by Dani Collins
“You weren’t invited to,” he stated.
Her stunned expression went stoplight-red, flashing blunt injury before she spun and treated him to a view of her rigid spine and spectacular ass. The door slammed loudly behind her.
CHAPTER FOUR
ISIDORA PASTED ON a smile as fake as her engagement and allowed Ramon the Rat to take possession of her life.
She knew how the Sauveterre men worked. There was no option to lead, only to follow or get out of the way. She had agreed to follow. As she sat through the meeting, she felt herself sucked along the slipstream of his accelerated pace. He snapped his whip over the team, pacing behind her and pausing only to consult with her in an offhand way as he threw out dates and locations, names and promotions.
“You agree, mi amor?”
“Of course, cariño,” she murmured, smiling and smiling her manufactured joy until her face ached. Trying to hide that she was dying inside.
She didn’t know how she would get through this.
The news that he hadn’t slept with her mother altered her feelings drastically. Of course she was relieved, but the resentment that had been a form of protection had been burned to the ground, leaving her suddenly susceptible to the powerful attraction that had always gripped her.
Which had made his shot about not inviting her to sleep with him quite the poison dart. Her insides were still seared raw. What was it about this man that made her so ultrasensitive to him? Was she missing a vital gene of self-preservation? She really was her father’s daughter, if that was the case.
Ramon had gone to incredible lengths to rebuff her and still didn’t want anything to do with her. That indifference of his had done a number on her self-esteem in her teen years, but after a lot of travel and hard work at school, not to mention dating men who actually seemed to like her, she had built up her confidence. Maybe she hadn’t fully escaped her fascination with Ramon, since she had never been drawn enough to other men to sleep with them, but she knew they found her attractive. Not that she needed a man to validate her. Her work ethic was solid and the work she did well-received. She had started today feeling like the confident, professional woman she had fought to become.
But she was back to feeling like an adolescent with an inferiority complex.
No. She had a thick skin in every other area of her life. Control, composure and staying on message, were her stock in trade. He had said this was just an extension of her job. She had to be as unaffected as he was.
As the meeting broke up, he chivalrously helped her with her chair.
She exerted supreme effort and kept her inner turmoil from her face, feeling brittle as she said, “Good meeting.” She made to step past him.
His heavy hand landed on her hip, urging her to stay and face him. Her stomach trembled in reaction. The intimate tone of his voice picked at her composure, threatening to unravel it.
“We should celebrate.”
It’s for show, she reminded herself, holding very still, trying to ignore the gaping canyon of yearning that opened inside her. His light touch sent licks of fire up her side and down her thigh. She told herself it was okay if her cheeks revealed the heat radiating from her core, that she was supposed to be dazzled by him. She gave in to his power for one moment and let her adulation of this particular god shine through her expression.
A startled spark flashed in his gaze, exciting and terrifying at once. His other hand came to her other hip and his fingers tightened. His attention slid to her mouth.
Her lips tingled as though he’d grazed them with his own. The memory of their kiss was right there, making her heart begin a rapid drumbeat.
You weren’t invited to.
She had folded like a cheap tent for him the first time, but a jagged catch of humiliation kept her from doing it again.
She didn’t care if they had an audience to amuse. The people filing toward the door were sending them curious smirks, but sick horror took hold in her, tensing her with resistance. She would not allow herself to become a laughingstock.
“Let’s keep the PDA to a minimum in the office, hermoso. No need to embarrass anyone.” She set her hand firmly on his chest, face averted. “I’ll go make a reservation for dinner.”
His strength was such that he didn’t have to exert himself one iota to keep her exactly where she was. “I’ll arrange it.”
“You mean you’ll ask Monique to do it?” She batted her lashes as she mentioned his PA. Engagement banter. So cute.
“I said I would.” His voice was laconic, his expression arrogant. Yet watchful enough to make the moment feel bizarrely lethal.
She was in the cage with the tiger. His tail was twitching, but he wasn’t hungry. Not for her. She was safe. For now.
“Seven o’clock?” he asked.
“Can’t wait.” She tried again to pull away and this time he allowed it.
And she knew she was deranged on some level because disappointment clawed in her chest.
* * *
Isidora did her own makeup and hair, then put on a dress her mother had bought for her when they were shopping on her last birthday. She had only tried it on because her mother had insisted.
“You have such a beautiful figure, mi angel. Why don’t you show it off?”
Isidora had bit back observing that her mother did enough showing off for both of them. “It’s not exactly office attire, Mama.”
It was a strapless cocktail dress that hugged her curves in what looked like ribbons of liquid gold. The tails came together in a bow between her breasts, leaving a peekaboo cut out over her diaphragm.
“You work too hard. Dance!” Her mother had bought her a pair of gold heels to go with it. “Enjoy your youth. Live your life with entusiasmo!”
Francisca was an heiress who had grown up with everything except love and discipline. The expense of a designer outfit for her daughter was nothing compared to what her mother spent on herself each month. Isidora had accepted the gift, fully expecting it would collect dust in her closet.
