Chapter Four
I CAN WAIT. Can you?
Joy hurried to the changing room, even more shaken than ever by her reaction to Axel Severin. Men wanted her all the time. She never wanted them. Not like this, but when he’d loomed over her in the Champagne Room, she’d been struck by an overwhelming urge to kiss him.
That would have been disturbing if he had been any stranger, but he was here on her birth father’s behalf. She was beginning to believe that much, at least—that he was on a legitimate quest to find the offspring of Lorena Fontaine.
After losing Wendy, the mother who’d raised her, to a congenital heart problem, then learning the mother who’d birthed her was dead, Joy had shrunk inward.
She’d tried to convince herself she didn’t care where she came from.
Her birth family didn’t matter because her adoptive family loved her unconditionally.
They had welcomed her home with open arms, hadn’t they, after she’d made such a fool of herself over Todd?
Her disappointment over not being able to meet her birth mother had contributed to her falling for Todd’s BS, though.
She saw it clearly now that she had distance from it.
She had been sad and adrift and had clung to the one close connection she’d had at the time.
She had been so afraid to lose Todd, she’d put him above her own autonomy and aspirations, never seeing how one-sided and flimsy their relationship really was.
Now Axel was offering a new connection, one that he held just beyond her reach while saying, I’m confident you’re the woman I’m looking for.
Her skin tightened as she remembered the specific timbre of his voice. She was still breathless and fluttery, still feeling accosted by his tightly contained energy and the sexual charisma that pierced her belly with yearning.
After removing her makeup, she quickly looked Axel up online, but only wound up with more questions than answers.
The first email about her birth father had come through the adoption agency.
She’d been asked to reply to a lawyer called Umberto.
She had still been deciding whether to respond and how to tell her father, Paul, about it when she’d received a private message from Axel through one of her social accounts.
She had blocked it, certain it was a bot.
But receiving that message had made the one from the agency seem suspicious.
When the couriered letter arrived two days later, she’d lied to her father and said it was about her student loans, but she’d been baffled and alarmed at the persistence of the scammers.
Axel wasn’t a conman, though. Not according to the internet. Either he’d gone to great lengths to create this online persona or he was the CEO of a big infrastructure conglomerate in Germany.
If he was a CEO, what was he doing here, on her birth father’s behalf?
She flicked through some photos of Axel. One showed him at a podium for a trade conference, another showed him arriving at a charity gala with his fiancée.
Fiancée!?
The sound of screeching brakes arrived in her ears, causing a sick lurch in her stomach.
Wow. Mira Braun was beautiful in an ultrasophisticated way. Even so, she didn’t look particularly fulfilled wearing something that Joy presumed was a designer gown. Her sparkly earrings were probably real diamonds, and Axel wore a tuxedo, but they both wore similar, aloof expressions.
The photograph struck her as staged. Like the kind actors took with their costars when they secretly despised each other but had to do a press tour and act as though they were in love.
Maybe she was being uncharitable. Jealous, even.
Of what, though? She didn’t have any feelings toward Axel besides hostility.
She sure as heck wasn’t looking for love or romance.
She was a complete cynic about those things, thanks to Todd.
If anything, learning Axel was engaged filled her with contempt—and little surprise.
I do want you…
She shrugged her shoulders as a shiver chased down her spine.
Why were men such predictable jerks? And why was she attracted to him when he obviously was one?
She dropped her phone into her bag and finished dressing, pulling on jeans with short boots and a diamond-knit pullover with a puffy jacket. She plopped a black motorcycle cap on her head and turned up her collar because the March wind off Lake Michigan was still cold enough to cut her in half.
She had half a mind to walk out the back door, but Axel was waiting in the hall, just inside the batwings.
“Ready?”
She clenched her teeth and followed him outside to a waiting SUV. He held the door for her, then directed the driver to the Ritz-Carlton.
The vehicle was tricked out like a limousine with a tiny refrigerator in the console between their armchairs. It held single-serve bottles of champagne and glass flutes along with a variety of snacks, including fresh fruit.
“Help yourself,” he invited when he saw her taking inventory.
