Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
L UCA COULDN ’ T GET Polly’s expression out of his head. She had been looking at his body. It wasn’t the first time. She had done so at his apartment last week the night she had quit.
She was aware of him physically. And she was nearly not his assistant anymore, which was pushing the bonds of his control.
He could not want her.
And yet.
He liked clear rules, and he liked to follow them. He spent so much of his time pondering the mysteries of humanity. Of science. The human body, and what men could accomplish when they studied that body.
There was no room for gray areas in his life.
Polly had been his first window into understanding the lure of reaching for something you should not touch.
Obsession, he’d called it. Because he was familiar enough with obsession and that didn’t have to be sexual. It wasn’t forbidden for him to catalog her outfits, her mannerisms, the way her hair moved when she tossed her head. And how it changed depending on whether she was amused, annoyed, or upset.
Obsession, because it could be nothing more.
Or rather, it had never been able to be more because she was his assistant and he would never, ever violate his position of power by seducing his assistant.
He thought about how she was leaving him, and he was beset by rage again.
But there was something about the rage that stoked the fire of that forbidden desire even higher.
This was not attraction as he knew it.
He was attracted to women. Their round bodies, their softness. He was not particular about the particular shape or features of a woman. He simply enjoyed the all-encompassing air of femininity. Soft skin, floral scents. When he indulged himself, he appreciated every aspect of that indulgence.
But it was never this . This aching pull that he had felt ever since that night last week.
Her defense of him on the plane had added a strange sort of sensation to the mix.
He was also not a man who enjoyed novelty.
He liked to be assured of things. To be certain in them.
In his work, he dealt in the miraculous and mysterious. He did not need any more of it. That was what he told himself. And yet, he found himself being fascinated by her in new and distracting ways.
And he was not a man given to distraction.
“Go and ready yourself,” he said.
She nodded, and scurried from the room, as efficient as ever.
And he was left to get ready. Everything he was meant to wear was chosen, and ordered, so that it would be easy for him to put together, easy for him to find which suits went with which speech.
It was no matter to him whether anyone understood that or not, but for him, each detail flowed into one another. And it was an exceptionally important thing. Disrupt one link in the chain and the whole of it was compromised.
He would have to find someone else who could handle his details.
He thought of that as he put on his black shirt, black tie and black suit. He did not have to run through his speech again, he had it memorized. Each and every word. Every pause.
He was very good with this sort of thing. He had ample time to rehearse. If he could rehearse everything, he wouldn’t need an assistant. But unfortunately, life moved at a pace, and interaction was often random.
None of that mattered tonight, though. Because tonight, he was going to be giving the most defining speech of his career, introducing the early detection processes and technologies that had been so long missing from the world of medicine.
Everyone wanted a cure for cancer. He among them.
But in the absence of a cure for advanced cancers, early detection was almost as good.
He would be saying just that tonight.
There was a knock on the door. He knew that it was her. She did not normally knock, but she had indicated that she thought she should have after walking in on him in a state of undress. Also, it was just how she would knock. Brisk, efficient. Not timid, even though what had occurred earlier had clearly embarrassed her.
He was fascinated by his assistant. He had made a study of her.
How could he not?
He had never known anyone like her.
She was expert with all people. Soft when she needed to be, hard when it was required. She seemed to possess the ability to make anyone feel at ease. And the truth was, if he could see that it must be profound.
She also seemed to take people exactly as they were, with no questions. She evaluated them and the situation, clearly and cleanly, and then moved on.
She accepted him in a way no one else ever had.
Not since his mother.
“Come in,” he said.
The door opened. And there was Polly, wearing a fuchsia-colored dress that conformed to her curves, hugging her body tightly, flaring out down past her knees. The neckline was plunging, revealing the plump curve of her breasts.
Damn, but she was beautiful. He was not a man who wanted what he couldn’t have, as a general rule.
That had been a choice.
It had nothing to do with compartmentalizing or appetites or anything of the like.
No. It had to do with being a small boy who looked at groups of kids playing together and couldn’t figure out how to approach them. It had to do with loving a mother who had gone, never to return.
Having a father he could never please no matter how hard he tried.
He had given up on desiring what he could not have.