She never wore skirts this short. Given her mother’s lack of modesty, she compensated with conservative styles and even more conservative behavior. Ramon’s sisters could easily get away with showing this much skin and still look respectable, but Isidora felt positively loose and looked...ah, hell. She looked like her mother. Not so much physically, but in the come-hither display of her wares.
She never dressed like this, especially for a man. Ramon’s constant rejections during her adolescent years had killed that in her.
She might have panicked and changed, but as she took note of the text that Ramon was on his way, she noticed things were heating up online. Ugh. She checked the rest of her notifications with dismay. She would have to discuss that with him.
In danger of running late now, she closed the door of her flat and descended the two flights of stairs to the lobby, realizing as she arrived on the bottom step that the noise she had dimly assumed was a neighbor’s television was actually a crowd gathered outside the glass doors of her building.
Aside from a handful of photographers, her arrival home from work hadn’t drawn much notice, but in the hour she’d been dressing, a hundred people had gathered. Maybe more.
She instinctively hung back until a black car pulled up to the curb.
An excited murmur grew. Ramon’s guard stepped from the passenger seat, took a reading on the crowd and directed people to part, waiting until there was a clear path to the building’s door before he opened the rear door of the car.
Ramon rose with his easy grace. The crowd roared with approval.
He paused to give them a nod, utterly breathtaking in close-cut pants and a light blue pullover beneath a linen blazer. He really was too beautiful.
Isidora snapped out of her admiration and quickly moved through the lobby and out the doors, intent on keeping the spectacle to a minimum and allowing them to hurry away.
As she appeared, another roar went up.
She paused reflexive
ly, not expecting the reaction. She was no one. Fake, fake, fake.
They didn’t know that, of course. They went wild.
She found her party smile and waved a greeting.
Was this what it was like for them? Pretending to be happy about the attention? Pretending she enjoyed the claps and calls of her name?
Wait. Was that a curse? A boo?
She faltered, glancing to the right where someone said something she didn’t catch, but his tone was aggressive.
The mood of the crowd shifted. The excited babble grew bothered as people jostled. She heard someone say something about her destroying the sport.
It was unnerving and she took a few more steps forward, but there were no ropes or other obstacles to hold people back. The crowd on either side had pressed into the space, narrowing her path, and a woman stumbled into her way, crying out a protest at being shoved. The milling bodies grew more unruly and an unseen hand reached for Isidora, hard fingertips skimming her arm.
Startled, she jerked from the touch, staggered in her heels and wound up bumping into someone on the other side.
Like walls closing in, strangers pushed into the space between her and Ramon, blocking her from both him and a safe retreat into her building as they started to surround her.
She grew scared. Truly scared. She looked for him, but another touch on her arm had her jerking her head around.
She was given a hard yank and lost her footing. She stumbled toward the sidewalk, hands outstretched.
* * *
Ramon was unsurprised that a crowd had gathered outside Isidora’s building. It was routine when he started dating a woman that fans and paparazzi tried to catch a photo of him with his new woman. It was the reason women threw themselves at him—for the notoriety.
He had expected to go into the building and escort Isidora out. That was also routine. He was a gentleman who offered door-to-door service, but she stepped out as he arrived, then paused in surprise as the crowd reacted.
He, too, reacted. His breath left him as he took in the vision she made of polished gold against the weathered stone of her building. She was an award statuette come to life, loose auburn curls gently shifting around her bare shoulders, her legs pale, delectable stems that begged for kisses upon every inch.
His gut tightened exactly as it had when he had stood in his boardroom, keeping her standing before him, feeling her hold him off even as she turned her sunny expression up to him.
He had basked in the glow of her smile like a cave dweller in springtime, startled by how good it felt. He had missed that light. That warmth. For a few seconds, an unidentified tightness in him had eased. He had wanted to kiss her again. Hard and deep. The kind of kiss that didn’t stop until they were both replete.
He wanted to make love to her. He could lie to her and pretend he didn’t, but he couldn’t lie to himself. What man, looking at her now, would not want to carry her to the nearest bed? She was breathtaking.
Desire like he had never known crystalized in him, far more potent than the generic sexual hunger that pulsed in his loins for any woman who gave him a signal. His body suddenly demanded this woman. He needed her capitulation. Her writhing body beneath his.
Pure lust blinded him as surely as their kiss had—which became a near fatal mistake as the crowd turned on her.
It was not something he had ever experienced. Female fans might say jealous things about his dates online, but no woman he’d ever been with had ever been assaulted.
Nevertheless, in seconds, the avid excitement in the crowd became stained with hostility. Outright aggression. Isidora was shoved and started to fall.
He reacted with the reflexes he had honed on the track and hardened with physical training, which included military-style fighting. He shoved aside whomever stood between them, swept her up and growled, “Get back or I’ll kill you.”
