At the Billionaire's Beck and Call? Read Online Free Page A

slowly up to her eyes. “Do you want to sit at the bar or take a table?”
    Glad for a reason to break eye contact, she scanned the room. “The tables down the back are quieter.”
    He put a hand on her waist and guided her toward the back of the room. As they wove their way through the tables, Johnny, a waiter who’d served her here before, was delivering drinks to a group of customers. He saw her and winked before continuing to place the brightly colored cocktails on the table.
    As she spared him a brief smile, Macy thought she’d caught a faint scowl marring Ryder’s features but when she looked fully at him, there was no sign.
    Ryder found a table in a corner that had a modicum of privacy. He pulled her chair out for her to sit, then turned to take his own seat, giving her a brief view of his back, so broad in the moss-green shirt, and exquisitely tapered down to his black trousers. For a man who had sat virtually motionless through the meeting today, he moved with masculine grace.
    â€œYou come here regularly?” Ryder’s voice held the first hint of curiosity she’d heard from him. Strange that he hadn’t seemed as curious about her reports—detailing launch expenses in the millions—as her social life.
    Macy shrugged one shoulder as she scanned the drinks menu. “Occasionally.”
    The live jazz was always exceptional, and sometimes when she’d finished a long day at work, after eating takeaway at her desk, all she wanted was to be lost in a dimly lit crowd for one drink. To unwind before going home.
    Ryder didn’t respond for one minute, then two. But she wouldn’t look up from the list of drinks. She couldfeel him watching her—the air was charged with the tension of it—another tactic that probably worked well for him with employees. She continued to casually read the cocktail options.
    Finally, he spoke. “Why do I get the feeling you don’t talk much about yourself?”
    She smiled, closed the drinks list and laid it on the silver tabletop. “I’ll have a margarita.”
    Without looking around, he held up a finger. Johnny appeared and Ryder ordered her margarita plus a martini, no olive.
    Once Johnny left, Ryder cleared his throat. “What made you settle in Melbourne?”
    â€œI like it here.”
    â€œYou obviously didn’t move for the weather. Hot as hell today, yet arctic winds on the way over here tonight.” He smiled ruefully.
    She recrossed her legs under the table, irritated that he’d been here less than a day and was already finding fault with her adopted home. But annoyance was another reaction she couldn’t show her boss. “Actually, I like the weather. Makes me feel like I’m not stuck in one place all the time. The trick is to dress in layers.”
    â€œUseful local information.”
    Johnny returned back with their drinks, and she gave him a quick smile. Waiter and customer—a nice, uncomplicated relationship, just how she liked them.
    Then she looked across at her date—a more complicated, tangled relationship she couldn’t imagine. But she smiled at him, too, and accepted her glass. “Thank you.”
    â€œBelieve me, it’s my pleasure.” He tasted his martini and winced. “Too dry.”
    Macy slowly twirled her glass, looking for the perfectplace on the salt-encrusted rim to sample her drink. A much better option than looking at the man across from her. If he’d been anyone other than her boss, this might have been playing out differently…but he was.
    He swallowed a mouthful of his drink then sat back in his seat. “Tell me something about yourself.”
    Macy sipped her margarita then licked the salt from her lips. This was the exact problem with being out socially with a colleague—the sharing of personal information. The press had shared her personal information with the world most of her life. It’d left a