Untouched Until Her Ultra-Rich Husband Page 3

  “If what you say about your circumstance here is true...” He set aside his coffee mug again. “One could argue that by taking control of my grandmother’s assets, I am taking possession of you.”

  There was that intriguing stillness again. The screen of her mink lashes, so ridiculously long and curled like a filly’s, hid her eyes while her mouth might have trembled.

  “One could argue that,” she admitted in a voice that wasn’t quite steady. “I’ve done my utmost to protect all of her assets. Including me. Which wouldn’t stop you from unloading me. As assets go, I’m probably at my top value right now. If you were to sell me, for instance.”

  He told himself she was mistaking him for someone with a conscience that could be played upon, but his stomach clenched in revulsion.

  “Of course, if you were to do that, I would make every effort to use what I know of her business interests to my advantage,” Luli continued.

  Such a cool delivery. He told himself to focus on that, her complete lack of emotional hysteria despite the topic they were discussing.

  Instead, he was compelled to ask, “Is that how she acquired you? Off some auction block?” He would turn the fortune over to the authorities, not wanting a penny of it if it was built on something so ugly.

  “No.” She shifted the fit of her hands, interlacing her fingers, but her knuckles remained white, telling him she was in a state of heightened stress, even though that was the only visible sign of it. Why? Because her story was true? Or because the lie she was telling had grown too heavy and unwieldy to carry?

  “My mother lived in a building my father owned in Caracas. She was his mistress. He was in government, married to someone else. He sold the building to your grandmother without making arrangements for my mother’s upkeep. Mae was trying to have her thrown out. My mother cut a deal with her to take me as an employee in exchange for allowing her to stay there. I’m working off my mother’s debt.”

  She named a figure in bolivars that would calculate to about a hundred thousand dollars.

  Was that what a human life was worth? Pocket change?

  “You were fourteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why haven’t you left? Even if she deducted room and board, I would think you’d have paid that off by now.”

  “Where would I go?” Her hands came up empty. “If your grandmother has my passport, it’s long expired. I have no right to be here and there’s nothing for me in Venezuela if they deport me. I could live on the streets, I suppose, and work under the table as other illegals do. How is that better than this? At least here I’m safe, fed and clothed.”

  And now that safety net was gone. He began to understand her motive.

  “I’m grateful to your grandmother,” she continued. “I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but there was a man who had also come to the apartment. If Mae hadn’t insisted on taking me, I’m quite sure my mother would have given me to him. My computer work these last years would have been purely as content.” Her faint smile was an inscrutable Mona Lisa of agonized acceptance.

  No. A sharp spike of repugnance slid deep into his gut at the idea of any woman being exploited that way. At fourteen. Ever.

  “She really doesn’t pay you?”

  “Please don’t be offended when I say this.” She angled her head with apology. “I think she looked on me as a sort of daughter. She didn’t pay me because you don’t pay family for working in the family business.”

  “If that’s how she saw you, why didn’t she leave everything to you?”

  “She said...” Luli sighed toward the ceiling. “She said that when the time was right, she would arrange a marriage for me. I don’t know if she was serious, but if I brought up money, she would get defensive and ask me if I would be happier scrubbing pots in the kitchen.”

  “No one else knows about this agreement?” Could it be called an agreement if Luli hadn’t been given a choice?

  “I’ve never told anyone. I don’t believe she ever did.”

  Because, no matter the lofty motives she might have had, holding Luli here like this was a crime.

  Or a complete fabrication.

  And his grandmother was gone. He couldn’t ask her if she had really kept a young woman as an indentured servant for eight years.

  “Mr. Dean—”

  “Gabriel.”

  “Mr. Dean.” Her voice made his scalp prickle, her accent so musical and warm despite her formal address. “I very much appreciate that you’ve given me this opportunity to explain myself.” Her gaze slid to the clock on the mantel, an ornate bronze piece atop a trumpeting elephant, likely from one of the Louis periods.

  “If you’re willing to continue this conversation, I would like to reset the timer on the laptop.”

  * * *

  He was impossible to read. Intimidating with his innate physical power on top of his wealth and influence. She had to continually remind herself to breathe. Inhale, exhale. No sudden movements. Predators were attracted by panic and the stench of fear.

  She suspected he deliberately let the seconds tick audibly in the silent room as a small form of torture to her. A test, perhaps, to see how nervous it made her.

  Poise was something she had begun cultivating as soon as she understood the word. She made herself hold his gaze, refusing to give up her small advantage until he agreed to her condition. If he thought what she had told him about herself was a complete fabrication, they would discover the hard way that it was true.

