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Julienne smiled, still polite and calm. “You met me here once before.”
And she knew as she said it that she was breaking all their rules. The unspoken boundaries all three of them had maintained for a decade. She and Fleurette never mentioned him or how they’d made it from a sad, half-abandoned French hill town to a lavishly appointed, semidetached townhouse in the center of Milan. He never indicated he knew either one of them. Sometimes Julienne had worried that he’d forgotten what he’d done for them—that it had meant so little to him when it had altered the whole of hers and Fleurette’s lives.
But no, she could see he hadn’t forgotten. More, she could see his astonishment, there in his eyes like a thread of gold in the brown depths. His dark brows rose, and he looked almost...arrested.
“I did.” His study of her made her want to shake. She didn’t, somehow. Not outwardly. “A meeting neither one of us has referenced in a decade. To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected trip down memory lane, Ms. Boucher?”
His voice was crisp. A distinct and deliberate slap, though as stern and controlled as everything else he did.
He meant her to wilt and she wanted to, but then, she had built herself in his image. She was made of sterner stuff because he was, and because she’d always assumed he expected it. She kept her cool smile on her face.
“In that decade, I have kept track of what you must have spent to rescue Fleurette and me. Then care for us.” She named a staggering number and saw that light in his eyes change again, to something far more sharp and assessing that she could feel like a fist in her belly. And lower, like heat. “With the latest deal we closed and the amount I have in a separate fund with your name on it, I believe I have repaid that sum. With interest.”
His eyes were dark brown, like the bittersweet chocolate his family made. And yet that could hardly begin to describe their ferocity, or the intense way they narrowed on her now.
“I do not recall asking for repayment. Or even acknowledgment.”
“Nonetheless.” She took a deep breath. “My resignation letter waits for you in Milan.”
He blinked. “I beg your pardon. You are resigning?”
“I am. I have.”
She reached out and did what she’d done ten years ago. She put her hand on his arm, but this time, she meant it.
Oh, how she meant it.
“Cristiano,” she said quietly. Invitingly, she hoped. “Would you like to buy me that drink?”
CHAPTER TWO
CRISTIANOCASSARADIDNOTcare for surprises.
He had arranged his life with great precision, the better to avoid the unpleasant shock of events that went in directions he had not already foreseen. Cristiano had a deep and abiding dismay for chaos or mess of any kind, thanks to a childhood brimming over with nothing but, and had therefore dedicated himself to organizing as much of the world as possible to suit his requirements.
Something that was easier than perhaps it ought to have been when one was a Cassara.
He should have deeply disliked the fact that this woman had deliberately shifted the ground beneath their feet. That she had not stayed put in the compartment where he’d placed her years ago.
He told himself he did.
But it was too late. Something in him had shifted, too, without a care for how little he liked the sensation. And he suddenly found himself looking at Julienne Boucher as if he’d never seen her before.
As if she was a beautiful woman he’d happened to meet in a bar in Monte Carlo, instead of all the other things she’d been to him over time. His attempt at kindness, at a kind of redemption. The embodiment of his guilt. And possibly the best vice president the Cassara Corporation had ever had, save himself.
“What exactly are you offering me?” he asked, finding his gaze intent on hers. He did nothing to temper it. “And more important, why are you offering it?”
“You could have taken what I was offering ten years ago. You didn’t.”
He gazed down at the hand she’d laid on his arm as if it was a writhing, poisonous snake. When he raised his gaze to hers once more, he felt certain it was frigid.
Yet somehow, she did not retreat.
“Are you suggesting that because I did not behave like an animal then I might reverse course now?” He blinked in an astonishment that was in no way exaggerated. “I don’t know what is more offensive. That you think I require pity sex or worse, that you imagine I might accept it.”
He had meant to sound cold. Exacting. And yet somehow the wordsexseemed to linger between them, making its own weather.
“That’s not what I meant to suggest at all.”
