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She was dismayed to find that she was suddenly reluctant to put him to the test. There were some things she might be better off not knowing…
‘I just don’t understand why I’m such a threat to you,’ she blurted, aware from his rigid face that she was putting it badly. ‘I mean, why hacking some stupid disk makes me so important. Because if it wasn’t for that, you wouldn’t have bothered to find me again, would you? Let alone bring me into your home. We wouldn’t be here, doing this…’ Her voice petered out as his rigid mask slipped to reveal a banked fire.
‘Maybe not here and now, but make no mistake, Nora. This—’ he rocked his flamboyant erection against her quivering belly ‘—would have happened between us sooner or later. Circumstances dictated the urgency but not the impetus…. You created that when you gave me that sexy look of wide-eyed innocence across a crowded room.’
Nora’s body thrilled to his sensual threat, even as her mind shied at the picture his words were creating.
‘Only it wasn’t so innocent on your part, was it, Nora? You were marking me out for your experiment. And when the instant physical attraction between us went too far too fast, instead of dealing with it like a mature adult, you simply bailed.’
She squirmed, unable to deny it. But he was making it sound as if he had been nothing but a helpless victim!
‘I hardly knew anything about you, and what I did know wasn’t exactly reassuring,’ she protested, discreetly wrestling her bra back into position over her tingling breasts. ‘I’m not very good with confrontations—’
He gave a snort and she glared up at him in righteous indignation. ‘I’m not! I’m usually very even-tempered and easy to get along with. But you have an extremely forceful personality, and it can be very overwhelming for an ordinary person like me,’ she said, the spirited challenge in her glowing eyes unconsciously giving the lie to her words. ‘Look at how you steamrollered over my protests this morning! And every time I ask you a question you don’t want to answer you find a way to distract me—’
‘When the stock market opens on Tuesday morning PresCorp intends to buy the rest of the TranStar shares it needs to take a controlling interest in the company,’ Blake interrupted bluntly, shocking her to silence with his unexpected openness. ‘We’re confident we’ll succeed in spite of the board’s resistance because we have what we believe to be watertight deals with a couple of major stakeholders. The only way we can possibly lose out now is if a rival bidder manages to leverage one of our deals out from under us over the weekend, or can lock up a strategic shareholding by off-market lobbying of minority interests….’
Nora’s eyes began to glaze as his frankness blossomed into talk of conditional bids and buy-backs and cross-holdings, but when he paused with a frown, she hurriedly rearranged her features to indicate intelligent life within. An ironic twist of his mouth suggested he wasn’t fooled, and she was not to know that her glassy-eyed uninterest had done more to persuade him of her innocence than any of her heated protestations.
Fortunately for Nora he seemed to have finally arrived at the relevant bit—the bit that was interesting. ‘PresCorp got the jump on everyone else because they expected we would wait to do due diligence before launching a bid, but we’d already run our own confidential investigation. That disk you took—’
‘Innocently acquired—’ she interjected.
‘Accidentally misappropriated—’ he allowed with a stern look of reprimand ‘—was loaded with highly sensitive financial information about TranStar, and PresCorp’s share-buying strategy and tactics, and plans for future restructuring. There were also files containing some extremely compromising and potentially actionable personal material about past and present TranStar shareholders and directors. If some, or all, of that information were to leak out before we make our stand on Tuesday—even a hint that we’d had a breach of security and the knowledge was out there to be scavenged—it could wreck months of planning and create havoc in the market, not to mention damaging a number of reputations….’
‘I see why your man Doug is such a favoured employee; you must keep him awfully busy.’ Her vodka-blitzed brain remembered tedious graphs and dreary stock projections interlaced by screens of crackling-dry prose, but nothing of any personal scandals. She must have nodded off before she even got to the juicy stuff! ‘You’ve actually blackmailed people into selling you their shares?’ she commented incredulously.
A muscle flickered in Blake’s cheek, but his voice remained cool. ‘There’s always cut-throat manouevring and mud-slinging behind the scenes in situations like this. Fortunes can turn over on a rumour. Grudges and loyalties get played out, especially in third generation family-founded companies like TranStar. Knowing who’s sleeping with whose wife or who’s over-extended himself buying a new yacht can give you an edge in negotiations. I don’t break any laws, but there are always plenty of loopholes in the rules and regulations for the lawyers to dispute afterwards. Meantime everyone scrambles to protect their own personal positions and maximise their financial gains.’
‘In other words it’s every man for himself,’ Nora said disapprovingly.
‘Or woman. There are plenty of women out there ready to slit a company’s throat for the promise of a seat on the board.’
‘And you think I might be one of them?’ she said, using scorn to disguise her stab of hurt.
His thumbs stroked her hip-bones, a glint of humour resurfacing at the sight of her furiously fluffed feathers. ‘Somehow I don’t see you as boardroom material,’ he murmured.
More bedroom material? Nora bit the tip of her unruly tongue to prevent the old cliché from spilling out, but from the lucent spark in Blake’s eye she might as well have uttered the provocative words out loud.
As an oblique form of apology it had bordered on a pretty good insult, she thought, trying to whip her hurt into a defensive outrage. She might not be brimming with management savvy, but she was clever enough to learn to run a company if she put her mind to it, albeit something small and interesting, like maybe her own IT business….
‘So I’m here because you’re afraid that my venal nature is going to get the better of me if I’m not u
nder twenty-four-hour guard, and to make sure I can’t escape with my ill-gotten gains if it turns out that I’ve already been corrupted! I’m surprised you want to sleep with me if I’m so obviously untrustworthy,’ she said bitterly.
He met her stormy gaze with a compelling calm. ‘There’s a wider issue of trust involved here. I have to deal with the facts as they stand here and now, not as I want them to be. I have a responsibility for those I work for and with—a lot of people have put their faith in the soundness of my judgements. Every day they take huge risks based on my recommendations. If I start to make critical business decisions based on my personal feelings rather than best practice, then I wouldn’t be worthy of their trust. And this buyout is set to cost Scotty several hundred million dollars, so he’s not going to be very sympathetic if it all suddenly turns to custard and my excuse begins, “Sorry, but there was this bewitching young woman with stunning golden eyes…”’
Several hundred million dollars? Nora’s stomach jumped at the notion. God, no wonder Blake was so paranoid! ‘Personal feelings?’ she ventured tentatively.
‘Extremely personal,’ he answered with a tantalising shift of his hips. His eyelids drooped, giving her a brief warning he was about to say something calculated to unsettle. ‘And, by the way, Nora, I never said I wanted to sleep with you….’
‘Oh!’ Elation turned to instant mortification and she tried to wriggle out from between his thighs, only to have him bend to hook his arm behind her knees, sweeping her off her feet and up against his chest with a deep satisfied laugh.
‘Because sleep will definitely be the last thing on my mind when I finally get you into my bed,’ he concluded in a wicked undertone, carrying her across the room as if she weighed no more than a feather. He turned down the hall, adjusting her more securely in his arms, and Nora’s head fell back against his shoulder as she contemplated her choices, knowing that there was only one she really wanted to make. Had wanted ever since she met him. This fascinating, infuriating, impossibly complex and wholly desirable man was like an elegant encryption, designed expressly to test her mettle.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, her voice husky with nervous anticipation, convinced that she knew.
‘My mother always taught me to escort my date to her door,’ he teased in that same low, intimate tone.
