C1 The Wrong Kind of Attention

"Take your hand off me before I forget you are my grandfather's favorite employee," I said.

The man let go of my wrist instantly. I pulled my sleeve down over the faint red marks his fingers had left behind and made sure my face gave away absolutely nothing.

"Thank you," I said, sharper than I meant it to sound.

He muttered something under his breath and slipped back into the crowd. Men like him always assumed money bought permission to touch whoever they pleased. I turned back toward the ballroom, and then I stopped moving entirely.

Alexander.

He stood near my grandfather in a black suit, one hand tucked into his pocket while a cluster of executives talked around him. He was not drinking. He was not laughing. He was watching me, and had apparently been watching for a while.

Our eyes met across the room. I expected him to glance away first. He did not.

His gaze dropped briefly to my wrist, then followed the direction the man had disappeared into, before returning to my face. His jaw tightened, just barely, then eased back into stillness. A small thing. I noticed it anyway, and something in my chest noticed it a little too closely.

"Was the professor actually protective of me?"

I crossed the floor toward him, my heels clicking sharply against the marble.

"Professor Black," I said. "Claire," he said, giving a short nod. "Enjoying the party?" I asked. "Was I supposed to be?" he asked. I laughed. "You are funny," I said.

"No," he said. "You are definitely rude," I said. "That one is accurate," he said, and the corner of his mouth almost moved.

I stepped closer, close enough to catch the faint scent of his cologne, close enough that my own pulse picked up speed without my permission. He did not step back. Instead, his fingers shifted slightly against the glass in his hand, a tiny, betraying motion, the only sign he had noticed the distance closing between us.

"Most people try harder when they are talking to me," I said.

"That is probably because most people want something from you," he said. "And you do not?" I asked.

"No," he said, a beat too quickly for me to fully believe him.

I narrowed my eyes. "Liar," I said.

The corner of his mouth finally moved, not quite a smile, but close enough to count, and his shoulders eased for the first time all evening, like he had been holding something in until that exact second.

"Claire." My grandfather's voice cut through the moment from behind me.

I turned. He wore that particular expression, the one that always arrived right before a lecture, mouth already pressed into a thin, disapproving line.

Alexander's mouth twitched again, and I caught it before he could smooth it away.

"You are enjoying this," I whispered. "A little," he admitted, low enough that only I could hear it.

Fine. If Alexander Black wanted to smile at my expense, I would make sure he got something worth smiling about.

"You embarrassed yourself tonight," my grandfather said, once the study door clicked shut behind us.

I dropped into the chair across from his desk. "I stopped a man from touching me," I said.

"You created a scene," he said. "He created the scene," I said.

"Claire." His voice carried that familiar weight, and his hand tightened briefly around the pen on his desk before he set it down with deliberate care.

I looked toward the window instead of at him. "I handled it," I said.

"You reacted," he said. "Is there a difference?" I asked. "Yes," he said.

I crossed my arms. He studied me the way he studied his quarterly reports, searching for whatever did not add up.

"You want to inherit Blackwood International," he said. My fingers went still on the armrest. "Yes," I said.

"Then start behaving like someone capable of leading it," he said. The familiar ache settled deep in my chest. I hated hearing it mostly because some small, stubborn part of me knew it was true.

"Do you ever think I do anything right?" I asked, quieter than I meant to.

Something flickered across his face, and his hand moved toward mine on the desk, then stopped halfway, retreating before it reached me.

"You are capable of more than what you keep showing me," he said.

Not praise. It landed heavier than praise ever could have.

I stood. "Fine. I will become the perfect heir," I said. "That is not what I—" he started. I was already at the door.

In the hallway, I leaned against the wall and let out a long breath. "Perfect heir," I muttered under my breath, tasting the bitterness of it.

Then, uninvited, Alexander's face drifted into my mind, that calm expression, that voice that refused to be impressed no matter what I said. My face warmed embarrassingly fast.

I pulled out my phone.

Me: How hard is it to make a man fall for you?

My friend replied almost instantly. Friend: Who are you plotting against now?

