Fierce (Not Quite a Billionaire) Read online

  I froze. “Yes?”

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t go up there without a notebook and pen. What are you planning to do, take notes in your head? Trust me, your memory’s not that good.” She held up the sheaf of color-coded spreadsheet in her hand. “There are several deviations from my instructions here.”

  Talk about a confidence booster. “Of course,” I managed, and ducked back into my cube for supplies. Then I rode the elevator up to 51, taking some deep breaths along the way.

  I was wearing a dark gray pencil skirt today, together with a turquoise blouse and a short pale-gray mesh sweater with its hem daringly cut away to just above the breasts. A knockoff of the real thing, but Nathan had whistled when he’d come in and said, “Very nice. Those benefits are looking better and better,” forcing me to smack him in the arm.

  If I’d known I’d be seeing Hemi again, though, I’d have worn my suit. Or would I? I shook my head. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. Note One. You radiate calm. Poise. Assurance.

  Oh, man. I so did not.

  Note Two. Fake it.

  I’d never been on 51 before, needless to say. An expanse of white marble, glass, and black leather greeted me as the doors whispered open, and the scent of lilies was strong in the air. A sweeping circle of a receptionist’s desk, a mighty display of flowers on one side, the source of the scent, and a perfectly groomed African-American man in a gray suit sitting behind it.

  “Yes?” he asked, his gaze sweeping down my body, pricing my outfit, and dismissing it.

  “Hope Sinclair. Mr. Te Mana is expecting me.” All right, maybe he was expecting to fire me, but he was expecting me.

  “One minute, please.” He picked up a phone and spoke a few words into it, gestured to one of the leather sofas and said, “Please have a seat.”

  Before I could, another man was there. Fairly young, curly dark hair crisply cut. “Josh Logan,” he said, and smiled, looking much more human than the last time I’d seen him at the photo shoot. “I remember you, of course. Please follow me.”

  So I did. Through yet another outer office with three women sitting behind desks, then down a short corridor to a pair of tall, pale doors at the end. A quick knock, and Josh was opening the door and saying, “Hope Sinclair.”

  You are as good as he is. Quite the thought to hold in your mind when you’re walking across acres of gray carpet, past a seating group of more black leather on one side, a pale conference table surrounded by eight chairs on the other, toward an almost-bare desk that was more like Command Central, set in front of wall-to-wall windows looking out over the Manhattan skyline.

  All of which I barely noticed, because I was looking at the man who’d stood as I entered, whose eyes were locked on mine for the entire interminable journey.

  Breathe. Walk. Don’t you dare trip. You are not a deer in anybody’s headlights. You are a woman. A soon-to-be-unemployed woman who can at least keep her dignity.

  At last, I was there and able to stop. “You sent for me?” I asked, as coolly as I could manage.

  The faint suggestion of a smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Good on ya,” he said, surprising the breath right out of me. “Please.” He gestured with one hand. “Sit.”

  I stopped for one frozen second. Once again, he wasn’t wearing his suit coat, and the sleeves of his tailored white shirt were rolled up to reveal most of his bulky forearms. And one of them had a tattoo.

  Not a tattoo. A Maori tattoo. Surely that was what it was. I’d done some research on the Maori before my interview. Polynesian adventurers who’d rowed, incredibly, across the unknown expanse of the Pacific in an age of celestial navigation to inhabit New Zealand. A fierce, proud warrior culture of handsome men and beautiful women.

  And those tattoos. Intricate, curling, stylized things of great personal and cultural significance that covered an entire bulky upper arm, and sometimes more. More in this case, because Hemi’s started a full four inches below his elbow, the deep blue of the inked patterns a contrast to his bronzed skin.

  It was only half a second’s hesitation, and then I was sitting down again, looking resolutely at his face, which wasn’t much of an improvement in the keeping-my-composure department. The hint of a smile was still there, letting me know he’d noticed me checking out the ink. And his eyes still held me. I might not be a deer in the headlights, but I was a deer in the wolf’s sights, for sure.