Not his usual urbane reaction, but he was incensed. Shaken. Utterly feral in that moment, unnerving himself and terrifying pale faces into backing off with wide-eyed alarm.
Oscar, his day guard, was right there, arms spread to ensure the press of bodies gave them room to reach the car. Ramon slid Isidora into the back seat and threw himself in behind her, slamming the door to lock them in. His heart jammed and his temperature redlined.
“What the hell?” he groaned as Oscar leaped into the passenger side and the driver took off down the street, pressing them into their seats.
“I had no indication—” Oscar stammered.
“It’s because you quit racing for me,” Isidora said in a small, breathless voice. She was white as a sheet, looking back through the rear window at the uprising they had barely escaped.
“Qué?” He couldn’t process that she had an answer when his security guard didn’t.
“Some, um...” She cleared her throat, visibly trying to regain her composure as she faced forward and folded one trembling hand over the other. “Some of your fans think your proposal was romantic, but some are blaming me for their favorite driver leaving their favorite sport.”
“You knew this was brewing and didn’t warn me?” The top of his head nearly came off.
“I started seeing the posts a few minutes ago.” Her face was drawn, her tone distraught. “I was going to tell you now. When I saw you.”
“It’s protocol to forward security concerns the second threats are recognized.”
“When they target you or your siblings. They weren’t saying anything against you, so I...” Her eyes nearly ate up her face at whatever was in his expression. Her voice became so thready, he barely heard her. “I didn’t think—”
“No. You didn’t. You put me in danger, Isidora. All of us.” He waved at Oscar and his chauffeur, then pulled out his phone and connected to the man who held the contract for Sauveterre security.
“We need a full detail for Isidora. Everything my sisters have.”
A preliminary backup team was immediately organized to join them at the restaurant. A promise was made to have everything in place by morning.
“I thought they were just trolls,” Isidora muttered.
“And I thought Trella’s kidnapper was just Gili’s math tutor. Anything could have happened back there.” He was still beside himself, his thoughts in the darkest places because he had learned the hard way that those places were real. “You could have been trampled. Beaten. Thrown into the street under a car. Stolen and raped and killed. You should have warned me.”
What if that had happened? What if it had been his fault?
She pushed back into her seat, lips white, chin crinkled, eyes blinking hard. Her knees were pressed together tight, her painted fingernails clutching her elbows. With a little sniff, she turned her face away and her throat flexed.
“Scared? You damn well should be!”
* * *
She hated him so much. And she would not—would not let him make her cry.
“Whose fault is it that they hate me?” she choked out. “Yours.”
“You think I don’t know that?” he roared.
She jolted and even the driver was startled because the car juddered before he smoothly changed lanes and carried on.
With a curse, Ramon leaned forward and closed the privacy screen.
“This is why I’m such a bastard. This is why I don’t compromise. This is why I can never be the man you wanted me to me.” He sat back, fist hitting his thigh. His voice held a note of uncharacteristic defeat. “I could never ask a woman to put up with this for the rest of her life.”
Your brother did, she wanted to snap out, but Henri and Cinnia had broken up and only came back together when Cinnia was noticeably pregnant. If she hadn’t been carrying a Sauveterre, Isidora was pretty sure both brothers would have remained bachelors their entire lives.
She privately believed Henri had been glad to have the excuse to get back with Cinnia. He had sounded indescribably pleased when he had told Isidora they were married, but Ramon seemed resolved in his detachment.
And looked surprisingly lonely in it. He stared ahead, his profile a study in carved planes and stark shadows.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a subdued tone.
“You should be.”
Why did she even bother? She looked out her window again, shoulders aching where she refused to let them slouch, trying not to breathe so he wouldn’t hear her sniff.
* * *
As he waited for Isidora outside the powder room on the top floor of the Makricosta Elite, Ramon was more keyed up than before a race.
He had set her up for harm with his proposal.
From the time he was fifteen, after Trella had been stolen and recovered, he had settled into a mostly unspoken agreement with his brother. Neither of them would pursue a serious, long-term relationship. A Sauveterre wife, and most especially a child, would be endangered simply by carrying their name.
Cinnia’s accidental pregnancy had forced his brother to change his mindset, but Henri had had feelings for Cinnia from the beginning, whether he had admitted to them or not.
Ramon kept his heart far more guarded. The logistics of protecting the people he cared about was a big responsibility, but that wasn’t the only reason he refused to marry. He had the money and resources to ensure the best if it came down to it. No, the real issue was the emotional cost. The idea that a woman he cared about, or a child he loved, could be taken and harmed as Trella had been, closed such a fist of terror in Ramon, he could barely withstand it.
He didn’t like being that vulnerable. He was very judicious in how much he cared and for whom. It was why he strove for indifference in his sexual relationships.
His proposal to Isidora had been a stunt. It was supposed to look gallant. In the back of his mind, he’d been aware that extra security precautions would have to be taken. Any woman who was attached to him was entitled to his protection. His team knew the drill.