The Billionaire's Challenge

by Elizabeth Lennox

  “Um…”

  Quickly, she shoved the papers under a stack of files. When she looked up at him, his eyes were hard and angry.

  Instantly, his eyes moved from the stack of files then back to her face, his gaze narrowing with suspicion.

  “In my office, Gianna,” Brant Jones snapped. And those shoes continued down the hallway towards the posh executive offices.

  Gianna stood up, giving him a bit of time to move further away from her. No point in creating more naughty, ill-advised temptation in her head, she told herself. And watching the man’s broad shoulders…well, the ideas that occurred to her simply weren’t professional or appropriate.

  Moments later, she stepped into his office and stood there, waiting for…something.

  “Close the door,” Brant ordered. Gianna considered defying that command. It might be better if there were witnesses to her murder.

  Then she looked over at the man’s glare and all of those naughty ideas came right back to her. That need to get a reaction out of Brant Jones, to make him feel…something, anything at all, hit her hard. So it was that her hand reached out, their eyes locked. He anticipated her act and dared her to follow through. Wrong thing to do, Gianna thought.

  That hand just…flipped the door. Slam!

  There! Door closed, she thought with satisfaction. And noise! Goodness the loud noise inside this stuffy office felt liberating!

  But as she looked up at the man, she knew once again that he was irritated with her. What was new, she thought with increasing resentment.

  Brant didn’t say anything for a long moment. He simply stared at her. Like a bug. Like a disgusting bug that was crawling across his immaculate, expensive carpet. His immaculate, noise-silencing carpet! How about a tile floor, she thought as she stood there, waiting for his furious inspection of her to end.

  “Why would I install tile?”

  Gianna blinked, cringing inwardly. She hadn’t meant to say those words out loud. Darn filter! What’s the point of having a filter if it didn’t work?!

  “Um…just…sound.” Giving in to her desperation, she moved forward, her hands lifting into the air to implore him to understand. “Don’t you ever want some noise? Something to let you know that you’re alive and that the world is moving around?” She spun around, sighing as she took in the amazing view of the mountains from his massive office. “Even here in this silent room, it is oppressive! You have a gorgeous view of the Rocky Mountains and yet,” her arm swept the air, indicating his desk, “you work with your back to that resplendent view!”

  Brant sat down in the leather chair and watched. It was always a delight to watch Gianna with her wild, dark hair that curled all around her lovely, delicate features. Even listening to her was amazing. Her English was brilliant, but the words were tinged with a beautiful, lilting, Italian accent. He almost laughed at her use of “resplendent” but pulled back just in time, not wanting to offend her. He knew that she was constantly pushing to improve her use of the language by trying out different words and phrases. Sometimes her new words were right on target and other times, she…well, didn’t. Either way, she was like a shocking breath of fresh air.

  Unfortunately, she was bored. He knew that she needed more challenges, more intellectual stimulation, but no matter how many assignments he handed over to her, she finished them with ease and accuracy, wanting more. She was doing the job of three people at the moment. Yet she still didn’t have enough work to do.

  Still, he couldn’t be seen as soft. There was a professionalism within the company that needed to be maintained. “Your father asked me to hire you, Gianna. He wanted you to work, not play games.”

  She stood up and moved around the office. “I work! But that’s all that anyone does around here! They work! No one does anything interesting!” She huffed for a moment, then swung around. “Where is the fun? Where is the laughter? You Americans!” she said with an inelegant snort. “You never do anything fun!”

  Brant leaned back in his chair, thinking about all of the fun things he’d like to do with her. Starting with taking off that sexy dress that wrapped around her voluptuous figure. With one, simple tug of that silk tie at her waist, the entire dress would fall open. One tug and he could view all of her lush curves. At twenty-five, Gianna had a very Italian sense of style. The flamboyant colors and simple lines all contributed to the sensuous nature of whatever she wore. Add in her dramatic flair for…everything and it was no wonder Brant was hooked. Completely!

  Not that he would do anything about his attraction for Gianna. She was gorgeous and outrageous, flagrantly taunting him some days and others, she just annoyed him by being around him and knowing that he couldn’t touch her.

