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“I—I didn’t know until today that Victor was hiding anything,” she stammered, trying to ignore the detonations of nervous excitement inside her. “I thought he was exactly what he looked like. A successful businessman.” She tried to resist looking into his eyes, but once his stare caught hers, she couldn’t look away. Her nerves seared with something like fight or flight, but it wasn’t fear. The danger here was subtle. Sexual.
“How did you meet him?”
“Who are you? Interpol?” She longed to move away, disturbed beyond bearing.
“Tell me,” he insisted, not releasing her.
“He needed something after hours. I was working late in the file room.” She begrudged making the explanation but wanted him to believe her. Sort of. You know I don’t want you if he’s had you. It was such a Neanderthal thing to say, but it made her insides quiver. “I found it and he said I was the sort of person the top floor needed.”
“I bet he did.” His thumb moved into the notch below her bottom lip. He tilted her face up, into the fading light from the window. His gaze stroked her face like a feathery caress, taking in features she knew men found attractive, but she sensed evaluation, not admiration.
It shouldn’t matter, but it undermined her confidence. Her looks were all she had unless she managed a miracle with the Brighter Days Foundation, and losing her job had quashed that.
“I didn’t think his motive was romantic. He was old.” She tested his grip on her chin, but he held fast, making her vibrate with nerves and awareness. It took everything in her to suppress her shivers and pretend she barely noticed his touch. “When I did realize he wanted people to believe we were together, I told him I wasn’t interested and he said I didn’t have anything to worry about. He wasn’t able to make it with any woman, but he didn’t want people to know. He said if I was able to keep a confidence, I’d have a good career ahead of me as his PA. I needed the money and it wasn’t like he was grabbing me all the time or anything.” She pointedly moved her fist with the pipe into the center of his chest and pressed. “Unlike some men.”
His touch on her face changed. His fingers fanned out and he stroked his palm under her jaw to take possession of the side of her neck, thumb lightly grazing her throat.
The tender touch stilled her, not just because it was unexpected but because it felt so nice. She didn’t encourage people to touch her and hadn’t realized how cherished and important it could make her feel. Her lashes wanted to blink closed so she could focus completely on the lovely sensation.
“So you took him for all he’d give you and never put out for any of it.”
“It wasn’t like that.” He made it sound ugly when she hadn’t taken anything. “The raise and job title were his idea. He suggested I move into this flat because he held receptions and cocktail parties in the main suite. If people thought we were together, that was their assumption. Maybe neither of us corrected it, but all I did was work for him.”
“What kind of work? Hostess duties? Attending functions as his escort?” His lip curled. “Why on earth would people get the wrong impression?”
“He was a widower, so yes, I was his date. But he also put me in charge of forming the firm’s charitable foundation.”
“Ha!” He released her with a lifting of his hands in rejection. “Van Eych help the less fortunate? Now I know you’re lying.”
“I’m not.” The words rushed out, but a sense of loss washed over her as well. Let him believe what he wants to believe, she told herself, but if she was allowed to set the record straight, she wanted to, especially if he’d fired her because he thought she was involved with Victor. Maybe he would reconsider if he believed she hadn’t been. Maybe that’s what he’d meant when he’d said he didn’t want her if Victor had had her.
Dismay squirmed through her. She didn’t want him to want her physically, did she? No. She was trying to rescue the foundation. If there was even a remote chance of keeping her job, and keeping the foundation alive, she had to try.
Veering from him on shaky legs, she found her laptop bag and unzipped it. “You won’t have seen it on the books because it’s not up and running, but I can show you…”
Most of her records were on her laptop and it took forever to wake up, but she had a slender file with proof of the logo she’d recently approved. It wasn’t the fanciest letterhead, but it gave the foundation an identity and made it real. Her heart pounded with pride every time she looked at it. She showed him.
“‘Brighter Days’? It looks like a child drew it.” He barely glanced at it.
“It’s supposed to! It’s an organization that provides funding to group homes and offers grants to orphaned children so they can develop independence.”
“By underwriting their lives?”
“By providing support of many kinds!” Insulted, Clair whipped the file closed. “You obviously don’t know what it’s like to be without parents or you’d have some empathy.” As she tucked the file back into her bag, she let her hair fall forward to screen how wounded she was by his cynicism.
