I Don’t Care If You’re a CEO—Find Someone Else!”… But He Chose Only Her
Beyond Professional Borders
The restaurant Sebastian had chosen was nothing like Natalie expected. Tucked into a quiet corner of the financial district, Le Petit Jardin was intimate and unpretentious.
Warm lighting made everyone look like they were starring in their own romantic movie.
The owner, a woman in her sixties with silver hair and kind eyes, greeted Sebastian with the familiarity of an old friend.
“Monsieur Knight,” she said with a slight French accent that made Natalie’s heart skip. “Your usual table, please.”
“Marie, this is Natalie Rivers. She’s the expert who’s going to tell us if your food really is authentically French.”
Marie turned to Natalie with interest. “Ah, une française! From where in France, chérie?”
“Paris,” Natalie replied, switching effortlessly to French. “But my grandmother was from Lyon.”
The conversation that followed in rapid French made Sebastian feel like a spectator at a tennis match.
He watched Natalie’s face light up as she and Marie discussed regional cooking techniques, family recipes, and the impossible task of finding good bread in America.
When they finally switched back to English, both women were laughing like old friends.
“She passes the test,” Marie declared to Sebastian. “This one knows food. You chose well.”
As they settled into their table by the window, Natalie couldn’t help but smile.
“You brought me here on purpose.”
“I wanted to see you in your element.”
Sebastian studied the menu, though he clearly already knew what he wanted.
“Most people become different versions of themselves when they’re comfortable. I was curious about your version.”
“And what did you discover?”
“That you’re even more dangerous when you’re relaxed.”
Natalie felt warmth spread through her chest. “Dangerous how?”
“Dangerous to my concentration. Dangerous to my carefully organized life. Dangerous to my assumption that I could keep this strictly business.”
The honesty in his voice made her pulse quicken. She had spent years perfecting the art of keeping men at exactly the right distance.
All were close enough to be charming but far enough away to maintain control. Sebastian Knight was systematically dismantling her defenses with nothing more than direct conversation.
“We should probably talk about the project,” she said, reaching for safer ground.
“Should we?”
Sebastian leaned back in his chair, making no move toward the business materials they had brought.
“Or should we talk about why you really became a consultant?”
“I told you already. European perspective on global markets.”
“That’s the professional answer. I want the real one.”
Natalie considered deflecting again, but something in Sebastian’s expression stopped her. He wasn’t asking out of idle curiosity; he genuinely wanted to understand.
“Control,” she said finally.
“When you’re a consultant, you get to solve problems without getting trapped in other people’s dysfunction. You come in, fix what’s broken, and leave before the politics and personalities can pull you down.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“Sounds practical.”
Sebastian nodded thoughtfully.
“I built my first app for the same reason. I was terrible at real relationships, so I created digital ones where I could control every variable.”
“And did it work?”
“For a while. Until I realized that perfect control is just another word for perfect isolation.”
Marie brought their wine, the bottle Sebastian had apparently pre-selected.
As he poured, Natalie found herself watching his hands. They were elegant and confident. A small scar across one knuckle suggested he hadn’t always lived in boardrooms.
“What happened there?” she asked, nodding toward the scar.
Sebastian glanced down at his hand. “Rock climbing accident in college. I was showing off for a girl and didn’t check my equipment properly.”
“Did it work? The showing off?”
“No. She was more impressed by the ER doctor who stitched me up.”
Sebastian’s self-deprecating smile made him look younger.
“I learned an important lesson about authenticity that day, which was that pretending to be someone you’re not usually backfires in spectacular fashion.”
Natalie sipped her wine, hyper-aware of the way Sebastian’s eyes never left her face when she spoke.
“Is that why you’re being so direct with me? Lessons learned from past romantic disasters?”
“This isn’t a romantic disaster,” Sebastian said quietly. “This is something else entirely.”
The conversation flowed through dinner like wine through crystal.
They talked about Sebastian’s childhood in Oregon, where his father had been a high school teacher and his mother had run a small bookstore.
Natalie shared stories about growing up in Paris with parents who were both professors. She told him how she had learned to argue by listening to their dinner table debates about philosophy and literature.
“They expected me to be an academic,” she explained over dessert. “They thought business was beneath my intellectual capabilities.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I realized that understanding human behavior in theoretical terms is interesting, but changing it in practical terms is powerful.”
Sebastian raised his glass. “To practical power.”
“To dangerous territory,” Natalie countered, meeting his eyes over the rim of her wine.
They lingered at the table until Marie began turning off lights, neither wanting the evening to end.
As they walked to Sebastian’s car, Natalie realized she had spent three hours talking about everything except the business project that had brought them together.
“I should get you to your hotel. You have an early morning tomorrow, of course.”
But he didn’t start the engine immediately. Instead, he turned to look at her in the dim light of the parking lot.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You’ve been asking me things all evening.”
“This one’s different.”
Sebastian’s voice carried a weight that made her chest tighten.