  No, you aren’t. You are strong.

  He didn’t move. He was the least fidgety man I’d ever seen. “We had a date,” he said.

  “Did we?” I lifted my chin again. “Or did you issue an order and not stick around to see how I responded?”

  “I wasn’t aware that my orders were optional,” he said softly.

  “Perhaps I’m laboring under a misconception. I thought the droit du seigneur went out of style a while ago.”

  His gaze sharpened even more, and the smile was gone. “Was I exercising that right?”

  “I don’t know.” I kept my voice level with a major effort. “Weren’t you?”

  I could see the smile now, not just a hint of it. “Reckon you could think so.”

  “Ah.” I tried to steady my breathing. “Yes. Well. I did think so.”

  “Mm. You’re very perceptive.”

  “Really?” I widened my eyes at him. “Does that take a lot of perception? You aren’t exactly subtle.”

  This time, I surprised a bark of laughter out of him. “Oh, I don’t know. I suspect you didn’t know everything I was thinking all the same.”

  “And I suspect that I had a pretty fair idea.”

  “And that idea isn’t…appealing to you.”

  His deep voice was velvet over steel. He wasn’t a wolf, I decided. He was a tiger. With eyes that held his prey mesmerized during that sure, soft-footed approach. And, finally, the lunge and the killing blow.

  Well, I was tired of waiting to be pounced on. Deer could fight, too. “Why did I get this job?”

  A flicker of the brown eyes at that. “Because Martine chose you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I told her she should.”

  “Oh.” That knocked the wind out of my sails a bit. “Why?” I managed to say.

  “Because I want to fuck you.”

  My notebook fell from my hand onto the carpet as I stared back at him. The tiger had pounced.

  Everything inside me had turned to liquid. Everything but my spine. It had me standing up, and him rising, too. And then, before he could say anything, my right arm was hauling back as if in slow motion and coming forward fast.

  I slapped the CEO across the face.

  I was reacting as soon as she walked in the door wearing a pencil skirt that emphasized the slimness of her waist, cut so close to her body that it forced her hips to sway even more, giving her that irresistible wriggle. The reason we designed them that way—at least, the reason I did.

  The sweater framed her tender young breasts beautifully, offering them up like precious little cupcakes and asking me to take a bite. And giving every man who saw them that same tantalizing moment of delicious imagination.

  That sweater was absolutely not appropriate.

  That sweater was in my fall line. But she still shouldn’t be wearing it. Not while she was walking around without me.

  The delicate color was high in her porcelain cheeks, her mouth had parted a little, and I could almost hear her panting. Her eyes held mine, and I saw the glaze in them. Nerves, or desire, or a mixture of both.

  I’d never had a woman on my desk, but I was going to have this one.

  I didn’t mix business with pleasure. I lived my life based on two principles: discipline and control. On the other hand, it would give me so much pleasure to use a bit of both on her. I was going to show her what we both needed. And I was going to show her hard.

  And then, of course, she slapped me.

  Special Delivery

  I wanted to run. But I didn’t.

  Hemi stood looki
ng at me, the print of my small hand standing out on his cheek. I stood, my breathing unsteady and clearly audible in the quiet room, and stared back at him. Something had happened to my peripheral vision. It had narrowed so I saw only him, through a red mist of something very much like rage.

  Slowly, he raised his hand to his cheek. And smiled.

  “So,” he said. “That didn’t go exactly the way I’d planned.”

  I was so surprised, I laughed, a short, angry sound that bounced off the hard surfaces of the office. “Well, if you go around saying things like that to women, a fair number of them are going to slap your face.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “And again, that wouldn’t be my first choice of answer.”

  He tilted his head the smallest bit. His hand had dropped again, and once more, he was still.