I smiled despite everything. Me: Alexander.

The typing bubble appeared, disappeared, then appeared again, and I laughed quietly to myself in the empty hallway. Maybe I had just found my next challenge.

The next morning I arrived five minutes late, entirely on purpose.

I pushed the classroom door open and walked in like I owned the room. "Apologies, Professor," I said.

Alexander stopped mid-sentence. The whole room went quiet. I felt every set of eyes follow me to the front row as I slid off my sunglasses and set them down on the desk with a small, deliberate click.

"You are late," he said. "I noticed," I said. A few students exchanged glances behind me. His expression did not change one degree. "Why?" he asked.

I sat and crossed my legs slowly. "I had something important to attend to," I said. "Was it worth it?" he asked. I smiled. "Ask me after class," I said.

Someone in the back laughed. Alexander did not. He set down his marker and walked toward me, unhurried, and my confidence slipped for half a second before I forced it back into place. I hated that it slipped at all.

He stopped beside my desk, close enough that I caught that same faint cologne from the night before, close enough that my breath caught somewhere in my throat. He leaned down slightly, voice dropping low.

"If you are trying to provoke me," he said, "you will need to try harder than that."

He straightened and walked away. As he turned, his hand flexed once at his side before he tucked it back into his pocket, quick, almost hidden, but I caught it anyway. Heat crept slowly up my neck. I had walked in here fully intending to unsettle him, and somehow I was the one left off balance.

Fine. Game on.

I opened my notebook and found a folder resting on top of the blank page.

MANDATORY CONDUCT REVIEW, CLAIRE BLACK.

My grandfather's authorization sat beneath the title, official and infuriating. Alexander's signature followed it, with a single handwritten line underneath. "Your grandfather requested that I personally oversee this."

I looked up sharply. He was writing on the board, apparently unbothered, though the set of his shoulders looked just a little too controlled to be careless.

The page listed every embarrassing thing I had done that entire month, ending in bold letters at the bottom. "Report to my office after class. Alone."

I lifted my eyes. He was already watching me from across the room. Perhaps I had not chosen my next challenge after all. Perhaps he had chosen me first.

The final bell rang, and students packed up around me, but I stayed seated, my fingers resting on the folder like it might bite. This was not part of my plan. I was supposed to make Alexander interested in me, not become the one being carefully, methodically watched.

I slipped the folder into my bag and stood once the room finally emptied. I walked toward him slowly, heels echoing off the tile.

He stood beside his desk, arranging papers with unnecessary precision. "You summoned me," I said.

"Yes," he said. "You could have just asked," I said.

"I did," he said. "Last night."

I frowned. "What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"You were too busy trying to get my attention to notice you already had it," he said.

My heart skipped once, hard. I stepped closer, close enough now that I could see the faint shift in his breathing. "What exactly do you want from me, Professor?" I asked.

He lifted the folder between us. "I want you to understand something, Claire," he said. "This is not a game."

"Everything is a game," I said. "Not this," he said.

He pressed the folder against my chest, and I caught it against my body, our fingers brushing for one full second longer than necessary. He pulled his hand back a half second before I did, a small motion I would never have caught if I had not been watching him this closely, this carefully, like he was the only person in the entire room.

"You will follow every condition written in that folder," he said. "No excuses. No family name. No special treatment."

"And if I do not?" I asked, chin lifting.

"Then I will personally recommend your grandfather reconsider your position as his successor," he said.

My smile vanished instantly. "You would not," I said.

"Try me," he said, and there was nothing playful left in his voice at all.

Neither of us moved for a long moment, the air between us tight and charged. Then he stepped aside and opened the door. "Tomorrow morning," he said. "Eight o'clock."

I walked past him, then paused right at the threshold and looked back over my shoulder. "You know, Professor, you have just made this so much more interesting," I said.

His eyes darkened, and for one brief second, his jaw tightened the exact same way it had at the ballroom the night before. "That is exactly what I am afraid of," he said.

I walked away with the folder pressed against my chest, my pulse still running far too fast to blame entirely on anger.