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“But you cannot be trusted.” He shook his head sadly. “You are a Connolly, first of all, and by definition a liar. More importantly, you have already attempted to lure me in once.”
“You thought I was attempting to...” When Kendra shook her head it was as if she couldn’t quite get her balance. She blinked. “My mistake. You’re apparently playing strange games. If you did not wish to do business, you should have said so.”
“I admire a woman who can barter. Particularly when what she is bartering is herself. No coy games. No fluttering about like all the rest, never quite getting to the mercenary point.”
Her eyes flashed. “If you’re not interested in the business arrangement you suggested, tell me what would interest you instead.”
Balthazar was intrigued, and that should have worried him when he knew her to be an empty, grasping liar, like all the rest of her family. She was treacherous and as dirty as the rest of them. But he could not deny that he was hard. That he ached for her.
There was only one way to soothe that kind of ache, no matter what manner of woman inspired it.
“This particular kind of business arrangement requires, shall we say, a down payment,” he told her. Matter-of-factly.
“A down payment. On sex.”
“But of course. I prefer my sex—”
“Abundant,” she clipped out. “I heard you.”
“Abundant, yes. But I also require a certain level of excellence, or what would be the point?” He smiled at her, edgily. “All I know about you is that you are selfish. And a tease. And entirely too willing to do your family’s bidding. None of that, I must say, suggests to me that you would be any good at all in the bedroom.”
He thought he heard a sharp sound, like an intake of breath.
“Am I to understand, then...?” Her eyes had gone a brilliant shade of bright amber, but her voice was precise. Crisp and to the point. “That is to say, I assume what you’re asking for is an audition?”
“We’re talking about more than two million dollars, Kendra,” he said with no little dark amusement. “I need to be certain I am getting my money’s worth. You understand.”
He expected her to turn and run from the room, screaming perhaps. No matter how many times she’d attempted to vamp her way out of trouble—a notion he could not say he enjoyed entertaining, though he shoved it aside—he doubted very much that anyone had ever spoken to her quite like this.
All those preppy, pastel-wearing country club scions of this or that supposedly elite family, as if there was such a thing in this adolescent country. All those Ivy League boys. All this American nonsense so many millennia after his own country had taken shape and changed the world.
It was something, all these pretensions to aristocracy. It really was. Balthazar could never tell if he admired these brash people or pitied them.
Still, he didn’t like imagining any of them with Kendra.
And if there was something in him that regretted what he planned to do here—what he should have beendelightedto do here—he shoved it aside.
But to his surprise, she only shrugged in return. “That sounds fair.” Her voice was so nonchalant it poked at him. She arched an elegant brow. “Right here?”
He felt that like a shot of electricity, straight to his sex. When he should have felt nothing of the kind. When he had anticipated feeling only the sweetness of his long overdue revenge. And had perhaps imagined she would run from him again.
Still, he did not back down. He was Balthazar Skalas. Backing down was not in his blood—his father had seen to that by spilling it himself, long ago. More, he had vowed that he would wipe the Connolly family off the map, one by one.
And so he would, starting now.
“Right here is fine, Kendra.” He inclined his head. “You can begin by stripping.”
CHAPTER THREE
KENDRAKEPTWAITINGfor the floor to open up and swallow her whole. But it did not.
The situation had gone from terrible to outrageous to something far worse, and she wanted nothing more than to run away. But she couldn’t.
Because this was Tommy’s only chance. She might not think much of Tommy and his endless messes, but she knew that Balthazar was right. If he dragged her brother through court, it would kill her parents.
And Kendra might think that her father could use a little humbling, sure. It certainly wouldn’t do him any harm. But she didn’t think her mother deserved the same. After all, what had Emily ever done but what she was expected to do? Did she truly deserve the scorn of all the women who’d made the same choices she had—because that was what she would get, in spades.
It didn’t seem fair that Emily should bear the brunt of Tommy’s poor decisions.
