Free Boxed Set: Dominated by a Billionaire - Part 10-12: Irresistible Billionaire by Emma M. Green Page A

faint smiles. His big arms pull me towards him several times, lead me into remote corners where we kiss passionately, as if realizing for the first time what's going to happen. Again and again. In just twenty-eight days, I’ll be Mrs. King. I’ll belong to him, he’ll belong to me. Forever.
    After that enchanted break, getting back to reality was… awful. It's 5 p.m., my feet are killing me and all those emotions have worn me out. Basically, I’m dying to get home and lounge around in my rooftop garden. Instead, the little Miss Perfect that I have for a conscience convinces me to make a quick stop at the office. I leave Vadim in the huge lobby – he is already deep in conversation with new investors, straight off the plane from New York. My CEO gives me one last glance as I slip into the elevator.
    Oh, Vadim… That intense gray gaze of yours…
    The Susan Bridges hurricane hits me and I come down off my cloud in a flash. Ouch! The fall is painful. The casting director, alias the biggest gossip of all King Prod, decides to let go of her phone for two seconds – despite it being grafted to her ear – to give me an update on the rushes that she has just screened. I listen distractedly, half my brain resisting.
    The other half refuses to leave Vaux-le-Vicomte. And I wish I'd listened to it and just stayed there...
    The express meeting ends within minutes. Susan is probably surprised by my lack of interest, but if she is, she doesn’t say anything about it. She leaves my office, clicking her heels loudly and waving her sheets of notes every which way. Noisy. That’s the word that sums her up best.
    "Alma, Can I talk to you a second?" Sophie asks, appearing in my doorway.
    "Sure, come on in. Everything all right?"
    "Not really. I don’t feel like I have a place here anymore. You know, with everything going on at home…"
    "Still no baby on the horizon?" I ask, as tactfully as possible.
    My coworker doesn’t answer right away. She seems to be looking for the right words… or an excuse to get out of this conversation – which she happens to have brought up.
    "Nothing to report," she finally sighs, biting the inside of her cheek.
    I guess she's trying to hold it together…
    "OK, I think this calls for going out for a drink with the girls!"
    "It'll be a Virgin, for me, then…" she says, frowning.
    "Virgin, you? Sophie Adam, would you be trying to pass yourself off as a nice, respectable girl by any chance?" I joke, being silly.
    "That's exactly what I am. And what do I get in return?" she whispers sadly, pacing next to me.
    OK, Alma. Stop joking. Right this minute.
    "Lily and Pippa are on their way," I say, sitting down on the bright pink booth in the Ternes lounge bar.
    "Pippa, your English cousin? Is she living here?"
    "No, thank God!" I say, opening up the cocktail menu. "She’s just passing through. I love Pip’s, but she’s a professional pain in the butt. I can only handle her in small doses."
    "Does Lily feel the same way?" Sophie giggles.
    "It’s a little complicated. They are best friends one day, sworn enemies the next. It’s been that way for ten years…"
    "Sounds like me and my sister. I haven’t seen her in ages, actually. She lives so far away and I’m stuck here with work."
    "You could take a week off, Sophie. If you need to take a break, feel free. I’ll do what it takes to give you the freedom you need…"
    "I know, Alma, you’re a doll," she whispers, fiddling with the little candle on our table. "Sometimes I forget you’re my boss the way you don’t have to torture your employees to get them to respect you. I admire you, you know. I envy you, too…"
    "You envy me? Why?"
    "Are you serious?" she bursts out laughing. "Hmmm, let’s see. You are engaged to the sexiest, brightest and wealthiest man on earth. You have a screwed-up family, for sure, but loving and omnipresent. You’re barely thirty and you have a job any fifty-year-old would dream of. Do you need me to keep going...?"
    "I’m