And that was when he had decided that you couldn’t move on until your life was straightened out. Until you’d tied up all the loose ends which had threatened to trip you up over the years. His mother was dead. His brother was found. Briefly, he closed his eyes as he thought about the rest of that story and felt a painful beat of his heart. Which left only Jessica Cartwright. His mouth hardened. And she was a loose end he was going to take particular pleasure tying up.
He turned his chair back around. She was still sitting there, trying to hide her natural anxiety, and he allowed himself a moment of pure, sadistic pleasure. Because he wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t appreciated the exquisite irony of seeing how much the tables had turned. How the snooty tennis prodigy who’d kept him hidden away like a guilty secret—while he serviced her physical needs—was now waiting for an answer on which her whole future would be decided.
How far would she go to keep her job? he wondered idly. If he ordered her to crawl under the desk and unzip him and take him in her mouth—would she oblige? He felt the hard throb at his groin as he imagined his seed spilling inside her mouth, before changing his mind. No. He didn’t want Jess behaving like a hooker. What he wanted—what he really wanted—was for her to be compliant and willing and giving. He wanted her beneath him, preferably naked. He wanted to see her eyes darken and hear her gasp of disbelieving pleasure as he entered her. He wanted to feed her hunger for him, until she was dependent on him. Until she couldn’t draw a breath without thinking of him.
And then he would walk away, just as she’d done.
The tables would be turned.
They would be equals.
He looked into her aquamarine eyes.
‘You’re going to have to change,’ he said.
JESSICA’S HEART WAS pounding loudly as she looked across the desk at Loukas, who in that moment seemed to symbolise everything which was darkness...and power. As if he held her future in the palm of his hand and was just about to crush it.
He had begun removing the jacket of his beautiful suit. Sliding it from his shoulders and looping it over the back of his chair and that was making her feel even more disorientated. He looked so...intimidating. Yet the instant he started rolling up his sleeves to display his hair-roughened arms, it seemed much more like the Loukas of old. Sexy and sleek and completely compelling. Her thoughts were skittering all over the place and suddenly she was having to try very hard to keep the anxiety from her voice. ‘What do you mean—I have to change? Change what, exactly?’
His smile didn’t meet his eyes. In fact, it barely touched his lips. He was enjoying this, she realised. He was enjoying it a lot.
‘Everything,’ he said. ‘But mostly, your image.’
Jessica looked at him in confusion. ‘My image?’
Again, he did that thing of joining the tips of his fingers together and she was reminded of a head teacher who’d sent for an unruly pupil and was just about to give them a stern telling-off.
‘I can’t believe that nobody has looked at your particular advertising campaign before,’ he continued. ‘Or why it has been allowed to continue.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘A variation of the same old thing—year in and year out. The agency the company have been using have become complacent, which is why the first thing I did when I took over was to sack them.’
‘You’ve sacked them?’ Jessica echoed, her heart sinking—because she liked the agency they used and the photographer they employed. She only saw them once a year when they shot the Lulu catalogue but she’d got to know them and they felt comfortable.
‘Profits have been sliding for the past two years,’ he continued remorselessly. ‘Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing—because it meant I was able to hammer out an excellent price for my buyout. But it does mean that things are going to be very different from now on.’
She heard the dark note in his voice and told herself to stay calm and find the strength to face her fears. Like when you were playing tennis against a tough opponent—it was no good holding back and being defensive and allowing them to dominate and control. You had to take your courage in your hands and rush the net. Face them head-on. She met his cold, black eyes.
‘Is this your way of telling me that you’re firing me?’
He gave a soft laugh. ‘Oh, believe me, Jess—if I was planning on firing you, you would have known about it by now. For a start, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, because it would be a waste of my time and my time is very precious. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Yes, she understood. She thought how forbidding he seemed. From the way he was behaving, nobody would ever have guessed they’d once been lovers. She had seen his ruthless streak before—it had been essential in his role as bodyguard to one of Russia’s richest men. But around her he had always been playful—the way she’d sometimes imagined a lion might be if it ever allowed you to get close enough to pet it. Until their affair had finished, and then he had acted as if she was dead to him.
Was that why he was doing this—to pay her back for having turned down his proposal of marriage, even though at the time she had known it was the only thing she could do?
She must not let him intimidate her, nor allow him to see how terrified she was of losing her livelihood. Because Loukas was the ultimate predator...he saw a weakness and then moved in for the kill. That was what he had been trained to do. She clasped her hands together and looked at him. ‘So why are we having this conversation?’
‘Because I have a reputation for turning around failing companies, which is what I intend to do with this one.’
‘How?’
He was looking at her calculatingly, like a butcher weighing a piece of meat on a set of scales. ‘You are no longer a teenager, Jess,’ he said softly. ‘And neither are the girls who first bought the watch. You are no longer a tennis star, either—you are what’s known in the business as a has-been. And there’s no point glowering at me like that. I am simply stating a fact. You were taken on because of who you were—a shining talent whose dreams were shattered. You were the tragic heroine. The sporty blonde who kept on smiling through the pain. Young girls wanted to be you.’
‘But not any more?’ she said slowly.
‘I’m afraid not. You’re trading on something which has gone. The world has moved on, but you’ve stayed exactly the same. Same old shots of you with the ponytail and the pearls and the Capri pants and the neat blouses.’ His eyes glittered. ‘I get bored just thinking about them.’
She nodded, her heart beating very hard, because it hurt to have him talk to her this way. To have her life condensed into a sad little story which left him feeling ‘bored’. She met his black eyes and tried to keep the pain from her face. ‘So what are you planning to do about it?’
‘I am giving you the opportunity to breathe some life back into your career—and to boost Lulu’s flagging sales.’
She wished she’d taken her raincoat off, because her body was beginning to grow hot beneath that scorching stare. She tried to keep her voice calm.