  His head jerked in an abbreviated nod.

  In a smooth, unhurried motion that hid the gallop of her heart, she went to the desk and opened the laptop with a single minute to spare. She used the opportunity of having her back turned to gather her composure. Her fingerprint unlocked the screen, but she had to enter a code at the same time and she had to get it right in two tries. She managed it, then navigated to give them another thirty minutes of playing chess on a minefield.

  As she turned, she found him on his feet. He removed his suit jacket and draped it over the arm of the sofa. His shirt strained across the virile expanse of his shoulders and chest and tucked into the narrow belt to accentuate his lean waist.

  “More kopi?” She moved to the tray where the urn sat, more to avoid approaching him than a desire to be a conscientious servant.

  He brought his cup to the tray. “No, thank you.”

  A deliberate effort to approach her? His jawline was what some might refer to as chiseled. It was a clearly defined, angular structure from corner to corner, quite a fascinating study for an artist’s eye.

  Or the eye of a woman who’d spent her adolescence in something like a harem, surrounded by women and a few off-limits middle-aged men.

  Gabriel’s chin went up a degree so his narrow eyes looked down his straight nose at her. “How much do you want?”

  She dropped her hands to the sides of her dress, palms gently cupped, fingers pointed, but relaxed. No fidgeting.

  “This isn’t blackmail.”

  “If it looks like blackmail and smells like blackmail...” he scoffed darkly.

  “I don’t want it to be,” she clarified, making herself hold her ground despite the twitches of alarm pulsing in her limbs. “I’ve had ample opportunities to steal. I enjoy this position of trust with your grandmother because I’ve never betrayed her. I’ve worked for her in good faith, not to repay my mother’s debt, but to thank her for removing me from my mother’s power.”

  “And you no longer owe her that allegiance?”

  “I don’t owe it to you.”

  His expression didn’t change, but the scent of danger stung her nostrils, making her want to skitter away out of self-preservation.

  “Not yet,” she allowed, fighting to keep him from seeing how unsure and frightened she really was.

  “Oh, might I earn the privilege of yo
ur holding my fortune for ransom? Do tell me how.”

  That was sarcasm. She could tell.

  Saying nothing, she took refuge in her long-ago training, tucked her heel into the arch of her other foot and squared her shoulders. A smile of any kind was beyond her in this moment, but she kept her expression relaxed, stood tall with a long neck. She tucked in her butt and did her best to project self-assurance and limitless patience.

  “What kind of person are you, Luli of the deceitful intelligence?” He sounded scathing, but as his gaze swept down, she thought it caught on her chest, lingered.

  She became aware of the weight of cotton across the swells of her breasts. A prickly, heavy sensation made her ultraconscious that she had breasts. A tight, pinched sensation hit her nipples, making heat flush from the pit of her stomach up to her cheeks for no reason at all.

  When his gaze came back to hers, something flickered in his expression. Curiosity and something avid. Luli had known about him for years and had studied him online in the same way she read facts about bears and deadly vipers, without quite believing such a creature existed because she’d never seen one with her own eyes. Even so, she knew she ought to be terrified if she ever came face-to-face with one.

  She was terrified.

  But she continued to stand there. Had to. She held her ground because she had no other options.

  “I propose that I work for you in the same capacity as I have for your grandmother.”

  “Free?”

  “More or less.” She cleared the strain from her throat. She had known this would be a tough sell, given the anvil she had positioned over all that he was poised to inherit. “I would assist in the transition at no cost to you in exchange for other considerations.”

  “I have no reason to trust you. Clean up your mess—” He nodded at the laptop. “—and your debt to my grandmother is zero. You’ll be free to go.”

  The floor seemed to fall away from beneath her.

  “Where?” She carefully modulated her tone so her fear of abandonment wasn’t obvious. “I have no money. If I wanted to live as a refugee, I would have run away years ago.” She was so tired of being powerless. Of feeling as though she owed her very existence to someone else.

  “You want to stay here?” He folded his arms, signaling his refusal. “No. I will take control of her fortune, if only to knock your fingers off it. You are no longer needed, Luli.”

  “I know that. Why do you think I’m doing this?” It came out with the fervent anger she had sublimated for years, emotions flaring so hot, her eyes burned.

  “What do you want then?”

  The things she wanted were so far out of reach, she had stopped thinking about them long ago. Love, security, a place where she belonged...those were luxuries. She had to focus on what she needed—a means to support herself.

  “I want to move to one of the modeling capitals. New York, preferably.”

