by Kat Cantrell
Sabrina let her spine relax against the back of the chair and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You promised me yesterday that we’d do this together. You moved me with that speech. Figure out a way,” he said. “And that’s as tyrannical as I’m going to get.”
There was no way in hell he’d let this job-switch mandate turn him into his father. Or, worse, into Xavier. But he was going to use his stint at LeBlanc to show everyone that, while his brother might have been their father’s favorite, Val could and would pass whatever test the old man posthumously threw down in his path—as long as he had Sabrina to help him avoid becoming the soulless corporate type his father had likely hoped this task would shape him into.
Four
Together.
That was not a coaching strategy, not the way Val meant it. He was essentially asking her to get into the game with him, to be his Cyrano de Bergerac behind the scenes as he took the spotlight. Be in lockstep next to him, figuring out how to guide him on the fly.
Sabrina didn’t work that way. She needed to analyze. Study. Contemplate. Caution was her default for more reasons than one, and having a well-thought-out plan helped. Together in her mind meant supporting him as he followed the plan. Not that she’d be part of a team.
Sabrina was and always had been a team of one. She’d never disappointed herself, never cheated on herself, never broken her own heart. The only way to avoid all that was to stay far away from anyone who could possibly wield that type of power.
She glanced at the printed pages in her hand, the ones she’d worked on until midnight because she’d needed the distraction first and foremost, but also because she’d said she’d deliver her initial four-week plan today. None of which she could actually use if Val was serious about trashing anything that resembled either change or modeling him into a corporate executive.
Instead, he wanted her to storm the gates of the CEO office alongside him. The concept scared the bejesus out of her. But, at the same time, it felt like an unparalleled opportunity. What better way for her to glean the skills she needed to remake herself into a CEO? She’d been on the sidelines for many, many long years, parroting strategy to her clients in clinical one-off sessions that were more personal growth than nitty-gritty.
She couldn’t tell him no. Neither did she think yes made a lick of sense.
“Watching the gears turn in your head is fascinating.”
Sabrina made the mistake of glancing at Val. He hadn’t moved from his chair, but it didn’t matter. His presence filled the room, winnowing into corners with ease, and not all of those corners were in the room. He’d found plenty of her nooks and crannies too, even the ones that she’d have said were quite hidden beneath her layer of frost.
She hadn’t slept well last night, that was the problem. Too busy trying to banish Val’s sensual edge from her consciousness to sleep, but she’d finally given up, realizing far too late that she’d have had better luck willing her skin to change color.
“Really?” she commented mildly. “You should get out more if watching me think is the slightest bit interesting.”
“If you were just thinking, I might agree.” He tipped the chair a bit, peering at her from behind strands of his ridiculously long dark hair. The tips grazed his cheekbones for crying out loud. “You were doing far more than that. Come on. Spill. I want to know what you were so furiously working out in your head.”
She stared at him while scrambling to put parameters around a rapidly shifting dynamic. What was she supposed to do, admit that he was pushing her out of her comfort zone? Worse than that, he was pushing her, and she wasn’t pushing back. “Nowhere in our agreement does it say I have to share my thought process with you.”
The grin that flashed across his face shouldn’t have been so affecting. “That’s the whole basis of our agreement, Sabrina.”
And he should stop saying her name like that, as if they were intimate and he had a right to color his tone so richly when he spoke to her. Val at full throttle was throwing her off. They had to get out of this private office before he pushed her beyond what she could handle.
“Fine. I was thinking that I have to start from square one with you. That none of the strategies in this plan are going to work, since you’re being so stubborn.”
His chair swiveled as he contemplated her. “Good. Then that means I’m getting through to you. Dump that whole thing in the trash, and let’s start over. Figure out step one together.”
There was that word again. Together. As a team. She had the wildest urge to see what that felt like.
Blinking her eyes for a beat, strictly for fortification that did not come, she did as he suggested, sliding the entire file into the trash. Oh, God. She’d thrown away her game plan, her link to sanity. What was she doing? Without structure, she’d crumple. Wouldn’t she?
“You’re much braver than I was expecting,” Val told her quietly, and her gaze flew to his. He caught it easily and held on, letting so many nonverbal things tumble between them that she almost couldn’t breathe.
The compliment shouldn’t mean so much, but it did. It was bar none the most affecting thing anyone had ever said to her, and the greedy part of her soul that craved recognition gathered it up tight before it slipped away.
But Val wasn’t done slicing her open.
“What did you see in Xavier, anyway?”
She flushed, heat climbing across her cheeks. “That’s not relevant.”
She’d seen a powerful man who came with guarantees: she’d never trust him, never fall for him and never allow him to hurt her. None of which she’d admit to anyone, let alone her client. Why was Val so fixated on her relationship with Xavier? This wasn’t the first time he’d brought it up, and she had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t be the last.
Val shrugged. “It’s relevant to me because I don’t see you two together. You’re far too deep for him.”
