At precisely eleven o’clock, Marceline stepped into the sweeping glass-and-steel lobby of the Auclair Holding Headquarters.
The air inside was cool, carrying a sharp scent of polished chrome, expensive leather, and distant rain.
Light streamed down through the vaulted atrium, casting long, sharp shadows across the dark marble floor.
She had spent the entire fifteen-minute drive across Paris reminding herself of the baseline rules.
This was a business meeting.
A high-stakes corporate negotiation.
Nothing more.
Claude was her family’s strategic rival and ultimate counterpart.
Nothing had changed.
The hotel room had been a temporary lapse in control, an aberration born of too much alcohol and too much history.
Nothing mattered.
The assistant pushed open the heavy double doors of the top-floor conference room.
Claude was already there.
Of course he was.
He stood up smoothly from the long glass table as she entered, unbuttoning his dark suit jacket with effortless grace.
“Marceline.”
His voice was soft, low, and entirely composed—a calm, rich timbre that sent an unintended, traitorous shudder down her spine.
She hated herself for noticing it.
“Monsieur Auclair,” she replied smoothly, keeping her chin high and her expression locked behind a mask of cold professionalism.
Claude’s face remained entirely unreadable.
“Please.” He gestured with a long, elegant hand toward the leather chair directly opposite him.
“Sit.”
She pulled back the heavy chair and sat, her silk skirt pooling around her knees as she placed her slim leather portfolio onto the table.
Claude seated himself across from her, his long legs resting under the glass table.
Without a second’s hesitation, he opened the thick black folder resting in front of him.
“I’ve reviewed the revised proposal from Maison Laurent,” he said, his blue eyes meeting hers with absolute, terrifying clarity.
And just like that, the tone was set.
No awkwardness.
No flicker of lingering heat in his eyes.
No subtle, loaded jokes, no reference to the hotel room, and no mention of the breathless, wrecked noises she had made into his neck on Saturday.
No indication whatsoever that anything had ever happened between them.
He simply began discussing business as if she were any other high-ranking executive in Paris.
“The projected foot traffic for the flagship location is entirely reasonable,” Claude continued smoothly, tapping a silver pen against the document, “but I think your allocation for the beauty division is far too conservative.”
Marceline stared at him across the polished glass table, her pulse hammering uselessly in her throat.
His voice was annoyingly, unbearably smooth—a deep, calm bass that sent a sudden, unwanted shiver running down her spine.
The sound instantly pulled her backward into the dark, tangled sheets of his hotel room, replaying the exact sensation of his warm breath brushing her ear, the gravel in his tone as he whispered for her to beg.
And the terrifying part was that she had.
Completely.
She forced her eyes off his face, only for her gaze to land on his forearms.
He had rolled his crisp white shirt sleeves neatly to his elbows.
The broad, corded forearms that had pinned her wrists above her head against the mattress.
He turned a page of the document, and the silver edge of his watch caught the afternoon light filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
His damned, perfect wrist.
Marceline violently dragged her eyes down to the printed numbers, her fingers clutching her pen so hard her knuckles turned white.
“I disagree,” she said, her tone clipped and deliberate.
Claude leaned back in his leather chair, watching her with cool, unblinking intensity.
“Why?”
She blinked, the figures on the page momentarily blurring together.
“Because…” She cleared her throat, forcing her corporate armor back into place.
“Because the younger demographic isn’t going to respond to a conventional luxury rollout.
They want quiet exclusivity, not an aggressive display.”
Claude gave a single, slow nod.
“I thought you’d say that.”
Without breaking eye contact, he slid a second sleek folder across the glass toward her.
“That’s why I included an alternative proposal.”
Marceline pulled the folder closer and flipped it open.
She scanned the bulleted points, the altered budget distribution, the guerilla marketing phase.
It was good.
Actually, it was infuriatingly brilliant.
“You already prepared this?” she asked, her brow furrowing slightly.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Yesterday morning.”
