Page 3 of The Billionaire's Bargain

I glance back, expecting to see mockery in his expression, but there's none. Only that same intense focus, as if he's cataloging every detail of my face.

"Likewise, Mr. Grant."

The moment stretches between us, taut with something I can't name. Then Cynthia clears her throat pointedly, and I retreat to table four, feeling his eyes on my back with each step.

Only when I hear the bell above the door signal his departure do I exhale fully. I risk a final glance through the front window. He's standing on the sidewalk, speaking into his phone, his free hand in his pocket. As if sensing my gaze, he looks up. Our eyes meet through the glass.

He doesn't smile. Doesn't wave. Just holds my gaze for one beat, two, three—then turns and walks to a sleek black car waiting at the curb.

I press my hand to my chest, feeling my heart hammer against my ribs. The smell of coffee clings to my uniform, and the memory of his fingers around my wrist tingles like a promise.

Or a warning.

two

. . .

Alexander

The numbers bluron my screen as I try to focus on the quarterly projections. Forty-eight hours since I saw her, and her face has burned itself into my mind like a brand. I've built an empire on concentration and ruthless focus, yet here I am, undone by a waitress with trembling hands and eyes that couldn't meet mine.

I push back from my desk, the leather chair whispering against the marble floor. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows of my penthouse office, Manhattan sprawls beneath me like a concrete playground. Mine to command. Mine to control. Sixty-five stories up, and I still can't escape her.

The skyline glitters with afternoon sunlight, buildings jutting like teeth from the city's jaw. From up here, people are specks, insignificant. But she wasn't insignificant. She was...everything.

I loosen my tie, feeling constricted despite the vast space around me. My fingers drum against the polished surface of my desk, Italian oak imported at a cost that could feed a family foryears. The thought makes me pause. Her family. I wonder what they're like. If they're struggling. The way her uniform had been meticulously mended at the cuff suggested as much.

"For fuck's sake," I mutter to the empty room. I'm Alexander Grant. I don't wonder about waitresses.

But I do. I have been. For two days straight.

The coffee she'd served me sits bitter on my tongue even now, a memory so sharp it might as well be happening all over again. I'd stopped at the café on a whim—no, not a whim. Nothing I do is without purpose. I'd been avoiding the construction on Fifth, took a detour, and there it was. A cramped little place with foggy windows and a sign promising "The Best Coffee in the City." A lie, surely, but I'd had fifteen minutes to kill before my next meeting.

The bell had jingled as I entered, and she'd looked up. Just a brief glance, but it stole my breath like I was some green boy and not a thirty-seven-year-old man who'd faced down boardrooms of sharks. Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, wisps escaping to frame her face. Not beautiful in the conventional sense that adorns the women I usually take to my bed. No, she was something else. Something real.

When she spilled the coffee on me…the way she'd startled at her name, like no one ever used it, like it was a gift I'd given her rather than pinned to her chest for all to see—that was when I knew I was in trouble.

I shake myself back to the present, to the empire I've built that suddenly feels hollow. The coffee at that café had been terrible, but I'd drained the cup anyway, left a hundred-dollar bill on the table, and walked out without looking back. A test for myself. A failure.

Because here I am, thinking about Alice. Alice with her soft curves and gentle features. Alice with exhaustion shadowing hereyes. Alice, who'd looked at me like I was something to be afraid of.

She wasn't wrong.

I press the intercom button on my desk. "Rachel, come in here."

My assistant appears within seconds, tablet in hand, expression professionally neutral despite the late hour and the fact that I've kept her well past when she should have gone home. Her tailored suit and sharp bob are as immaculate as they were at seven this morning.

"Sir?"

"I need information on someone." I don't bother with pleasantries. Rachel doesn't expect them.

"Of course. Details?"

"Her name is Alice. She works at a café on 28th and Lexington. Waitress. Nineteen or early twenties, I'd guess." I recite the facts clinically, as if she's a potential acquisition and not a woman who's crawled under my skin.

Rachel nods, makes a note. Doesn't question why her billionaire boss is interested in a waitress. That's why I pay her obscenely well.

"I want everything. Where she lives. Family situation. Financial status. Relationship status." I pause, tapping my finger against the desk. "Debts. I especially want to know about any debts."

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