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CHAPTER FOUR

“I’M LOSING MY home at midnight,” her soft lips pronounced before tensing with acrimony. “I need to pack. Traveling will have to wait.” There wasn’t an ounce of self-preservation in her as she matter-of-factly righted the laundry basket and heaped the tumbled clothing into it.

“Don’t test me, Clair. I’m not nice.”

She straightened with a flushed face, all out aggression blasting at him in a way that had him planting his feet.

“What do you want me to do? Leave my things for the new owners to throw in the trash? Exactly how much do you want from me besides my job, my home and—” She clamped her lips over whatever else she almost said. Her mouth trembled briefly and for a moment there was a cast of startling defenselessness to her.

It was gone before unease could take a proper hold on him, hidden by the shift of her body away from him. Her stiff shoulders were proud. “You’re the one who sold this place out from under me. Stop complaining that it’s cutting into your plans.”

She was acting like an amateur.

Aleksy narrowed his eyes on her back, always aware when women were trying to manipulate him and occasionally willing to allow it when it suited his end purpose: primarily to get the physical release his body required. If Clair was attempting to wring guilt out of him, she was being predictable and hopelessly misguided. If she didn’t appreciate how powerful and absent of empathy he was, he’d demonstrate.

With one call—in English so she’d understand it—he swept away her stall tactic.

“The brawny and coldly efficient Lazlo again?” she asked without turning.

“He’s enlisting a young man you might know. Stuart from accounting? He’s proving to be extremely cooperative. A stickler for procedure. Stuart will make an inventory of your property and put it in storage at my expense.”

“Stuart from accounting wants to paw through my underpants drawer? And run back to the office with what he found in my medicine chest?”

“Not if he intends to keep his job.” Aleksy didn’t like the way she paled and liked even less the thought of some flunky fondling her undergarments. His hands tingled to cradle her in reassurance. He shook off the unfamiliar urge. “Gather your personal things if it will put an end to this delay,” he muttered. “You have one hour.”

* * *

In the end she chose Paris, but not for the reason he thought.

“The city of lovers,” he’d said ironically, the timbre of his voice stirring her blood. “Of course. A perfect weekend retreat.”

Weekend. The word punched low, gushing delicious heat through her abdomen.

She shook off the reaction and bit back an explanation that she’d picked Paris because she could get home on her own steam if she had to. Not that she had a home to come back to, but flying back to London from Cairo or Vancouver or Sydney would destroy her shallow savings.

As they traveled, she focused on budgeting for a new flat and where she’d start looking for a job so she wouldn’t recall the way Stuart’s Adam’s apple had bobbled when he found Aleksy in her flat.

Aleksy had curved a possessive hand against the back of her neck and said, “I don’t date my employees. Clair is no longer with the firm.”

Clair had lifted a disillusioned Could you be more blunt? expression to him.

Aleksy had quirked his split brow in a Want me to be?

She’d left without saying a word, her guilty blush burning her cheeks, aware that he’d sealed her fate. Her reputation as a tart was solidified and so much better than criminal. That made her squirm, but she’d learned to shield herself against judgment long ago. No, it was the way he’d gotten into her head so easily that really disturbed her. It made her feel vulnerable.

“Clair.”

His touch turned her from staring out the car window, once again opening that invisible gateway through her defenses. His intense personality whirled into her psyche like a restless summer wind, scattering her thoughts and inducing an instant, fluttering sensuality that reached toward everything in him.

“We’re here.”

The lights of Paris came to sparkling life around her. The scent of rain-damp streets smelled promisingly fresh as he left the car. The strength in his hand as he took hers to help her exit made her heart trip in a nervous rhythm against her breastbone.

She paused as he steered her toward a building, turning her face up to the sprinkling black sky to take in the facade of elegantly lit stone. It wasn’t a towering structure of glass and steel, but an old-world walk-up with wrought-iron balconies and planter boxes already blooming with spring. “This is very—” charming, she almost said “—nice.”

“It’s a good investment,” he dismissed.

The statement chilled her. “If you’re so keen on good investments, why did I hear you dumping all of Victor’s properties?” He’d been positively ruthless, speaking harshly into his mobile as she’d moved through the flat collecting her few sentimental items. He hadn’t taken any losses that she could discern, but he hadn’t seemed concerned with making huge profits either. “I’m sure his family would have kept what you didn’t want.”

“His sons kept enough,” he said bluntly, pausing on the top landing to open a door by punching a code into the security pad. “I left them their homes because they have innocent wives and children, but they knew enough about how their father made his fortune that they didn’t fight my takeover. I didn’t have the evidence to prove Van Eych’s crimes until the firm’s accounting books were in my hands. Now the truth will come out and his sons will change their names to escape any connection to him.”

