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 if maybe he’d seen something in the video that wasn’t there. Would he even recognize the one woman who’d ever walked out of his interview process?
But the moment she stepped inside, he knew it. He felt it, as if she’d brought the slap of winter with her when he knew full well it was a lovely spring evening outside.
And he watched as she took in the long walk ahead of her, a look on her face that told him she was equal parts dubious and curious.
He realized that he really hadn’t been sure she would show, and that almost made him laugh all over again.
Because Lachlan couldn’t remember the last time a woman hadn’t been a sure thing.
It was a sheer accident that he’d even seen her video, much less as quickly as he had. He probably wouldn’t have seen it all—because there was no way his assistants would have sent it up the food chain—but he’d happened to text his assistant about a different matter and had casually asked how the selection process was going.
Well, boss, Ryan had replied in his usual cheeky manner, the first one laughed and walked out, so take that as you wish.
That wasn’t the way the selection normally went. Usually the panel had to herd the candidates out because they went on for too long. Lachlan, stuck in a car between two tedious meetings, had asked to see the woman who had broken the mold. Ryan had sent over the short video, Lachlan had laughed, and here he was.
In the video, Bristol had been dressed in an unremarkable short-sleeved, knee-length dress that he suspected was billed as the sort of thing a woman could dress up or down according to her preference. She had done neither. She’d worn no jewelry, save the utilitarian watch strapped to one wrist. She had long, dark hair, glossy and straight, that fell to the middle of her back. Her eyes were big and clever, and her face. It was clever, mercurial. She’d actually frowned and, more, looked as if she did so often—no regular Botox appointments to keep her muscles still and smooth.
It was her face that had captivated him, switching from something like bewildered to straight-up entertained in a heartbeat. Her laugh had been wicked.
And she’d turned and strode off without so much as a hitch in her step or a backward glance. Lachlan had been certain she would forget he existed the moment she stepped out into the street, and he’d found he...couldn’t have that.
He’d expected to regret that choice.
But he didn’t.
Because tonight she marched toward him wearing yet another unremarkable dress. This one was not in the sensible navy shade from before, but was a richer, darker black. And somehow he knew that both the dress and the pair of serviceable heels she wore were the one version of each she had in her closet.
He doubted very much that she had raced out to shop for this outfit. He would have sworn that if asked, practical Bristol March with her PhD in social policy had weighed the options and decided to make do with what she had.
Lachlan didn’t know how he knew that. He just did.
Maybe it was that every other woman who had ever gone through his selection process had come to dinner like a trap ready to be sprung. They’d presented themselves like a living, breathing PowerPoint demonstration. Breasts out for inspection or coyly hidden, usually with an open back instead. Stunning stiletto heels, formfitting gowns, and the kind of effortless, laid-back charm that could only be achieved after a full day in the salon and a trip through the city’s couture ateliers.
But not Bristol March, PhD.
Lachlan couldn’t seem to keep himself from wondering where else she would present herself like this—no frills, no games, just her.
His cock was on board. Enthusiastically.
He saw the very moment she recognized that it was him, standing there waiting for her way down at the other end of the long hallway. She slowed, but only for a moment. Then she simply soldiered on.
She did not smile. She did not turn sultry. There wasn’t so much as the faintest hint of slinking.
She marched up to him and Lachlan noticed that the only nod she’d given to adornment was a set of shiny studs in her ears that he doubted were real diamonds. That same watch that was clearly to tell time, possibly in several time zones, and not a piece of jewelry. No manicure and only a bit of lip gloss.
He couldn’t tell, yet, if she was deliberately dressing down to appear as if she didn’t care about this, or him, as some had tried—though with significantly more quiet touches of cosmetics and couture, like the one woman who had feigned surprise that she’d actually turned up with her dress on inside out. It was possible Bristol was playing that game.
It was also possible she was that rare unicorn. A woman out on a date with him who really, truly wasn’t trying to impress him.