“Or maybe I do and I didn’t have the luxury of handouts to help me find my way. Maybe I managed on my own.” His tone was dangerously quiet.
The truth in the hardened brass of his gaze made her hesitate. The thought that he might have shared some of her struggles struck a chord of kinship in her, but he emanated aggression, provoking her defensive response.
“So did I,” she challenged. “I’m still capable of wanting to help others.”
His hard laugh cracked the air. “Van Eych gave you this flat, a manager’s salary, and countless other favors for that face.” He pointed at her features, then let his gaze traverse insultingly down her narrow shape. “Among other attributes. Not for any smiley face you drew on the sun. Hardly pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.”
He acted as if this illustration was all she had to show for her year of research and meetings and planning. Impotent fury threatened to engulf her, but to let him see he could get under her skin was handing him a weapon he didn’t deserve to hold.
“I don’t care if you believe me,” she said stiffly. “You’re obviously a bully who kicks people around for the fun of it. If you’d like to wait in your flat next door, I’ll clear out of this one by midnight.”
* * *
Such an ice queen, walking into the bedroom as though she wasn’t daring him to follow. Throwing out the bait that she’d never let Van Eych have her. He wondered how she’d homed in on the one reservation he had against her and dismantled it so effectively. A depth of experience in getting what she wanted from men, he supposed. Look at the way she had singled him out as the top dog this morning, making a play with one bold look before he even knew her name.
He almost didn’t care whether she had given herself to Van Eych, so long as he possessed her, which left him oddly defeated. Van Eych had stolen everything from him: not just his parents and home, but his youth and looks and his right to a normal life. No matter how Clair was connected, he ought to want to bury her, not bury himself in her.
He told himself her defiance provoked him. A man who’d conquered as many challenges as he had was internally programmed to trim the claws of a spitting cat and show her he wasn’t the easy dalliance she was used to. She wouldn’t be the biddable sex kitten he was used to either, but that made the thought of having her all the more exciting.
Listen to him. He knew better than to trust her, but he was halfway into bed with her anyway.
Pulling out his mobile, Aleksy texted his PA, then held his breath. He had the truth in seconds and swallowed back a howl of triumph. Her sugar daddy hadn’t been capable of making physical demands. That made taking her not just acceptable but imperative.
He pushed open the half-closed door and found more evidence to support her claim. She was moving clothes into a laundry basket set atop a narrow, single bed. There was something very youthful and innocent about her. He imagined Van Eych had been feeling his age—and beginning to feel the pressure of Aleksy’s running him to ground—when he’d discovered Clair in the file room.
Clair was just the old man’s type: young and pretty, angelic in looks but not in disposition. Van Eych had had women on the side even during his marriage, so it came as no surprise that he’d wanted to maintain the illusion of virility into his later years. The inability to fully enjoy Clair must have churned like bent nails in the old man’s gut.
If only he were alive to hate Aleksy for this. A wicked smile of enjoyment pulled Aleksy’s mouth. “The medical records confirm what you say. Van Eych was limp.”
She sent him a glance that tried for boredom but held an underlying flutter of nervous tension. “I told you, it doesn’t matter to me what you believe.”
“It matters to me.” He hooked a hand over the top of the doorframe, anchoring himself so he wouldn’t press forward into the room and take what he wanted before they’d outlined the terms. She had maneuvered a very profitable situation out of a criminal-class schemer. He couldn’t underestimate how conniving she could be.
She grabbed a hooded jacket off the suitcase near his feet. As she folded it, she hid her expression and any chance of reading her thoughts, but he heard the wheels turn.
He took in the unpacked case as he waited for her to make the next move, distantly wondering where she’d been for a week. With a real lover perhaps, but other men didn’t matter. She had never belonged to Victor. That was the important piece here. The thought of taking her for himself kindled a hungry fire in him. It was an approximation of the victory he craved, and he would have it.
With possessive satisfaction, he toured her shape, stoking the heat of anticipation as he hit narrow feet in bronze ballet slippers and climbed up slim but shapely legs. Hips that would fill his hands. A thick pullover sweater that hung loose, disguising whether she wore a bra. He’d bet she wore a snug undershirt of some kind, something that would trap the heat of her skin but still allow him to find and rub her taut nipples.