  She’d asked him a question. Question? No, she’d made a comment. Something bout…Americans? Yeah, that was it. She thought that Americans were boring and work driven. Oh, if only she could read his mind, she’d know full well that he was focused on her and work…he had no idea what was waiting for him on his desk or on his calendar. On the other hand, Brant was fully aware of the enticing shadow between her breasts and her slender ankles. Pulling his eyes back up to her darker ones, he nodded in agreement. “Yes. Americans are very focused on work issues.”

  “Why?!” she gasped, once again, dramatically throwing her delicate hands up in the air. “Why can’t you just take a day off and…” she gestured toward the mountains. “Just go have a picnic! Luxuriate in the beauty around you! Take a bubble bath or drink some wine!”

  “You want me to take a bubble bath?” he teased. Gianna didn’t understand that he was teasing her and her disgust escalated. Which only amused him further.

  That hand waved in the air in his general direction. “You’re such an American! You take everything so actually!”

  “Literally,” he corrected in what he hoped was a gentle tone.

  “Exactly!”

  He didn’t bother to explain that he was correcting her word usage. Why bother? He actually liked it when she messed up a word or phrase. He thought it was adorable, just like the rest of her.

  “So you want to go on a picnic?”

  She swung around and he once again had to stifle a laugh when she glared at him. Obviously, his intimidating nature didn’t affect her in the same way it affected the rest of his staff. The woman was courageous, he’d give her that much.

  “A picnic would be lovely, but it isn’t the only thing that would brighten a day!”

  He rubbed a finger over his mouth. Damn, he loved it when her accent deepened. He could always gauge her emotions by the intensity of her Italian accent. Right at this moment, she was angry, but even that turned him on.

  Ignoring his body’s increasing reaction to her lush figure and sparkling, dark eyes, he lifted an eyebrow. “Other suggestions?”

  She glared at him, her hands coming to rest on her round hips. “You are mocking me.” With a sigh, she looked up at the ceiling, then back at him. Thankfully, he was able to bring his eyes back up to hers before she realized that he was surveying her breasts. Apparently, the dress wasn’t made of silk but of some sort of stretchy material because it was literally straining at the seams as the material tried to keep all of her lush curves encased.

  “I’m not mocking you Gianna. Your father asked me to take care of you.”

  Her glare intensified and he wondered what she would do if he lifted her into his arms and…oh, a lot of ideas popped into his mind.

  “My father asked you to employ me for this next year.”

  “And take care of you.” He only said that to irritate her further. And yeah, he liked it when she wiggled like that. Brant struggled, and failed, to keep his eyes on her face. But what was a man to do when she moved like that? Did she have any idea of how erotic it looked when she shifted her body in that way? Everything moved! Every sensuous, gorgeous, sexy part of her figure drew his attention! And yeah, his eyes drifted lower, taking it all in. He was only human after all.

  “No! No man takes care
of me! One takes care of babies and children! I take care of myself! I refuse to allow any man to take care of me!”

  He ignored her assertion because Brant had conversed with Gianna’s father every week since she’d arrived two months ago. The man was worried about his daughter and demanded updates on her welfare from Brant.

  “Are you finished with the report I sent to you yesterday?” he asked.

  She shrugged dismissively. “Yes. Your sales are down in the West Coast by two percent but up dramatically in the East Coast,” she explained. “Eleven point one percent actually.” She swung around to look at him. “The trainer on the east is good. Selena trained that team good and they know how to suggest individual products more better.”

  Brant leaned back in his chair, enjoying the errors in her language as well as the accent. He listened to Gianna recite specifically which products were more closely aligned with another and lended themselves to upselling. It was an easy, service oriented way of selling more by simply suggesting to the client to purchase mascara remover whenever they came in for mascara. Or suggesting makeup primer when they wanted foundation. It was simple to explain how primer allowed a customer to use less makeup and have it last all day, thereby saving them money in the long term. And Gianna’s lilting accent only made the recitation even more interesting.