He was a billionaire. There was never a reason—not one—for him to ever be desirous of that which could not be his.
And yet, he wanted her.
In that moment, more than he could remember wanting anything.
It was a craving.
What would it look like, peeling that dress away from her body, exposing more of her skin?
He nearly growled, but he held it back, because he knew well enough to know she would find that disturbing.
“It suits you,” he said, keeping his tone brisk.
She blinked. “Thank you.”
“Everyone in attendance will be very impressed.”
“With your assistant?”
Polly was occasionally miscaptioned as his date. It never bothered them.
He didn’t bring dates to things like this. There was no reason. He didn’t need to date, he needed somebody who understood him. Somebody who understood the business.
Someone who could take what he was trying to say and spin it into something interesting.
She was very good at that.
He did not take her arm, he never did, though he had known a momentary temptation to do so.
They walked out of the hotel room together, and to the elevator.
She was beautiful at his side, as ever. And he found himself fighting the urge to touch her.
He was on the cusp of the most important thing he had yet discovered and launched to the public, and he was drowning in novelty. He didn’t like novelty.
He could not afford the distraction. This was not the launch of a product designed to simply generate income. This was something that could very well change the world. His libido had no space in the equation.
He was a man of infinite control. In fact, it had never even been difficult for him.
One fuchsia dress and a pleasing collection of rounded curves would not derail him now.
They moved into the ballroom, all the glittering opulence. He felt the tension sometimes, the necessary generation of massive funds when it came to working with this sort of technology. He wanted everything to be freely accessible to those who needed it. And yet, the actual work itself required massive amounts of money to keep it moving. And so, it required playing a game. It required the generation of wealth.
His own personal fortune had been amassed with investments elsewhere. Property portfolios, and other work. While his medical corporation generated billions, it was all put back into research, and medical funding.
For him, the act of making money was a simple thing. It all related to that focus.
Focus that would not be splintered now.
He moved away from Polly and made his way to the front of the room. His very presence signaled that it was time for everyone to take their seats.
And then, he took his place on the stage. Every word, every inflection was planned. And every portion of the speech was articulated exactly as he had intended.
He knew exactly what he was about.
The excitement in the room was palpable. This discovery changed so many things.
And while the room was full of a great many investors, people who cared primarily about the monetary value of something like this, there were also people who took it for what it was.
A chance to save lives.
And the truth was, while the medical-industrial complex certainly had its issues, issues that Luca himself fought against, it was also made up of people. And even investors loved people who got cancer. Even they felt an investment in this change.
Because the truth was, they lived in a world where money could only help with your treatments to a point. If the ability to discover and detect an illness didn’t exist, then you were not insulated. Not even by your billions.
Everyone benefited from this.
“As part of the research phase, we will be looking specifically at monitoring those with family history who cannot pay for conventional medical care.”
A ripple went through the crowd. “We will be sourcing participants from around the world. That way we can see the effectiveness on people who come from a variety of backgrounds. It is important to our research that we spread the information as broadly as we possibly can. We must collect all the data that we can. This is the beginning to what we truly all hope for. A cure. And this proves that we are not defeated by answers that have eluded us for all this time. There are still discoveries to make. And we will make them. This is the beginning of a very exciting summit. We will pool knowledge, and together we will find the answers to the most pressing medical concerns we face in society.”
The applause when he got off the stage was deafening.
He ignored it. He didn’t do this for accolades.
They were immaterial.
He did not do this for glory.
He felt Polly’s gaze on him, he knew it was her without having to look.
But he did look, and he saw that her eyes were glistening.
She was emotional. He wondered why.
It was not, after all, a personal thing to her, at least not as far as he knew. He had done a background check on her when he had made her his assistant, and nothing in her files suggested she had experience with losing a family member to disease.
He went to his table, one occupied by the chief investors, and sat by Polly. He ignored the investors and leaned toward her. “Are you upset?”
She shook her head. “I’m not upset. I’m simply moved. I understand more now why this matters to you.”
She cared about that? She was angry with him. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have quit.
It made no sense that she would be moved to tears by his experience in that case.
