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Her pitch for investment today had been specific, innovative, nothing short of exceptional. Like her company. In three years she had taken the very simple idea of an advice column into an exclusive, information-filled web portal with more than a million members and a million more waiting on shortlists for membership.
He closed his eyes and immediately the image of her assaulted him.
Dressed formally, in black trousers that showed off her long legs and a white top that hugged her upper body, she was professionalism come to life—as far as possible from the woman who had cried her pleasure in his arms just a month ago.
He had even forgotten the reason he had come to New York while he had followed her crisp, confident presentation. But the moment she had realized he was present in the audience had been his prize.
She had faltered, searched the audience. That seconds-long flicker in her focus was like a nervous scream for an average woman.
But then there was nothing average about the woman he had married. She was beautiful, brilliant, sophisticated. She was perfection personified—and she had as much feeling as a lump of rock.
A rock he was finally through with—ready to kick out of his life. It was time to move on, and her little nervous sputter at the sight of him had gone a long way toward pacifying his bitter resentment.
He walked to an elevator and pressed the number for the tenth floor. When he reached her suite he pulled the gold-plated keycard he had bribed from the bellboy from his coat packet.
He entered the suite and closed the door behind him.
The subtle scent of lily of the valley assailed him instantly. It rocked him where he stood, dispensing a swift punch to his gut more lethal than the ones he had taken for half his life.
His lungs expanded, drawing the scent of her deep into him until it sank once again into his blood.
His body pulsed with remembered pleasure. Like a junkie getting his high.
He studied the suite, with its luxurious sitting area and mahogany desk. Her files were neatly stacked on it, her sleek state-of-the-art laptop on top of them. Her handbag—a practical but designer black leather affair—lay near the couch in the sitting area.
The suite was everything its owner was—high-class, flawless and without an ounce of warmth.
He turned at the sound of a door on his right.
Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it. A sheen of sweat danced on her forehead.
He frowned, his curiosity spiking.
Her glistening mouth trembled as she spotted him, her hands moving to her midriff.
There was a distinct lack of color to her skin. Her slender shoulders quivered as she ran the back of her hand over her forehead.
He looked at her with increasing curiosity. Her jacket was gone. A V-necked sleeveless white silk blouse showed off her toned arms. The big steel dial of her designer watch highlighted her delicate wrist. A thin gold chain dangled at her throat.
The shadow of her breasts beneath the thin silk drew his gaze.
He swallowed and pulled his eyes up. The memory of her breasts in his hands was cutting off his breath more effectively than a hand choking his windpipe. The feel of her trembling with pleasure in his hands, the erotic scent of her skin and sex—images and sensations flooded through him.
He could no more fight the assault than he could stop breathing.
Her eyes flared wide, the same heat dancing in those chocolate depths.
She was the very embodiment of perfection—always impeccably dressed, exuding the sophistication that was like a second skin to her. Yet now she looked off-balance.
He reached her, the slight sway of her lithe figure propelling him toward her. “Are you okay, gatinha?”
She ran her palm over her face, leaving pink fingerprints over her colorless skin. Stepping away from him, she straightened the already immaculate desk. Her fingers trembled as she picked up a pen and moved it to the side.
She was more than nervous.
“No, I’m not,” she said, shrugging those elegant shoulders. The frank admission was unusual. “But that’s not a surprise as I just saw you, is it?”
He raised a brow and sliced the distance between them. “The sight of me makes you sick?”
Her fingers clutched the edge of the desk, her knuckles white. “The sight of you reminds me of reckless stupid behavior that I’d rather not remember.”
He smiled. “Not even the good parts, where you screamed?”
Pink scoured her cheeks. The slender set of her shoulders straightened in defense. She moved to the sitting area and settled into a leather chair. “Why are you here, Diego?”
He watched with a weird fascination as she crossed her legs and looked up at him.
The nervousness he had spied just moments ago had disappeared. She sounded steady, without a hint of anger or upset. Even though the last time they had laid eyes on each other she had been half-naked in his bed, her face bereft of color as he had dressed and informed her that he was done with her.
There was no reproach in her tone for his behavior a month ago.
Her calm composure grated on him like the edge of a saw chipping away at wood.