It was amazing, he thought as she stopped before him, how desperately he wanted it to be the latter.
And how much his cock didn’t care either way.
“Mr. Drummond,” Bristol said and thrust out her hand, as if this was a business meeting. One where she was in charge.
Then again, given his selection process, he supposed it was a business meeting. Though he’d never thought of it that way when his actual business meetings were far drier and never the least bit sexual. More to the point, the women who usually held these meetings with him acted as if they didn’t think of it that way either. Because most women, in his experience, actually wanted to date him. Or have dinner with him. Or simply...be in his presence.
Bristol March, PhD, was clearly withholding her judgment on that.
Lachlan took her hand in his and smiled as that electricity he felt when he’d seen her video kicked through him again. Hotter and longer this time.
He estimated she was five-seven or so in her bare feet. The two-inch heels she was wearing put her chin on level with his chest, and looking down at her was no hardship. He still couldn’t get over that face of hers. As if she’d been built to be wicked but had decided to be studious instead. It stirred him up.
She stirred him up.
Even when she frowned at him as if she was trying to bring him into focus.
Or maybe as if she was processing that same electrical charge.
“Dr. March,” he murmured. “A pleasure to meet you in person.”
He could feel it as she started to release her grip, so he held on. Just for a moment. A breath. Just to keep that electricity pumping, if only for a little longer.
And he liked it when he saw her eyes dilate.
It was a good start. Especially when she flushed slightly.
“Once again, I don’t know why I’m here,” she announced, forthright and to the point. “I walked out of that interview, which is the kindest description I can think of for it, for a reason. The reason hasn’t changed.”
“Is the reason that you find me disgusting? Actively repellent?”
“You, personally? I couldn’t say. That bizarre spectacle, on the other hand...”
Again, she surprised him. Lachlan wasn’t used to that. And he certainly wouldn’t have imagined that, having managed it once, she would do it again. Or...repeatedly.
“You’re here for dinner,” he told her. “That’s all. It’s not a panel or any kind of audition. It’s just dinner.” He laughed when she only studied him, clearly unconvinced. “This is currently the most sought-after restaurant reservation in New York City. If nothing else, surely we can enjoy the experience of one of the world’s most avant-garde chefs. It’s widely held to be spectacular.”
He released her hand, aware that he didn’t want to, and that, like everything else, was new. And all her. Then he nodded at the hovering hostess to seat them at last. Walking behind Bristol, they were led to the table he’d requested. It sat on the second-floor balcony far from any other patrons, looking out over the restaurant, yet private.
So they might be seen by anyone in the restaurant, with its zero-tolerance policy for cell phone usage in a place that catered to so many celebrities, but would not be heard.
Lachlan enjoyed the view as they walked. Unlike the other women he’d dated, Bristol wasn’t putting on a performance. She charged after the hostess in much the same way she’d entered the restaurant, as if she had a great many important things to do. And clearly, nowhere on that to-do list did it occur to her to vamp it up for the man who was trailing behind her.
Notably unlike the hostess, who he had seen walk crisply all over the floor of this restaurant without treating anyone to the metronome-hip action he could see before him now as she climbed the steel stairs to the second floor. It was certainly impressive, but all Lachlan was interested in tonight was the good doctor.
At the table, Bristol waved off the waiting server’s offer to pull out her chair and sat herself down as briskly and matter-of-factly as she’d done everything else so far. She folded her hands on the table and gazed at him when he sat opposite her, and there wasn’t a trace of anything even remotely seductive about the way she studied him.
If he didn’t know better, he might have been tempted to imagine that she was the one who had invited him here. To study him. And not in a particularly flattering fashion, but as a part of her research.
“Explain to me why you do this,” she said the moment the server walked away. Not waiting for him to lead their conversation. Not seeming particularly concerned with him at all, really. It was novel. “You’re Lachlan Drummond. You were famous before you were born. Surely you can get a date without convening a panel.”