That was a new one on her.
Most men called her icy or, at least, that’s what they said to her face. She didn’t have any illusions about what they called her behind her back, and that bothered her not at all since she purposefully cultivated a reputation for being remote and frigid.
Never had she been called deep. It intrigued her against her will.
“Deep?” she repeated with just the right amount of nonchalance that she could play it off as lack of interest if he went a direction she didn’t like.
“You have these layers,” he explained, shaping the air with his fingers as he mimed filtering through them. “They’re fascinating. One minute I think I have you pegged, and then you do something so shocking that I can’t get a handle on it. Have dinner with me. I can’t wait to see what happens on a date.”
She had to laugh at his one-track mind. “You say that as if a woman who veers between extremes is a draw. After you painted such a flattering picture of me as a crazy person, I hope you won’t find this next part shocking. No.”
He watched her with this fine edge, his gaze digging into her layers right here and now, and his slight smile clearly conveyed his anticipation of finding something juicy. What he’d do with it she had no idea, nor did she want to find out. Her frost barrier stayed firmly in place to prevent exactly that. Or, at least, it did with everyone else on the planet. Val acted like it didn’t exist, and she had no idea how to get him on the right page—she didn’t do his brand of passion. Sabrina had tasteful, quiet affairs with even-keeled men who could help her achieve personal goals. That was it.
“The no wasn’t the shocking part.”
“Do tell,” she suggested blandly.
“It’s that you seem to think you’re one-dimensional and that veering between extremes is a bad thing. Life is extreme. We experience so many highs and lows as humans. Why try to stuff that into a box? Let it out, and really feel what’s happening to you.”
&nb
sp; What was this conversation they were having? Willingly open yourself up to feel things, like pain and betrayal and suffering? No, thanks. “Um, why would I want to do that, again?”
His dark blue eyes danced. “Because that’s when you get to the amazing part.”
There was no doubt in her mind they’d veered firmly into intimate territory and that Val unleashed would be amazing. Amazingly dangerous, sensual, driving her to extremes, as promised. That sounded like the worst idea in history. She concentrated on avoiding those types of emotions, and any man who spent that much energy indulging in hedonism did not stick with one woman. The signs were all there, in neon. He practically bled erotic suggestion, even in the way his full lips formed words. She’d never believe he’d be satisfied with monogamy.
Which mattered not at all since she wasn’t asking him to apply for the nonexistent position of her lover. They had a professional relationship, and that was the full extent of it.
Speaking of which...there was very little coaching going on thus far this morning, and she needed to get it together. Step in and guide him toward the end goal since he’d made it clear he either couldn’t or wouldn’t rein himself in.
“Val.” She held up a finger as he cocked a brow. “No. Back to business. I threw away the plan because it’s useless at this point. But you’re still my client, and I promised you that we’d get your inheritance. We’re going to concentrate on that. There’s nothing else between us.”
“Right now, yes,” he agreed readily. “But not forever.”
So sure, are you? She shook her head. “We need to focus here, Val. I’m treading on some shaky ground without the proven strategies that I just abandoned. I need you to be on my side if I’m going to be on yours.”
He let another indulgent smile spill onto his face. “Are you admitting you have vulnerabilities? And here I thought you weren’t embracing your highs and lows.”
“I’m not admitting anything of the sort,” she shot back primly. “I’m saying this is uncharted water. If I’m not reshaping you into a CEO, what am I doing?”
“Winning,” he said succinctly. “Just as soon as you figure out if we’re on shaky ground or in uncharted water.”
The man was going to unglue her. “Are you deliberately trying to sabotage this?”
He abruptly extricated himself from behind his desk and sidled around it to end up on her side of it, leaning against the edge as he towered over her. This close, his masculine scent couldn’t be ignored, and her needy, treacherous insides sniffed it out instantly, inhaling him in one gulp.
Mayday! Val was not for her. She had rules about dating clients, rules about men like him, rules about her rules. Why was all of that so hard to remember when he pursed his perfect lips and watched her with undisguised wickedness sparking in his expression?
“I’m deliberately trying to get you out from behind your walls so we can work together. You’ve got more land mines ringing you than a military outpost in Iraq. I get that I’m asking you to do this gig differently than you’re used to, and that there’s no tried and true formula that fits me. I trust that we’re going to figure it out. Together,” he stressed.
Trust. That was a word that didn’t get thrown around in her world very often. But if she’d engendered his, great. That was a fantastic first step. Unfortunately, it was the first in a long line of them.
“Then you have to trust me when I say that the first step is that makeover.” Please, God, get him the hell out of this office, and make him go somewhere else. “You need a wardrobe that tells people that you’re the one who makes the decisions. Then you don’t have be a shark because people already recognize your power even before you open your mouth.”
He nodded once and extended his hand. “You have to come with me. That’s part of the deal.”
