“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Rebecca leaned back against the brass rail and tried not to look like the cat that ate the canary. “What do you mean? I told them you did everything legally.” Legally, but not morally. She had no doubt he’d understood what she’d said out there.
His grey eyes flashed. “You know very well you’re jeopardizing our stock value with comments such as those.”
“I’m sure you’ll recover from the dip.”
“Yes, but will I need to shed a few assets to keep earnings on projection?”
Her heart thumped at the threat, but she remained unaffected on the outside. “Did you pay bribes in Dubai?”
“Do you think I would admit it to you if I had?”
She spoke before she could talk herself out of it. “You’ve grown fast over the years. I’d wondered how you did it, but perhaps the secret to your success has little to do with business acumen and everything to do with your willingness to play dirty.”
His gaze sharpened. “You’d like to think so, but I assure you everything I’ve gained has been earned through hard work. Unlike yourself, no?”
His reaction was not as harsh as she expected, but it sliced deep. It was a charge that stung, but not one she could deny. At least not in any way he would understand. She’d had to work hard to prove herself to her father, to prove that a daughter could be every bit as good as a son when it came to captaining the family business. She’d worked harder than anyone would ever know.
She would not share those struggles with Alejandro—or, indeed, with anyone. The memories of what she’d endured were too painful.
His look was telling. “How it must anger you to know your fate is in my hands. Perhaps you should be nicer to me, encourage me to be gracious. How is it you say in American? That you must use honey to get the flies, not vinegar?”
She stiffened. “Don’t you dare insult me by pretending I have a chance to convince you otherwise. You’ve already made up your mind, so why not just tell me what you want and be done with it? It’s clear you have a plan, regardless of what I say or do. Save us both the hassle.”
His grey gaze bored into hers. “What makes you think this is a—what was the word? Hassle—for me?”
She speared her hair away from her face, having forgotten the clip on the breakfast table. “I mean that since you already know what you want from me, let’s just get right to it and skip this other stuff.”
She sounded brave, though she was anything but. He could fire her here and now, put her on a plane and send her back to New York with nothing more than a bad case of jetlag and a rapidly dwindling bank account. She probably shouldn’t have baited him with her statement to the reporters, but she was tired of being at his mercy. She wanted this nightmare over, wanted her company back and her life free of this man.
“Get right to it?” he said softly, his gaze hot as his eyes slid over her. “Skip the foreplay? A good idea sometimes.”
Rebecca’s breath caught at the sensual undertone of his voice. Was she imagining the heat in his gaze? The elevator suddenly seemed too small to contain the two of them.
“But not always,” he continued, his voice caressing the words. “You may plead your case in front of my board.”
“They will vote as you want. What’s the point?” Her voice was far huskier than she would have liked.
“Maybe.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out his phone, frowning at the screen. The sexual tension emanating from him died as if he’d flipped a switch. He scrolled through his phone, shutting her out.
Rebecca gripped the railing behind her, stunned both at the immediacy of her reaction and at his ability to turn off his own response. Because he had wanted her. She’d seen it. Hadn’t she? Or was this simply another part of his game?
Unbidden, images of him flashed into her head. The jagged scar from a bull’s horn slicing across his ribcage, the taut ripple and glide of muscle when he moved, the impressive jut of his erection. The ecstasy on his face when she straddled him and drove them both out of their minds with her slow, even thrusts.
He’d accused her of enduring his touch for the sake of her family business, of seeing him as nothing more than a bullfighter dirty from the ring. If only he believed that she’d truly loved him, how sexy she found him in spite of the barbarity of his former profession.
If only… They were words she’d thought so many times before.
Now, standing in this elevator in his custom-fit suit, Alejandro was as far from the glittering garb of a matador as any man could be—and yet she still saw the bullfighter beneath the polish. The raw, hungry, intense man who could stand in a ring with an angry bull barreling toward him and never, not even once, flinch. This was a man who could stare death in the face and not blink.
After their affair ended, she’d actually gone through a torturous phase of tracking down and watching his recorded fights. Holding her breath while the bull charged, while the cape swept down, then whirled away as Alejandro went up high on his toes and plunged his sword home. She’d thought it barbaric, and yet Alejandro had once explained, when she’d been tracing his scar in the aftermath of their lovemaking, how honorable the fight was for both man and bull. It wasn’t her kind of thing, to be sure—and yet there was a certain beauty in it.
A beauty in him.
She closed her eyes, remembered the heat of him, of the two of them tangled together in his sheets. It’d all gone so wrong, so horribly wrong. And she wasn’t the same person she’d been back then, the same starry-eyed girl with dreams of love and a life with the most magnetic man she’d ever met. The world had certainly taught her the folly of those beliefs.
The elevator glided to a halt, the doors whispering open to let them into a spacious private office. Overstuffed chairs and a sleek sofa sat beneath a wall of books. A chrome and glass desk was positioned in front of floor to ceiling windows that ran the length of one wall. Alejandro went behind the desk and sat down without looking at her.
In the distance, the twin glass and steel structures of the Puerta de Europa leaned toward each other across the busy Paseo de Castellana. Much closer, the giant Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, where Madrilenians flocked to watch their soccer team, squatted against a bright blue sky.
“The board meeting will be in an hour. I suggest you prepare.” He picked up the phone and spoke to someone. A second later, a pretty woman opened the door.
“Please escort Señorita Layton to a desk, Maria.”
Rebecca followed the woman without another word, smiling and giving her thanks when Maria deposited her in a small, windowless office. Though she needed to prepare for the meeting, she first placed a call to the Cahill Group’s offices in London. Roger was out of town until tomorrow, so she hung up and clicked open her briefcase. A glance at the clock told her she had fifty minutes left.
She didn’t know what she’d encounter in that boardroom, but she wasn’t going down without a fight.
When she was finally called to the meeting, more than an hour after she’d been told she would be, she was ready. She’d spent the last two hours completing her projections, dragging her finance people out of bed to give her numbers, and making sure her arguments were sound. Layton International would be out of the red in six months if she were allowed to continue on the path she’d chosen.