She drove him to be the very worst of himself—seething with frustration, thrumming with desire—whereas she remained utterly unaffected.
He settled down on the coffee table in front of her and stretched his legs so that she was trapped between them. He flipped open the file next to him against his better instincts, to finish what he had come for. “Your proposal is brilliant.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” she threw back, her chin jutting out.
He smiled. The confidence creeping back into her tone was not a surprise. When it came to her company his estranged wife was a force to be reckoned with. “Is that your standard response to a potential investor?”
She snorted, and even that was an elegant movement of her straight nose. “It’s my standard response to a man who I know is intent on causing me maximum damage.”
Diego frowned. “Really? Have I done that?”
She snatched the proposal from his hands and the scent of her wafted over him. He took a breath and held it fast, the muscles in his abdomen tightening.
Droga, two minutes in her company and he was...
He expelled it with the force of his self-disgust. Pleasure was not the reminder he needed.
“You already had your revenge, Diego. After I walked out on our marriage six years ago you refused to divorce me with the express purpose of ruining my wedding to Alexander. Then you seduced me and walked out four weeks ago. Isn’t that enough?”
“Seeing that you went back to your life, didn’t even falter for a second, I’m not sure.”
Something flickered in her molten brown gaze as she spoke. “I propelled my sister and Alex into a scandal, putting everything Alex has worked for at risk.”
“Again, them—not you. From where I stand nothing has gotten to you. Apparently nothing ever gets to you.”
She ran her fingers over her nape, her gaze shying away from him. Sudden tension pulsed around her. “You left me utterly humiliated and feeling like a complete fool that morning. Is that better?”
He had wanted her anger, her pain, and it was there in her voice now, thrumming with force. But it was too little, too late. Even now it was only the prospect of her precious company having caught his interest that was forcing any emotion from her.
“Maybe,” he said, shrugging off his jacket.
Her gaze flew to his, anxious. “Tell me—what do I need to say so that you’ll leave my company alone? What will save it from the utter ruin you’re planning?”
“I thought your confidence in your company was unshakeable? Your strategy without pitfalls?”
“Not if you make it your life’s mission to destroy it,” she said. Her voice rang with accusation, anger, and beneath it all, a curious hurt. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Anyone who crosses you, who disappoints you, you ensure their ruin. Now it’s my turn.”
She straightened, her hands folded at her middle. The action pushed her small breasts into prominence. He trained his gaze on her face as though his life depended on it. Maybe not his life, but his very sanity relied on his self-control.
He didn’t plan to lose it again.
“Six years ago you were obsessed with revenge, driven by only one goal—to ruin your father. You didn’t care who you hurt in the process. You took his small construction company and expanded it into an empire—encompassing energy generation, mining. If I were to believe the media—and knowing you personally I’m very much inclined to—you are called a bastard with alarming frequency. You crushed anything that got in your way. Including your own father.” She shot up from the seat and paced the length of the room. “I don’t believe in wasting precious time fighting the inevitable. So whatever you’re about to do—do it. But I won’t go down without a fight. My company—”
“Means everything to you, right? You should be held up as an example to anyone who doubts that women can be as unfeeling and ruthless as men,” he interjected smoothly, feeling that flare of anger again.
She stared at him, her gaze puzzled. “Why do I get the feeling that that’s not a compliment?”
“It’s not.”
Her fingers tightened on the windowsill behind her. “We’re even now, Diego. Let’s just leave it at that.”
He moved closer. He could see his reflection in her eyes, her slender shoulders falling and rising with her rapid breathing. Her gaze moved to his mouth and he felt a roar of desire pummel through his blood. It was impossible not to remember how good she had felt, how she had wrapped her legs around him and urged him on with soft little growls.
If he kissed her she wouldn’t push him away. If he ran the pad of his thumb over the pulse beating frantically at her throat she wouldn’t argue. She would be putty in his hands.
Wasn’t that why he felt such a physical pull toward her? Because when he touched her, when he kissed her, it was the one time he felt that he owned this woman—all of her. Her thoughts, her emotions, the core of her.