Her arm came across her breasts, forcing him out of his fantasy. Her blue eyes were wide, her lips parted. A blush of awareness bloomed across her cheekbones. She knew exactly what he was thinking and even though she was acting shocked, she wasn’t repelled. Her lashes dropped to hide her eyes, but she flirted light fingers through hair that looked as shiny and silky as gold tassels on a scarlet cushion. Her chest rose in a shaky little pant and she ran her tongue over ripe lips.
It struck him that she wasn’t accustomed to wanting the men she used.
He chuckled, delighted not only to have the upper hand, but to have her delectable body fall so easily under him. “Go ahead, Clair,” he taunted. “Ask me if offering to share that bed will persuade me to let you stay in it.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_95eb6e47-2f84-55cc-8d22-b88c352ec36f)
FOR SOME REASON Abby’s note from this morning came back to Clair.
I miss waking up with you.
Clair didn’t allow herself to be an idealist. She knew better than to wait on Prince Charming, but her insides twisted all over again. She’d had invitations to sex before, even considered a few, but something had always held her back. Fear of letting down her guard. A sense of emotional obligation that wasn’t comfortable. Never once had she heard anything so blunt and tactical.
“I thought you believed me when I said I wasn’t sleeping with Victor.”
“Victor, yes. No man at all?” He was three thousand percent confident, laconically filling her bedroom doorway with his primed body. “You’re what? Twenty-five?”
Clair closed lips that had parted with indignant denial.
“Twenty-three,” she muttered, which was still long in the tooth to be a virgin, but she was stuck in a catch-22. She had thought she ought to save herself for someone she cared about, but she shied from any type of closeness. Opening up was such a leap of faith. Handing your heart to someone put it in danger of disappointment at the least and complete shattering at the worst. The right man hadn’t come along to tempt her into taking the risk.
This man shouldn’t tempt her, but sex without the entanglement of feelings held a strange allure. She suspected it would be very good sex too, not just because he looked as though he knew his way around a woman’s body, but because her own seemed drawn to his, sense and logic notwithstanding. He made her hot.
It was driving her crazy. She didn’t know how to cope with it except to pretend the reaction wasn’t there. Shaking out the T-shirt she wore to bed, she folded it against her middle and said frigidly, “What makes you think I want to sleep with you?”
“You’ve managed to convince me you’re capable of honesty, Clair. Don’t start lying now. You want me.”
He could tell? How? Humiliated, she avoided her own eyes in the mirror opposite, not wanting to see the flush of awareness he obviously read like a neon sign.
“That bothers you, doesn’t it?” he mocked. “That you’re attracted to more than my fat wallet?”
“What wallet?” she scoffed, ducking an admission that she was reacting to anything. “All I heard was an offer for one night in exchange for what, one more day here? You said I was selling myself short earlier. Surely a man in your position could do better than that.”
Her words didn’t take him aback, only provoked a disparaging smile. “You want the penthouse.”
“I didn’t say that,” she protested.
“Good, because the sale closes tomorrow.”
Her insides roiled. She really was homeless. She didn’t let him see her distress, only blurted, “You work fast.”
“Believe it.”
Her belly tightened at the resolute way he said it, and quivered even more when she saw the gleam of ownership in his eye.
“Well,” she breathed. “I can hardly ask you to share this bed if you can’t arrange for me to stay in it, can I? Pity.” Her false smile punctuated her sarcasm.
“I’ll provide you a bed. One that’s bigger and…sturdier.”
A jolt of surprise zinged all the way to the soles of her feet. He wasn’t supposed to take this seriously. She wasn’t.
She clenched her hand around the edge of the laundry basket as if it were a lifeline that would lift her out of this conversation, but for some stupid reason, her gaze dropped to his open collar where a few dark hairs lay against his collarbone. She imagined he was statue perfect under that crisp fabric, with sharply defined pecs and a six-pack of abs. His hips—
Good grief, she’d never looked at a man’s crotch in her life. She jerked her gaze away, mind imprinted with a hint of tented steel-gray trousers. She blushed hard and it was mortifying, especially when she heard him chuckle.