His mouth curled into a cruel smile as he held the door for her.

Foreboding crawled through her veins. “You think it’s funny to cause the severing of family ties?” Everything in her castaway upbringing was appalled.

“Funny? No. Justified? Yes.”

She stepped into a room lit with intimate golden pools, but she didn’t take it in, too caught up with looking for a crack of humanity in his unyielding expression. Until now she hadn’t worried what would happen to her, aware only that if she walked away from Aleksy’s money, she’d always cringe with regret. Orphaned children needed a voice and it wasn’t as if she could find support for the foundation elsewhere. Victor was gone and who else would sponsor it if rumors started up that its founder had been in collusion with a white-collar criminal? No, if she didn’t do this, the foundation was history, but reality hit as the door clicked shut behind them, loud and symbolic.

Aleksy Dmitriev was a hard man. Not cruel; she believed him when he said he didn’t hurt women. He’d already demonstrated that he held himself to specific, sharply defined ethics. But he wasn’t merely detached like her. She deflected emotions, but he didn’t feel them at all. That made something catch in her. Apprehension, but empathy too. What had made him so devoid of a heart? Had he ever had one?

Did it matter? She belonged to him regardless.

Her heart sank, taking her last chance of protest with it, leaving her feeling naked and defenseless. You’re not naked yet, a lethal voice whispered in her head.

“Dine out or in?” he asked, his accent raspy on her sensitized nerves.

Her breath stuttered and she struggled to catch it, not realizing she’d been holding it. Part of her would rather get the main event over with. It was late enough she was growing tired, but she was also wide-awake with nervous anticipation.

His nearness, the power of his intense glance, stole her voice. His hair had flattened into a dark helmet under the light rain. A shadow had grown in on his square jaw, accentuating everything male in him. She was ridiculously weakened by the sight. Her gaze should have been flashing a back off. Instead she studied his mouth, recalling the feel of those full lips moving with erotic control over hers. Her fingertips itched to trace the smooth curves that were uncompromisingly masculine, yet wickedly sexy.

“This stubble will burn if I kiss you the way you’re begging me to,” he said in a growled voice that slammed her back to reality.

“I—” She strangled on denial, mortified enough to jerk out of his hypnotizing aura and move across the room.

“I’ll shower and shave. You put on one of those cocktail dresses you asked me if you should bring. I want to see your legs.”

She threw him a livid glare, but he disappeared down a hall. What did she have to be angry about anyway? She’d sold herself into his control, hadn’t she?

Clair gripped her elbows, hanging on to her composure with bruising tightness, taking in her surroundings to turn her mind from her precarious situation. The lounge was enormous, tiled in marble and divided into sections with area rugs and attractively arranged furniture. Everything was decidedly masculine, the writing desk set in the corner surrounded by enough space to accommodate its charismatic owner. The rest of the flat took up the entire top floor of the building, incorporating half a dozen smaller flats into a single sprawling living space that one man couldn’t possibly need.

She had thought Victor obscenely wealthy. She shook her head, reminding herself that the real test of a person’s class came from his character, not his possessions. Problem was, Aleksy guarded himself even more closely than she did. She wondered what kind of man lurked beneath that polished granite exterior. One who would laugh her to the curb when he realized what a novice she was?

Stop it. Steadying her knees and pulling her shoulders back, she resolved not to be intimidated. He could laugh all he wanted, but she had her own principles: loyalty, a debt of gratitude and a personal honor that demanded she live up to her word.

She was terrified, but she’d sleep with him because she’d said she would.

* * *

Her luggage was gone from his room when he emerged from his shower.

It was an unexpected slap in the face for Aleksy. Women never rejected him. Given the math Clair had scratched into a notebook on the plane, he had considered their deal more than sealed; was she now trying to get out of it?

Snatching up his mobile, wearing only a towel, he strode from the bedroom to the empty lounge. Down at the far end of the flat, as far as she could get from his master bedroom, the door was shut. He pushed through it, noted her open suitcase on the bed and heard the hair dryer click on in the bathroom.

The release of tension in him was profound—and aggravating.

Get a grip, he ordered himself as he returned to his room. She was only a woman, the same as all the others he’d taken into his bed. Yes, there was a certain satisfaction in claiming what Victor had wanted, but Aleksy had been patient enough to hunt that man down over two decades. He ought to be capable of waiting a few more hours for this final conquest.

