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Luc looked at the woman who stood so tensely across his office. He could almost see her quiver with it. He hated to admit it, because little piqued his interest these days, but she was intriguing him on a lot of levels after his initial shock in seeing her again.
Physically she wasn’t his type at all, and yet he couldn’t deny that, much as last year, something about her compelled him to keep looking at her. He preferred statuesque voluptuous beauties who were confident and experienced. Jesse Moriarty was petite and athletically slim. She more closely resembled a pale shadow than a sexually confident woman. Her figure was completely obscured in a conservative uniform of narrow charcoal-grey trousers, and a white silk shirt buttoned up underneath a jumper. Her hair was cut almost militarily short, the strawberry-blonde strands feathered close to her skull.
So why was it that Luc felt the irritating urge to deny the frisson of something hot in his bloodstream? He was a red-blooded, sexual man, so her very ascetic non-appeal should not be triggering a flare of sensation along his nerve-endings.
He frowned inwardly and told himself that it was the memory of his last lover that was heating his blood—not this woman who looked as if she’d prefer to jump out of his window than be here facing him. Not a reaction he was used to having from a woman. He wondered idly if his solicitor had been right; perhaps she was gay?
Jesse wished that Luc Sanchis would stop looking at her as if she was a specimen on a lab table. He opened his mouth to speak and her eye was effortlessly drawn to his sensuous lower lip. She wondered helplessly when she had ever noticed a man’s mouth as being sensual before.
‘Ms Moriarty, unless you’re willing to give me an explanation as to why you don’t want me to invest in O’Brien then I’m afraid this meeting is over. I don’t deal in riddles.’
His voice rumbled through her and Jesse folded her arms across her chest tightly. Feeling unbelievably threatened, she blurted out, ‘He’s practically bankrupt … his business is in tatters … surely he has nothing to offer you?’
Luc Sanchis’s mouth tightened. ‘At the risk of repeating myself, once again I’m afraid the onus is on you to tell me why you’re so interested in him.’
When Jesse was obstinately silent for a long moment he said, with an icy bite of reluctance, ‘O’Brien still has stakes in Eastern European construction that I’m interested in acquiring before it’s too late to salvage anything.’ He shrugged one wide shoulder. ‘If that means saving O’Brien in the process then so be it. You have to admit that I can claim a far more legitimate interest in his concerns than you.’
Jesse’s brain hurt; what he said made perfect sense. At first she’d thought Luc Sanchis must be in league with O’Brien, but she’d checked him out and his reputation was pristine. Not a hint of misdeed or corruption, which an association with O’Brien might have indicated. And he had no previous connection to O’Brien. He’d literally come out of nowhere as a last-minute saviour.
Luc Sanchis shifted on the desk now, and Jesse felt his renewed interest with a shiver of foreboding down her spine.
‘Why haven’t you just gone directly to O’Brien with a better offer?’
Jesse paled, not wanting to remember her first face-to-face meeting with O’Brien the week before. She should have expected Luc Sanchis to ask the most logical question of all, but inside her head she was wondering hysterically what he would do if she was to blurt out the full, ugly and lurid truth of her relationship with O’Brien.
She avoided his eye. ‘I have my reasons.’ It was a pathetic non-answer, but she couldn’t explain that, having confronted O’Brien once already, she couldn’t approach him again. She’d burnt her bridges in that meeting but had only done it because she’d thought she was safe—that no one else would bail him out before it was too late.
The reason why she couldn’t be cool and calm and answer Luc Sanchis’s questions with logical answers was because this had nothing to do with business; this was about hurt and pain. Grief and suffering. And, above all, revenge. How could she even begin to make someone else understand the whirling cauldron of dark emotions inside her? She’d lived with this for so long …
Luc Sanchis unfolded his tall frame from the desk and stood up. Jesse couldn’t help her gaze going to him, as if pulled against her will. His face was stern. He’d had enough.
‘Whatever your mysterious reasons are, the question is this: who wants to invest in him more?’
Jesse could sense Luc Sanchis’s intractability. She might be powerful in her own right, having built up a multi-million-pound IT software business, but she couldn’t compete with this man if he chose to fight her.
She had to make him believe it didn’t mean that much to her. When it meant everything.
‘Look,’ she said now, with a studied nonchalance that belied the thumping of her heart and the bead of sweat forming between her breasts, ‘I’m willing to double the amount you’ve offered O’Brien if you’ll drop your plans to invest.’
Luc stared at Jesse Moriarty. He didn’t like the questions she was posing in his mind with this determination to match his offer—more than match it. She obviously desperately wanted O’Brien. Something inside him hardened. The problem was, so did he. He’d worked far too hard and long to let this opportunity pass. Especially not for some prickly slip of a woman who was starting seriously to irritate him with those huge eyes and the way colour flooded her cheeks so easily—as if she didn’t knowingly use that to good effect.
Women like Jesse Moriarty didn’t get to be successful in business by being nice or kind. They were ruthless and single-minded and didn’t care who they stepped on to get ahead. He’d learnt a valuable lesson early on at the hands of a woman determined to succeed at all costs, and he had no intention of letting Jesse Moriarty divert him from a path he’d set out on almost fifteen years before.
Resolutely he went towards her.
Jesse’s eyes grew wide when she saw Luc Sanchis move. She had to consciously battle the urge not to take a step back. Her arms dropped and her hands clenched into fists again. She felt inordinately threatened by the sheer size and presence of the man. He was built more like an athlete than a titan of industry. All six foot four of him towered above her, and she wished for the umpteenth time that she was taller and more formidable.
He held out a hand and said with the utmost civility, ‘You could quadruple the amount, Ms Moriarty, and I still wouldn’t back down. If you do go to O’Brien with a higher bid, even if it’s anonymous, I’ll just match it until I’ve priced you out. I’m sorry your journey has been a wasted one today.’
CHAPTER TWO
JESSE looked at Luc Sanchis’s hand dumbly; he’d just confirmed her worst fear. He would thwart her no matter what.
She had a burning urge to get out of there now. With the utmost reluctance she lifted her hand and slipped it into his to shake it. The physical effect was instantaneous; it was like a nuclear reactor exploding deep inside her, sending a mushroom cloud of devastating sensation to the far corners of her body.
Like a scalded cat, she pulled her hand free, even though they’d touched for less than a second. She saw belatedly that Luc Sanchis was also holding out her slim briefcase from where she must have dropped it onto the floor near the desk. She hadn’t even noticed and her cheeks burned. She grabbed it inelegantly and looked up at him, forcing her brain to work.
Stiffly she said, ‘I’m sorry that I can’t persuade you to rethink your plans to invest. Good day, Mr Sanchis.’
