Page 21 of The Pleasure Contract

Not Bristol.

Diplomats found her charming—the minimum requirement to appear on Lachlan’s arm—but they also found her engaged. An interesting extension of Lachlan himself and, better still, his agenda. She had an uncanny knack of appearing not to pay attention only to be able to recite everything that had been said to her, usually while talking to exactly the right person at whatever party they happened to attend. More than once, over the course of that long June spent flying from city to city all over the globe, Lachlan found himself in a meeting only to have the person across from him reference a conversation they’d had with Bristol as having changed their thinking on some or other key point.

He hadn’t expected that.

The question she’d asked him at that first dinner seemed to haunt him the more time passed. His previous choices had never been bimbos. That wasn’t his style. But they’d tended to be either spoiled heiresses who’d relied a little too heavily on their prep school polish or sharper, more feral women who could more than hold their own but were always out for themselves. The former had always been angling for a wedding ring. The latter were more interested in the payday.

And whatever they were or wanted, none of them had ever been able to spend hours debating the finer points of contention in an initiative to bolster education in certain Third World countries with a literal think tank.

Dr. Bristol March, he realized with a measure of pride that he told himself wasn’t personal but professional, was a formidable force.

“I heard that your conversation with the UN delegation grew heated,” he said one early evening.

He had to check the view outside his window to figure out what country they were in. Greece, it turned out. Athens, to be precise, though it could have been anywhere. There was another black-tie function this evening and he was already dressed. Bristol, who had shrugged off the usual fawning attendants his women usually considered a perk of their position weeks back, was fastening a necklace around her neck, standing in front of a mirror so he had all the time in the world to contemplate the way the dress she wore left her lovely back open to his view.

Almost too open, he thought, with a surge of that possessiveness that had marked his response to her from the start.

But Lachlan didn’t get possessive.

He told himself he was tired, that was all.

“Iwasn’t the least bit heated.” She turned to face him, a wry expression on her clever face. “I’ll concede that the delegation left our interaction unhappier than when they arrived. But then, they should think through the sweeping generalizations they like to make regarding their initiatives. Every wave of a hand is a life. That’s all I said. If that’s contentious, so be it.”

“And is that up to you to decide, do you think?” he asked, lazily enough.

For a moment, she didn’t respond. Her head tilted slightly to one side, but he already knew that she was unlikely to get provocative. Not anymore. And sure enough, she regarded him with that particularly opaque look in her eyes that he hated more and more. Every time he saw it, he hated it all over again as if it was new.

“I’m sure you will tell me what is or isn’t up to me,” she said with perfect equanimity. “I await your ruling.”

Once again, she was...distinct.

The other women who’d traveled with him had responded to rebukes very differently. They would apologize, charmingly or wholeheartedly, and prettily beg his forgiveness. Or they would slink their way over to him and offer apologies in a more physical manner.

It wasn’t that Bristol didn’t apologize when necessary. She did. But she did so in the same forthright manner she did everything else, then looked at him as if the matter ought to have been settled.

Lachlan couldn’t understand why all the ways she continued to set herself apart from the rest...lodged beneath his skin. Not enough to bother him, exactly.

But he couldn’t compartmentalize her the way he’d done with all the rest. He found her on his mind at the oddest times—like in the middle of tense negotiations when he normally would have forgotten he even had a girlfriend.

“It appears that obedience is not your strong suit,” he said because she was standing there, waiting for him to say something with that unreadable expression on her face. But she wasn’t like the others, so he hardly knew what his point was here. The truth was she was correct in her assessment of the delegation. He agreed completely with her take on the situation. Lachlan might not have any idea what went on in her head, but everything she did in her role as his girlfriend, in public anyway, was wholly supportive of him and his aims. Why wasn’t that enough? “Did you know that about yourself?”

“I suspected it,” Bristol replied drily. “Hence my choice of career.”

“I thought the academic life is filled with rules.”

“Every life is filled with rules.” She shrugged in that way she did that always made her seemmoregraceful, somehow. “But as knowledge is its own reward, thinking in new ways is always encouraged. The minutiae of a university faculty meeting aside, that part always feels...less obedient.”

“But this is not an academic exercise.”

He was hard again—always—when all he was doing was sitting in a chair, studying her. The dress she wore transmitted a certain hushed elegance, but as always, Bristol undercut it by deliberately falling short of the kind of polished veneer that was expected. It should have irritated him. He knew it made the perpetually sniffy Stephanie apoplectic.

Instead of following the usual script, Bristol’s manicure was clear polish only. It was such a subtle thing, but it lent her an air of capability. The understated earrings she wore, no matter how many far more riotous selections were presented for her consideration, suggested practicality. Tonight she’d pulled her hair back into a low, sleek tail instead of the dramatic sort of updo he might have expected for a dress like this, and that, too, made her look serious and even a bit determined. As if her beauty was an afterthought.

Lachlan was well aware that despite what Stephanie might have liked to believe, or liked to huff about, everything Bristol did was deliberate.

Well, of course,she’d replied when he’d said as much, one jet-lagged night in Melbourne.I do like to excel.

He wanted her in ways that made absolutely no sense.