He fisted his hands. But it would prove nothing new—to him or to her. Self-disgust boiled through him for even thinking it. He had let her get to him on the island, burrow under his skin until the past six years had fallen away and he’d been standing there with her letter in hand.
Never again.
He needed a new beginning without being haunted by memories of this woman. He needed to do what he had come for and leave—now.
“I realized what I had done wrong the moment I left the island,” he said, unable to stop himself from wringing out the last drop of satisfaction. He had never claimed to be a great man. He had been born a bastard, and to this day he was one. “I’ve come to rectify that mistake.”
Kim trembled all over, an almighty buzz filling up her ears.
“A mistake?” Her throat ached as it pushed that word out.
His golden gaze gleamed, a knowing smile curving his upper lip. “I forgot a tiny detail, although it was the most important of all.”
He plucked a sheaf of papers from his coat pocket and slid them on to her desk. Every inch of her tensed. The words on those familiar papers blurred.
“I need your signature on the divorce papers.”
She struggled to get her synapses to fire again, to get her lungs to breathe again.
The innocuous-looking papers pierced through her defenses, inviting pain she had long ago learned not to feel. This was what she had wanted for six long years—to be able to correct the mistake she had made, to be able to forget the foolish dream that had never stood a chance.
Her palms were clammy as she picked up the papers.
“My staff at the villa were never able to locate the copies you brought.”
She shivered uncontrollably at the slight curiosity in his words. Because she had torn them up after that first night when Diego had made love to her.
No, not love. Sex. Revenge sex. The this-is-what-you-walked-away-from kind. For a woman with an above average IQ, she had repeated the same mistake when it came to Diego.
She turned the papers over and over in her hands. This was it.
Diego would walk out of her life. She would never again have to see the foolishness she had indulged in in the name of love. What she had wanted for so long was within her grasp. Yet she couldn’t perform the simple task of picking up the pen.
“You could have sent this through your lawyer,” she said softly, the shock and confusion she had held in check all evening by the skin of her teeth slithering their way into her. Her stomach heaved. “You didn’t have to come yourself.”
He leaned against the table, all cool arrogance and casual charm. But nothing could belie the cruel satisfaction in the curve of his mouth. He wanted blood and he was circling her like a hungry shark now that he could smell it.
“And miss the chance to say goodbye for the final time?”
“You mean you wanted to see the fallout from your twisted seduction?”
“Seduction?” he said, a dark shadow falling over his features. The force of his anger slammed into her like a gale. “Why don’t you own it, like you do everything else? There was no seduction.” He reached her before she could blink. “What does it say about us that even after six years it took us mere hours after laying eyes on each other to end up in bed? Or rather against the wall...”
Her stomach somersaulted. Her skin sizzled. He was right. Sex was all she could think of when he was close. Hot, sweltering, out-of-control, mind-blowing, biggest-mistake-of-your-life-that-you-made-twice sex.
She would die before she admitted how much truth there was in his words, how much more he didn’t know.
She grabbed her pen and signed the first paper, her fingers shaking.
She lifted her chin and looked up at him, gathering every ugly emotion simmering beneath the surface and pouring it into her words. “It’s nothing more than a stimulus and response—like Pavlov’s dog. No matter how many years pass, I see you and I think of sex. Maybe because you were my first. Maybe because you are so damn good at it.”
The papers slithered to the floor with a dangerous rustle. She felt his fury crackling around them. He tugged her hard against him, his body a smoldering furnace of desire.
She had angered him with her cold analogy. But it only made the void inside her deepen.
His mouth curled into a sneer. “Of course. I forgot that the cruise, those couple of months you spent with me, were nothing but a rich princess’s wild, dirty rebellion, weren’t they?”
She felt a strange constriction in her chest, a tightness she had nothing to fight against. A sob clawed its way up her throat.
She hated him for ruining the most precious moments of her life. For reducing them to nothing. She hated herself for thinking he had loved her six years ago, for losing her mind the moment she had seen him again four weeks ago.
For someone who had been emotionally stunted for so long, the upsurge of emotion was blinding—pulling her under, driving reason from her mind.
She bunched her fingers in his jacket, his heart thundering beneath her touch. “It’s good that you’re so greedy you came back for more. Because I have news for you.”
CHAPTER TWO