“I don’t even know you,” she choked, wanting it to be a pithy rejection, but it was more a desperate reminder to herself that this was wrong. She shouldn’t be the least bit interested in him.
“Not to worry, maya zalataya. I know you.”
That yanked her attention back to him and his supremely confident smirk.
“You’re waiting for me to meet your price. Let’s get there,” he said implacably.
“That’s so offensive I can’t even respond.”
“It’s realistic. If you were looking for love, you wouldn’t be living off an old man, allowing people to think you belong to him. I don’t need hearts and flowers either, but I like having a woman in my bed.”
“Your charm hasn’t landed you one?”
He shrugged off her scorn. “I’m between lovers. The takeover has kept me busy. Now I’m tallying up my acquisitions, preparing to enjoy the spoils.”
“Well, I don’t happen to come with this particular acquisition.” She kneed the side of the mattress. “I didn’t have to share this bed to sleep in it and I had a paycheck besides. Don’t throw that look at me!” she snapped, hackles rising when he curled his lip. “Victor was going to underwrite the foundation, and it—”
“By how much?” he broke in.
“Pardon?”
“How much was he going to donate toward ‘brightening your day’?”
“He— You— Oh…” She ground her teeth, glaring at his impassive expression. Planting her hands on her hips, she stood tall and said clearly, “Ten.” That ought to make him realize how seriously Brighter Days had been taken.
“Million?” His eyebrows shot toward his hairline.
“Thousand,” she corrected, startled. She could dream of having millions at her disposal, but Victor’s promised funds would have been enough to keep the doors of the home open until she raised more.
Aleksy removed his mobile from his pocket. “You do sell yourself short. We’ll add a zero to that and call it a deal.”
“What?” she squeaked, but he was already connecting to someone, speaking Russian, then switching to English.
“Daniels, yes. You have her details through payroll? Perfect.” He ended the call.
“What did you just do?” she gasped.
“The transfer will complete in the morning.” He pushed his mobile back into his pocket. “Come here, Clair.”
She stayed where she was, aghast. Infuriated. Was it wrong to be dazzled and elated, as well? Oh, what she could do at Brighter Days with a hundred thousand pounds!
“That’s—” She cleared her throat, recalling he was under the impression he’d just bought her. Her stomach turned over, except…well, it wasn’t with the repulsion she expected. It was like peaking on a roller-coaster track and feeling the car drop away while she hung suspended and breathless. She bottomed out quickly, though, rattled by the way the world began whirring by as the situation picked up speed. She didn’t know which way was up. She wanted off.
“That’s a very generous donation,” she choked, blindly scrabbling up her folded T-shirt. She snapped it out and creased it into a messy rectangle against the bedspread. “I’ll issue a proper receipt for the full amount after I’ve moved it into the trust account.”
“Do whatever you want with it. It’s yours. Now let’s find more pleasant surroundings. I’ll send someone to finish packing your things.”
“The transfer hasn’t cleared.” Terror provided the quick retort, but it felt incredibly good to lob it at him. Better than revealing how thoroughly he mixed her up. “And given that you repulse me—”
“Do I?” He launched from his lazy slouch in the doorway. She only had time for one backward stumbling step before he’d clamped hard arms around her, pulled her into the wall of his chest, then crushed her mouth with his.
Claw his eyes out, she told herself, but aside from the fact that her arms were trapped between them, the sensation of his mouth closing on hers was too remarkable to reject. He was domineering and inexorable, but this wasn’t punishment or force; it was—
Hot. Sexy. Enticing. She instinctively parted her lips under the angle of his firm ones, and his tongue speared wetly into her mouth, shooting such a jolt of pleasure through her that her knees buckled. She moaned and lifted her chin, seeking another thrust and another. Rocking her mouth against his and moaning again when his hand moved to her bottom, crushing her against the hard ridge at his hips.
It was unfamiliar and overwhelming, but she wanted to cry, it felt so good to be wrapped in strong arms, mind blinded to all but the pleasure flaring up from her abdomen, filling her with a blossoming sense of rightness. She didn’t know she was moaning with gratification until he drew away and she heard her own mewl of distress.