She frowned, looking back up at him.
“You anticipated my objection?”
“You made the exact same argument during the preliminary review three weeks ago,” Claude replied calmly, as if it were the most obvious detail in the world.
She stared at him, caught off guard.
He simply continued, entirely unbothered by her silence.
“If we position the autumn launch around discovery rather than traditional authority, your strategy will perform fifty percent better in key metro markets.”
Marceline looked down at the proposal again, her jaw tightening.
Damn him.
He was exceptional at his job.
He was thorough, sharp, and deeply perceptive.
She hated that about him, too.
“The digital influencer allocation is still too small,” she said, trying to find a fracture in his work.
Claude looked at her, the shadow of a smirk pulling at the corner of his lips.
“I thought you might say that as well.”
His mouth curved faintly—a microscopic, dangerous tilt that made Marceline’s breath catch in her chest.
“So I’ve already adjusted the capital allocation on page four.”
She stared rigidly at the paper, refusing to raise her eyes to his face again.
That smile.
She knew what those lips felt like when they were pressed against her pulse point, hot and ruthless.
She immediately looked down, her tone flat.
“Fine.”
Claude continued reviewing the figures as though nothing had happened, his voice steady and clinical as he guided her through the rest of the strategy.
They spent the next forty minutes locked in a grueling, hyper-focused review.
The conversation moved with clinical precision through every strategic angle:
Campaign Positioning: Shifting the narrative from legacy luxury to underground discovery.
Retail Locations: Securing prime boutique real estate on Rue Saint-Honoré and Avenue Montaigne.
Projected Revenue: Balancing high-volume beauty sales against limited-edition leather goods.
Marketing Budgets: Reallocating capital to digital channels and private VIP pop-ups.
Launch Dates: Setting a strict early-autumn timeline to front-run fashion week.
Brand Partnerships: Finalizing exclusive cross-promotions with premier hotel groups.
Nothing personal leaked through the cracks.
No inappropriate double entendres.
Not even one long, lingering glance.
Eventually, the soft rustle of paper ceased as Claude closed the black leather folder with a decisive snap.
“That covers everything for the initial phase.”
Marceline looked up from her notes, her brow lifting slightly in surprise.
“That’s it?”
Claude nodded smoothly.
“Unless there’s something else you’d like to discuss.”
The word Saturday rushed to the back of her throat—a hot, reckless demand to address the elephant suffocating the room.
Instead, she forced her posture straight and said flatly, “No.”
Claude stood up from the glass table, unbuttoning his suit jacket.
“Then I’ll have the revised contracts sent to your desk by three o’clock.”
He stepped around the table and extended his right hand.
Marceline stared at his long, manicured fingers for a fraction of a second too long before raising her own.
She shook it.
His hand was solid and warm, his grip firm.
Her stomach did something deeply, infuriatingly inconvenient—a violent, fluttery drop that made her pulse spike.
She released his hand immediately, stepping back.
“Thank you, Monsieur Auclair.”
“You’re welcome, Marceline.”
He walked past her to open the heavy frosted-glass door, holding it wide.
“Have a good afternoon.”
She walked out without looking back, the soft hum of the corporate floor washing over her.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Marceline stood frozen in the middle of the carpeted corridor for several long seconds, her heart hammering against her ribs.
She took a slow, steadying breath, then quietly muttered to the empty hallway, “I hate him.”
Except the words fell flat into the quiet air, sounding considerably less convincing than they ever had before.
Inside the conference room, the silence was absolute.
Claude remained standing by the closed door, his eyes fixed on the empty space where she had just been.
He waited until the faint sound of her heels faded down the marble corridor.
Only then did he close his eyes and exhale a long, heavy breath, his shoulders finally dropping half an inch.
Maintaining that impenetrable mask of cold, unbothered professionalism around Marceline had been exponentially harder than he had anticipated.
And neither of them had mentioned Saturday night.
Not once.