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“I did make it clear I meant those who have a nine-to-five schedule. You’re not one of those. In fact, you’re the only one who almost makes this place your home.”
She stared into his spellbinding eyes as he stared back with the same intentness.
How did he know that?
How? Because the man had a level of intelligence and efficiency she’d never before encountered. It stood to reason he’d researched the staff before he’d acquired them. Though she’d thought they’d be too insignificant for him individually, she had to revise that opinion. To reach his level of success he couldn’t be a detached leader who left details to others. He had to be hands-on. Nothing and no one was too trivial or below his notice.
She wouldn’t be surprised if he had invasive info on everyone who held or would hold any position in his businesses...and had memorized it, too. Thinking that disconcerted her on a primal level. Even if there wasn’t much about her to know, just that he did know it put her at an even bigger disadvantage, if that was even possible.
“Nothing to go back home to?”
His quiet question surprised an unfiltered answer from her. “There never really was.”
Her dismay deepened at the contemplative cast that came over his gaze. She’d exposed herself even more, and she held him accountable for it, him with his damned hypnotic power.
But her consternation was swept away by the surge of memories. Memories of growing up with only her mother, who moved her around so much following her medical career she’d never stayed long enough in one place to form real friendships. Only when Lili had entered medical school herself had her mother finally settled in LA, just before she fell prey to early-onset Alzheimer’s. Lili had gone back to live with her, before being forced to put her in a home for four years before her death a year ago. Her mother’s house remained a place to crash when she wasn’t working. Being a workaholic was what saved her from feeling lonely. It was the only other thing she’d inherited from her mother. Hopefully. Home had always been wherever she worked. This lab had been her home for the past three years. Her haven. Until he happened.
“There you go again.”
“There I go what again?”
His lips spread wider. The ground beneath her tilted. “Using me as target practice for your poison-laced glances.”
Choking on the heart that his smile yanked into her throat, she shrugged. “They’re just dipped in heavy tranquilizers. Or loaded with fifty thousand volts.”
At that, he did something she’d dreaded in theory, but had thought would never come to pass in reality. Not in her presence.
He threw his head back and laughed.
And his laughter was...horrible. It did terrible things to her insides, had her hormones rushing in torrents in her system.
Great. Just great. Just when she discovered she had those kinds of hormones after all, they had to be activated by him of all men. And in broad daylight. When he was laughing his magnificent head off at her, no less.
To make things worse, one big, elegant hand rose to wipe his left cheek. He’d laughed so hard, it had wrung a tear from his eye. Fantastic.
But what was really worth marveling at was how moisture smeared his hewn flesh. Her thoughts caught fire imagining him drenched in exertion, during or after he’d—
Shaking away the sensual images only lodged them deeper into her brain. Her tongue tingled with until-now unknown urges—the sudden longing to drag him down to her, so she could trace that cheekbone, taste his virility. Only his hand combing back the hair that had fallen over his forehead distracted her from those idiotic impulses. The hand of the virtuoso surgeon he was, powerful, graceful, skillful...in every possible way, no doubt—
For God’s sake, stop. Stop noticing his every detail and getting arrhythmia over each one!
But in the absence of others, she had no buffer against his sheer charisma and sensual power—both of which she was certain he didn’t even mean to exercise on her. A man like him must have them on all the time on auto. She’d never even thought men like him existed outside of legends and fairy tales.
After she’d become a jumbled mess, he sobered, the wattage of his smile dazzling her.
“So you don’t want me dead, just incapacitated.”
She fidgeted, her tote getting heavier by the second. “Ideally, long enough to remove you from my path. I want you gone from my world, not the one at large.”
“That’s big of you.”
Nerves jangling at the outright teasing she could no longer mistake, she sighed. “When it doesn’t come to my lab—yours now—I do recognize that, even if it’s to your humongous advantage, you are a formidable force for good.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Considering your views of me back there it’s unexpected to hear you admit that.”
“I’m a surprise a second. To myself most of all today. I sure didn’t mean to say any of the things I said back there.”
“So you didn’t mean them?”
“I said I didn’t mean to say them.”
