Money he’d given her without a fight...

“You’re so much curvier than you seemed to be in your last film,” Chelsea said in a voice so sweet it practically gave Tatiana a sugar rush. “I hope your fitting goes well.”

This time, Tatiana couldn’t stop her laughter from bubbling up and out. She’d met plenty of competitive actresses in the past ten years, but Ian’s ex trumped them all. “Casting directors usually just jump past curvy and go straight for the word fat.” But she’d already easily shrugged off the insult. “I know Kate Moss said nothing tastes better than being thin, but I’m pretty sure she’d change her mind if she ever tasted the chocolate truffles we had for dessert at Ian’s parents’ house on Friday night.”

“You’re not fat,” Ian growled as he moved between them. Turning his scowl on his ex, he said, “You got what you came for, Chelsea.”

“I know,” Chelsea said, holding up her hands as if he was the one on the wrong foot, rather than she. “You’re ready for me to leave so that you can get back to business. Believe me, I remember what it was like being married to you. Business always came first then, and clearly it still does.” His ex gave Tatiana a pitying glance. “I don’t know how the two of you met...”

With every word that fell from the woman’s blood-red lips, Ian’s tension seemed to rise, and the instinct to protect him from anything else his horrible ex-wife had to say had Tatiana reaching for his hand. “We met at a wedding.”

The need to protect him quickly turned into something that ran even deeper as she stared down at her hand in his and was rocked by such a strong jolt of sensual—and emotional—awareness that she found herself confessing, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man look better in a suit.” But it was what she saw on his face when she looked up into his eyes that had her continuing to speak straight from her heart, only for him, their audience completely forgotten. “All it took was one handshake for me to fall for you, Ian.” Palm-to-palm, the memories of that first time they’d touched came rushing back.

“Trust me,” Ian’s ex-wife said, shattering the moment with all the precision of a baseball hurled straight through a plate-glass window, “Ian might be good in bed, but even the best orgasms in the world don’t make up for what it’s like to live with him. Or should I say, not live with him, since I promise you that after he gets over his current infatuation, even you are only going to see him when he needs to screw away his tension from a business deal gone bad.”

“It’s past time for you to go, Chelsea.” This time Ian put his hand on her arm to make sure she didn’t linger. Unfortunately, her heavy scent did.

Tatiana would never be able to wear Chanel No. 5 again.

She had wanted to teach his ex-wife a lesson, but she hadn’t planned on doing it like that, by finally opening up her heart to Ian so suddenly. And so completely. It was simply that she hadn’t had it in her to lie about her feelings for him—not even to his ex-wife.

Interestingly, though, Tatiana was certain that it had also been the best possible way to strike out at the other woman. Because nothing could have infuriated her more than knowing how thoroughly she’d been forgotten by her ex-husband.

Chelsea was his past.

And Tatiana had just made it perfectly clear, in perhaps the most unplanned and non-well-thought-out way possible, that she hoped to be his future.

CHAPTER NINE

Tatiana’s mind raced with a half-dozen different ways to approach Ian when he came back into his office. Would it be better to act like nothing had happened? Or should she try to cut the tension from what she’d witnessed with a joke that he wouldn’t see coming and wouldn’t be able to resist laughing about?

If she were in his place, she finally decided, what she’d really want was an ear, a shoulder, someone to gently talk through the whole situation with. Of course, that meant she’d need to force her own emotions into the background so that she could help him.

So then, if she’d been so sure about the best way to deal with things, why was the first thing out of her mouth when he walked back into his office, “Why did you give her the money?”

Only, she knew exactly why she’d said it, didn’t she? Tatiana had never been any good at hiding her feelings. Especially when she felt more for the man standing in front of her than she could ever remember feeling for anyone else.

There was only the barest hitch in Ian’s gait as he moved to his desk to pull something up on his computer screen. “I have more money than time to deal with lawyers,” he replied in a voice utterly without inflection or emotion. “She knows that and capitalizes on it.”

What he’d said about his money-to-time ratio was certainly true, but in Tatiana’s mind it didn’t come anywhere close to explaining what had happened. She frowned as she thought about the scene between Ian and his ex-wife.

One thing continued to stick with her: the guilt she’d seen in his eyes.

“You think you owe it to her—whatever she asks you for—don’t you?”

Ian Sullivan had a masterful poker face, and she’d thought more than once that if he hadn’t become a captain of industry he could easily have ruled the high roller tables in Vegas without breaking a sweat. But she could have sworn she saw a crack appear as she continued, “Why? Why would you think you owe her anything? I saw the way she acted. I see the way she is. What more than what she’s already gotten from you do you think she deserves?”