Hurt, dagger sharp and bright, pierced her chest, and she blinked against it. “Is that what you really think? That I wanted you to use our past...association to give me this job?”
“Why are you here?”
Another flash of pain. But this time, she buried it beneath a sheet of ice. She’d learned the coping mechanism early; with parents like hers, she’d acquired defensive skills that would impress a five-star general. If she survived Laurence and Cherise Hill, she damn well could endure this conversation with Achilles Farrell.
“To clear the air. If we’re going to be working together—if I’m going to be a vice president for your company—we need to be on the same page. Especially about where we stand as far as being employer and employee.”
“Make it plain, Mycah. You’re not going to be fucking the boss, and you don’t want anyone to know that you have in the past. Is that what you’re saying?”
How was it possible to go up in flames that were equal parts embarrassment and lust? It seemed like he twisted everything she said to him. But God, just hearing him growl the wordfuckand recalling his saying it to her at another time under very different circumstances...
She shook her head. “Look, Achilles, can we start over? It seems like I keep offending you—”
“Why did you pretend not to know me yesterday?” He pushed off the desk, straightening, but he didn’t come near her.
Shame flickered through her, and she forced herself to meet his gaze. She’d like to say that she was an honest person, and at her core, she believed she was. God, she had to cling to that belief. But in her family, lies had their many uses. For her parents, lies were tools, a stock in trade. For Mycah and her sister, they were a necessity for survival.
And that’s what yesterday had been.
Survival.
“I’m sorry that I misled your brothers—”
“You lied.”
“I lied,” she murmured. Exhaling a soft breath, she spread her hands out, palms up. “And I’m sorry for the position it put you in. I really am, Achilles.” She shifted closer to him, but the ice in his eyes warned her not to come nearer. A shiver worked its way through her. With effort, she forced her hands to her sides instead of rubbing them up and down her arms to ward off the chill. “I’m not asking you to understand or accept my reason, but I’m a woman in a male-dominated business. Even with all my education, the successes that I can recite alphabetically and chronologically, if anyone discovered that I’d had sex with an employer or supervisor, none of what I accomplished would matter. I would be seen only as the woman who made it to the top on her back.”
Achilles didn’t reply, but he jerked his chin at her, and she took that as the universal man sign to continue. Sighing, she ran a hand through her curls.
“I don’t know if your brothers would’ve fallen into that misogynistic category, but I also know I couldn’t chance it.”
Because she needed this job.
Not just because she desired to bust through a glass ceiling.
Not just because of the prestige of being an officer with a company that consistently appeared on the Fortune 100.
No, she desperately needed this job because of family. Specifically, her parents.
While the Hill name might belong to old wealth and an older lineage, thanks to Laurence and Cherise’s overindulgent lifestyle, the quarterly business profits of their family company couldn’t support them. And so, her parents had come to depend on Mycah’s employment—or rather her salary—even as they derided her for that dependence. They considered her job common; it shamed them. Yet they expected her to foot the bill when their allowance ran out. What was an overdue mortgage or car payment or the household staff’s salaries going unpaid when the living room had to be redesigned with what was au courant? Why should they concern themselves with inconsequential bills when they had her to cover them?
If it were just them, she might say to hell with it. But it wasn’t just them. There was Angelique. Her brilliant fifteen-year-old sister had started high school this year. And not just any high school. A prestigious private academy whose academics rivaled Harvard—and so did the price tag. But she deserved every advantage. And for Angel, Mycah would willingly pay...
Even if it meant continuing to foot the tab for their parents, too.
The throb above Mycah’s right eye intensified, and she caged the impulse to rub it. At one time, she’d willingly stripped naked in front of Achilles, had been as vulnerable as a woman could be with a man. But that was then, not now. She couldn’t afford to be weak, exposed. This man, so unlike the one who’d taken her mouth even as he’d tenderly and passionately taken her body, offered her no quarter with his merciless stare. He sought a flaw to exploit.
“Was lying the only length you were willing to go to?” He moved forward, closing the distance between them.
He stopped just short of looming over her, but still near enough that his pine-and-fresh-rain scent wrapped around her, invading her nostrils. Since not breathing wasn’t an option, she had no choice but to inhale him, dragging him into her lungs. She remembered how his sex-dampened skin tasted on her tongue.
Damn.
Shaking her head to rid her mind of those thoughts, she murmured, “What are you talking about?”
“You’re too intelligent not to have researched the company. You had to know there’d at least be a chance I would attend the interview. Ambushed, Mycah. That’s what I felt. But was that your plan? What would’ve happened if you hadn’t been offered the job? Would blackmail have been the next step?”
Outrage scorched a path from her stomach up to her throat, temporarily incinerating her ability to speak. Hurt fueled the flames. She didn’t deserve that—shedidn’t. And damn if she’d take it.