“So you did mean them.”
“Can’t mean anything more, in the context of my own concerns.” She shot him a defiant glance, this man who’d detained her because he could do anything he wanted and have the world bend over backward to accommodate him. “You’re sadly misguided if you think you’ll get an apology or a retraction.”
“You’ve given me both when you deigned to recognize my worth to the world.”
“Still doesn’t change the fact that I wish I had the power to make you disappear.”
He shook his head, his grin widening, wreaking more havoc with her already compromised nerves.
“What do you find so funny now?” she mumbled sullenly.
“Not funny, delightful. You’re definitely not the first person to wish to eliminate me, but you’re the first to tell me so to my face.”
“Hey, watch your terminology. You go around using words like poison-laced and eliminate, and if something ever befalls you, I’m a prime suspect. I only wish to be rid of your disruption. All I want is to go back to work tomorrow to the news that you’ve withdrawn your bid and let us be.”
“And if a way presented itself for you to make this happen?”
“I wouldn’t hesitate.”
He gave another chuckle. “It doesn’t seem you were handed discretion at the cosmic assembly line. Are you this blunt with everyone?”
Noticing the watchfulness that entered his gaze at this question, getting the feeling that he somehow didn’t relish the idea, she shrugged a shoulder. “Not since I was a kid. Or at least I thought so, until just before you arrived and Brian told me I’m transparent. I thought it was only my expressions that everyone could read, that I wasn’t as incontinent verbally, then you started your hypnotic session and I felt my colleagues being assimilated into your hive mind, and I...well, any tact I thought I cultivated evaporated.”
“You don’t like this about yourself.” It was a statement, not a question. “You should. In fact, you should continue being as outspoken about the grievance you have with me. I have a feeling it goes beyond objecting to the change in course I’m proposing.”
She almost snorted. “Proposing? You mean dictating. And you think that’s not enough for me to consider you and your takeover the worst thing that could happen to this place?”
“I didn’t get the impression anyone else shared that unfavorable opinion.”
This time, she did snort. “Of course, you didn’t. You must be surprised there was even one dissenting voice.” Her blood frothed again at how her colleagues had succumbed to him without even a fight. “You know very well the effect you have on people.”
“I only noticed the inflammatory one I had on you.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I’m the mad scientist type.”
“Aren’t you all supposed to be that?”
She exhaled. “I thought so. But the promise of open-ended coddling proved irresistible to my colleagues.”
“But not to you.”
Her shoulders hunched with futility. “Yeah.”
The blue of his eyes seemed to intensify. “Why? What makes you so resistant? Why is the promise of everything you’ve ever dreamed of at your fingertips not as alluring to you?”
“I told you why in agonizing detail and you already know I hate redundancy. Especially after you took such pleasure in deconstructing my argument and having the last word.”
“I don’t remember I had the last word.”
“You didn’t bother to have it. You just ignored mine.”
“I chose not to engage you again in front of everyone, decided to do so in private. As I am doing now.”
“You shouldn’t have. I have nothing more to say.”
“So do you only take exception to leaving your own project behind?”
“I take exception to being forced to.”
“Your results won’t evaporate if you shelve them for a while.”
“I see no reason to while I’m making progress.”
“There are many reasons, scientific and financial. You’ll also gain expertise working on my projects, your own work would eventually benefit.”
“If you think I need expertise you shouldn’t want me working on your projects.”
“I meant added expertise. I wouldn’t have paid all that money if I thought you were anything but the best.”
She waved his placating response away. “You didn’t pay anything for me. That hundred million—”
“Two hundred million. Half of which is funding for phase one of all the projects I have planned for you.”
She forced her open mouth closed. “What’s a hundred million dollars more, huh? But whatever you paid was for our collective services and obedience, probably for the rest of our lives. Now that you’ve found one troublemaking apple in your bushel, you can always toss it out.”
“I have no intention of tossing you out.”
“Well, I intend to jump out of the cart myself.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re contemplating quitting?”
“I’m done contemplating.”
