Page 13 of Daddy Billionaire Dragon

“I meant replace. I don’t want to replace her. I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep up this charade and pretend that we are not attracted to each other.”

I look around the room, trying to see if they are with me on this. I need them to understand. I need them to know that she’s not my soul mate and there can never be anything meaningful between Nic and I. But they’re not sold. They’re all looking at me identical dubious expressions.

“Does Nic know that you want to sleep with her?” Damon asks. He cuts to the point as always.

“Well…” I hesitate.

“So no,” he says, fixing me with a stare.

“She does know. She almost went home with me the other night, didn’t she?” I ask. I can’t help it that my voice is raised. They’re all making it more complicated than it needs to be.

Damon is unfazed by my outburst.

“‘Almost’ being the operative word,” he says evenly.

“Well, she’s also confessed her attraction to me. So there you have it.”

It makes a few jaws drop.

“So she wants to sleep with you as well?”

“Yes,” I say simply and want to leave it at that, but can’t. I won’t have her name ruined.

“But she says she won’t as she doesn’t want to jeopardize her career,” I say and pinch the bridge of my nose.

“At least one of you is acting sensibly,” Liam murmurs.

“She is a temp! There isn’t even a non-fraternization clause in her contract! It’s not like I will be breaking any rules by sleeping with her,” I press my point.

“You forget that she doesn’t want to sleep with you,” Pat says.

“No! She wants to sleep with me, but won’t. Look, enough already. Let’s get back to the meeting,” I say, looking at the screen pointedly.

Nobody says anything for a brief while.

“Sure,” says Liam eventually. “Just one thing before we continue.” He exchanges a brief glance with Pat. For an instant, there is such sadness in both their eyes that my heart goes out to both of them. I know what Liam is going to say, but I let him say it. He needs to say it.

“I’ve been down this road before. You remember how it almost ended me?”

I nod. It was a dark and difficult time for all of us, but especially so for Liam and Pat. It is a testament to their bond as brothers that they recovered from what happened all those years ago. But my situation is different! Nic is a stranger! And she’s not my soul mate.

“Just promise me you’ll be careful,” Pat says in a low voice.

“I promise,” I say, looking at each of them in turn, willing them to trust me. They decide to let it go for now.

“So what is the start-up called?” Liam asks.

It takes me a while to realize that he wants to know the name of the start-up I had talked about a little while back.

“Uh, KobiTech,” I say, looking at the card in my hand.

“Right, so we get in touch with the CEO tomorrow,” Liam says.

For the rest of the meeting, we only discuss the app and nothing else, and I am glad for it. While there are definite advantages in working with your best friends, there are disadvantages as well. Nothing slips past them. They throw strange glances my way from time to time, but I ignore them.

My mind is more or less made up though. I am going to woo Nic and get her to agree to a one-night stand. Our constant proximity is affecting her as badly as it is affecting me. I need to prove to myself once and for all that she’s not my soul mate. The only way to do that is to sleep with her. It is the forbidden nature of it that is making it all the more tempting. I’m sure I wouldn’t have felt the attraction with this intensity if she was just some random woman, and not my executive assistant.

Chapter 6 - Nic

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