Chapter 4 - The Rehearsal Dinner
If Bergdorf Goodman was Act One of our transformation, the private dining room at Le Bernardin that evening was Act Two—the dress rehearsal for a play neither of us knew how to finish.
The restaurant was dimly lit, echoing with the soft clink of crystal and the low, civilized murmur of Manhattan’s elite. We were seated at a corner table draped in crisp white linen, shielded from the main dining room by a screen of dark wood and frosted glass.
I sat across from Adrian, struggling to cut my Dover sole while hyper-aware of every single movement he made. Across the table, he looked effortlessly at ease, swirling a glass of cabernet sauvignon between his long fingers, watching me with a gaze that felt heavy enough to anchor a ship.
"You're holding your fork like you're preparing for a corporate audit," Adrian noted dryly, setting his wineglass down.
I dropped the fork slightly, glaring at him across the candles. "Excuse me if pretending to be madly in love with my billionaire boss while eating $200 fish feels slightly unnatural."
"You're treating this like a hostile takeover," Adrian said, leaning forward resting his chin on his interlocked fingers. "If you look at me like a balance sheet all weekend in the Hamptons, my mother will smell the fabrication from twenty paces."
"Then give me some pointers, Mr.—I mean, Adrian," I corrected myself hastily. "How exactly do women who are madly in love with you behave?"
A slow, dangerous smile crept across his face—a rare, unguarded expression that completely transformed his harsh features into something devastatingly handsome.
"They don't call me 'Mr. Moretti' across a dinner table for starters," he murmured. "They touch my arm when they laugh. They steal bites from my plate. And they look at me as if I'm the only person in a crowded room."
Before I could process his words, Adrian moved with sudden, deliberate speed. He picked up his fork, speared a delicate slice of seared scallop from his plate, and reached across the narrow white table, holding it out toward my lips.
"Taste this," he instructed, his green eyes dark and challenging.
My breath caught in my throat. The restaurant around us seemed to vanish, replaced entirely by the intense, magnetic pull of the space between us. My instincts screamed at me to pull back, to remind him of the boundary lines between assistant and employer. But the contract—and the fifty thousand dollar check sitting safely in my apartment drawer—demanded obedience.
Slowly, deliberately, I leaned forward and took the scallop from his fork.
"Well?" Adrian asked, his voice low, his hand lingering just an inch from my mouth.
"It's... exceptional," I whispered, my voice sounding strained even to my own ears.
"See?" Adrian smiled, pulling his hand back and settling back into his chair. "You're a natural. Now, apply that same level of commitment when my mother asks you how we met."
I froze, fork hovering in mid-air. "Wait. We haven't established our origin story yet. How did we meet?"
"Simple," Adrian said smoothly, taking a sip of his wine. "You spilled coffee on my custom Tom Ford suit in the lobby six months ago. I was furious. You didn't apologize; you told me my tailoring deserved to be ruined if I couldn't watch where I was walking. I fell in love on the spot."
I stared at him, my jaw dropping. "You want me to lie and say I yelled at you on day one?"
"It's the only story my mother will believe," Adrian replied deadpan. "She knows nobody else in my life has the spine to talk back to me."
May you like
I let out a breathless laugh, shaking my head. "You are completely insane, Adrian Moretti."
"Maybe," he agreed softly, his green eyes holding mine across the candlelight with a terrifying intensity. "But by next Sunday, the entire family will believe every single word of it."