  “If you’re trying to make me feel special,” I elaborated, “here’s a hint. That one didn’t work either. But then, you clearly aren’t trying to make me feel special. As you say—it isn’t necessary. You follow your own rules. Hooray for you. But that doesn’t mean I have to follow them.”

  “It doesn’t, eh.” His eyes had kindled again, and there was no smile now.

  “No. It doesn’t.” I crouched down and picked up my notebook and pen from the floor, then stood again. “I don’t think it was very fair of you to let me quit my job and jeopardize my family’s security without telling me the rules, though. For the record.”

  “Who said I played fair?” His voice was dangerously quiet.

  “Nobody.” I faced him across the desk again. “Nobody. Congratulations.”

  I walked out. All that distance again in reverse, knowing he was watching me, half-expecting him to come after me, for the tiger to pounce from behind and drag me back.

  As a composure-maintaining exercise, the whole thing was pretty much a dead loss. And I still had to go back down to my office and wait for the axe to fall.

  Well, if all I had was my pride, I was going to hang onto it. Hemi didn’t follow me, and I marched through the doors of the Publicity Department and back to my cube.

  When I passed Nathan, though, he wheeled himself rapidly across his plastic chair mat and hissed at me.

  “Hope.” He jerked his head. “In here.”

  “What?”

  “What happened? Martine’s in a mood, and she wants to see you right away.”

  That hadn’t taken long. I took a deep breath and, without bothering to stop at my cube, walked across to Martine’s office and rapped at the open door.

  She looked up. “Ah. Hope. Come in and shut the door, please.”

  My heart was pounding as I did as she said, then slid into a seat opposite her.

  “Everything all right up there?” she asked.

  “Um…yes.” If she didn’t know yet, I wasn’t going to tell her. At least I might get paid for the day if I hung on here for another hour or two.

  “Good. Now, then. This schedule.” She reached beside her for the document and began to point out my errors. My many errors, which mainly amounted to not having read her mind. I took notes, nodded, and asked questions that she answered impatiently, but I was getting the hang of it, and despite everything, that felt good.

  “See that that’s finished right away, please,” she said. “I wanted it finalized this morning.” She glanced at her watch. “Take another pass at it, and try to get it right, please. Our time is limited.”

  Little did she know. “Of course.”

  Nathan popped his Prairie Dog head over my cube when I came back. “What the hell is going on?”

  I sighed. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. Go away. I have work to do.”

  The next interruption came two hours later, after I’d turned in the schedule and was waiting to hear if I’d passed, unable to fret too much about it, as it would be almost the last thing I’d do for Te Mana.

  “Hey, Hope.”

  I swiveled to find Danny, one of the mail guys, outside my cube. “Hey yourself.”

  He handed me a package in a giant interoffice envelope. Way too big to be a pink slip. “Got something for you. Looks like something good.”

  The second he was gone, I was opening it.

  A box. I pulled it out, lifted the lid, and found…shoes.

  Shoes?

  A pair of black pumps like mine, in the same ridiculously hard-to-find small size as mine. Five and a half. And yet nothing at all like mine. As different from mine as an Italian greyhound from a pit bull.

  I didn’t have to look at the label to know. Jimmy Choo. A beautifully pointed toe, the sides gracefully cut away, and a three-inch heel I could actually walk in. And, best of all, the gorgeous texture. Strands of glistening metallic leather laced through rich black in the subtlest of chevrons.

  I craved them. I lusted after them. And I knew I couldn’t have them.

  There was a note in the box.

  You could call it an apology.

  I was still looking at them, resisting the urge to put them on, when the phone rang. I glanced at the display. Another unfamiliar internal extension. I picked up. “Hope Sinclair.”

  That melted-chocolate voice. “Or you could call it an invitation.”

  I sucked in a breath. “I’m not—” I cleared my throat. “I’m not for sale.”

  “Got that, didn’t I. How do they look?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t tried them on.”

  “Shall I come down and put them on you?”

