Free His to Have: A Billionaire Romance by Piper Hayes

empty seat in one of those cubicles and dig into my work. Maybe that would take Catherine off my mind for even a minute. Maybe that would keep me from fixating on her and the way she drives me wild. Even just thinking about her, I can taste her lips and hear her excited breaths; I can picture how beautiful her eyes are when she looks at me like she’s the only person in the world who can truly see me.  
    “Blake, are you with me?” Damien asks. “You’re staring off again. That’s the third time in fifteen minutes. What’s going on?”
    “It’s her,” I say. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”  
    “I’m not going to tell you how to run your private life, but she’s a distraction you don’t need right now, Blake, and she could be a liability. We should really get back to the Agenda. We still have to talk about Boston and Singapore, and I don’t even want to think about how long it’s going to take to unravel the whole mess with the Stapleton debt write-offs.”
    “Stapleton, yeah, I think we’re still in a strong position there.” Honestly, I don’t even remember what Stapleton is. Just as Damien is about to call me out on it, my phone lights up. Edna knows I’m meeting with Damien, and she knows I don’t take calls during meetings with Damien unless it’s an emergency. I pick up the phone.
    “Mr. Bennett, it’s Charlie, you told me to call you if I saw anything going on. Well, he’s back. The guy you asked about. He’s headed up to your apartment right now.” Charlie’s the doorman from my building. He’s about my age, but he’s got a wife and two young kids. He takes the subway from the Bronx every morning, and I give him a heavy tip every Christmas and on his birthday. Even though I have a private entrance, I stop by and chat with him at least once a week. Then I take the service elevator up to the back entrance. Last week I showed him a picture of the guy who has been hanging around the building, and I asked him to give me a heads up when he next showed. Treat people like people instead of dirt and they’ll look out for you.
    “Thank you, Charlie,” I say. I have a clear image in my head of Ben standing in the middle of my living room, looking at everything I have, looking at Cat,
    “Do you want me to send someone up to make sure everything’s ok?”
    “Just keep me informed. I might need you to do something for me soon, but for now, sit tight.” I hang up. Damien is staring at me like I just lit my desk on fire. “What?” I say.
    “What do you mean what? I’m your fixer, and it sounds like you have a situation.”
    “I have it under control. It’s personal.”  
    “If it involves that FBI agent, it’s not personal. You had me look into him last week. Then I met with him like you asked, pretended to have information on you. He seemed to imply that he had other sources close to you. You know all of this. It has to be her, Blake.”  
    “It’s not her. I know it’s not her,” I tell him. I’m not going to have this conversation. “I’m telling her tonight.”  
    “You can’t do that,” Damien says. “Think with your head, not your dick for a minute here. How much do you really know about her?”
    I smile. “More than you think.”
    “I’m not talking about what kind of freckles she has between her bikini line. I’m talking about her intentions. You put her father out of business. If anyone has motive to come after you, it’s her.”
    “She’s not like that,” I say.
    “Don’t be naive. You can’t trust her.”  
    If there’s anyone I can trust right now, it’s Cat. She trusts me too. I know it. “Well, I trust her.”
    “You have the doorman keeping tabs on her. I wouldn’t exactly call that trust.”
    I’m looking out for her. I didn’t want her getting dragged into all of this, and now she is. I just hope she’s on my side and that she’ll find some way to forgive me when this inevitably blows up. “I know what I’m doing.”  
    “I