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She’d been frustrated.
Then Willa Gruber contacted her to ask for a simple favor. She suggested they could work together and might have some mutual interests. The woman wanted some simple things. It involved cutting off communication between Lissa and her employer, Julio Torres. She was certain it was a turf thing. Without knowing any details, she assumed that somehow Lissa was interfering with Willa’s plans. So one woman helped another get around her employer. In return for her services, Willa made some calls and got Tina a few clients. They were small and didn’t pay much, but they liked her style. The jobs were low profile enough that Lissa wouldn’t hear about them.
When it was clear that Lissa was pregnant, bells went off. Willa’s desire to keep the two apart made sense. When Lissa had to go into the hospital, Tina felt she’d been handed her chance. For two months or so, until the babies were born, she’d be the face the clients saw. They’d hear her ideas, and if they were receptive, she’d have the opportunity to drop careful hints and find out if they’d be willing to switch their business over to her.
Poaching clients was harder than she expected. It came as a shock that most of Lissa’s bread-and-butter clients were too fucking loyal. They had no interest in her ideas. What they wanted was for her to go into meetings and discuss how to weight variables and do other analysis. There was no vision there at all. Tina’s degree in economics wasn’t hardcore, more social science than econometrics, and she’d skated through at that. Even when she let the rumors slip out that Lissa might have a drug problem, they didn’t seem to hear a word. All they wanted was more of what they’d been getting all along. A few hinted that she could get their business, but they expected to get more of the same at a lower price.
Fuck that.
Tom Acker was the exception.
When she mentioned to Willa that she was negotiating with Acker to work on the Milan deal, Willa surprised her. “I’d be grateful if you can get that contract signed soon,” she said.
“Tom’s not in a rush.”
“But I am. I’d like to see her under contract before she knows much about the Milan deal.”
That made sense, given that Julio Torres was the other major candidate to do the work, and the woman’s agenda was to keep those two far apart. She enjoyed the clandestine work she was doing with Willa, but getting Lissa a contract with Acker didn’t suit Tina’s plans. He was a big, juicy client, and from the moment she’d had the first meeting with him, she’d cultivated the idea that she was the right person to work with him. In meetings, and then in his bed, she’d insinuated herself.
Now, by a quirk of fate, things looked really good. Tom was interested, and her plan might even make Willa happy. If Acker got moving on things, she’d work with him and Lissa wouldn’t be able to work with Torres. Things might not go the way Willa expected, but the result was the one she wanted.
Everything had been poised to happen right. She’d ensure she was a player in the Milan project, working closely with Tom. She’d quit her job and ditch all the small clients. She wouldn’t have time for them. And then suddenly things were thrown into chaos. Lissa was back in the office. Her damn sister had come out of nowhere to provide child care, and urged Lissa to get back to work. The woman came in, changing everything back to how it had been, and the deal with Tom wasn’t done yet. His lawyers were still going over details.
Damn lawyers. Things would have to move fast now. She needed things in place. With Lissa back, the situation was different. What would have been easy was still possible, but riskier.
She was having dinner with Acker that night and she’d let him know, get him to poke the lawyers with a cattle prod. Of course, he’d extract a price. He’d hinted at it that morning. “That was good,” he said. “You’re hot. But the thing is there are lots of hot women who don’t even want as much as you.”
“Anyone in particular?”
His smiled suggested there might be. “If you want to keep my interest, be prepared to play a few games.”
“Games? Kinky games?”
“Any games I want.”
Tina didn’t mind a few games. Not when the stakes were so high. Sure, if he wanted kinky, she’d be kinky. At least kinky enough to make certain she was on the team in Milan.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was morning. A brilliant sun rose over the palm trees that dotted the waterfront of the Mediterranean Sea brightening the office. Julio sat at his desk in his Barcelona office building. When he’d first built this building, he’d been proud and delighted to be able to sit at his desk with his coffee and watch the sunrise. This complex had made his name as someone who could design and manage international-scale projects. Now the newness and excitement were gone, and it was just his office, but he still appreciated the mornings in it.
This morning, all mornings for a time now, a feeling of helplessness, of having missed something important, had pervaded his thoughts and made him sad. That sadness had nothing to do with his office or the sunrise, or success or failure. For a man who prided himself on taking on challenges that others wouldn’t attempt, of succeeding by doing things his own way regardless of what others thought, it was a strange, miserable sensation.
It wasn’t failing that bothered him. You didn’t reach for the brass ring as often as he did and not experience failure. If he didn’t fail at things now and then, it would be a sign that he’d stopped setting his sights high, an indication that he’d lost his edge. Maybe that would happen someday. It was reasonable to assume that eventually he’d do like so many people and begin to settle for equaling his previous performance, essentially repeating himself by sticking to things that had worked in the past.
That day hadn’t come. Far from it. The sadness he felt wasn’t failure, or at least nothing he could view as a failure. The truth was that he had no idea what had happened, what had gone wrong, and that was the tragedy. He’d met a kindred spirit, a soul mate who shared his spirit. She was so much his complement. People spoke often of their other half or better half, and while he didn’t think of her as better or half of anything, he’d immediately felt she was the female that corresponded perfectly to his maleness. They fit together perfectly yet came from different backgrounds, different cultures. When they met, when they were together, it was as if his horizons had suddenly expanded. His life was joyous before he met her, and she showed him that there were things he’d never dreamed of, and it had seemed she felt the same about his world.