He laughed as if winded when really, he was amused. “You seem singularly unimpressed with me.”
“I had no plans to come tonight,” she said, and it took him a moment to realize she was agreeing with him. “I talked myself out of it, repeatedly. But then my curiosity got the best of me, so here I am. After all, I’ve seen you on magazine covers and in all the papers for as long as I can remember, and that’s without ever seeking you out.”
“Perish the thought.”
She looked as if his dry tone surprised her, which shouldn’t have felt like both a rebuke and a caress. “Surely all you have to do is set foot in the street and thousands of women will flock to your side and clamor for your attention. It’s not a Broadway play, so why the audition process?”
“It’s more like a Broadway play than you might imagine.” But maybe this wasn’t the time to go over his list of strict requirements. The public events that he had to attend and the private shows he preferred to enjoy without having to worry about tending to the demands people in regular relationships inevitably had. “I’ve found, over time, that any woman I might meet organically comes with an emotional tax.”
It was her turn to sound dry. “This already sounds healthy.”
Lachlan sat back in his seat, studying her. If this was an act she was putting on, he couldn’t see it and by this point in his life, he could read people all too well. Bristol March was demanding he account for himself, and if he wasn’t mistaken, she actually wanted to know the answer.
She’d come for those answers, not for him.
It was a measure of how fucked up he was, clearly, that even that turned him on.
“It depends how you define healthy,” he said.
“The usual way.” She smiled faintly. “That would probably not involve panels of underlings in a creepy town house.”
“The creepy town house is actually an eighteenth-century brownstone that happens to be on the National Register of Historic Places. As an aside.”
“That doesn’t make it less creepy. It makes it more likely to also be haunted.”
Lachlan decided not to die on the hill of an old house some ancestor of his had built when that neighborhood, now in the middle of Manhattan’s grand sprawl, had been considered “uptown” and far away from the heart of the city.
“Is it healthier to pretend that I have an emotional capacity that I lack?” he asked mildly instead. “Or to admit up front that I don’t so that everybody’s on the same page throughout? I happen to think that my approach is, if nothing else, kinder.”
“Is that a word that you would use to describe yourself? Kind?” Bristol’s gaze was intent on his. Unwavering. She appeared to hide nothing, and he found that almost as electrifying as her hand in his. “Are you the world’s first example of a kind billionaire?”
That landed a bit harder and did not make him feel like laughing. Lachlan signaled one of the waiters. “I think this conversation requires wine, don’t you?”
He half expected this shockingly direct woman to lecture him on remaining clearheaded for the academic exploration they were apparently taking tonight, but she didn’t. Instead, she accepted the wine he ordered gratefully and took a fortifying gulp. Then another.
Much as he did.
Not as formidable as she wants to appear, he thought, and was pleased that at least he wasn’t the only one having a novel experience tonight.
And as they set about ordering, which required a small food-based performance on the part of the staff—the better to inhabit the chef’s vision—Lachlan realized that he was happy to stall. To pause for a moment.
To take a breather while he sorted through the complicated tangle of emotions and pure attraction that was making him feel perilously close to off-balance here. He liked the sensation, or he didn’t hate it, but it was new. He liked new. Craved it, even.
But Lachlan hadn’t felt anything close to off-balance in as long as he could remember. He’d learned how to stand his ground when he was a kid and he’d viewed that as a virtue. Still did. Tonight he obviously needed to recalibrate himself. He was used to being in complete control of every interaction he had. He told himself that taking a moment to get his bearings with this woman who not only didn’t follow the rules, but didn’t seem to know them, was only smart.
While he did, it occurred to him that all the women who usually turned up to take part in his interview process were self-selecting in the first place. They had to want to audition for a place in his life to get invited to try. And there were precious few professional intellectuals in that set. Bristol was the first.
The professor types he met in the course of his businesses and charities were usually part of think tanks, philanthropic entities, or governments, and were certainly not interacting with him in a social manner. They wanted funding of one sort or another. They were always trying to get him interested in their research, not themselves.
