Chapter 7: After the Fact

Lucas rolled over, reaching for the woman who should have been curled up beside him and found nothing but empty sheets.

He opened his eyes, scanned the room, then sat up and checked more carefully. No sign of her.

A strange hollowness settled in his chest. He got up immediately and checked the bathroom.

Empty.

There was no one else the apartment could be hiding her in. Claire was simply gone.

Lucas had pegged her as a gold digger the moment he'd noticed her watching him beautiful, sharp, clearly working an angle. That was exactly why he'd brought her home; women like that were at least predictable.

He'd been drawn to her, more than he wanted to admit. But he'd never respected her for it assumed she'd cling, angle for something, try to make herself impossible to shake off the next morning.

Instead he'd woken up completely alone.

No note. No number. Nothing.

She'd gotten exactly what she came for and vanished without asking for a single thing in return?

Memories of the night before flickered unbidden through his mind her voice, her hands, the way she'd looked at him like he was the only interesting thing in the room.

He'd given her a night most women would have used as leverage, and she'd walked away from it like it meant nothing.

Claire Bennett, he thought, an unfamiliar smile tugging at his mouth. You are far more interesting than I gave you credit for.

After leaving the estate, Claire went home to shower and change.

She swapped her bar-ready outfit for a crisp white-collar work suit and drove straight to the office.

Sitting at her desk, her mind kept drifting back to the night before.

She'd teased Lucas nearly to the point of no sleep, then slipped out before dawn without so much as a goodbye.

She wondered, with a small private smile, what expression had crossed that gorgeous face of his when he woke up alone.

Lucas Kane. Handsome, wealthy, and she had to admit genuinely captivating.

For the first time in her life, she'd been with someone other than Nathaniel. And he'd more than lived up to the hype.

Body, technique, everything she had zero complaints.

Claire worked as an administrative assistant at a major company, managing day-to-day operations tracking assignments from management, scheduling meetings, prepping materials, recording minutes, and organizing team events and the annual conference.

She pulled her attention back to the present and started compiling sales figures.

Her desk phone rang. It was her supervisor.

By the time the call ended, her brows had drawn together in a tight, worried line.

The administrative director informed her that the company's CEO would be arriving unannounced for an inspection and had specifically requested that Claire personally take the meeting minutes.

The pressure of it hit her instantly. No warning, no lead time, nothing.

Three years at this company, and she'd never so much as glimpsed anyone from the executive level, let alone been handpicked to sit in on a meeting with the CEO himself.

Her nerves spiked.

Guess I'll have to wing it, she thought. At least I've handled big meetings before the skills should transfer.

She was dressed today in a crisp white blouse that fit close to her figure conservative on paper, but undeniably striking on her. A black pencil skirt, sheer black stockings over her long legs, and black pointed-toe heels completed the look.

It was a different kind of sexy than the version she'd worn to the bar restrained, polished, but no less magnetic for it. At the office, she stood out like a rare flower planted among ordinary ones.

Plenty of her male coworkers whispered about her looks when they thought no one was listening, but her status as a taken woman had always kept them at a respectful distance.

She had no plans to correct that assumption now that she was divorced.

If word got out, she had no doubt the office would turn into an open hunting ground.

And frankly, none of them interested her in the slightest.

None of them came anywhere close to earning a spot in the very short list of men she actually wanted.