Page 41 of Most Eligible Billionaire

“Fine.” I get in and I stab the lobby button a few times.Stab stab stab.

“The doors don’t shut faster when you do that,” he says.

“Shows what you know.” I stab it again. The doors shut. “See?”

He rolls his eyes. And we’re alone.

The air between us is thick and heavy.

He turns to me, gaze serious. “We’ll whip out the check at the fabrication facility. It’ll be good for you to see some of the operations beyond the office.”

I nod.

Just then the doors open and two women come barreling in with a giant cart. “Oh, Mr. Locke!” the older one says. “We can take the next.”

“Come on, there’s room.” He rests his fingers on my elbow and guides me back to the corner in order to make room for the huge cart. It’s just a light pressure, fingertips to elbow, but the sizzle burns clear through me.

His eyes rivet to mine. Did he feel it, too? He removes his hand, and I think he did feel it, but no, he’s helping to adjust the cart.

“Thank you,” the other woman says, with a gaze of enchantment.

Henry nods and grabs the bar at the back of the elevator.

The thing stops again and a woman and two small boys get on.

I set my own hand on the bar back there, right near his. His suit sleeve grazes my bare arm. My body hums with his nearness, with the tickle of fine fabric.

“We’ve got the Prime-Valu people on four,” the one woman says, unaware of the strange combustion in our corner. “That room projector bulb issue, but just to be safe…” She seems to wait for his blessing.

He smiles his dazzling smile, the one Carly showed me in pictures, pleased with his minion. “Excellent call.”

The women rattle off some corporate jargon. It’s clear that they just really want him to see they’re doing a good job. Everybody loves Henry, magical CEO of the world.

I fix on the projector cord, neatly wound up at the side of the cart, trying not to feel him so keenly.

Latrisha, my furniture maker friend, once said that living, growing trees extend beyond the actual physical space they take up. Standing next to Henry, I think that it’s true of people, too.

It’s not just the body heat of him; his shining power seems to take over the little space. Maybe that’s what won him that hot bachelor award, that the space around him seems to crackle with power. Even the elevator is all about Henry.

I should inch away, but the giant cart is taking up ninety percent of the space. And anyway, he’d assume it was because of him. Like I’m overwhelmed with him or something.

It’s in the CEO job description if the CEO says it is. I make the rules.

So arrogant.

Around the twenty-fifth floor I’m wondering if it’s a smell thing—he has this vague masculine scent with manly notes of cinnamon and something musky. I breathe it in, letting it fill my nooks and crannies.

Maybe that’s what’s affecting me. Maybe he’s wearing some pheromone concoction. A zillion dollars an ounce, made from the tears of mighty lions.

He’s watching the numbers, so I turn my head slightly, in service of my scientific inquiry, breathing him in, telling myself he won’t notice. It’s cinnamon and musk and something oceany. Deep mysterious ocean with huge surges of waves.

I catch one of the boys studying me. “Are you smelling him?” the boy asks. “You were smelling him!”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You turned your face to him and your nostrils went in and out. That means you were smelling him.”

I smile like I think he’s cute and then I give the rest of the women a baffled look.

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