Page 124 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

I give her a smile of my own. I’m done letting her intimidate me.

I get out of there and continue on up to Theo’s office. Everything is still Gulag Drummond up there. The gloomy anteroom. Theo’s drab workspace.

Theo doesn’t get nice things even when everybody else does. He’s working at his whiteboard, totally absorbed.

Wearing his lab coat. The lab coat.

“Art? Microwave popcorn? What have you done with Mr. Drummond?”

He turns. Our eyes meet. White-hot energy bolts through me as he comes to me, slow and steady. Stalks to me.

I back up to the door. Most of me backs up, anyway. The butterflies in my belly are freaking out to get to him.

He pushes the door closed behind me, caging me against it.

“How can it be?” I say. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to fire yourself for promoting a climate of fun.”

“I’m a scientist,” he growls, kissing me. “I test things out. Even wild theories from wake-up-call girls.”

“Seriously.” I push him away. “You promoted Fernice to oversee employee morale? That’s brilliant. I was just down there. I think it’s already working.”

“It wasn’t really my idea,” he says. “I hired an executive coach, and we brainstormed finding somebody with people skills to complement my chemistry skills. Valerie, that’s my coach, is all about the carrot over the stick. Or the gift basket, as it were. The microwave popcorn was my addition.” He kisses me. “If productivity goes up, they’ll get more colors and more treats.”

“And if it goes down?”

He draws a finger across his throat.

I slide past him and walk to the middle of his office. I feel like I’m on the edge of a cliff. A good cliff, maybe, but a cliff all the same. I go to his board. Is he still making progress? “I have news, too,” I say.

“Uh-oh,” he says. “You sound serious.”

I turn. “I might’ve found a space.” Suddenly I can’t stop smiling. “And it’s amazing.”

He tilts his head. “A space?”

“For the bakery.” I fish out my phone and show him the pictures. “I know. It wasn’t going to happen. But look. Check it out.”

He flips through. “Wow. Even your ceiling.”

“Is it amazing or what?” I tell him the story of the landlord couple, or at least I think they were the landlords. The entrepreneurial deal. “I didn’t think I could get one on my own with no cash and my credit totally shattered. But I did. I got it on my reputation. I did it myself.”

A dark cloud seems to pass across his gaze, but then he brightens back up. “You’re staying.”

“I have to figure out how to break it to the subletter. My parents will be sad, but if I really hustle…I mean, with a space like this, I know how to make money.”

“You’re staying.”

“Yes!” I’m just laughing now. “I’m staying!”

He picks me up and twirls me around, and I scream, and for a second, we’re like a normal couple. Simple and happy. A normal couple where something good doesn’t mean something scary.

He sets me down on his worktable and slides a knuckle along my jaw. His touch feels potent. Electric. Far too honest. Everything’s new now, because I’m not leaving. And before I can pull away, he kisses me. I take hold of the lapels of his lab coat and hold tight.

“Thank goodness.” He tips his forehead to mine. “I wanted you to stay, Lizzie. More than anything.”

I narrow my eyes and glance at his whiteboard. “More than anything?” I ask, meaning, even the solution to the formula?

“More than anything.”

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