Sebastian stared at me for several seconds. I saw him reacting a hundred different ways in my head, but eventually he surprised me by breaking into a laugh. "Well, well, well. Sophia. We did say we might see each other again, but I hadn't expected it to be quite like this." Strangely, he didn't seem surprised, just amused.
I gazed up at him with gaping eyes, blushing furiously. I didn't know what I could possibly say. The whole situation had gotten way out of hand. I briefly debated trying to talk my way out, but judging by the twinkle in his eye, the time for that had passed.
So I did the only thing I could think of.
I ran.
I leapt out of the cupboard and bolted for the hallway. He probably could have stopped me if he'd wanted — the gap between his leg and the cupboard door wasn't very large — but he didn't move, he just watched me, a curious smile on his face.
Before I knew it, I was in the corridor, and then the main room. The guests all stared as I tore across the wooden floor, but I ignored them. All I cared about was getting somewhere safe. Every part of me felt frayed, confused, agitated.
At some point, it occurred to me that I'd left my shoes behind. Just like Cinderella, I thought. Although I'm not sure if the story traditionally contains quite so much masochism.
For some reason, that thought struck me as perversely funny. I began to laugh as I ran. By the time I broke through into the bar's main room, I was cackling like a street corner drunk.
I was certain someone would be chasing me, but there were no signs of pursuit. Even the door guard was mysteriously absent.
"Come on," I panted to my gaping friends as I charged over to them, "we've gotta bail."
"Wha—"
"Now!"
They didn't argue further.
Thirty seconds later we were half way up the street, giggling with the adrenaline of a successful escape. They didn't even know what we were running from, but the fact that we were running was enough.
"So," Louisa said, when we finally began slowing down, "what the hell was that? What happened back there?"
"You're not going to believe me."
"Try us," Ruth said, looking at me with a mixture of disbelief and curiosity.
And so I told my tale. I described everything as best I could, the grand room, meeting Sebastian, my accidental corporate espionage. The only thing I omitted was the spanking. Something about it made me feel decidedly uncomfortable.
"That's crazy," Louisa said, when I was done.
Ruth shook her head. "You see? She sneaks in there, and five minutes later she's bagged a mysterious millionaire. I told you we should have followed her!"
"I'd hardly use the word 'bagged'," I replied. "Last I checked, trespassing and breaking and entering weren't exactly the keys to a man's heart, although perhaps I'm just out of touch."
Ruth laughed. "You're such a glass half empty kind of girl."
"Hey, I'm just glad he didn't call the cops." I turned to Louisa. "Lou, next time I try to do something like that, do a better job of talking me out of it, would you?"
"I'll do my best," she replied with a grin.
It was just a few hours shy of sunrise at that point, and so we went our separate ways. I caught a cab home and collapsed into bed without even bothering to change. I was exhausted and expected to fall asleep quickly, but my mind was still restless. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw Sebastian staring down at me with that breathtaking gaze. Whatever his bedroom predilections, there was something undeniably alluring about him. I couldn't remember the last man that had set my heart racing so easily.
CHAPTER FOUR
The following morning was far from pleasant. I woke feeling like I'd loaned my head to a marching band. I debated simply rolling over and going back to sleep, but there was too much to do at the office. "You can sleep when you're dead," was a popular catch phrase amongst the Partners, and as much as they grinned when they said it, you knew they were being perfectly serious. Don't get me wrong, Little Bell wasn't any worse than any other big firm — technically it was named Bell & Little, but nobody called it that, no matter how many stern memos went out — it was just the norm in big law to bleed your employees for every drop you could.
A long shower, a coffee, and the world's greasiest ham and cheese croissant later, I was sitting in the back of a cab feeling marginally more human. But apparently I still didn't look it. As I exited the lift on my floor of the building, I ran into my friend Elle. She took one look at me and burst out laughing. "Big night hey Soph?"
I glanced down at myself and grimaced. "That obvious hey?"
Elle nodded. "You look a little haggard, yeah."
There's a funny camaraderie within law firms. Because we all work such long hours, we naturally become friendly. A lot of lawyers have no social lives outside of work. But it's always felt a little fake to me. Behind the niceties, there's as much backstabbing and petty bullying as in any school playground. With most of my colleagues, I kept my distance, but Elle was the exception. Unlike almost everybody else, she didn't buy into all the office bullshit, which meant we'd quickly become friends.
"What can I say? The girls are a bad influence."
Elle flashed an indulgent grin. We'd been out enough times together that she knew who incited most of the drinking. "Well, I hope you've saved some energy for tonight. Drunk Partners, a huge group of self-important corporate types; it's practically your perfect evening."
Shit. I'd completely forgotten about that. A few times a year, our company threw a party for all of its long standing clients. A kind of thank-you-please-keep-giving-us-buckets-of-money type deal. It seemed to work because our profits just kept climbing, but I hated those evenings. There was only so much corporate asskissery I could stomach. Unfortunately, we were all expected to be there if we could make it. We didn't actually do anything; the puppet masters just liked showing us off. A flexing of the company's considerable legal muscle. I usually made it tolerable by taking abundant advantage of the open bar, but with the memory of the morning's hangover still fresh in my mind, I wasn't sure I'd even be doing that.
"I kind of wish you hadn't reminded me. I could have slept through it and not felt guilty."
Elle chuckled again. "Oh come on, it won't be that bad. Do your bit, brown nose a few CEOs. Who knows, you might impress someone."