The short flight to Paris had been unbearable, though, the drive from the airport eternal. She’d been quiet, almost as if trying to hold herself behind an invisible shell, while his senses had been homed onto her presence, for once hungry to learn about his partner, but he hadn’t wanted to reveal his curiosity.

He didn’t want to feel it. She shouldn’t be drawing him in this strongly.

When she’d turned that look of longing on him after they arrived in the flat, it had taken everything in him to keep from leaping on her. Whether it had been a tease or real, he had ached to accept her invitation like nothing he’d ever wanted, even his lifetime of revenge. He’d controlled himself because any weakness for women had always been a distraction he couldn’t afford. He wouldn’t let a habit of a lifetime click off like a switch, but he’d been near panting in London when she’d thrown down her condition that the money had to clear.

His saving grace had been that she had been panting too; it was affecting him. The women he usually went for enjoyed sex, but with Clair the chemistry was notched to maximum. She might have an agenda, but her desire was interfering with it. It was an unbelievable turn-on; it enthralled him.

Surely once he’d had her the mystique would dissolve though. It had to. This obsessiveness was intolerable.

He stepped into black jeans and tugged on a light gray pullover, returning to the lounge, where he made a few calls while pacing off his restlessness, mercilessly tying off his need as he waited for staff from a nearby restaurant.

As he waited for Clair.

* * *

Clair forced one foot in front of the other and stepped into the lounge, tensed for the impact of Aleksy’s inspection. He was on the phone, his face and body in quarter profile.

She had expected one of his disturbingly penetrating looks, but found herself doing the appraisal, going weak as she took in the length of his back and the way his jeans hugged the shape of his backside and outlined his muscled thighs. He stood with his long legs braced and shrugged a shoulder, drawing her attention to the powerful layers of muscles bulging beneath the wool. She imagined exploring light fingers over the textures of cashmere, swarthy neck and short, damp hair and had to strangle a moan of longing.

He finished his call and turned to strip her deep purple slip dress with hungry eyes. It was the same look he’d given her this morning, just as carnal and without the safety net of an office full of people to prevent him acting on his desires.

The assessment acted exactly as powerfully on her, pinning her feet to the floor and making her realize that for all her rationalizations about helping orphaned children, the real reason she was here was this: she wanted to be with him. It was a frightening admission after a lifetime of convincing herself she didn’t want or need anyone.

“Lovely,” he said, languidly climbing his appreciative gaze from her exposed knees to her carefully composed expression.

Her stomach contracted under the impact of his undisguised sexual intention.

“Victor liked it.” She didn’t know why she said it. Perhaps to keep him from guessing how utterly he held her in thrall, but it had a glacial effect on him.

He narrowed his eyes and said chillingly, “Be very careful about throwing his name at me, Clair.”

Uneasiness wafted over her along with confusion. She had pushed that “spoils of war” unpleasantness to the back of her mind, but it came flooding forward now.

A knock on the door kept her silent.

He opened it to uniformed staff. They turned one end of the dining table into an intimate candlelit cove, setting out covered plates and pouring wine. Soft music came on and fragrant flowers complemented scents of orange sauce and rich braised duck.

Unsteady in her heels, Clair moved forward to the chair Aleksy held for her, trying to frame her suspicion in a way that didn’t demean her any further than she already was.

When they were alone, she cleared her throat. “You said earlier—” Was it only a few hours ago they’d stood in her flat setting out terms for this arrangement? What was she doing! “You said that you’d been targeting the firm for some time. Victor was under considerable stress leading up to his heart attack. Was that from the takeover?”

The implication behind her simple question crashed and reverberated in Aleksy’s head, as swift and unexpected as the knife that had cut the line into his face. A dark maelstrom of emotion threatened, the kind he hadn’t allowed himself in years. He fought it back, master of everything he felt or didn’t feel, but it shocked him that she’d almost pulled something out of him that he no longer allowed. Chagrin. Loss. Rage.

“Are you accusing me of murdering him? Intentionally?” He was able to keep his tone impersonal, but she didn’t mistake the threat beneath. She paled.

“N-no.” Her voice was weak.

“Because I’ve been targeted for takeovers many times. It never raises my blood pressure. Van Eych knew what was coming and may have grown hypertensive, but that’s because he didn’t take care of himself. He lived as if an overweight, sedentary lifestyle would never catch up to him.” His entire body ached with tension.

“I know. I told him—”

“I don’t want to hear what you told him,” he snapped with a slip of control that made her jump. “I know more about the man than I ever wanted to. Now I want to forget him. I want his entire existence obliterated.”

He was revealing more than he intended to, but it would put an end to any more infuriating remarks regarding Victor. He glared at the elegantly simple dress that showed her delicate curves to perfection, offended that Victor had paid for it, that anything about the man had ever come in contact with her.

