Chapter 965
Noreen’s eyes fluttered open to look at him. “Hard work?”
“Yeah.” Seth’s long fingers slid down from her temples to the nape of her neck, gently working out the tight knots. “I actually consulted with an executive who was legendary for surviving corporate drinking cultures. We came up with a systematic plan to build up your limits.”
It had been over a decade, yet he remembered the details with flawless precision.
“When we started, your absolute limit was three glasses of wine. If you mixed beer and liquor, you were gone after two and a half. You could handle four glasses of red, but the hangover was brutal, so we kept the cap at three.”
“During that time, I invented a hundred different excuses at banquets just to make sure no one poured you a fourth glass.”
“Later on, you improved. You could handle five to eight glasses. If it was hard liquor, you maxed out at ten shot glasses. By that point, you could handle mixed drinks, but you’d get nauseous. So I made sure you drank yogurt beforehand to coat your stomach, and lemon water afterward so you wouldn’t have a splitting headache the next morning.”
Noreen had forgotten most of those details herself. Yet Seth recited them as if they were his most prized possessions.
“How do you remember all of this so clearly?” she asked, genuinely bewildered.
“Because I kept a detailed log.”
That was the last thing she had expected. “Why would you keep a log?”
“Because I was terrified that when I wasn’t around to do the math for you, you’d get taken advantage of. You needed to know exactly what your limits were so you could protect yourself.”
Hearing him lay it out, a wave of nostalgia hit her. She remembered how, whenever she had to go to a business dinner alone, Seth would constantly text her, reminding her to pace herself. If a client was too pushy, he taught her how to politely deflect. If the client wouldn’t take no for an answer, he told her to drop the deal entirely.
But Noreen had been too ambitious, too driven. During the two years he was expanding the business overseas, she had hustled so hard that she practically destroyed. Ker stomach lining om the constant drinking. If Seth had known it would go that far, he never would have trained her at all. It was a regret that still haunted him.
He brushed a gentle thumb across her brow, his gaze darkening. “I was so focused
on giving you the armor you needed to survive in this industry that I didn’t realize
that armor would eventually hurt you.”
Give her armor.
She couldn’t deny it. Her entire
business philosophy, her razor-sharp decision-making, the way she
commanded a boardroom-it all had traces of Seth in it. Setting aside their broken past, Seth Harcourt was undeniably the architect of her career If he hadn’t spent years relentlessly pushing her, the wildly successful Noreen Gilmore wouldn’t exist today. He had been the
whetstone that sharpened her blade.
Noreen hadn’t fully grasped the depth of it until now. She stared at him for a long moment before whispering, “Did you do all of that because you knew you were going to prison? Because you wanted to make sure I could survive without you?”
“Yes,” Seth admitted, his voice
rough. From the moment she joined Aurelion Group, he had
systematically taught her every ruthless survival skill he knew. He needed to be absolutely certain that if he ever vanished from her life, she would be untouchable.
The sheer weight of this delayed truth shook Noreen to her core. He had never been the type to shower her with roses, but he had paved the road for her entire future.
She tilted her head up, her eyes bright and slightly glassy. In the dim amber glow of the streetlights filtering into the car, his sharp, chiseled features looked frustratingly gorgeous, radiating a dark, restrained energy.
She reached out, grabbed his lapels, and pulled him down. The faint, sweet scent of alcohol on her breath brushed against his lips.
“I want to kiss you,” she whispered.
Seth’s Adam’s apple bobbed sharply. With the very last shred of his sanity, he hit the button to raise the privacy partition, completely sealing off the back seat.
The temperature in the confined space skyrocketed. His dark eyes flared with raw heat as he leaned closer. “You can have whatever you want.”
Noreen tilted her chin up and captured his lips. Seth braced his arms around her, adjusting his height so she could reach him comfortably, letting her dictate the pace as she kissed him over and over.