“Your actions strike me as empire building.” He crossed his legs, hitching his pants as he did. “You have made yourself indispensable in a grasp for power. I’ve seen it before, many times.”
“I have no empire,” she assured him.
His cynical look said he saw right through her, which shouldn’t cause her stomach to bottom out, but it did. He was nothing to her, but it was taking every ounce of courage she possessed to hold his gaze.
It struck her that she had never had the courage to defy Mae. What chance did that give her against someone like him?
“You live here?” The cynical twitch of his mesmerizing mouth called her a parasite.
“A room is assigned to me, yes.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Venezuela.”
“That wasn’t what I was asking, but I hear that in your accent now.” His gaze shifted as he took in her features once again. “It’s sultry. Exotic.”
He sounded vaguely mocking, which stung. Her rudimentary English, taught to her by a chaperone, had been perfected here, where Mae had learned it from a British boarding school. The staff spoke broken versions peppered with Indian, Malay and Pilipino accents.
As he stared at her, the tingle of sensual, elemental awareness shimmered around her again, disconcerting her. Logically, she presumed she could use her voice and looks to charm and distract him, but she had no practice wielding those weapons. Instead, she found herself fascinated by the subtle inflections in his voice and the slightest twitch of his lips.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“Eight years.”
“Not Singapore. In this house, employed by my grandmother.”
“I came to this house when I came to Singapore eight years ago.”
He frowned. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Were you hired as a housemaid?” He was taken aback. “How did you come to be doing high-level work like this?” He jerked his chin toward the sleeping laptop on the writing desk.
She licked her lips. How to explain?
“As I said, your grandmother found computers tiresome, but she wished to be as hands-on as possible with every facet of her business.”
“You’re her hands?”
He was skeptical, but it was true. Luli couldn’t count the number of times Mae had nudged her in the back of the shoulder and told her, Go back. Show me that again.
“I perform various confidential tasks at her direction.”
“Bank transfers, stock purchases...?”
“Yes. If a broker or middleman is used, I follow up after transmitting requests to ensure the task has been completed. I compile background information on potential employees and business partners, assist her in reviewing performance reports and run random secondary checks on various budgets and accounts, helping spot discrepancies that could point to misuse.”
“People love audits, especially random ones. I bet you’re very popular.” He was being sarcastic.
“A necessary evil” was probably the kindest thing she’d been called, usually in an email chain not meant for her eyes.
Was she evil? She would have called her mother that, until she had been backed into a corner herself and now had to think about how she would survive.
“As you say, most people think I’m a computer program. I’ve never concerned myself much with whether people like me so long as your grandmother was satisfied with my work.”
A small lie. She would love a friend, a real one, not an old woman who had forgotten what it was like to be young and curious about the world. One who was scared to let her see any of it, in case it made her leave.
“On the topic of programs,” she said, feeling clammy sweat break on her palms. “It might interest you to know that your grandmother requested I switch exclusively to using your operating system. She had reservations about cloud-based so she purchased the download versions. We use all your business modules, accounting and security, the productivity suite... She wanted to know her most important records and cryptocurrency were backed up and protected against intrusion. She liked that you claim it’s next to impossible to hack. I’m sure you could get in, though. If you had to.”
There. She was inching onto the limb she had chosen.
It might hold her or it might snap and send her plummeting to her death.
LUCRECIA. IT SOUNDED like the Latin name for one of those exotic flowers found in remote jungles. The kind with waxy petals in shades of ivory streaked with lush crimson and mysterious indigo. The kind with a perfume that drew a bee inexorably into her honey trap.
Where she paralyzed and ate him alive.
What a way to go. Gabriel almost didn’t see a downside, except that he’d learned very early not to fall for any sort of manipulation. They’d all been tried—threats, flattery, guilt, false friendship and—frequently—lust. Sex was something he enjoyed like whiskey over rocks or a cool swim on a hot day. It wasn’t something he needed or succumbed to.
Yet this woman had put a coil of tension in him merely by existing and was notching it with each lift of her thick, curled lashes over her piercing blue-green eyes.
To think, he had only come to the house as a last resort, thinking he would fire up his grandmother’s laptop and ascertain exactly what this “Luli” software was all about.
Her wares were soft, all right. In all the right places, despite being draped in the least flattering dress imaginable. The color was wrong for her skin tone, but there was no hiding her catwalk height or her flawless complexion. She didn’t need makeup or adornments. In his mind, she only had to remove that dress and the pins from her hair and she would be perfect.
But she was his employee, he reminded himself, in the same way the workforce of any company became his responsibility and resource after a takeover.
Therefore, while he enjoyed fantasizing each time she threw one of those doe-eyed, speculative glances his way, looking ever so innocent as she let the tip of her tongue dampen her lips suggestively, he refused to let her see it was having the desired effect on him, i.e., Desire.
He definitely didn’t let his carnal reaction blind him to the nuanced threat she was making.
“Why would I need to hack into accounts that belong to me?” he asked, muscles activating as though preparing to face an opponent on the mat.
“You wouldn’t...”
If.
She didn’t say it, but he heard the lilt of suggestion in the way she trailed off.
He set aside his half-finished coffee with a click of bone china meeting lacquered wood.
She swallowed, eyes shielded by her lashes, but she was watching him through them. Cautious. Scared, even.
He let his lip curl to let her know he was amused by her adorable attempt to extort from him.
“You understand I could have you arrested.” Which was a strangely appalling thing to imagine. He had brought charges to bear in the past, when laws had been broken. He never thought twice about protecting himself and always sought justice through due process.
But