by Tessa Radley
The slender body was clad in a clinging dress of some sort of dark pink fabric—the kind of pink only a worldly, passionate woman would dare wear. If this was Danielle Sinclair then she had grown up. But it was her face that drew his attention—or what little had been left of it on the photo after being slashed with a deadly blade.
Rico stared at the mutilated photo, his heart pounding. Pascal was right. She needed someone to watch over her before she landed stretched out and stone cold on a mortuary gurney.
And he hadn’t held her hand through the worst time in her life just to let some lunatic hurt her.
The instant Danielle pushed open the door to her father’s study she sensed the tension. It hung over the room thicker than a pall of smoke. Her eyes landed on the broad shoulders of the unknown man who had to be the cause. He stood with his back to her, his legs slightly apart, his body angled so that his left hip confronted the four men ranged before him. Despite being outnumbered, she had no doubt he was in total control.
A brief glance confirmed she knew all the others. Her father, looking frustrated; Ken, her father’s chief of security, appeared a little calmer; while David, her father’s trusted advisor, wore the poker face he adopted when he was desperately searching for a solution to some complex conundrum. The young security guy whom Ken had singled out as a man to watch, Ty? Tymon? Tyrone?—she’d forgotten his name—was clearly out of his depth.
Her gaze returned to the stranger. The other four men watched him as they might a dangerous animal, their wariness apparent in the way they stood, out of reach and careful to face him. She wanted—no, needed—to see this man’s face, read his eyes, understand what made him a man among men.
Danielle blinked to dispel his powerful image, but couldn’t help a last appreciative glance to take in the way his shoulders stretched the black T-shirt, and how the black denims—so new that the creases still showed—clung to his behind and long legs. He was only a man, she told herself. Albeit a finely built one. But she couldn’t prevent her eyes tracking slowly upward over his taut rear, his lean back.
He was holding a file—no, an envelope and something else. An instant later he turned. Her heart stopped at the first glimpse of his hard, dark profile, and hot confusion swept her as he swung to face her. Something flared in the depths of his eyes as he recognised her, then a shutter came down and he shoved whatever he’d been looking at into the envelope and set it down. Her blood started to pound, hard enough to make her head ache.
Rico D’Alessio.
Cold fury clutched her heart, but she kept her gaze level, not wanting to show the hatred the name, the man, engendered. Heck, she’d even been admiring his body. Her stomach heaved. She sucked in air, striving to pull her usual serenity around her like an all-concealing cloak.
“What’s this all about, Dad? Why is he back? What does he want?” She whirled around, searching each face for answers, waiting for someone to take charge…to hurl him out of here. “And why haven’t you called the police?”
“The matter won’t be pursued,” her father said reluctantly.
“Why?”
Rico D’Alessio’s gaze clashed with hers. He looked arrogantly amused…and something else. Danielle studied the curve of his sensual mouth, the glitter of his black eyes.
He was angry. Beneath the carefully arranged amusement, he was absolutely bloody furious.
What did he have to be so mad about? He was the bastard who’d harmed her sister. Why was he here? In their home. Violating her family. Again.
Bewildered, she looked back at her father. “I need to call Kim.” To warn her sister…and to get out of this oppressive room.
For a moment her father looked old. “Kim already knows, she’s the reason he’s back. She changed her statement.”
Danielle gasped. Her head spun and she felt oddly dizzy.
“Sit down, Danielle.” She barely heard her father speak.
How could this be? When Rico D’Alessio had left the country four years ago, she’d been so relieved. Known he’d never hurt Kim again. And now he was back, filled with a deadly intensity that was a world apart from the man she remembered.
Oh, God.
“Sit, girl, before you faint.”
Mindlessly she obeyed her father’s impatient command and sank down opposite him.
An instant later the cushion beside her subsided beneath the force of a far larger, heavier body. She turned her head and silently met the dangerous gaze of Rico D’Alessio.
Two
“P rincess, don’t tell me you thought I was guilty?” Rico challenged Danielle Sinclair, watching her through narrowed eyes. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—accept that she’d been as ignorant as her wide-eyed shock suggested.
Hell, forget shock. She looked shattered.
“Of all the people in the world, I’d have thought you’d know how I’d react if I was confronted by my employer’s daughter bent on seduction. And rape wouldn’t be it.” He spoke softly so that her father, seated across the expanse of the priceless Persian, couldn’t hear, and his body shielded her from the others.
“You weren’t accused of rape.” But she’d paled, and dainty white teeth closed on her bottom lip.
He dropped his gaze to her mouth and heat rushed to the junction at the top of his thighs. Rico shifted. This was a trap he hadn’t expected. For an instant he wondered if she still wore the lacy white panties she’d tried to tempt him with all those years ago. He took in the feminine white dress she wore, nothing like the pink sheath she’d worn in the photo.
He tore his attention from the pristine dress, the fine-boned, slender body beneath, and, careful to hide his unwanted reaction to her femininity, met her eyes.
