Kitabı oku: «Modern Romance June 2019 Books 5-8», sayfa 3

CHAPTER TWO

LUCRECIA. IT SOUNDED like the Latin name for one of those exotic flowers found in remote jungles. The kind with waxy petals in shades of ivory streaked with lush crimson and mysterious indigo. The kind with a perfume that drew a bee inexorably into her honey trap.

Where she paralyzed and ate him alive.

What a way to go. Gabriel almost didn’t see a downside, except that he’d learned very early not to fall for any sort of manipulation. They’d all been tried—threats, flattery, guilt, false friendship and—frequently—lust. Sex was something he enjoyed like whiskey over rocks or a cool swim on a hot day. It wasn’t something he needed or succumbed to.

Yet this woman had put a coil of tension in him merely by existing and was notching it with each lift of her thick, curled lashes over her piercing blue-green eyes.

To think, he had only come to the house as a last resort, thinking he would fire up his grandmother’s laptop and ascertain exactly what this “Luli” software was all about.

Her wares were soft, all right. In all the right places, despite being draped in the least flattering dress imaginable. The color was wrong for her skin tone, but there was no hiding her catwalk height or her flawless complexion. She didn’t need makeup or adornments. In his mind, she only had to remove that dress and the pins from her hair and she would be perfect.

But she was his employee, he reminded himself, in the same way the workforce of any company became his responsibility and resource after a takeover.

Therefore, while he enjoyed fantasizing each time she threw one of those doe-eyed, speculative glances his way, looking ever so innocent as she let the tip of her tongue dampen her lips suggestively, he refused to let her see it was having the desired effect on him, i.e., Desire.

He definitely didn’t let his carnal reaction blind him to the nuanced threat she was making.

“Why would I need to hack into accounts that belong to me?” he asked, muscles activating as though preparing to face an opponent on the mat.

“You wouldn’t...”

If.

She didn’t say it, but he heard the lilt of suggestion in the way she trailed off.

He set aside his half-finished coffee with a click of bone china meeting lacquered wood.

She swallowed, eyes shielded by her lashes, but she was watching him through them. Cautious. Scared, even.

He let his lip curl to let her know he was amused by her adorable attempt to extort from him.

“You understand I could have you arrested.” Which was a strangely appalling thing to imagine. He had brought charges to bear in the past, when laws had been broken. He never thought twice about protecting himself and always sought justice through due process.

But there were exceptions to every rule, he supposed. Even the rules he made for himself.

“You could bring in the police,” she agreed in that same trailing tone. This time the adjunct was but. “I haven’t done anything illegal, though. Not yet.”

Not yet? “Ah. You’ve planted a cyberbomb.” He ought to be furious, but he was so flabbergasted by her audacity, he wanted to laugh. Did she know who he was?

“May we call them incentives?” Her gaze came up, crystal as the Caribbean Sea. Placid and appealing and full of sharks and deadly jellyfish with stinging tendrils.

His divided mind wanted to watch the shift of color in those eyes as he immersed himself in her even as the other half absorbed the word incentives. Plural.

“Call them anything you like. I’m calling the police.” Even he didn’t know whether he was bluffing. He took longer than he needed to bring his phone from his pocket, though, watching for her next move.

“If I don’t log in soon, a tell-all will release to the press.”

“Has my grandmother been running an opium den? What terrible tales could you possibly have to tell about her?” As far as he knew, Mae Chen’s worst crime was being stubbornly resentful of her daughter’s choice in husband—and rightfully so.

Luli’s face went blank. “I’d rather not reveal it.”

“Because you have nothing.”

“Because your grandmother’s good name would be smeared and she’s been good to me.”

“Yet you’ll destroy her reputation to get what you want from me.”

“I’ll tell the truth.” Her tone was grave, her comportment calm enough to make him think she might have something more than threats of revealing a dodgy tax write-off or a penchant for young men in small bathing suits.

“Something to do with my mother?”

“Not at all.” That seemed to surprise her.

“What then? I’m not playing twenty questions.”

She pinched her mouth together and glanced toward the door to ensure it was firmly closed.

“Human trafficking and forcible confinement.”

“Ha!”

She didn’t laugh.

“That’s a very ugly accusation.” There was a thriving black market in everything from drugs to kidneys, but it wasn’t a shop on Fifth Avenue where women in their golden years could drop in and buy house staff. “Who? You?”