  Gianna, with her brilliant mind and impressive ability to recall even the smallest piece of data, knew the figures for each section of the country and profit margins for each product right off the top of her head. So not only had she done the research, she knew exactly how to improve top-line revenue for the areas that had lower sales. Her analysis wasn’t just numbers deep. It was extraordinary!

  He needed to promote her. Even if she was only here for the year, the woman’s intelligence and insight deserved more responsibility and more money. “So what do you suggest?”

  Gianna shrugged. “Get the East Coast trainer out to the West Coast and train the trainers more effectively,” she replied as if that were the most obvious answer.

  Which it was and he’d already made a note to do that. For the next hour, he snapped out questions for her and she answered them without hesitation and with statistics or data to back up her suggestions. She’d been hired to work in the financial department under Brant’s chief financial officer, but the information she provided him was even better than what his CFO, Ken, had provided just yesterday. That man only presented the raw numbers, never the analysis behind those numbers. Ken was good, but Gianna was better. Ken’s analysis wasn’t as thorough, nor could he spout the data off the top of his head as Gianna could.

  Todd, his assistant, knocked on the door, interrupting their conversation that was both enlightening and fascinating.

  “What is it?” Brant snapped, ignoring the way Todd cringed slightly.

  “I apologize for interrupting, sir, but your first meeting of the morning has convened.

  Brant glanced at the computer monitor. Sure enough, there was a flashing message indicating that he was late for his first meeting. Unfortunately, his lack of focus was normal whenever Gianna was around. He knew that he should get back on schedule.

  Even so, he focused his attention on the woman sitting in front of him. Her brown eyes flashed defiance as her dark curls danced around her head, her whole body vibrating with energy. What was it about Gianna that made him so…!

  The word ‘crazy’ popped into his mind, but as he studied her dark eyes that dared him to tell her she’d gotten anything wrong during their hour-plus conversation. And damn it, he really wanted to! He wanted to tell her to get the hell out of his office and his company. He wanted to order her back to Italy where her sense of vibrancy and beauty belonged.

  Gianna was a complication in his life that he didn’t need or want. He absolutely refused to give her enough power over him by admitting that she made him crazy. So what if he looked forward to seeing her every damn morning? And there was no way he’d admit to anyone else that he enjoyed just looking at her, talking with her. Listening to her.

  Seeing her smile.

  It made absolutely no sense. He didn’t trust her, he didn’t like her and he definitely didn’t think she was beautiful. Even though she was. Stunningly beautiful! And damn, he hated the way her full lips softened, as if she might be thinking about kissing him as often as he thought about kissing her.

  Kissing?

  Wait. Huh?! What the hell? He never thought about kissing the damn woman! He wanted her gone! Out of his life!

  And yet, his eyes dropped to those soft lips again, wondering if she would vibrate with the same kind of energy if he made love to her.

  “Sir?”

  Brant looked at his assistant, irritated that his concentration on Gianna’s lips had been interrupted. “What?”

  “Your meeting,” The feisty brunette admonished. That’s when Gianna stood up and Brant braced himself for the impact of her enticing figure on his body. Gianna was lush in the most lushest of ways. And he blamed Gianna for his lack of mental acuity because she shifted to the left, bending ever so slightly and Brant just sat there watching her, his body tensing for a brief glimpse of her cleavage.

  Yeah, he’d been reduced to this, he thought. Brant considered admonishing himself for looking, but Gianna’s full, incredibly full, round breasts were…beautiful. And lush. There really was no other way to describe her. Tiny waist, full hips and breasts that would be more than a handful.

  She was too short, he told himself. At several inches over six feet, Brant preferred the women in his life to be tall and sultry, with more subtle curves. He liked athletic women, he reminded himself. Looking at Gianna’s full breasts, he wondered if she ever played any kind of sports. She had the kind of body men drool over, watch and stare at longingly.

  Exactly as he was doing now.

  Damn, she was also smart and brilliant and funny. He needed to treat her with respect.

  At least until he understood her motives for being here. Why would a woman like Gianna travel halfway around the world to work in Colorado at a cosmetics company? It just didn’t make sense.

  Click HERE to Read more about Gianna & Brant!