The grey-green depths were raw with turbulence; her confusion bringing out an urge to protect. The response disturbed him. It had been a long time since anything—anyone—had stirred him. “Robotic” was how Morgan and Carlos, his business partners, referred to his lack of emotion. Could this response be a holdover from the sympathy he’d felt for her after her mother’s death? She’d been so damn brave.
“No,” he agreed. “I wasn’t accused of rape. But only because your father trumped up a charge that would stick more easily. Tell me, do you believe I seduced your sister? Or as the police put it ‘had unlawful sexual connection with a minor’?”
Confusion clouded her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Not good enough!” For some reason he needed to hear her say she believed him, that she’d never suspected him of the repulsive accusation.
“So Kim lied?” Her voice lifted, making it a question rather than a statement.
Damn! She had thought him capable of harming her sister, of betraying the trust that went with being her father’s protégé, his business partner. Anger gnawed at him but he said nothing. He’d learned—the hard way—that sometimes saying less was better.
Finally, when the silence grew unbearable, he glanced at Robert Sinclair and raised his voice, “I’d suggest you get those guys—” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder “—out of here.”
“Danielle has known Ken and David all her life. They came to her christening for God’s sake,” Sinclair said with an arrogance that made Rico’s fists curl.
Danielle shifted beside him. “Daddy, could you ask them to go? Please?”
Her soft, breathy voice sounded as if she was near the end of her tether. Rico hadn’t expected the sympathy that seeped through him. It clashed with the rage that had buoyed him for the past ten days since his lawyer’s call.
Her father shrugged. “I don’t see what the fuss is about.”
“I think your daughter would like a little privacy to come to terms with what she’s discovered,” Rico said as coolly as the fury bubbling inside him allowed, then wondered why he was defending her.
Sinclair rose and crossed to where the rest of the men huddled.
From beside him Danielle spoke, “I want you to go, too.”
Rico glared at her. “Not a ch
ance…Princess.”
The taunt rankled. The stiff way she held her body told him that. When the door thudded shut behind the departing men, Rico almost wished he had gone because she cupped her face in her hands and her shoulders began to shake.
He glanced desperately around. Hell, what was he supposed to do now? He hated it when women cried. And Danielle cried silently, he remembered. She’d wept for her mother during the long hours after the accident. At the funeral there’d been one final bout of weeping, and after that…nothing. Sure her eyes had been sad for a long time, but he’d never seen another tear. Unlike Kimberly, who’d gone through huge dramatic upheavals necessitating long spells of therapy. And Kimberly hadn’t even been involved in the car accident that had killed Rose Sinclair, nor had she been trapped inside for the two hours it had taken the emergency services to cut Danielle free. Awkwardly he patted her shoulder. His thumb touched the bare skin at the top of her arm. It was soft and silky. With a guilty start he withdrew his hand.
“Why did Kim do it?”
Her voice was so faint that he leaned closer. He’d wondered, too, and four years on he was no closer to a conclusion. Unless it was the old hell-hath-no-fury thing.
“Who knows? Perhaps she was having a bad hair day.”
Danielle didn’t smile. Instead she folded her hands in her lap withdrawing further into herself. “You never…touched…Kim?” she whispered, her grey-green eyes huge in her white face.
“Remember what I said that night in my defence?” His mouth twisted at the memory. “I had a wife. A wife I loved, who was going to have our baby. Why would I’ve screwed that up?”
She frowned, her face uncertain, puzzled. “But later you left—”
“I wasn’t given much choice, was I?” he said bitterly, glaring at her.
She glanced down, her hands twisting in the white fabric of her dress. Mercilessly he watched her throat move. “I’m sorry. I heard your wife died.”
“‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t cut it,” he said harshly. “It won’t bring Lucia back.”
Her head jerked at his brutal words, and for an instant he felt remorse. Danielle knew about the pain of losing a loved one. She was the last person he should be taking his anger out on. For a heartbeat his resolve crumbled, then he steeled himself.
She was a Sinclair. She’d been a part of it all…and she was available. A frown creased his forehead as he started to think about that. Kim might be married, but her sister was not.
“You hate us,” she was saying. “You really hate us. So why are you here?”
“Your family owes me.” The look he gave her wasn’t meant to be kind.
“You want revenge?”
She was quick. And she was straight. He’d always liked those qualities about her. “Let’s say I want to be recompensed for what I lost.” His lips twisted. That had to be the understatement of the century.
“Oh.” A strangely disappointed expression flitted over her face. “You want money.”
No, Princess. There are many things I want, but money isn’t one of them.
But he didn’t say that. Instead he gave her a slow smile. “You’re fast.” The sucking sound of a door opening and a cool draft on the back of his neck made him swivel. Sinclair was standing in the doorway with Pascal behind him. Rico turned back to Danielle.
She was staring at her father. “He’s been saying—”
“You used to call me Rico,” he interrupted, speaking softly so that only she could hear.
Colour surged into her cheeks. She raised her chin a fraction. “D’Alessio’s been telling me that you’ve got to compensate him. Has this all been resolved?”
“We’re ironing out the finer details.” Sinclair gave her an absent smile. “No need to worry yourself about it.”