And not to put too fine a point on it, but they were very rarely as pretty as Bristol.
Of course he was a little thrown. That was why he liked her.
“Why did your sister submit your application?” he asked when they were alone again. He smiled when she looked taken aback, and didn’t bother pretending that he wasn’t a little bit happy to see that particular shoe on the other foot. More than a little bit, even. “Or am I the only one who is expected to answer questions tonight?”
“It’s very on-brand for my sister, actually, to submit applications on my behalf without asking me.” Bristol rolled her eyes, but with affection. “She considers herself a free spirit in all things and would like nothing more than if I suddenly became one myself, but she gets tired of waiting for me to wake up like that one morning. So, periodically, she does things.”
“Was she under the impression I was looking for a free spirit of some kind? If so, she’s probably the first person in a long time to mistake me for some kind of hippie. Hippies don’t normally have hedge funds or Yale in their past.”
“You’d be surprised how many hippies turn out to have trust funds. It takes money to afford all that not doing anything.”
“Not a fan, I gather. But your sister thinks I am?”
Bristol’s gaze was shrewd. “You’re looking for something that’s hard to define, aren’t you? The woman in question has to be free-spirited enough to take you up on your offer in the first place, which is hardly a mainstream sort of thing. She has to be able to meet your physical demands, which I’ve been repeatedly informed, mostly via texts from your underlings, are...”
She was obviously searching for a word, so Lachlan supplied one.
“Healthy?”
Her eyes gleamed. “Indeed. Yet you also require a certain polish and educational background, which in many ways precludes the former. I’m surprised that you ever find a single candidate, if I’m honest.”
“It might surprise you to learn that many consider me a catch, Bristol. And are willing to do all kinds of things to be the one to catch me for a while. Even a night.”
She picked up her wineglass but didn’t raise it to her lips. “It seems to me that the only way a highly educated, appropriately polished woman would agree to serve as an escort for you would be if they needed money and were prepared to do whatever was necessary to get it. The usual reason a woman becomes an escort, I imagine. Either that or they think they’ll find a way to upgrade themselves to wife. And either way, that doesn’t quite sound to me like the emotion-and issue-free arrangement you’re supposedly looking for. One is transactional and the other is a deliberate game of pretense. Which do you prefer?”
Lachlan felt adrenaline rush through him. He was familiar with the sensation. Notably he felt it in a business environment, right when he was about to close a major deal.
And it only occurred to him then, as she essentially laid bare his entire dating history with such ease, that he hadn’t felt it in a romantic sense longer than he liked to admit.
“I can’t say I like either,” he found himself saying, which was a truth he preferred to keep to himself. Since he couldn’t see how to do anything differently. Not with the life he led.
“You’re too much of a catch, as you say, to like the sensation of being just a paycheck and too aware of the performance of the would-be wives to enjoy it.” Bristol nodded sagely. “That is a quandary.”
Lachlan had never thought of it that succinctly before. This time, he didn’t have to pretend to feel winded. He felt it.
But his cock wanted nothing more than to explore all the ways she could make him feel that, in all the best ways. Less psychological profiling, more sex.
The food began to arrive then, and he found himself irritated that they were being interrupted. Even though he was well aware that this kind of self-referential dining experience was part of the package any woman who wanted to date him had to be fluent in.
He understood that it would be devastating if Bristol March could capture his interest so many ways, yet fail this test. When he normally found these dinners entertaining because, for him, they provided a checklist of ways the women he was with—though they might be marvelous in any number of ways—couldn’t meet his needs to fill this role.
Bristol was right. Though there were many candidates, there were very few who were capable of making him forget what they were really after—a payday or his name.
Lachlan wasn’t sure when it had become, not just amusing, but critically important to him that this woman who wanted neither pass all of the carefully constructed tests his sister had long since told him were appalling.
Try seeing if you like her, idiot, Catriona would say.
