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In the grand scheme of things, overcharging Skalas & Sons and pocketing the difference mattered little to Balthazar. It was the principle that offended him. It was the noxious Tommy Connolly’s clear belief that hecouldcheat Balthazar that he could not allow.
Still, he could admit that sending the daughter to handle her family’s sins was an inspired choice. He would have refused to see the father or the son.
“I was certain my secretarial staff was mistaken when they told me you kept calling.” He watched her closely as she stood there, framed by the gleaming city behind her, yet seeming to glow the brighter. “Begging for an appointment when, last I saw you, you were far more interested in running away.”
Kendra had fooled him back then, when no one fooled him.Him.And in the privacy of his own mind, he could admit that it had been more than her brother’s theft that had made him detest her family. That her brother’s behavior had merely confirmed what he had already concluded. Because of that night long ago, with her.
Balthazar was not accustomed to wanting things he could not have.
Instantly.
“I’m here on behalf of my family,” Kendra Connolly said, her voice cool. Something like professional, when he could see the heat he remembered on her cheeks and in her gleaming, golden eyes.
A liar, then. He should not have felt even the faintest inkling of surprise.
Much less something that veered a little too close to disappointment for his taste.
“They consider you the most appropriate weapon, do they?” he asked smoothly. “I think your family is misreading this situation.”
She blinked at that, but didn’t collapse. Or shrink in on herself. Both reactions he’d seen in puffed-up male CEOs who stood before him and risked his displeasure.
Unlike them, Kendra...bothered him. Balthazar could remember too well the heat of her in his hand—though he still couldn’t understand why she should affect him so. When women blurred in his recollection, becoming one grand and glorious smear of sensation and release. Yet he could recall her taste in his mouth. The silk of her skin.
The way she’d come fully in his grip.
To say that Balthazar resented that was a vast understatement.
“I appreciate you seeing me,” Kendra said in the same collected way, folding her hands before her in a manner that might have seemed polite and calm had he not also seen the evidence that she was gripping her own fingers much too hard. Why did he find that...soothing? “I’m not here to excuse my brother’s actions.”
“I should hope not. He stole. Fromme. And worse still, believed that he could get away with it.” He smiled. Thinly. “It is the arrogance I cannot abide.”
He had tasted that pulse in her neck. Perhaps that was why he could not seem to look away from it now. Particularly not when he could see how hard and wild it beat.
He blamed her for that, too.
“I don’t expect you to forgive him. Or even think kindly on him. Why would you?”
“Why, indeed?”
“What I’m hoping is that you and I can come to some kind of agreement. If there’s a way that I might convince you that notifying the authorities isn’t necessary, I would love to find it.”
Balthazar laughed at that, though there was little mirth in it. He pushed himself away from the doorjamb and made his way into his actual office, a sprawling affair that shouted out his wealth and consequence from every possible angle. There were walls of glass on two sides, making it seem as if they floated over Manhattan. Steel and granite everywhere, gleaming as much with quiet menace as with wealth.
He liked to announce who he was. So there could be no mistake.
When he rounded the great slab that served as his desk, he was not surprised to find that Kendra had trailed after him and now stood uncertainly just inside the door.
“What on earth makes you think that I would do such a thing?” he asked her, genuinely interested in her answer. “The sheer hubris of it. The unmitigated gall. You must rate yourself highly indeed if you imagine you can convince me of...anything.”
She spread her hands out in front of her, a gesture of surrender. It should not have made him so greedy for a taste of her, surely. “I’m not going to pretend to you that my brother Tommy isn’t problematic.”
“You are here anyway. Sent to defend him. Yet what defense can you possibly mount for a creature so reckless and self-destructive?”
“None.”
That surprised him, when he prided himself on never allowing business machinations to surprise him. He stood behind his desk, one finger on the granite surface, and it was only when he realized he was tapping it that he understood he was more agitated than he allowed himself to appear in public.
Balthazar added that to the long list of things he blamed on this woman.
