He straightened. “Yes, Willow, you do.” He kissed my forehead. “I’ll walk you to your door.”

“No.” I’d be too tempted to drag him inside. “But thanks for everything. I’ll see you next week.”

“Take care of yourself.” He stepped aside to let me pass, then waited on the sidewalk while I entered the building.

I reached my apartment feeling more exhilarated than I had since I was a teenage girl crushing on my father’s protégé. Only this time, it wasn’t a hopeless case. This time, I had a chance. Or more accurately, I might have a chance if we could figure out how to get out of the tangled situation we’d gotten ourselves into.

Chapter Fourteen

Willow

“So?” Sage demanded the second I walked through the door. “How did it go?”

I slipped off my shoes and collapsed onto the sofa. “Better than expected.”

Her eyes lit up, and she settled beside me, drawing her knees to her chest. The hood of her unicorn onesie flopped over her eyes. “What happened?”

“I kissed him.”

She flinched. “Who, Tom?”

“Ew, no!” I waved a hand. “Ronan. Tom supposedly got called away right after we started talking to Mr. Petrov, but Ronan saved me. We danced, he gave me a ride home, and I kissed him outside.”

“Go, you!” Sage held up her hand for a high five. “Except for the whole Petrov thing, it sounds lovely. You basically got your date after all.”

I rested my head on her shoulder and smiled. “I know. I actually think I might want to see where things go with him, even though he wants to steal my family company. I can’t seem to help but want him.”

Sage gave me a look. “That’s great. I don’t understand why you thought you and Ronan couldn’t be together and just keep it separate from what’s going on with your companies.”

“Because things are messy and the world doesn’t work that way.”

She pursed her lips. “It should.”

A knock sounded at the door.

I raised a brow. “Are you expecting anyone?”

“No. You?”

I shook my head, my pulse picking up as I wondered if Ronan had come back. “Who is it?”

The knocking stopped. A moment later, the entire door smashed inward and crumpled to the floor. Sage screamed. I scrambled off the sofa as a massive man appeared in the doorway. Debris crunched beneath his boots as two other men followed him in.

I exchanged a wide-eyed look with Sage. “Run!”

I took off for my bedroom, which was directly behind the living room, and she raced right, toward the bathroom. I slammed the door and stumbled to the window, but I’d forgotten it didn’t have an emergency exit and there was nowhere I could go, short of falling to the concrete. I lunged for the closet, but before I could reach it, an arm encircled my waist and yanked me into a bruising embrace.

“Let me go!” I yelled, lashing out ineffectually with the back of an elbow.