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Such affectations as vintage watches and Valentino briefcases meant nothing to him, but appearances mattered to everyone else. He always played to win, even at “who wears it best?” so he ordered hand-sewn suits in rare wools like vicuña and qiviut. He had his leather shoes lined with the softest materials when they were custom cobbled in Italy. He hung all of it off a body that he ruthlessly kept in peak athletic condition.
He wore sunscreen and moisturized.
And he genuinely didn’t care that folding his grandmother’s net worth into his own would tip him into the exalted echelon of world’s first trillionaire. All it meant, quite inconveniently, was more work—yet another thing he didn’t need.
His grandmother was his only relative of note, however, despite being both strange and estranged. He might lack strong feelings toward her or her money, but he did feel a responsibility to preserve her empire. He respected what she had built in her seventy years. He might be progressive by nature, but he didn’t tear down institutions for the sake of it.
He flicked back to the original message and brought the phone to his chin as he dictated a text.
Who is Mae’s business manager?
Transmitted from Luli: I assist Mrs. Chen in managing her transactions. May I help with a specific inquiry or instruction?
Artificial intelligence was so delightfully passive-aggressive, always deferential when it was being obstructive.
Send me the contact details of the man or woman who carries out Mae’s personal banking transactions.
Transmitted from Luli: I perform those tasks. How may I help?
Gabriel bit back a curse. Once this news was released and his connection to Mae Chen made public, a global circus would erupt around her financial holdings. The clock was already ticking, given her doctor had learned of their connection.
He switched gears and began sending instructions to his own team of advisors and brokers to reach out to hers. Once he was on the ground, he would learn exactly who ran things for Mae Chen and firmly take the reins from him.
* * *
“Luli.” The butler introduced her last, since she had deliberately positioned herself at the end of the line of staff, after the housemaids and cook. She was practically standing around the corner of the house where vines grew against the wall that ensured the privacy of Mae Chen’s colonial-era mansion.
His mansion now.
“You’re human.”
If she was, Gabriel Dean was the first to notice in her twenty-two years of existence.
Of course, Luli experienced very human reactions as she shook hands with Mae’s grandson, bowing slightly and murmuring, “Sir,” as she did. Her heart was pounding, her skin coated in cold perspiration, her stomach churning like a pit of snakes.
Aside from the married butler and the gardeners, she rarely saw men. Not this sort of man, especially. His black, glossy hair was precision-trimmed and disheveled with equal precision. He was clean-shaven, his cheekbones a masterpiece, his mouth—she didn’t know what to compare it to, having never studied a man’s lips before. They weren’t the feminine peaks and sensual fullness with corner curls like hers. They were thinner, straighter and as much a statement of unspoken authority as the rest of him.
“Is that your full name? Luli?”
“Lucrecia,” she provided, tacking on the other half of a name she had nearly forgotten. “Cruz.”
His gaze flickered down her pleated-neck dress. Its straight cut was belted with the same pale yellow cotton and the hem ended just above her ankles, revealing her bare feet in sandals. The maids wore an apron over theirs and looked efficient and smart. Luli wished she had that extra layer of protection, but even a plate of armor wouldn’t hide the fact she was significantly more endowed in the chest than the delicately built Malaysian women beside her. On her, the fabric pulled across her hips and required a higher slit to accommodate her longer stride.
Gabriel was taller than she had expected. No wonder Mae was always telling her to sit. It was intimidating to have someone look down on you.
Gabriel’s gaze came back to her face, taking in features she knew to be striking. It wasn’t just that her skin was paler than the rest of the staff’s, or her eyes distinctly Caucasian. Her light brown hair was naturally streaked with ash blond and her nose slender and elegant.
Gabriel’s eyelids were distinctly Asian, his irises an unexpected gray-green.
She had seen enough photos to expect him to be beautiful, but she had not expected this radiation of power. She should have. His grandmother possessed a version of it, but this man’s force of will nearly knocked her off her feet and all he had done was step out of his car.
Now he relaxed his grip so she wasn’t sure if the handshake was over. She took too long to draw her hand from his. It made her feel ignorant and foolish. The maids would be laughing at her later, but she couldn’t help this weakness of fascination that overcame her.
“May we offer refreshments, sir?” the butler asked. “Your room has been prepared, if you wish to rest.”