“When was the last time you let yourself want something that wasn’t part of your five-year plan?”
The question hit her like a physical force. Natalie stared at him, aware that her answer would change everything between them.
“I don’t,” she said finally. “Want things outside my plan, I mean.”
“What if you did? What if I did?”
“What, want something or someone that wasn’t part of the plan?”
Natalie felt her carefully constructed walls beginning to crumble.
“That would be terrifying.”
“But not impossible.”
“Sebastian.” His name came out softer than she intended. “We work together now. This gets complicated very quickly.”
“It’s already complicated.”
He reached across the space between them and gently touched her hand.
“The question is whether we’re brave enough to deal with the complications.”
Before she could respond, her phone rang. Robert’s name flashed on the screen, and reality crashed back into focus.
She answered, grateful for the interruption and annoyed by it at the same time.
“Natalie? How did the meeting go?”
Robert’s voice filled the car through the speaker.
“It went well. Very well. We’re moving forward with the project.”
“Excellent! I’ve got news from London. The Morrison Group wants to meet next week about the pharmaceutical campaign. It could be huge for us.”
Natalie felt Sebastian’s hand slip away from hers.
“That’s wonderful, Robert. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
After she hung up, the silence in the car felt heavy with unspoken words.
“The Morrison Group,” Sebastian said finally. “That’s a significant opportunity.”
“Yes, it is.” Natalie stared straight ahead. “My partner is very excited about it.”
“And you?”
“I’m focused on completing your project first.”
Sebastian started the engine, but his expression had shifted. The warmth from dinner had been replaced by something more guarded.
“Of course. Professional priorities.”
The drive to her hotel passed in uncomfortable silence. When Sebastian pulled up to the entrance, Natalie felt like she was losing something important, but she didn’t know how to stop it from slipping away.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said formally. “And for the wine recommendation. Marie was right about the authenticity.”
“Natalie.”
Sebastian’s voice stopped her as she reached for the door handle.
“Whatever happens with your business in London, whatever other opportunities come up, I want you to know that working with you has been the most challenging and rewarding professional experience I’ve had in years.”
The careful politeness in his tone broke her heart.
“Sebastian, I don’t want to leave things like this.”
“Like what?”
“Pretending that dinner was just business networking.”
Sebastian turned to face her fully. “What do you want it to have been?”
“I want it to have been exactly what it was. Two people getting to know each other without professional agendas or strategic outcomes.”
She took a deep breath.
“I want it to have been the beginning of something real.”
“And the Morrison Group? London? Your five-year plan?”
“I don’t know.”
The admission felt like jumping off a cliff.
“For the first time in my adult life, I genuinely don’t know what comes next.”
Sebastian’s smile was like sunrise breaking through storm clouds.
“That’s terrifying. Completely terrifying. Want to be terrified together?”
Natalie laughed despite herself. “Is that your idea of a romantic proposition?”
“It’s my idea of an honest one.”
Sebastian reached for her hand again.
“I don’t know what this is between us. I don’t know how to balance it with business. I don’t know if it’s smart or sustainable or anything else that usually matters to me.”
“What do you know?”
“I know that I haven’t felt this connected to another person in years. I know that you challenge me in ways that make me better.”
“And I know that if you get on a plane back to Paris without exploring what this could be, I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life.”
Natalie felt tears threatening at the corners of her eyes.
“You’re not making this easy.”
“Nothing worth having is easy.”
She looked at him sitting there in the hotel parking lot. This man had turned her carefully ordered world upside down in a single day.
Everything rational told her to walk away to protect her career and her heart by maintaining professional distance.
But something deeper, something she had ignored for years, was screaming at her to stay.
“One condition,” she said finally.
“Anything.”
“If we do this, if we explore whatever this is, we do it honestly. No games, no strategic positioning, no protecting our professional images at the expense of the truth.”
Sebastian’s answering smile was brilliant.
“Deal. But I have a condition, too.”
“Which is?”
“You have to promise me that you won’t run away the moment things get complicated.”
“Things are already complicated.”
“They’re going to get more complicated.”
Natalie considered this, aware that she was standing at a crossroads that would define the rest of her life.
She could choose safety, success, and the comfortable isolation she had perfected over years of careful planning.
Or she could choose the terrifying possibility of something real with someone who saw through all her defenses.
“I promise,” she whispered. “But I can’t promise it won’t scare me.”
“Being scared is half the fun.”
As Sebastian walked to the hotel entrance, Natalie realized that everything had changed.
Not just her business plans or her travel schedule, but something fundamental about how she saw her own life.
For the first time in years, the future felt uncertain and full of possibility.
“Good night, Natalie Rivers,” Sebastian said softly, pressing a gentle kiss to her cheek.
“Good night, Sebastian Knight.”
She watched him drive away before going upstairs to her room. She spent the next hour staring at her phone.
She tried to figure out how to tell Robert that their carefully planned European expansion had just become infinitely more complicated.
