Chapter 11 Julian
JULIAN
Savannah obviously didn’t understand the assignment because she’s already gone off track.
The ballroom is buzzing with people, and the background jazz music is soft enough that it doesn’t drown out conversation.
Expensive drinks flow, and the amount of money in this room gives no excuse not to contribute to the cause—a good one too, the food bank.
My whiskey is on point, and the man from my corporate circles next to me is talking about a new restaurant, but it’s merely white noise.
In this very second, all of those details are drowned out, because I’m trapped in a moment that I feared.
Savannah scans the room, and I’m lucky that it’s me that she’s searching for.
Her dress? Well, that’s the part where she didn’t listen.
While elegant, I don’t appreciate how the dark blue satin fabric drapes down her back, revealing the length of her spine, or the way it curves around her breasts, taunting the imagination.
Her hair is half curled and falls softly around the shape of her face, with her dark red lips.
I already notice a trust fund kid to my right giving her a second glance.
The way she presents herself in this very moment should be reserved for only me.
She broke the rule that she isn’t quite aware exists.
The moment she spots me, the corner of her mouth lifts faintly into a smile, and she walks my way. I knew I should have picked her up.
“Excuse me,” I tell the man next to me. I’m quick to grab a flute of champagne off the tray of a passing waiter before I meet Savannah halfway.
“Good evening.” She greets me brightly, as though she is oblivious to the fucking chaos she’s causing in my head.
“Evening.” I hand her the drink, and she seems appreciative. I clear my throat. “You look lovely.”
She raises her brows at me, amused. “Yikes. You had to force that out. Is something wrong?” She begins to assess herself.
I touch her bare arm to calm her. “No, it’s fine. It’s…” She waits patiently for me to finish the sentence as I formulate my words. “I can create a map of half of your body.”
She fights her smirk. “Well, be sure the compass direction is right,” she quips.
Lifting my nose in acknowledgment, I snap out of being the Julian that loses the plot around this woman. “Really, you look beautiful,” I calmy and genuinely compliment, and her response is an almost bashful smile.
“Thank you.”
“It’s refreshing to see a woman here not covered in jewelry that is ugly as hell but sends the message of their status.”
She giggles once. “Well, I’m not a huge jewelry person. I did have a charm necklace that came in a little blue box when I turned 18, but I unfortunately lost it. A mystery where.”
“That’s a shame. A particular charm?”
“A simple one. A key. Classic, I guess.”
She takes a sip of her champagne, and I give her an unimpressed look. “Uh-uh. How rude of you not to toast,” I tease her.
The way she rolls her eyes playfully is what I’ve become accustomed to. “What is it that we’re toasting? That you successfully persuaded me to come to this thing?”
I touch her glass with my own. “That will work.”
There is an odd moment of silence until she opens her mouth. “Julian, I’m here because you and I do this hot-and-cold thing. You’ve been a little frosty lately, so I’m hoping this will bring us back to a toned-down torment of each other phase.”
That is a spot-on explanation of us. “Playing psychologist today?” Her feigned glare causes me to press my lips and smile.
“Agreed. Moving away from cold to hot in your words. So, are we doing warm ‘you need a sweater to cover your shoulders in that dress’ or sauna hot on the scale? I need to adjust my behavior tonight accordingly.”
Her eyes blaze at my comment, and she quickly takes another drink from her flute. My smile turns to a smirk as she searches the room, not uneasy, nor on a mission. When her eyes land back on me, she seems to ponder. “Nice tux. Not the one that I wasted my lunch hour on, but still, it’s nice.”
“Thank you. I have to be up to your standards.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, do we work the room, or have dinner, or hit the silent auction where you can pretend you want to buy lunch on a private yacht on Lake Michigan? What’s my assignment?”
I do appreciate her breezy attitude and humor. “Let’s stay away from the silent auction. Dinner is in a bit, and I guess this is the part where I need to be more social."
She looks at me peculiarly. “You’re excellent at schmoozing, but I’m not sure why I haven’t noticed before that you absolutely don’t want to be at these types of events.”
I tip my head to the side. “Solid observation.” These things are stuffy, often pretentious, and remind me of everything I hated growing up. However, these events are part of my life and keep my business network strong.
