Chapter Five

Damian had just approved a forty-eight-million-dollar acquisition when his screen informed him that Serena Ellis should still have been in his bed.

The notification appeared in the corner of his monitor, ordinary enough that he nearly dismissed it without reading.

CONTRACT MILESTONE REMINDER

Original Agreement: Ellis, Serena

Scheduled Expiration: 90 Days

His hand stopped on the mouse.

For several seconds, Damian looked at the notification before opening it. Aella’s legal management system loaded the archived file and displayed its current status prominently across the screen.

STATUS: TERMINATED

He knew that. He had terminated the agreement himself.

Apparently, the system had retained the original expiration date because software lacked the discretion to understand when a reminder was no longer necessary.

Three months remained on the original agreement when he ended it, which meant Serena would have been his for another ninety days if he had allowed the arrangement to reach its natural conclusion.

Instead, Damian had paid her every cent she would have received for those months and added thirty million dollars to ensure she disappeared afterward.

His jaw tightened as he closed the file and returned to the acquisition documents.

Damian read the first line, then the second, but his attention drifted toward the corner where the notification had been.

He could picture exactly how Serena would have reacted if she had seen it.

Congratulations. Only ninety more days of suffering me.

She would probably have said it while eating something that belonged to him.

Serena had developed an irritating belief that anything in his penthouse became communal property the moment she discovered she liked it. The first time Damian caught her eating from his plate, she had been sitting barefoot at his kitchen island wearing one of his shirts.

“That was mine.”

Serena had looked down at the fork in her hand before raising her eyes to him. “You weren’t eating it.”

“I left the room for two minutes.”

“And look what happened.”

She had taken another bite before he could answer, entirely unrepentant.

Damian ordered a second meal that evening. After that, his staff had simply started ordering more food whenever Serena was expected at the penthouse.

He hadn’t told them to make the adjustment.

They had adapted.

Everyone had.

Damian’s gaze moved toward the phone beside his keyboard. There was nothing from Serena, although he had neither expected nor invited anything. Their termination agreement prohibited her from deliberately contacting him personally, and she had followed it perfectly.

Of course she had.

He pushed away from his desk and crossed toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over the city spread beneath him in orderly blocks of steel, glass and afternoon traffic.

This was what he had wanted when he ended things with Serena: quiet.

There were no messages arriving during meetings, no photographs sent without explanation and no calls at eleven at night because Serena had decided she wanted dessert from a restaurant across the city and somehow expected Damian to solve that problem.

There was no perfume lingering in his dressing room, no pair of heels abandoned where they didn’t belong and no woman asleep on his side of the bed because she claimed the mattress was somehow more comfortable there.

His side.

The memory came with irritating ease.

Damian had returned to the penthouse after midnight one evening and found Serena already asleep. Nothing had happened between them that night. He had been working late, and she had apparently grown tired of waiting for him, curling beneath the covers with a book lying open beside her.

She stirred when he entered and squinted toward the clock on the nightstand.

“One twelve?”

“Go back to sleep.”

Serena blinked at him as he removed his cuff links. “You’re just getting home?”

“I had work.”

“And I suppose you’re going straight back to your office because Aella will collapse before sunrise if Damian Taylor isn’t personally holding it together.”

“It might.”

Her eyes drifted closed again. “Your company is very needy.”

Damian almost smiled as he loosened his tie. “You say that as though you’re not.”

“I’ve never needed anything in my life,” she murmured into his pillow. “Except for you to turn off that lamp.”

He did.

Instead of returning to his office, Damian climbed into bed beside her.

At some point during the night, Serena moved toward him until her cheek rested against his chest and one leg tangled with his. There had been no seduction behind it and no expectation that the contact would lead anywhere. She had simply reached for him in her sleep.

Damian woke before she did.

He could have moved away without waking her, but he hadn’t.

The memory remained uncomfortably clear as he stood before the windows of his office.

Nearly a year was long enough for habits to form and for a person’s presence to become part of the landscape of another person’s life. It was also long enough to notice when that presence disappeared.

There was nothing unusual about that.

Damian returned to his desk just as his phone began ringing.

His father’s name appeared on the screen.

He answered. “Yes?”

“Are you at the office?”

“Where else would I be?”

Victor Taylor gave a quiet sound of disapproval. “You could attempt to speak to your father like a human being occasionally.”

“You called during business hours.”

“And yet somehow I remain your father during them. Dinner tomorrow at eight. The Ardens will be there, so before you tell me you’re busy, whatever is on your calendar can be moved.”

Damian leaned back in his chair. “I had dinner with Cecilia last night.”

“You’re marrying Cecilia, not having dinner with her once and declaring your obligations fulfilled. Her parents would like to see the two of you together before October becomes more than a date her mother is throwing around.”

“I know.”

“Good. The announcement went well. The market responded favorably, so did the board, and Arden Capital’s position alongside Aella strengthens both families considerably, particularly with the expansion plans coming next year.”

“I know what the marriage accomplishes.”

“Then try not to sound as though you’re being marched toward an execution whenever someone mentions it.”

Damian looked toward the windows.

Cecilia was beautiful, intelligent and educated, and she understood his world. Their families had known each other for years, and neither Damian nor Cecilia had entered the engagement under romantic illusions about what their marriage represented.

It was sensible. More importantly, it was uncomplicated.

Victor shifted the conversation toward Aella’s expansion plans and an issue involving Arden Capital that needed to be settled before the end of the quarter. He also reminded Damian about another upcoming dinner he had apparently been expected to remember despite never being told about it.

Then, almost as an afterthought, Victor asked, “And the other situation?”

Damian knew exactly what he meant. “There is no other situation.”

“Serena.”

His expression cooled. “It’s over.”

“Good. I don’t need details, and I don’t particularly want them. I only need to know nothing from that arrangement is going to resurface after you’re married.”

“It won’t.”

“You’re certain?”

“I terminated the agreement. She signed it. It’s finished.”

That seemed to satisfy Victor.

“Then leave it that way. Cecilia and the Arden alliance are your future. Whatever existed before them belongs exactly where you put it.”

Damian’s gaze shifted toward his monitor, although the notification had disappeared several minutes ago.

“I know.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.”

The call ended, and Damian set his phone down.

He remained still for several seconds before returning his attention to work.

Victor was right about Cecilia being his future. She was beautiful, intelligent and accomplished, and she understood his world because she had been raised in one much like it. She understood obligation, discretion and expectations, as well as the demands that came with families like theirs.

Most importantly, Cecilia understood boundaries.

Damian would never come home to find her barefoot in his kitchen eating from his plate. She wouldn’t fill a section of his dressing room with clothes that had no business being there, nor would she send him something deliberately provocative in the middle of a board meeting and then refuse to answer her phone because she knew exactly what she had done to his concentration.

Cecilia would never crawl across his bed at one in the morning, take his laptop from his hands and inform him that he had worked enough.

She would never behave like Serena.

Damian stared at the acquisition documents in front of him and reminded himself that this was a good thing. He had chosen a future built on order and predictability with a woman who understood the life she was entering and would never attempt to rearrange it around herself.

It was exactly what he wanted.

The fact that he had spent the last several minutes remembering everything Cecilia would never do was something Damian chose not to examine.