But Lachlan couldn’t trust likeability. Too many people put on acts when they met him. He was too well-known. He wanted something genuine. Of course he did. Someday he would look for genuine when he was ready for a real relationship. When he wanted what Catriona and Ben had.
Until then, he had his dating protocol and his tests.
And though the food here was exquisite, he hardly tasted it, so busy was he watching Bristol acquit herself beautifully.
Conversation flowed easily in and around the performance art piece that was the service, and the operatic flair of the food itself. So easily that he had to remind himself to look for all the markers he usually paid such close attention to at these meetings. Like the conversation itself. Talking effortlessly to a stranger was an art that few understood and even fewer could pull off no matter their emotional state. Lachlan was a master at it. He needed his girlfriend to manage it tolerably well, because the circles he moved in required it. There was no place for a trophy in a dinner that might easily turn into the seeds of the kind of regime changes that altered the world for the better.
Bristol March, it turned out, could not only talk about any subject under the sun, but she also seemed genuinely interested in each and every one of them. She was widely read. She listened. She made fascinating connections and did not lapse into monologues or speak only of herself. She was not afraid of sharing her opinions, but had the increasingly rare quality, these days, of not seeming unduly attached to them.
His grandmother, who he and Catriona not so affectionately referred to as the Dragon Lady, would have given one of her severe nods. The sincerest form of flattery she possessed.
By the time the attentive waitstaff cleared the table, Lachlan was busier keeping his hands to himself than marking off items on a checklist. It was harder by the second to do much of anything but pay attention to that driving pulse that beat through him, that endless greedy fascination for Bristol and her frown and her clever face, making him wonder if he could keep his hands to himself.
“Thank you,” Bristol said when their coffees had been carried off. She looked surprised. “I’ll admit, this was far more pleasant than I imagined it would be.”
“I’ll admit that I’m used to significantly more deference and interest on the part of my dinner dates.”
She tilted her head slightly to one side, which he now knew was a telltale sign she was about to be provocative. “I would have thought displays of interest and deference came after the audition. Once the starring role was secured.”
“Some like to show that they’re capable of such things, Bristol.”
“Dress for the job you want, not the job you have?”
“Exactly.”
“Well,” she said, lifting a brow. “I did. You’ll note I’m dressed like a person deciding between professorships and postdoctoral research positions at a number of highly regarded institutions. Not an actress. Or an escort.”
“Is this a strategy? Do you think that if you insult me it will make me want you?” Lachlan was fascinated to find that his temper, so often dormant because he cared deeply about so very few personal things, had engaged. “I would strongly caution you against leaning too far into that.”
He had his answer in the look of shock on her face. She was either the best actress he’d ever encountered...or it had literally never occurred to her to employ a strategy with him in the first place.
Lachlan wasn’t sure which was more lowering.
He reached across the table, taking her delicate hand in his and feeling the kick of it. Watching, perhaps a little too closely, as her pupils dilated once again.
As her breath picked up.
It reminded him that all this architecture—all the panels and the dinners and the conversation, too—was about the chemistry between them. These were structures he liked to put around sex, but it was still about the sex.
And that need in him, white-hot and intense.
He made rules so that he could have exactly what he wanted, precisely when he wanted it, from a woman he’d made certain, in advance, was also what and who he wanted.
And he’d never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Bristol.
“I don’t have a strategy,” she said quietly. Her pulse was drumming wildly in her neck. Her hand was hot in his. “I still don’t know why I’m here.”
“I do.”
Heat poured through him, shooting out from where their hands were joined and finding its way straight to his cock. What he really wanted was to take a bite out of her. But that would come.
He was sure of it.
“Tell me, then,” she invited him. Her voice was husky. “If you know.”
“I have a better idea,” Lachlan said. And later, maybe, he would remember this moment and worry about how far he was straying from the usual script. But right now, all he could see was Bristol. And all he could think about was getting a taste of her the way he’d wanted to do since he’d seen that video. “Why don’t I show you?”