If this was a kidnapping—and she was only convinced it wasn’t because she had nothing worth being ransomed for—she could see how easily Stockholm syndrome happened.
“I read that you’re engaged,” she said belligerently while fingering through playbills from the seat pocket, wistful that she wasn’t in any of these musicals.
“It’s been called off,” he said dismissively.
“Convenient.” She flicked him a glance of undisguised doubt.
He turned his head, face shadowed and unreadable. “It has.”
The wall of derision she’d erected as a defense against him turned to sand. His masculine energy sparked and crackled in her direction again, licking like flames against her skin.
“You seem like a bigwig at a huge company.” She changed tactics. “Why are you here, running errands for my father? Who is he to you?”
“We’ll talk at the hotel.”
So annoying.
They traveled in silence until they walked into the lobby of the hotel. A young man met them there. He wore a suit that rivaled Axel’s and held a tablet inside a black leather cover.
“My assistant, Heskel. Ms. Youngston,” Axel provided.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Youngston. Would you both come with me, please?
Everything is ready upstairs.” Heskel escorted them toward the elevators, speaking to Axel as they walked.
“I made a reservation in the restaurant, but it’s very busy.
The chef has agreed to send something up if you prefer? ”
“Three courses with a paired wine,” Axel said with an absent nod.
As they stepped into the elevator, Heskel opened his tablet cover and extracted something. “For you, Ms. Youngston.” He offered a slim red leather sleeve that held what looked like a single credit card.
She didn’t take it, only moved her gaze from the card to Axel’s impassive expression.
“You asked for twenty thousand dollars,” Axel said. “That’s preloaded with thirty, to assist with legal costs. You’ll want someone you can trust.”
Heskel continued holding out the card like a barker on the street, trying to entice passersby into his peep show.
Axel plucked the card, then picked up her hand and pressed the card against her palm, folding her fingers around it.
No touching, she thought, even as fireworks shot through her. His hands were warm. Strong and insistent. Magical in their ability to halt the elevator midair. To stop the earth from rotating and make her feet leave the floor.
We called it off.
A vibration between longing and apprehension arrived in her breastbone, sending skittering sensations into the depths of her abdomen. The vibration dropped low, like embers that stayed hot and heavy in the notch of her thighs.
She yanked her hand away and shoved the card into the back pocket of her jeans. “Must be nice, being able to arrange something like this at the drop of a text,” she said, using a snotty tone because she was so disconcerted.
“You’ll soon find out, won’t you?”
The elevator doors opened, and Axel waved her to exit first.
* * *
Joy had been working up her courage to have her blood drawn. She hated needles, but it turned out to be a cheek swab. She had barely removed her hat and jacket before the nurse was leaving with the sample, Heskel on her heels.
Blinking with astonishment, Joy suddenly found herself alone with Axel. This time there was no bouncer beyond the door or a CCTV to record what happened between them.
“Happy?” She rose and touched the credit card in her back pocket, wondering if it would really work. She reached for her jacket where it was draped over the arm of the sofa.
“Wait.” He picked up the card the nurse had left on the coffee table, the one with Joy’s file number written on it.
“Email Umberto. Tell him you’ve sent your sample to this lab and give him this number.
Tell him that when you receive confirmation that it’s a match, you’ll make arrangements to travel to Germany to meet your father.
It’s the middle of the night there, but he’ll see it first thing.
By the time you wake here, you’ll know.”
“Give you an inch, and you take a mile, don’t you?” she muttered as she dug in her bag for her phone.
“What is that in metric?” he asked with false interest.
“A crap ton of arrogance,” she provided with a sweet smile. “I can’t just drop everything and fly to Germany, you know. I have responsibilities.” Even so, she took the card and sank back onto the sofa while she began to scroll through her trashed emails.
“All of that will be taken care of. Don’t mention me in the message.”
“Why not?” She looked up.
“Because I asked you not to.”
She snorted. Arrogance didn’t begin to cover his brashness. “This all sounds very shady. Are you making me an accomplice in something illegal?”
“No.”
“As if you would admit to it,” she grumbled.
“I will explain after you send the message.” He took on a tone of weary patience and walked over to the bar. “Would you like something before dinner arrives?”