“I’m here to work.” He glanced toward the front of the house. “Coffee will do.”
“Of course.” The butler clapped his hands to send everyone filing back to their duties.
Luli breathed out a subtle sigh of relief and started to follow.
“Luli.” Gabriel’s voice jolted her. “You’ll show me to my grandmother’s office.”
He spoke English with an American accent, not the British one she was used to hearing and copying. He waved for her to join him as he climbed the front steps.
She was disturbed by it. She struggled to find acceptance here as it was. Mae gave her special treatment in some ways, but Luli never liked to do anything that made it seem as though she was trying to rise above everyone else.
Besides, her guilty conscience wasn’t ready to confess to him what she’d done.
She concentrated on her breathing and maintaining a tall posture. She ensured her expression was serene, her movements graceful and unhurried despite her unsteady pulse and the shakiness brought on by sleep deprivation.
She had had twenty hours to react to this sudden change in her circumstance. It was her habit, through years of boredom and confinement, to mentally plan for every conceivable situation. Thus, she had known from the first call of alarm into the garden what she would have to do.
Executing those actions, however, had taken nerves of steel and hours of careful coding into the night. There was no room for error—and likely no forgiveness from this man no matter how things played out.
Gabriel paused inside the opulent foyer, taking in the mosaic tiles beneath their feet, the inlaid wood in the stair banister, the priceless art and the arrangements of fresh flowers. All his now.
Luli halted as well, waiting until he glanced at her expectantly.
“Mrs. Chen’s office is the third door,” she murmured with a nod toward the hallway.
In a confusing war of chivalry against her effort to be subservient, he waited for her to go first then fell into step beside her.
“I’m very sorry about your grandmother,” she said. “We’ll miss her deeply.”
“It sounds like it was very swift.”
It had been. They’d all known the quick, anxious efforts of Mae’s nurse were futile. Even as Mae’s helicopter had airlifted her from the garden where it had happened, a blanket of subdued reflection had hung over the entire house.
Luli brought him into Mae’s office. The room was designed along spare lines, more staid than the other rooms, but still had feminine touches in the pastel color scheme and the English teapot that Luli filled for both of them every afternoon.
It felt terribly empty in here. Who would she drink tea with now? What was going to happen?
Her future was no longer in the tight, but secure hands of Mae Chen. Luli could kid herself that she was taking her destiny into her own hands, but that wasn’t true. The way this man reacted once he learned what she had done would dictate how t
he rest of her life proceeded.
His hands were long-fingered and lightly tanned. They looked powerful. Deadly.
Luli stood beside the rolling chair at the delicate writing desk that was her workstation, waiting for him to sit. He took in the room, glancing beyond the windows to the garden, and gave each painting and vase a brief, incisive glance.
She found herself holding her breath, waiting for his assessing gaze to come back to her, hoping for a sign of approachability in him. Approval on some level. Something that would reassure her.
“I thought you were a form of AI, but there’s nothing artificial about you. Is there?” His head turned and his expression eased, revealing a slant of something that invited and appreciated, even as it caused her inner radar to tingle with caution.
She had the most bizarre sensation of being chased, breaths growing uneven despite not moving. Her middle filled with fluttering butterflies, but they weren’t fear. They were the excitement of the unknown. Of playful pursuit.
This was sexual awareness, she realized with a pressure in her throat that was an urge to both laugh and scream. She understood sexual attraction in a very abstract way. She had been exposed to the feminine tricks of making herself appealing to the opposite sex far too young, but she wasn’t trying any of them right now. She was barefaced and the only reason she stood tall and sucked in her stomach was in an effort to seem confident and competent.
And she had been judged on her external attributes from an early age, but hadn’t felt it, not like this. If anything, she’d been repulsed by older men studying her and assigning her a score. Occasionally, since being here, one of Mrs. Chen’s visitors had noticed her and made a remark before she was shooed out of sight. She had been an odd duck, if not an outright ugly duckling.
She hadn’t realized a man’s gaze could make her stomach wobble and her blood feel as though it fizzed in her veins. That a force field could encompass her like a cup over a spider, so she could be scooped into the palm of his hand to be crushed or freed on his whim.
The butler came in with the tray, breaking their locked gaze.
