lower myself.

His hand caught my arm.

“I have a much better idea.”

He walked to the door and locked it. Made a call to his secretary, brief and final. Not to be disturbed.

Then he turned back to me and went to his desk and opened a drawer.

He set a box on the desk and opened it.

I stared at what was inside.

“A gift,” he said. “I bought it for you.”

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