She sat primly, cowed by his temper into holding her hands in her lap, her spine straight, her eyes downcast. He didn’t apologize; he wanted the message driven home that this topic would never be revisited again.

“Well,” she said with quiet impertinence. “That certainly answers the question I was really asking, which was whether you had a grudge against Victor.”

“A grudge?” Aleksy choked on the inadequacy of the word, but what did you call it when you knew a man was responsible for your father’s death? For your mother’s slow, painful decline? For your own self-destruction? He swept his clogged throat clean with a swallow of wine, suppressing anguished thoughts. “Yes, Clair, I had a grudge.”

Aleksy’s posture was casual, but his stillness spoke of extreme tension. There was nothing to be read in his expression beyond the startling prominence of his scar.

Clair realized she needed to tread softly, but she had to ask, “Why?”

“He knew. That’s all that’s important.”

“Not to me,” she protested.

The corner of his lip quirked. She realized he knew what was really bothering her. “You struck the deal you wanted. Do you hear me asking why it was important to you?”

He’d already made it pretty clear he didn’t care about her motivation. This was commerce, not romance, but the worry drilling a hole in the pit of her stomach was that he didn’t really want her. Obviously he was attracted to her to some degree, but she didn’t want to be a thing. She wanted her first sexual experience to at least be sensual, not a twelve-point inspection and a stamp on the windshield. What happened when she turned out to be less than the high-performance ride he was used to?

“I just want to understand. You didn’t want anything to do with me when you thought I’d been sleeping with Victor, but when you learned I hadn’t, you coerced me into this arrangement. If you’re on a mission to collect all of Victor’s possessions, why count me among them? And why sell them off as quickly as you acquired them?”

His jaw hardened at the word coerced, but he only said bluntly, “To dismantle what he built. To expunge his mark on the world.”

“Well, I won’t let you dismantle me.” She grew hot. “I wasn’t his. You don’t get to erase me.”

“He thought you were his,” he shot back. “You let the world think you were.”

“It doesn’t mean you can treat me like—”

“Property?” Bracing his elbows, he leaned forward so she had to jerk back. “Why do you care? You got what you wanted. I’ll get what I want. There’s no conflict.”

There was, but apparently only to her.

Drawing a deep breath, she picked up her fork and said stiffly, “Just so I’m clear…You don’t care whether the things you’ve acquired are to your taste. You only want to hold them long enough to devalue and unload them?” Looking him in the eye was an act of supreme courage, especially since it made him bare his teeth in an uncivilized grin.

“You get to keep the money, Clair. You’ll walk away satisfied that your bottom line has benefited, I promise. Now let’s change the subject.”

“I think you just did,” she muttered, staring at food she had no appetite for as she tried to sift through the mixed emotions of being physically infatuated with a man who promised to give her pleasure while only taking a cold helping of revenge for himself.

His attitude hurt her and she didn’t want him to have that power. She wanted to be unaffected and remote, the way he was.

“Did I?” he responded with throwaway sarcasm.

“Yes, you did.” She set down her fork with a clatter. Trying to eat was pointless when she was so consumed with nerves. She could sit here waiting out the minutes until his stupid money came through, trying to reimagine this into something more meaningful than it would ever be, or she could have sex with him and be done with it. It didn’t matter if he didn’t feel anything, she told herself. She had always preferred superficial connections over something deeper. Right?

Right?

“Let’s do it now,” she decided shakily.

Her statement arrested him. “Why the sudden change of heart?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

Her pulse raced, but she ignored it, determined to be as cool and impervious as the women he was no doubt used to. “Because unlike an island villa or a vintage car, which have no say in life, I am a human being capable of making a choice. I want to complete this transaction so I can move on.”

She rose and left the table, heading toward his room without looking back, unable to hear if he followed because her ears filled with a whooshing sound. Her whole body trembled. She halted when she saw the intimidating expanse of his bed.

What was she doing? A cold chill of doubt washed through her. She couldn’t be so casual about stripping naked and letting a man into her body.

Fingertips grazed her spine, making her flinch. He lowered the zip of her dress before she clutched at the drooping front, panic whirling her to face him.

He scooped her to his chest, trapping her arms between them as his mouth captured hers. One hand streaked from her waist to slide beneath her elbow, where he cupped and firmly massaged her breast.

The dual sensations of fierce kiss and possessive, intimate touch hammered her with a pulse of pleasure so strong it frightened her. The situation was not just flying but exploding out of her control. She jerked her head to the side, gasping for breath, and pressed with her forearms for distance.

“You’re going too fast!”