His expression went blank. But though there was nothing to read in it anymore, she felt she was getting the first real glimpse of what he hid beneath the polished exterior of the genius surgeon and suave businessman. Something lurked below his placid surface, something more sharp-edged than his state-of-the-art scalpels. Someone utterly ruthless. No, more. Someone lethal.
Which was stupid. Whatever else he was, this man was a healer. He didn’t end lives, he saved them. All these feverish thoughts must be the sun frying her brain. Or was it such intense and close exposure to him?
Then he spoke again, sending her every hair standing on end. “It’s clear contemplation has nothing to do with your decision. I wouldn’t even call such a knee-jerk reaction one.”
He again sounded like when he’d been addressing their assembly, making her realize how deliberate and calculated he had been in comparison to how he’d been talking to her now. He had been out to subdue and mesmerize everyone. He was trying to make her bow to his will now.
Well, he should have realized by now that his tried and true methods only backfired with her.
Bent on walking away this time, she stood as tall as she could. “Call it what you like. I quit, Dr. Balducci. I’m sure my loss will be nothing more than a negligible annoyance, since BIL is chock-full of those who will ecstatically do your bidding.”
“You can’t quit, Dr. Accardi.”
“Because the lump sum you paid included my price? Just a sec...” She took the bag off her shoulder, rummaged for her wallet, pulled the money she found and stuck the bills out to him.
“What’s that supposed to be?”
Extending her hand as close as she dared get to him, she met his glowering with her own. “I don’t know what the going rate per head was, but taking into account the premises and everything else, I’m sure I didn’t cost you more than that.”
His eyes fell to the notes before he raised them to her, full of mockery. “I assure you, you cost me much more than that.”
She refused to lower her hand. “You let me know exactly what I cost you, and I’ll pay for my freedom in installments. Consider this the first one.”
As he realized she wasn’t joking, his gaze clashed with hers as if to make her cower before him. She was sure such a glare had brought many adversaries to their knees. Tough, it was going to let him down this time. Even if she felt he’d set her on fire if she held his stare any longer.
A second before she averted her own eyes, he suddenly looked down at the money. He plucked three hundred-dollar bills from the bunch before he raised his eyes again and almost knocked her flat on her back with the mischief filling them.
“Now you really can’t quit.”
She gaped at his wicked grin. “What?”
“You just paid me for shares in your facility. Now you have to stay and run the place with me. Or for me.”
Before another thought could fire in her stalled brain, he turned and strode away.
Out of nowhere, a sleek black limo slithered soundlessly up to him.
Before he got in, he turned to her with a mock salute and said, “See you tomorrow, partner.”
Three (#ulink_311fbe7d-2d5d-5af3-9af1-0ace330fc255)
Antonio caught himself grinning again and again all the way back to his mansion in Holmby Hills.
Shaking his head for the umpteenth time since he’d left Liliana Accardi gaping at him as if he’d grown a spiked tail and leather wings and taken flight, he again wondered what the hell had happened in that parking lot. Actually, what the hell had happened since she’d blasted him in that meeting room.
This wasn’t what he’d envisioned at all. Not after everything had gone according to plan. At first.
He’d made the bid on the lab, knowing he’d find no resistance. He’d finalized everything in record time before moving to the next phase—conquering his new subordinates. He’d done that, too, with more acceptance than his best projections, thanks to his long-perfected methods of making people do his bidding.
He’d started practicing his influence from childhood when he’d been in the clutches of The Organization, which had taken him and hundreds of children to turn them into lethal mercenaries. Even among his brotherhood, as unyielding as they were, he’d enjoyed a unique position of power. While Phantom—Numair now—had been the leader everyone deferred to, it had been Antonio everyone trusted to have the most levelheaded opinion. When he’d become their medical expert, they’d trusted him with their very lives.
He’d taken that skill into the outside world after they’d escaped The Organization. Normal people had been no match for the sway he’d honed with some of the world’s most shrewd and lethal people. He’d plowed through the worlds of medicine and business like a laser, being described by rivals and allies alike as irresistible and unstoppable. Not that he reached his goals through aggression or intimidation. He relied on persuasion and manipulation, so no one had a reason to fight him and every reason to succumb to him.
