The Pleasure Contract by Caitlin Crews (free romance novels .TXT) 📗

its way into her, making her as breathless and melting as she’d been when Indy had started this whole thing.

She ducked out of the flow of pedestrian traffic and stood there, her back against the wall of the nearest building. Maybe it was the only thing holding her up.

“Whatever for?” she managed to ask.

“I saw your video, and I—”

“My video?” She was outraged. And more than that, embarrassed. “I never consented to any recordings!”

“As a matter fact, you did.” He sounded amused, and Bristol had no idea why she was clutching her mobile even tighter, pressing it against her ear as if trying to get closer to him. “I think you’ll find it was in the fine print when you signed up for an interview slot.”

“Oh.” Now that she thought about it, there had been a rather long paragraph of legalese on that page. She’d been too busy pretending she wasn’t doing what she was doing to read it. “Still.”

“Dinner tonight,” he said, as if it was settled. He named an excruciatingly cutting-edge new restaurant. “Eight o’clock.”

Then he hung up.

And no matter how many times Bristol told herself that she obviously wasn’t going to go, she also couldn’t seem to put her phone away, or push off from the wall where she stood.

She was unable to do anything but stand there, holding her phone like a talisman.

Like it was her very last hope.

By the time she moved on, at least an hour had passed.

And she was already planning what she was going to wear for the dinner date she absolutely wasn’t going to keep.

CHAPTER TWO

LACHLAN DRUMMOND DID not wait for anyone. He was rarely given the opportunity to try. But he waited for Dr. Bristol March in the cavernous vestibule of New York’s current hottest restaurant that evening and stranger still—didn’t mind.

He could have allowed the restaurant to seat him while he waited for her, as the hostess had offered to do approximately twenty-seven times already, but he wanted an untutored first impression. He wanted to see her before she expected to see him, because that was always instructive whether he was meeting someone socially or otherwise.

People liked to wear masks, especially around a man with his power and wealth. They liked to hide things, disguise things, and play pretend. Lachlan had learned long ago that it was always better to see a person’s true face whenever he could.

He might carry right along as planned, but it was always better to know.

And in the case of this woman, he also wanted to see how she fit standing next to him, straight off. If her physical presence was even half as electrifying as her video had been.

If she’d make him laugh again.

Because that video had made him laugh out loud, and Lachlan couldn’t recall the last time a woman he might potentially care to date had even come close. Not like that, deep and surprised and sudden. It was his own fault, he knew. He’d boiled dating down to the system his older sister, Catriona, liked to call the squalid horror of your personal life.

Often and to his face. While shuddering.

Lachlan couldn’t help smiling at the thought of Catriona, his favorite person in the world, who had always acted as if the numerous boards she had to sit upon as one of the two remaining Drummond heirs was a terrible imposition instead of a privilege. All she’d ever wanted was what she had. What she would say she’d fought to have, given the circus of their celebrated upbringing. Her high school sweetheart, their kids, and a life as far away from any kind of spotlight as she could reasonably get when she was Catriona Drummond.

From which she liked to make a great many pronouncements about her younger brother’s life choices, naturally.

Which Lachlan allowed because she was Catriona, the only person on this earth he loved unconditionally. Because they’d survived their childhood, the loss of their parents, and the constant media scrutiny that went along with both. And they were currently both surviving “Life as the Last of the Drummonds,” as the papers liked to scream.

They would have been forced to get along even if they didn’t, so it was lucky they always had.

We get along because you need a voice of reason in your life, and I’m the only one you’ve got, Catriona would have said if she was there. Lucky you.

But he shoved all that away, because his older sister was happily not here in this excruciatingly cutting-edge restaurant tonight. Because Dr. Bristol March wasn’t like the other women who’d shown up for what his personal assistant referred to as the casting call. That had been obvious from the way Bristol walked into that Murray Hill brownstone with entirely too much purpose. Then had stood there, blinking around at his panel as if she had no idea what she was doing there, and had perhaps expected to find herself in a classroom.

One she was in charge of, clearly.

And then she’d laughed.

At them. At him. At the whole squalid horror of his personal life, he assumed, and how could he not follow up on that? Lachlan had felt as if he had no choice.

When he never felt that way. Because he was Lachlan Drummond. He always had a choice.

A swift glance at his watch told him she still had a minute to go before she was actually, technically late.

He didn’t entertain the possibility that she might not come at all.

The restaurant was set in a self-consciously industrial space, which meant there was a long way to walk from the entrance door to the hostess stand where he waited. It was deceptively lit, with dramatic stone sconces on each side of the walkway, but even more light from above.

It meant that anyone who walked in was instantly recognizable, which was a feature or a bug depending on the person. Lachlan had entered through the private entrance out back, because he didn’t need to make announcements. And as he waited, he wondered