What Were You Thinking?

POV: Ava

Perfect.

Let them keep thinking that, because the more they underestimated me, the easier it would be to destroy everything they had built on my suffering.

Once inside my room, I set my things down and opened my laptop, because I had far more important things to deal with.

Dominic Keller.

The man who could change everything.

I started researching Keller Group and its mysterious CEO, learning everything I could about the man who had built one of the most powerful companies in the city. He was a businessman, a billionaire, and, according to the rumours that followed him around, connected to people it wasn't wise to ask about too closely.

More importantly, he was the one person with enough power to stop the deal Dillan planned to sign that night.

I needed him, and I needed to reach him before Dillan could get anywhere near a signature.

I sent several emails. Nothing came back. After waiting as long as I could stand, I decided I had no choice but to take a bigger risk.

I called him.

The phone rang twice before a deep voice finally answered.

"Who is this?"

"Dominic Keller?"

"Who's asking?"

"My name is Ava. I'm calling about the contract your company is preparing to sign tonight." Silence followed my words. "I have information that could make you reconsider it."

"You've been sending me emails." My heart skipped. So he had seen them.

"Yes."

"You claim you own the design and the software."

"I do."

"And you're also claiming you found your way to my direct line without an invitation."

"Yes." His voice went colder, and there was something dangerous in how calm it stayed.

"Then prove it," I said, tightening my grip on the phone.

"If you were resourceful enough to reach me, why don't you find me yourself?" he said. I said nothing. "You have until ten."

"Ten?"

"Find me by ten, and I might give you twenty minutes to say whatever it is you came here to say." The call ended.

I stared at my phone for a moment before a slow smile pulled at my mouth.

Challenge accepted.

I opened my laptop and started working, but tracing him wasn't easy. Keller had serious security around him. Still, I had something he didn't know about. I had spent the last day watching my entire life get taken apart in front of me, and I wasn't afraid of a little risk anymore. By eight thirty, I had a location. A rooftop restaurant inside one of the most prestigious hotels downtown.

I stared into my wardrobe, knowing I wasn't going to meet a man like Dominic Keller looking uncertain. After a few minutes I chose a fitted white button-down shirt under a cognac leather midi dress, a wide belt at my waist, the kind of structured cut that worked with my curves instead of hiding them. Gold jewellery finished it off. I picked up my handbag and took one last look in the mirror before I left.

For once, the woman looking back at me didn't look like the one Dillan had spent a decade convincing me she was. She looked strong. Capable. Dangerous, even.

I left the house at nine. By nine thirty I was standing inside the rooftop restaurant, only to find that Dominic wasn't there. Just his phone, sitting alone on a table.

Of course, I thought. Testing me. Seeing how far I'd go with thirty unearned minutes.

I sat down, opened my laptop, and pulled up the hotel's security feed, working through the cameras until I found him. Tall, broad-shouldered, dark suit, moving through the halls with several men around him whose presence alone was enough to clear a path. There was something about the way people stepped aside for them that told you everything about how much power he was used to having.

He stopped mid-corridor and looked, without hesitation, directly into the camera.

My fingers froze over the keyboard.

He knew.

His mouth curved, faintly, before he turned and disappeared down the hallway. I swallowed hard.

So that's the kind of man you are.

I grabbed his phone off the table and headed for the elevator, determined to reach him before his window closed. When I stepped out on the top floor, I was two minutes late, but I didn't let that slow me down. There was only one door at the end of the corridor. I knocked.

Nothing.

I knocked again, and the door opened before my hand had even fully dropped. A hand closed around my arm and pulled me inside, and the door shut behind me before I could react.

"You're late," he said. The same voice from the phone, cold and completely in control of itself.

"I'm sorry, I was—"

He took my bag from me and set it on a nearby table, then stepped closer, and the sudden nearness made my breath catch. His hand moved down my arm and then along my side, unhurried, and I froze, because his touch was startlingly gentle. I stopped thinking clearly. Only one question was left in my head. Was he actually attracted to me?

The thought embarrassed me the moment I had it. Men like Dominic Keller did not look twice at women who looked like me. Dillan had spent years making sure I believed that about myself, and yet here this man was, close enough that I could feel the warmth off his body.

Before I could say anything, he turned me, one smooth motion, and had me facing the wall, his hands moving over me, checking, methodical, along my arms, my collarbone, down over my chest. A small, humiliating sound escaped me before I could stop it. It had been so long since anyone had touched me at all that my body didn't seem to know the difference between a search and something else.

"Please, don't," I managed, breathless, "I'm not here for that. I just want to talk."

His hands didn't stop. They moved down over my waist, along the fabric at my hip, my dress shifting under his fingers, and another sound slipped out of me before I could catch it, enough that I pressed my own hand over my mouth.

His face was close enough that I could feel his breath against my skin, and for one absurd, disorienting moment I actually wondered if this was real, if a man this composed, this controlled, was genuinely interested in me.

My face went hot. I looked away, embarrassed, while he kept working through his careful, clinical search like he hadn't noticed anything at all.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Stop him? Would that cost me his help? My husband had spent years in another woman's bed, but did that give me any right to want this, whatever this even was?

I bit down on my lip hard enough to hurt, trying to hold back every sound my body wanted to make, and then, all at once, he stepped back.

"Good," he said, something faintly amused in his voice. "No weapon. Now we can proceed."

I stared at him, my mind completely blank.

No weapon.

I looked down at myself, then back up at him, and the truth landed all at once. He hadn't been flirting with me. He hadn't been teasing me. He had been checking me for a weapon before he let me anywhere near him.

My whole face burned. I wanted, more than almost anything in the last twenty-four hours, for the floor to open beneath me.

Dominic tilted his head, watching me with unmistakable amusement now. "What exactly were you thinking?"

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. How was I supposed to explain that for one full minute I had genuinely believed a man like him wanted me, after everything I already knew about how little I was supposed to be worth?

I looked down instead of at him, and bit my lip, wishing I could take the last sixty seconds of my own head back.

He said nothing else, just watched me, and something in his expression told me he already knew exactly what I'd been thinking, and found it more interesting than he was letting on.

For the first time since I'd stood sobbing in my own driveway less than a day ago, I had no clever answer for anything. I was simply, completely, too embarrassed to speak.