She changed the conversation, shifted it, included the investors. She was good at that. She maneuvered it so that he had only to answer questions about the research. And peppered things with delightful, humorous anecdotes and personal remarks. The kind of conversation that left everyone feeling as if they had had a good interaction with him, even though Polly had done most of the conversing.
He did not know what he would do without her.
Anger began to build inside of him, and it only got worse in the following days. As she continued to prove utterly indispensable, and ravishingly beautiful every night for the formal events.
What had been contained by the rules of society, of professionalism, now felt less clear. He’d banked his need for her all this time because it was the right thing to do. But she was leaving now, which meant every word, every interaction, felt like it had a different meaning to it. Different rules.
Or worse: no rules at all.
He was a man who often relied on rules.
And now she was Polly, without the fence of appropriate boss/employee relations surrounding her.
So when she did something for him, he couldn’t simply dismiss it as her doing her job.
When he earned a smile it no longer felt like it was strictly her duty.
When her fingertips brushed his he wasn’t obliged to pretend he didn’t feel sparks of electricity winding through him, that his gut wasn’t tight with need. That his body wasn’t on high alert.
It built, over the course of all these days. It was nearly physical pain.
The hotel itself was one of the most storied venues in all of Singapore, and yet Polly made it look pale in comparison.
It was such an odd thing. Her beauty had always been undeniable. And yet, she had never been the type to actively court attention. Her beauty had never been sensual .
It was as if it was a costume that she put on, and yet once he had seen the inherent sensuality in her he could not unsee it.
He felt utterly entranced by it. By her.
On the last night, she wore gold. She was utterly resplendent, and he was meant to focus on the conclusions of the week. All upcoming research projects from universities and smaller medical tech companies. He was choosing investments himself, that he might help further broader medical research.
That should be his focus.
And yet, he found himself captured by Polly. He noticed that many men were. Her long hair fell in waves over her shoulders. Her body was on tempting display, barely covered by the liquid gold gown she wore.
And after this, she would be leaving his life forever. It was the thing he had been avoiding thinking about. Suddenly, it was all he could think of. It filled his mind, filled his vision.
She had been everything these past few years. She had been compelling, constant, consistent.
She was the content of the inner workings of his life. And he could not remember a time when he did not have her.
At the same time, he wanted to bury his fingers in her hair and claim that sweet mouth for himself.
He thought that, standing right in the glittering ballroom where everyone was celebrating a successful summit.
He thought only of kissing Polly.
What if he did? What if he claimed the one thing he should not have? What if he claimed the one thing he should not want? How different would it feel?
Perhaps he could do something with this gnawing ache. This craving, by making it real.
Suddenly, sex became something different. Something beyond the usual appetite, something beyond even a general craving.
He would die if he did not have her. He was not a man given to excess. And so this first experience of wanting something excessively was like a drug.
He had never taken those either. Only because he knew himself to be a man of obsession. A man who would likely lose himself entirely if addiction were to ever meet obsession.
And yet, that was what she felt like.
Addiction. Obsession.
Something he could not control.
People were dancing. He never partook in such things. These were nothing more than business events to him, and he did not participate in the more festive aspects. But as he saw her standing there on the edge of the dance floor looking on, he realized that either she would stand there alone—which was a crime all on its own—or another man would ask her to dance. Another man would take her in his arms.
He could not allow that. He crossed the room to her. “Luca—”
“Dance with me,” he commanded.
“What?”
“You do not need me to repeat myself. You heard me. Dance with me.” He realized then that he had repeated himself anyway.
“Oh.”
That was neither an affirmation nor a rejection. So, he took her hand without waiting for either one. He brought her out to the dance floor and pulled her against his chest. The contact was electric. Her breasts brushed against him, and he wanted nothing more than to clear the room and strip her body of that offending dress. It was beautiful, and yet it was an obstacle. And he supported the removal of obstacles.
“Luca,” she said, her eyes round. Was she afraid of him? Or was it something else? He could not read it. He did best when emotions were simple. Like science. When there were definitive answers. When things became open-ended he found he could not know them, and when he could not know something, he was only ever angry at it. And yet, he was not angry at her.
“Do I scare you?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry.”
He stepped away from her, regret filling him.
But she took a step toward him, and put her hand on his forearm. “No, Luca. You scare me because I want you too.”