“What? No. I’m not going with you.” She needed decompression time, best done miles and miles away from Val.
“Yes,” he said simply and wiggled his fingers. “We’re a team. I need your critical eye. What if the suits I get give people the wrong message? Come on. We can talk about next steps at the same time.”
Yeah, no, that was not happening. She did not take men shopping for suits. Or anything else. That was entirely too intimate an activity. “That’s what the tailor is for. You explain what you’re looking for, and he creates it. When you’re spending five grand on a suit, they tend to be a little better than average at customer service.”
“This is why you have to come,” he returned without blinking an eye and pushed his hand further into her space. “Because there is no way I can actually hand someone my credit card to purchase suits that cost five thousand dollars. You’re going to have to do it for me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Seriously?”
Judging by the mulish glint in his gaze, she had two choices. She could test out which one of them could hold out the longest or give up now since he didn’t intend to concede. He’d spent the better part of fifteen minutes laying out how this coaching assignment needed to work differently than her other ones, and either she could climb on board his crazy train now or keep fighting him—and losing.
“Fine,” she spit out for the second time this morning, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. “But I can stand on my own.”
He didn’t move his hand. “The offer to help you out of your chair has nothing to do with your abilities and everything to do with my character. The faster you learn that, the easier this is going to go.”
That sank in much more quickly than she would have credited and, for God knew what reason, she believed him. Or, rather, she accepted that he thought it was true. She’d expended an enormous amount of energy trying to be accepted into a man’s world, and letting one treat her like a woman didn’t get her anywhere but frustrated. Val was in a class by himself and probably really didn’t get the dynamic, nor would he if she explained it. So she opted to skip the lecture about sexual politics in the c-suite and clasped his hand.
The shock of it swept over them, and he didn’t even bother to hide the result. Awareness swamped her, heightened by the decidedly carnal edge to his smile as he pulled her to her feet, which didn’t diminish the snap, crackle and pop in the least. He still leaned on the desk, only now she had him boxed in against it, and the delicious position put her in a reckless frame of mind.
How else could she explain the sudden urge to step into his space and pin him to the desk as she kissed him?
She didn’t do either. Yanking her hand free through an enormous burst of will that she hoped never to have to muster again, she stepped away.
The tension should have been severed instantly. But no. Her skin prickled with a strange, shivery sort of heat that made her restless. She could not stop her muscles from flexing. Rationally she recognized it as a fight-or-flight adrenaline response pumping through her body, but that didn’t make the experience any easier.
Nor did she believe for a moment that, if Val closed that distance, fighting him would be her first instinct.
“If we’re going shopping, we should leave,” she told him hoarsely and cleared her throat. “The faster we get that done, the faster we can move on.”
“I’ll drive,” he offered, and it was so not fair that he had the capacity to sound normal when her insides were a quivering mess. Over a touch of their hands that lasted less than a half a second, no less.
She had to pretend everything was kosher. “Whatever. That’s fine.”
It turned out that being wedged into Val’s SUV gave her none of the reprieve she’d been hoping for. The vehicle was roomy enough, but he drove with his elbow on the center console and, when he turned corners, his arm drifted over into her space. She spent the entire drive trying to make herself smaller so he didn’t accidentally graze her, which was enough of an indicator that she should have been adamant about not going on this shopping trip.
T
he exclusive shopping center he’d selected near Grant Park had the right qualifications for the type of look she’d envisioned for him. They walked into the suit shop, which had maybe five of its wares on display, and her brain had just enough functional cells left to figure out that he’d brought her to a place that custom-made suits, as opposed to selling ready-to-wear. Of course, that was what a man built like Val needed. He was tall, with a wiry frame that matched his brother’s pretty well, and that was literally the last thing she needed to focus on at this inopportune moment.
The sales clerk or tailor or whatever title people held in a place she had no business being in rushed over to start working his magic on Val. Sabrina hung back, seriously thinking about slinking to the car. What value would she have at this point, anyway? Her job was to ensure he crossed the finish line, which was way off in the distance.
That’s when Val motioned her forward to introduce her to the clerk. “This is my companion. She’s going to make sure I’m dressed appropriately.”
So that was it then. She’d been dragged into the entire process, bless him. “I thought I was just here to pay.”
A giggle almost burst free of its own free will. How was that for a nice reversal? The clerk probably thought he was the gold digger and she’d brought him here to get him clothed for her world. In that scenario, he’d definitely be trading sexual favors for the privilege.
“You’re also here for moral support,” he told her, and the clerk whisked him away to a fitting area to take his measurements, which no one seemed to expect her to participate in, thank God.
She took the reprieve and sank into one of the plush couches near the bay windows, phone in hand so she could read the slew of emails that had stormed her inbox in the hour since she’d last checked it. The joys of being a team of one. There was no assistant to take care of the minutiae, which normally she enjoyed since it meant she was the only person accountable for ensuring her success.