She swallowed. “Ask anyone here how many times I’ve been outside the front door of this house. They’ll tell you today was the first time in eight years.”

“Because you’ve coached them to say that? Are you ring-leading?”

“I’m acting alone. I would be surprised if anyone else knows my situation as anything but a preference for staying inside the grounds.” Her watchful gaze came up. “As I say, it would damage their memory of your grandmother if staff began gossiping. I’d rather you didn’t make serious inquiries.”

“You know as well as I do that without a thorough investigation, it’s very much she said, no one else said. I’ve weathered disgruntled employees making wild accusations many times. I’m not concerned.” He was a little concerned. This woman was not like the others here, that much was obvious. Not just in looks and background, either. At twenty-two, she had inveigled her way into controlling an elderly woman’s fortune. She was infinitely more dangerous than she looked.

Luli’s cheeks drew in as she set her chin. “Whether the police believe me or not, I expect they will deport me, seeing as I have no legal right to be here. My prospects in Venezuela are dim. I’ve had to make arrangements for that possibility.”

“I bet you have.” He couldn’t recall the last person to be so bold in their stalk of his money. He was reluctantly fascinated. “Stealing is a crime.”

“Only if I collect it.”

“Indeed.” He picked up his cup to sip and allow that lethal threat to sink in.

She might have paled slightly, but the sun had set and the light was changing.

“You could kill me,” she acknowledged. “Or I could simply disappear. Contingencies have been prepared for that possibility, as well. The investigation into that would be very thorough and go on a very long time.”

“Hell hath no fury like a woman with a keyboard. What did I do to deserve this wrath?”

Her hands, so prettily arranged in her lap, turned their palms up in a subtle entreaty. “I’m aware that my only value right now is my ability to reverse the inconveniences I’ve arranged.”

“I’m confident I can reverse them myself before they do too much damage. Your value is nil.”

“You’re probably right.” She nodded, not even sweating. Her only betrayal of nerves was the rapid tattoo of the artery in her throat.

Gabriel had a weakness for puzzles. There was a twelve-year-old boy inside him itching to lock the door, put on his noise-canceling headphones and hack his own system until he’d found every Easter egg she’d hidden there. Not because he was worried. Purely for the game of it.

And there was a thirty-one-year-old man who wanted to put his hands on the twisted pieces of this woman and see how quickly he could untangle her and make her come apart.

“If what you say about your circumstance here is true...” He set aside his coffee mug again. “One could argue that by taking control of my grandmother’s assets, I am taking possession of you.”

There was that intriguing stillness again. The screen of her mink lashes, so ridiculously long and curled like a filly’s, hid her eyes while her mouth might have trembled.

“One could argue that,” she admitted in a voice that wasn’t quite steady. “I’ve done my utmost to protect all of her assets. Including me. Which wouldn’t stop you from unloading me. As assets go, I’m probably at my top value right now. If you were to sell me, for instance.”

He told himself she was mistaking him for someone with a conscience that could be played upon, but his stomach clenched in revulsion.

“Of course, if you were to do that, I would make every effort to use what I know of her business interests to my advantage,” Luli continued.

Such a cool delivery. He told himself to focus on that, her complete lack of emotional hysteria despite the topic they were discussing.

Instead, he was compelled to ask, “Is that how she acquired you? Off some auction block?” He would turn the fortune over to the authorities, not wanting a penny of it if it was built on something so ugly.

“No.” She shifted the fit of her hands, interlacing her fingers, but her knuckles remained white, telling him she was in a state of heightened stress, even though that was the only visible sign of it. Why? Because her story was true? Or because the lie she was telling had grown too heavy and unwieldy to carry?

“My mother lived in a building my father owned in Caracas. She was his mistress. He was in government, married to someone else. He sold the building to your grandmother without making arrangements for my mother’s upkeep. Mae was trying to have her thrown out. My mother cut a deal with her to take me as an employee in exchange for allowing her to stay there. I’m working off my mother’s debt.”

She named a figure in bolivars that would calculate to about a hundred thousand dollars.

Was that what a human life was worth? Pocket change?

“You were fourteen?”

“Yes.”

“Why haven’t you left? Even if she deducted room and board, I would think you’d have paid that off by now.”

“Where would I go?” Her hands came up empty. “If your grandmother has my passport, it’s long expired. I have no right to be here and there’s nothing for me in Venezuela if they deport me. I could live on the streets, I suppose, and work under the table as other illegals do. How is that better than this? At least here I’m safe, fed and clothed.”

