I give a nervous laugh. “I have to say…I don’t like your partner very much.”

“Makes two us,” he says, and I blink in surprise. Beck and I haven’t discussed JT before other than that first night we met when he told me that JT didn’t like confident women, and so I’ve never known what his feelings were. For all I knew, they were the tightest and best of friends.

Stepping in to Beck, I press my forehead briefly to his chest and say, “Well, I’m glad you came in when you did. I was getting ready to kick him in the balls.”

“I would have paid money to see that,” he says with a laugh, and then with a tug against my hair pulls my head from him. He tilts my face back and gives me a light kiss filled with nothing but affection.

It’s nice.

Very nice.

“Hungry?” he asks with a smile.

“Starved.”

“Good, let’s go.”

Beck takes me by the hand, laces our fingers together.

This is also very nice and I actually get a warm feeling within my chest as we walk out of his office, and Linda’s eyes immediately take notice of us holding hands. She gets almost misty-eyed as she smiles at us.

“Get that look off your face, woman,” Beck growls, but it’s done with a great deal of fondness.

Linda puts her hand over her mouth, looks at Beck with shining eyes, and shakes her head slightly at what she clearly thinks is a miracle going on in front of her. “I can’t help it. You two are adorable.”

“Christ,” Beck mutters, and pulls me past her desk.

I chuckle and give a tiny wave to Linda over my shoulder.

When we hit the lobby, Beck drops my hand but immediately drapes his arm around my shoulder, pulling me into him and laying a kiss to my temple before murmuring, “You’re going to be setting all the gossips’ tongues wagging with your visit here today.”

My eyes cut over to the coldly beautiful Clarista, who watches Beck and me with her mouth hanging open. I can’t help it: I put my arm around his waist and step in closer to him as we walk by her desk, and shoot her a sweet smile. “Goodbye, Clarista. It was lovely to meet you.”

Beck looks over to Clarista, squeezes me in closer. Clarista’s eyes move to Beck, almost pleading with him to tell her this isn’t happening. Beck North, the most eligible bachelor in this building, is cavorting with a girl in a T-shirt and Converse shoes.

“I was just going to step out for a bite of lunch, but now that I think about it, I’m going to take the rest of the day off,” Beck says impetuously to Clarista. “Will you let Linda know?”

“Yes, Mr. North,” she says, her voice completely dumbfounded.

“Excellent,” Beck says with a grin, and then he pulls me closer as we walk out of the lobby.

Chapter 14

Beck

“Is this weird?” Sela asks as she smooths down the dress at her hips with nervous hands.

“No, and quit fidgeting,” I tell her as I guide her into the ballroom by the elbow.

“It seems weird,” she maintains.

“It’s not weird,” I tell her for about the hundredth time. “And we don’t have to stay long. Just enough to make an appearance and then we can go.”

“See, I told you it was a waste of money to buy this dress,” she complains as we walk toward the bar. “Silly, since you only have to stay for a little while. I should have just stayed at the condo and waited for you, and you could have saved yourself a pretty penny.”

I laugh and squeeze her elbow. “Ever-practical Sela.”

God, her practicality is fucking adorable. When I told Sela at lunch a few days ago that The Sugar Bowl had another mixer that I needed to attend, she first got jealous on me. Oh, it was barely perceptible…a tightening of her jaw, a spark in her eye. I wanted to call her out on it but knew it would embarrass her, so I quickly let her know that I wanted her to go with me as my date. I assured her that I just had to make an appearance and that we wouldn’t stay long.

So after lunch that day, we then went shopping for a cocktail dress. I let Sela pick out what she wanted, and while the boutique I took her to didn’t have anything that cost less than a thousand dollars, I was surprised she picked a more sedate dress. It’s champagne-colored silk with sleeves that sit off her shoulders, a snug-fitting bodice, and a skirt that falls below her knees. It’s actually quite elegant and not at all something a Sugar Baby would wear, which means I loved the fuck out of it.

Tonight she paired it with a pair of high heels in the same champagne color and put her hair in a tight twist at the back of her neck. She looks like she could be attending a fancy charity dinner instead, and I realize as we walk into the ballroom that my chest is actually puffed out a little with pride in the woman that is with me.

We step up to the bar and a bartender swoops in on us taking our drink orders. I offer an empty stool to Sela. How she so gracefully gets on it with that tight skirt is beyond me, but when she crosses one leg over the other and a long slit appears running up her thigh, I immediately understand. I can’t help myself…placing my fingers on her bare skin and running them up high until the material comes together again.

“You are the sexiest woman in this room,” I tell her as I tilt my head to the side and kiss her bare shoulder. She shivers and lets out a tiny gasp of pleasure.

I pull back and grin at her, finding her looking at me with confusion.

“How do you do that?” she asks in amazement.

“Do what?”

“Make me feel like some high school girl with a crush on the cutest boy in the class and he just looked at her and made her go all silly inside,” she replies.

“I know the feeling,” I tell her softly, and she smiles at me.

A rare, genuine, full smile from Sela with nothing else hidden underneath. It captivates me and everything else in the room melts away. Our eyes lock and hold. I feel an almost electric current pop between us, as if I’ve just had an epiphany of some sort.

But then Sela’s gaze wavers and slides past my left shoulder, narrows for an instant, and then fills with disgust. I turn my body that way, look over my shoulder, and immediately see what caused that look.

The bar is curved like a horseshoe and JT is standing at the end about six stools down from Sela and me. He’s got his arm around the back of one of the stools that holds a scantily clad and huge-chested blond girl, early twenties as best I can tell, and he’s whispering into her ear. She’s clearly his target for tonight.