Watching the flush deepen on her honeyed skin, Rico decided the man might as well have slapped her down publicly and told her not to worry her pretty little head about petty things like money and injustice. He found he wanted to distract her from the patronising put-down, to clear the hurt from those lake-grey eyes. “I get a position on the Sinco board, too.”
She turned to him, her eyes shadowed. “What position?”
He hadn’t made up his mind until that moment. But now he knew what he was going to do. It was so simple, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. “Princess, I’m in charge of special projects.”
“What are you doing here? This is Martin’s office.” It was early on Monday morning. The Sinco offices were usually still empty at this hour and Danielle certainly hadn’t expected to be confronted by the tall, dark man seated at her boss’s desk.
“I believe the esteemed human resources director is at a conference in Sydney this week.” Rico didn’t even look up from the sheaf of papers he was studying. “And when he gets back he’s off on paternity leave. The builders have to do some rearrangement on the tenth floor where I’ll be housed, so I’m here for now.”
I don’t want you here. Danielle bit her lip. It sounded so childish. Yet it was true. Separated from her office only by the alcove of space occupied by Cynthia, the secretary she and Martin Dunstan shared, Rico was far too close for comfort. “You can’t work here.”
That brought his head up.
“Surely it’s no big deal?”
His voice was tinged with impatience. Danielle looked down at her knotted hands and shifted restlessly from foot to foot. It shouldn’t be a big deal. How could she explain how overwhelmed she felt? She couldn’t. Because she couldn’t explain why she felt that way. Not to him. And not even to herself.
“I want to show you something.” Rico held an envelope in his hands. Propelled by curiosity, she moved forward. “I don’t believe you should be kept in the dark like a child.” His fingers brushed hers as he passed her the envelope. “Open it.”
Feeling a little like Pandora, Danielle lifted the flap. Her breath caught as she stared at the photo, the vicious incisions where her image had been.
Distantly she heard Rico say, “I’m no profiler, but whoever he is, I’d say he means business.”
Danielle couldn’t think of anything to say that would lessen the terror that tore through her. A finger jabbed past her, landing on the massacred photo. “That’s why Pascal and your father are worried. That’s why I’m in the office next door.”
She swallowed, choked a little. Why did it take something like this to get her father to notice her existence? Instead of blurting that out, she raised her eyes and said, “Why you?”
“Because you refused a bodyguard.”
Oh, God. “I don’t want you—”
He rocked back in the leather chair. “Why not?”
“Because…” She struggled to find the right words.
Because I don’t want you near me all hours of the day and night. Especially now that she knew Rico was no longer married, wasn’t guilty of terrible treachery against her sister. What had Kim been thinking of, making such an accusation? And she couldn’t even ask her sister until she returned from her honeymoon because she wanted to see her sister’s eyes when she confronted her, watch them widen or flicker, to test whether her sister’s responses were the truth or more lies.
But deep in her heart she believed Rico. There was no other explanation for his fury, for her sister’s revocation.
Try not to hate me. I couldn’t live with it all hanging over me. Not when I was so happy. I had to do something. Kim’s haunted words made sense.
The Sinclairs had betrayed Rico.
But despite her pity for his predicament, she didn’t want him near her all day long. “I don’t need a minder,” she said truculently, glaring down at him.
He tilted the chair back. “I’d say the photo proves you do. But have it your way. If you don’t want a bodyguard you get me.”
“I don’t want you.”
“Why not?” His eyes were too sharp.
She felt herself flushing. “I don’t trust you.”
He went white.
Oh, God! He thought she meant…
“No, not for that reason.” Kim had cleared him of that. “I don’t trust you because you want payback. Do you really think I’m going to be stupid enough to give you an opening to find ways of leveraging it higher?”
“Do you blame me?” He looked away. The silence lengthened. At last he said with quiet ferocity, “I need the board position in Sinco.”
Danielle’s heart sank. He’d lost so much already at her family’s hands.
He must’ve sensed her distress because he spoke quickly, flushing slightly. “This board position will give me a start—a chance to regroup—gain back my reputation. Once your father appoints me CEO he even gets to keep his monetary compensation and the interest he offered.”
“Poor Bradley, he’s in for a shock.” She smiled sadly. “But so are you. My father’s not going to let you dictate the terms.”
The dark eyes that met hers were expressionless. “Oh, yes he will, Princess. I can do whatever I like.”
She gave him an incredulous look, saw that he was deadly serious and started to laugh, torn between hysteria and disbelief. “He doesn’t know what he’s got.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“My father has a twenty-four-karat tiger by the tail, and he doesn’t have a clue.” She almost laughed again. Here was someone her father could not control. She could hardly wait to witness Robert Sinclair’s frustration.
Rico held his hand out for the photo, then dropped it back into the envelope. “Just remember I’m not your bodyguard. You need to take care. I have a job that’s going to take most of my time and attention. I’m only keeping a very part-time eye on you because Pascal and your father are worried about your safety. Your father already has to deal with me. This way he gets to kill two birds with one stone—give me a toehold into Sinco without having to oust Bradley yet, and frighten off this parasite at the same time. Simple.”