Free Bound to Her: Three Dates With a Billionaire by Emma Lyn Wild Page B

between us. I lifted my glass. “To us,” I said, “And to better understanding.”
    She swallowed a small sip of the wine, looking as if it would choke her. “To better understanding,” she said, her tone monotonous.
    She’d decided to stick it out. Besides, Madame X signed her girls to three dates minimum. If Cassie bailed, I could give her employer a bad report. My admiration for her crept up a notch.
    I couldn’t remember having a more fraught meal. I didn’t let up. For one last time I put on the persona of Foxman, or rather, the alter ego, Evan Fox, the superior, snobbish billionaire who fought for the underprivileged in his spare time. Why make it up when I’d spent the last five years working as him? Some fans even sent letters to “Evan.”
    We ate the beef, and I made polite conversation, taking care to leave nothing for her to take offense at. We talked about the play, about other Shakespeare plays, and then I led the conversation to the Romans and left her safely there until I’d ordered dessert. As a museum worker with a specialism in Roman art, she was in her element, and since I was opening in Antony and Cleopatra soon, it suited me, too.
    She ate a few mouthfuls without comment on the food, but told me all about what the Romans ate and how they ate. I thanked her, even though I knew a lot of what she said from my own research. I needed to get into that character so bad. She knew much more than the superficial shit she was feeding me. Perhaps it was her way of getting her own back. I wouldn’t blame her.
    I’d engaged her until midnight, and the meal ended at eleven. We could have lingered over aperitifs and coffee, but I wanted something else. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her if she wanted a good tip, but I wouldn’t put it past her to walk out. Instead, I helped her from her chair and led her outside into the taxi I’d ordered earlier, when I’d taken a bathroom break. I didn’t want to give her a chance to refuse.
    Maybe the fact that the driver took a different route allayed her suspicions, but she sat primly next to me until the car drew up outside my apartment building. Her head jerked to one side and she looked at me as I got out, and held out my hand to help her. She took it, the first time she’d touched me that evening. The first time I’d allowed it. “Where are we?”
    I glanced up at the building. “I moved into a condo.”
    “I didn’t know you owned a property in New York.”
    I chose not to correct her but tightened my hold on her and led her inside. I was beginning to hate myself. I didn’t understand what I was doing, just as I didn’t understand my role as Antony yet. Were the two bound up together, or was something seriously wrong with me? Had I lost it? That was the actor’s fear, the thing that kept us up nights. Losing the magic. When it happened, it could be grisly. I’d seen actors blaze through their early careers and then spend their later years making potboilers, and crap because they couldn’t get back on the bus.
    I’d rather retire than let the public watch my meltdown. Perhaps they felt like I did now, that something was slipping away, and kept trying, praying that the next job would do the trick.
    Uncertain, anger never far from my mood, I coolly escorted her upstairs. I kept my hands off her, except for a small touch in the small of her back to guide her in the right direction. Even then heat sizzled through me when the warmth of her body went through me.
    I let her look around while I fixed coffee. She asked me a few questions about the art and the furnishing, none of which I could answer properly, because my PA had leased the place as it stood. Very little in here was mine. My surroundings rarely meant much to me, as long as they were adequate. “Do you like it?”
    She gazed around at the big sofas in primary colors, the shelves of books and the soft Oriental rugs. “It’s better than the hotel.”
    We sat on one of the plush sofas to