Savannah looks around my shoulder. “Over there. Oswalt Jones is here.”
A man who often visits the office due to his account with us. Saying hello is a must, and Savannah’s already on it. I turn slightly to check, and sure enough, the portly older man catches my eye, and we smile.
“Well spotted, Ms. May.”
She gladly accepts the praise as Oswalt arrives.
I rev my engine up for the overly polite conversations that will occupy the rest of the evening. “Oswalt, great to see you.”
“You, too.” He looks at Savannah and smiles. “You remember Ms. May,” I preamble, and Savannah gives him a smile and small bow of her head as hello.
“Lovely to see you again. Is Charles here?”
She shakes her head in response. “No. He has a grandchild’s birthday party.”
Oswalt looks between us like a pendulum of a clock. “Ah, so you’re here with Julian. Great to see two people enjoying life outside the office together.”
Savannah almost chokes on her champagne but remains composed.
I have to let out a short laugh. “Well, Savannah is my personal assistant now. I think you might have heard the rumors that Charles is retiring soon.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“As luck would have it, I landed his talented and beautiful assistant,” I cooly add on before taking a sip of my drink. My attention slips only once to Savannah who doesn’t seem surprised by my choice of words.
It’s a minute more of pleasantries before Oswalt is summoned by his wife to another conversation, and turning to face Savannah with a fixed wry smile is priceless.
I lift a shoulder. “Nothing wrong with giving someone a gray area of interpretation.”
She shakes her head ruefully. “I don’t know what to do with you, to be honest. You’re either cranky most of the time, infuriating the other times, and for a few seconds, actually intriguing in a good way.”
I can’t help but grin. “You should tell me more about those few seconds.” I indicate with my head in the direction of our assigned table for dinner, and we walk together. I set my fingertips on her lower back to guide her, and neither one of us think about it because it’s far too natural.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong… if I wasn’t working for you and was watching from the sidelines, then you might get points for your ridiculousness because it is a smidgen funny some of the things you have done recently.
” She is quick to point a finger at me. “But I do work for you,” she reminds me.
“Therefore, you are a despicable boss, instead.”
“I could say you’re a horrible assistant, and would your heart be as wounded as mine every time you say I’m a horrible boss?” I’m sarcastic.
She shakes her head gently as we reach our seats and greet the others at the table. When we sit down, she sighs and leans back in her chair to angle herself toward me.
“It isn’t a trap, you know. You can knock yourself off of your award pedestal,” she remarks.
My brows rise. “A trap?”
“I doubt I’m here because of your need for an assistant. I’m surprised you didn’t pull out your contact list for other options.”
I lick my lips because she’s stating the obvious of what we both already know.
“I burn numbers, I do not keep them. You being here solves a problem. I needed someone here, and you keep it simple.” Or so I believed.
My plan is already backfiring because I’m loosening more than I would at these events.
Apparently, she holds a string that I didn’t know existed.
Which is why I lean in closer to her, keeping my mouth a respectable distance from her ear, but being this close to her is enough to drive me wild.
Especially when my nose feathers her hair and I inhale her berry scent.
“As for a trap? You willingly showed up, well aware that there isn’t even a trap. ”
She turns her gaze sharply to me, and her look is so angelic and confident that I could kiss her right now. A sensitive ripple floats between us along our skin.
“Touche, Mr. Haven,” she says, her voice low.
Finally, we may actually agree on something.
Dinner was typical. Small talk, laughs with a few people whose company I actually enjoy, and speeches that are not always genuine.
I don’t need the noise, and I follow the silent-donor route.
Savannah was by my side, and although we didn’t get much chance to speak to one another, our eyes met enough times that we could probably create a whole new language.
I also have no illusions, the way my hand would casually touch her elbow or back gave away the message to others that she’s mine, and that’s what I intended.
Touching her is also an addiction. One that she might be experiencing too, as her body brushed past mine on several occasions, causing me to tell my dick to calm down.
Finally, dinner is over, the remnants of chocolate mousse in a glass pot in front of me, and people navigate to the dance floor for the band playing classic jazz while I sink into the seat. We get a chance to breathe, and Savannah half-turns her body to talk to me.