And now that safety net was gone. He began to understand her motive.

“I’m grateful to your grandmother,” she continued. “I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but there was a man who had also come to the apartment. If Mae hadn’t insisted on taking me, I’m quite sure my mother would have given me to him. My computer work these last years would have been purely as content.” Her faint smile was an inscrutable Mona Lisa of agonized acceptance.

No. A sharp spike of repugnance slid deep into his gut at the idea of any woman being exploited that way. At fourteen. Ever.

“She really doesn’t pay you?”

“Please don’t be offended when I say this.” She angled her head with apology. “I think she looked on me as a sort of daughter. She didn’t pay me because you don’t pay family for working in the family business.”

“If that’s how she saw you, why didn’t she leave everything to you?”

“She said...” Luli sighed toward the ceiling. “She said that when the time was right, she would arrange a marriage for me. I don’t know if she was serious, but if I brought up money, she would get defensive and ask me if I would be happier scrubbing pots in the kitchen.”

“No one else knows about this agreement?” Could it be called an agreement if Luli hadn’t been given a choice?

“I’ve never told anyone. I don’t believe she ever did.”

Because, no matter the lofty motives she might have had, holding Luli here like this was a crime.

Or a complete fabrication.

And his grandmother was gone. He couldn’t ask her if she had really kept a young woman as an indentured servant for eight years.

“Mr. Dean—”

“Gabriel.”

“Mr. Dean.” Her voice made his scalp prickle, her accent so musical and warm despite her formal address. “I very much appreciate that you’ve given me this opportunity to explain myself.” Her gaze slid to the clock on the mantel, an ornate bronze piece atop a trumpeting elephant, likely from one of the Louis periods.

“If you’re willing to continue this conversation, I would like to reset the timer on the laptop.”

* * *

He was impossible to read. Intimidating with his innate physical power on top of his wealth and influence. She had to continually remind herself to breathe. Inhale, exhale. No sudden movements. Predators were attracted by panic and the stench of fear.

She suspected he deliberately let the seconds tick audibly in the silent room as a small form of torture to her. A test, perhaps, to see how nervous it made her.

Poise was something she had begun cultivating as soon as she understood the word. She made herself hold his gaze, refusing to give up her small advantage until he agreed to her condition. If he thought what she had told him about herself was a complete fabrication, they would discover the hard way that it was true.

His head jerked in an abbreviated nod.

In a smooth, unhurried motion that hid the gallop of her heart, she went to the desk and opened the laptop with a single minute to spare. She used the opportunity of having her back turned to gather her composure. Her fingerprint unlocked the screen, but she had to enter a code at the same time and she had to get it right in two tries. She managed it, then navigated to give them another thirty minutes of playing chess on a minefield.

As she turned, she found him on his feet. He removed his suit jacket and draped it over the arm of the sofa. His shirt strained across the virile expanse of his shoulders and chest and tucked into the narrow belt to accentuate his lean waist.

“More kopi?” She moved to the tray where the urn sat, more to avoid approaching him than a desire to be a conscientious servant.

He brought his cup to the tray. “No, thank you.”

A deliberate effort to approach her? His jawline was what some might refer to as chiseled. It was a clearly defined, angular structure from corner to corner, quite a fascinating study for an artist’s eye.

Or the eye of a woman who’d spent her adolescence in something like a harem, surrounded by women and a few off-limits middle-aged men.

Gabriel’s chin went up a degree so his narrow eyes looked down his straight nose at her. “How much do you want?”

She dropped her hands to the sides of her dress, palms gently cupped, fingers pointed, but relaxed. No fidgeting.

“This isn’t blackmail.”

“If it looks like blackmail and smells like blackmail...” he scoffed darkly.

“I don’t want it to be,” she clarified, making herself hold her ground despite the twitches of alarm pulsing in her limbs. “I’ve had ample opportunities to steal. I enjoy this position of trust with your grandmother because I’ve never betrayed her. I’ve worked for her in good faith, not to repay my mother’s debt, but to thank her for removing me from my mother’s power.”

“And you no longer owe her that allegiance?”

“I don’t owe it to you.”

His expression didn’t change, but the scent of danger stung her nostrils, making her want to skitter away out of self-preservation.

“Not yet,” she allowed, fighting to keep him from seeing how unsure and frightened she really was.

“Oh, might I earn the privilege of your holding my fortune for ransom? Do tell me how.”