It was a brief interlude that was supposed to become more. That time in Switzerland had been a taste, a sample of what lay in store for them. He’d even said so, and she’d agreed. They’d talked about working together on fantastic new projects, of living in new places, of intertwining their lives. He’d dreamed that intertwining would go on forever. After meeting her, after touching her soft skin, staring into those deep brown eyes, making insanely passionate love to her, feeling her supple brown body entangled in his, having her passion mingling with his, he’d thought she meant forever too. But after he’d left, with both of them joyfully promising they’d be together soon, he never heard from her again. He only even heard about her briefly.
He’d scoured the business pages for word of her doings. He knew she’d consulted on a restoration project in Prague and never contacted him. Finally she had disappeared, or seemed to.
Any number of things could make a person do that. Once or twice Julio had thought of doing that himself. The idea of closing his apartment and office and going off to a tropical island, leaving no forwarding address, no contact information, sounded like the height of self-indulgence. A time like that could be restorative, give your brain the time and opportunity to get out of the routines and rituals it was prone to fall into; he could let new and dramatically different surroundings reshape his thinking. It could let him set new goals and find exciting new pathways towards them.
Willa’s private investigators reported that she’d turned over the reins of her business to her number two and dropped out of
sight. She wasn’t attending conferences or consulting on major projects, yet that was her life, who she was. The New York public records didn’t list her death, so it was as if she’d retired and gone into seclusion.
But why hadn’t she contacted him? Even to say there were problems and ask for his help and support? Even if it was just to say that the moments they had together in Switzerland had left her angry, or fearful of losing herself? That knowledge would be a balm on his spirit. Whatever had kept her from wanting to move ahead with him, with what had seemed so powerful, magical, and beautiful… he could respect her choice. He just wanted to know what it was, that a decision was reached. The vacuum of silence bothered him. It didn’t seem like the woman he had known and loved so intensely.
As a practical man, Julio didn’t expect anyone to live in dreams, but throwing a dream away without any discussion horrified him, made no sense. He couldn’t see Lissa as a hysterical or fanciful person. He’d thought she was the same kind of dreamer he was—a person who enjoyed a dream and then set out to find out how much of the dream could be attained, could be made real if you were willing to struggle for it. Dreams were to be considered, not abandoned without a thought.
That was the way he understood things, the way he did them.
He had to consider the possibility that he’d been wrong about her. Totally and completely. That made him sad. For once he thought he’d found someone special—he’d never met anyone like her before. If she wasn’t the person he thought she was, then perhaps he was foolish to think he’d ever meet a woman who would or could be his perfect love.
That thought pained him. It meant settling for sex and companionship and forgoing the hope of actual love as he understood it. He could accept that, not be happy about it, but accept that as a possibility. Unfortunately, most people settled for what came easily, and someone who understood the difference between his ambition and greed, someone who celebrated life the way he did, was a rare find. What truly troubled him was the idea that he had been so wrong about her. Where had he gone wrong? A great part of his success came from assessing people, judging their strengths and weaknesses. The woman he’d known so briefly hadn’t seem at all like the kind to cut and run without a word. If he’d been so wrong, it was his failure, not hers. That was on him, and he didn’t like doubting his own judgment.
The door opened and Willa came in. He gave her an appreciative glance. She was an interesting contrast to the ideal he’d allowed himself to build Lissa up to in his mind. Willa was more what he considered the high end of the rest of womankind—the best of the rest.
The slender, petite German had good instincts. She’d accepted his morning ritual easily, seeming to understand that he was happy for her to come in at this time, but she wasn’t to speak until he greeted her, letting her know he was ready to put his brain into the business gear, and that for the moment he was in his own space and time. He’d mentioned that to her only once and from then on, she came in with her own coffee and her inevitable paperwork, to sit on his leather couch, crossing her lovely legs and waiting quietly. Her predictability was a comfort, and at the moment made him think more affectionately towards her than he felt towards Lissa.
Willa had made herself an important part of his life, his business world. Her disciplined and competent mind let her organize and facilitate his daily work. She knew how to ask questions and then could add her own insights to whatever task was at hand. She was an attractive blonde who hadn’t pushed herself at him the way some assistants had. He was drawn to her, and acutely aware that the attraction was both sexual and because of their shared experience. She was someone he had let get close. She was a dedicated worker who never complained about overtime—even seemed to enjoy it—and was ready to travel for business at a moment’s notice. As far as he could tell, she had no personal life. She’d never mentioned a boyfriend or even family to him. They were joined together by work.
He sensed that she was more ambitious than she liked to show. Every so often she appeared to be frustrated that she was executing his orders and not giving them herself. He wasn’t afraid of employees being ambitious. It often meant they were better workers, but one day it could become an issue. If she wanted more than he thought she was ready to take on, problems could arise. She was great at what she did, but he wondered if she would be a good leader.