  “No!” The word came out with a little too much force, and I lowered my voice and hissed, “No. I can’t—” I was nearly whispering now. “Hemi. I can’t accept these.”

  “No? Not even if I said the words?”

  “What—what words?”

  “Those little words every woman longs to hear. The ones I’ve never said.”

  I held the receiver out and stared at it, then put it back to my ear. “That’s crazy. You don’t love me. You barely know me. I’m not sure you even like me.”

  His rich voice was full of amusement now. “The words I had in mind were, ‘I’m sorry.’ I’ll have a better idea about the…liking,” he went on, the word a caress, “once we have dinner together. And, yes, I’m asking, not telling. Saturday night.”

  “Do you still want to, uh…”

  “Yes. I still want to. Fair warning.”

  It was more than a shiver. The pulsing throb was right there, and the man had barely touched me. “Well,” I said weakly, “at least you’re up-front about it.”

  “Oh, you’re going to find that I’m very, very up-front. I’m going to tell you exactly what I want. And I’m going to require your…answer.”

  Oh, man. I was so out of my depth. I shifted in my chair and felt the warmth increase. Just the sound of his voice had me aroused almost beyond bearing. I couldn’t see him again. I couldn’t touch him again. I had a sudden sense-memory of his hands around my ankles, and I swallowed. “I already gave you my answer.”

  “Maybe,” he said, the tiger purring now, “I just didn’t ask nicely enough.”

  “No. You didn’t ask nicely at all.”

  “So. Saturday.”

  “Tomorrow? I’m sorry. I’m busy.”

  “Tell him no.”

  “And again—you don’t get to say that.” My date was with Karen, but that was information he didn’t need.

  “Sunday. My driver will pick you up at seven. Give me your address.”

  I shouldn’t say yes. I needed to bundle these shoes up and send them straight back upstairs to him.

  “Let’s get one thing clear,” I said. “Do I still have a job if I say no? If I say no at any point?”

  The sigh came straight through the phone. “You still have a job.”

  “And not because of you,” I thought to add. “You won’t interfere in any way?”

  The silence stretched down the line, and I waited him out.

  “I’m thinking,” he said, and my heart sank. Wait. I wanted to
say no. I was going to say no. Wasn’t I?

  “I won’t give Martine any direction,” he finally said. “But that means it’s down to you to do the job.”

  “R-right,” I got out, my heart beating ferociously again. “But I’m not getting picked up.”

  “No? And yet I could swear you are.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. I’ll meet you at—wherever. At any restaurant, I mean,” I hastened to add. “But you never let the guy pick you up at your place on the first date. It isn’t safe.”

  “And you want to be safe.” There was that edge in his voice again. “What if I told you that a bit of danger could be so much more exciting?”

  I had to breathe. “Then I’d tell you,” I finally managed to say, “that you aren’t a five-foot-two woman.”

  “No. I’m not. The idea of the car would be that we’d keep you safe from the danger you don’t want. And get you ready for the danger you…might.”

  The sound of a throat clearing had me whirling in my chair. Martine stood there, an expression on her face I couldn’t read.

  “That will be perfect,” I stammered into the phone. “We look forward to your participation.” Then I slammed down the phone and whirled to face her.

  Her eyes were on the open shoebox on my desk. “Shopping on company time?”

  “Of course not. Just receiving a delivery.”

  “Receive your deliveries at home, please. And come into my office.”

  I realized, as I stood up, that I somehow hadn’t ever managed to turn down the shoes. And that I wasn’t going to be able to.

  Some things are just too hard to resist. And other things are impossible.

  Napoleon

  I could’ve discovered Hope’s address easily enough. It was right there in her employee file.

  I’d wanted to do just that. The thought of her taking the subway to meet me drove me mad. But she’d aroused something in me besides the obvious. Who knows, maybe a desire to play fair after all. I suspected that it would’ve been easier to win her if I’d been…less. That she didn’t want strength, or power, or money. Or at least that she didn’t want as much of any of them as I had.