  “You want to be a model?” He said it with such disparagement, she let her weight shift onto her back foot.

  “You don’t think I’m pretty enough?” Panic edged in from all sides. This was all she had!

  “Why haven’t you done it already? Singapore has a thriving fashion district.”

  “Of Asian models. My look doesn’t fit this market. It’s not a profession where you walk in a door and get a job anyway. You have to build up to it, provide headshots and find an agent.”

  He waved at the laptop. “You have options. Why haven’t you made inroads?” He sounded incredulous.

  “Your grandmother couldn’t run her business without me. Not the way she liked to run it.” Her conscience grew heavy with the familial obligation she had alluded to a few minutes ago. “And she would never have forgiven me. She was furious with your mother for leaving without her permission.”

  The sudden flash in his eyes told her that particular topic was off-limits.

  She resisted the urge to tangle her hands together and wring them.

  “I’ve been struggling these last few years, aware that she needed me, but also aware that the two advantages I possess—youth and looks—won’t be available to me forever. If I’m going to exploit them, it has to be now.”

  “Don’t overlook that cunning brain of yours.”

  “Much as I would prefer to be valued for my intellect, who will hire someone without accreditation or even a home and a computer of her own? The work I do for your grandmother isn’t transferable to anyone except you. And my use to you has a very short shelf life. I know that.”

  She sighed, trying to keep hold of her composure as she continued.

  “Her passing has forced me to secure my future as quickly and expediently as possible. Models with the right look can work anywhere. They’re paid well and agencies help with the travel and residency paperwork.”

  “You just pointed out that no one walks into that career.”

  “It depends who escorts me, doesn’t it?” She was way out on her wobbly limb now, grip slipping and the whole tree swaying in hurricane-force wind.

  His brows went up. She’d watched those raptor wings lift like that several times, expressing his astonishment at the audacious mouse in his sharp-taloned foot, chittering no matter how hard he squeezed her.

  He smiled faintly. “I wondered when we were going to get to an offer like that.”

  The tip of his finger grazed her temple in a caress that tucked a stray hair behind her ear.

  Any further words she might have found became tangled in her throat because his fingertip continued that nascent caress into the hollow beneath her ear, then stroked the soft flesh beneath her jawbone, tilting up her chin before she had realized she was obeying his silent command.

  “Pleasant as that inducement promises to be...” His voice grated sensually across her nerve endings. “I won’t be persuaded to let you handle my grandmother’s money. Or me.”

  He dropped his touch, sending a chill through her whole body.

  * * *

  Dragging his gaze off the temptation of her plump, shiny, parted lips took every ounce of Gabriel’s well-honed discipline. He controlled all that he did because he controlled himself. Giving in to impulse, especially the sexual kind, was juvenile.

  But the flare of yearning and disappointment in his eyes was almost his undoing.

  “I wasn’t...um...trying to offer s-sex for—”

  “The stutter is a nice touch. Most men go crazy for the helpless damsel act. Good on you for trying it.” It was her first show of vulnerability amid a nerves-of-steel performance. He wasn’t buying it, though. “I’m impervious.”

  Mostly. His hands itched to drag her against his chest, not only because he wanted to do things to her—carnal, wicked things—but because the tremble in her lashes tugged at something in him. Against his better judgment, he felt an urge to shelter her. Reassure her.

  She didn’t argue or stammer out more protestations. There might have been a glimmer of injury behind her eyes, but it was gone so quickly, he knew it was only a strategy that was briefly considered before she discarded it. Within seconds, she returned to her true, iron-butterfly persona.

  “Sex is firmly off the table?” Her tone gave him the sense he was missing something.

  “I never force sex and I never pay for it. I am, however, open to enjoying it anywhere, including on tables.”

  “I’m willing to offer other acts that might be of value to you, then. Marriage, for instance.”

  “You want me to marry you? I honestly didn’t think you could astound me further. Not my first offer. Thank you, but no.” He rejected her firmly even as a voice in the back of his brain reminded that he would have to begin thinking of marriage. Was he going to leave his fortune to those idiot cousins of his father’s?

  He brushed that aside, needing all his concentration to deal with this surprisingly daring and skillful c
on woman. Especially when she seemed genuinely taken aback by his words.

  “I don’t want to marry you. You’re far too young,” she said, as if the idea was ridiculous.

  “I stand corrected,” he drawled. “I am further astounded.”

  “I would make an excellent trophy wife. I’m open to considering marriage to a man of advanced years at your direction, provided I’m granted residency in a major center like New York or London.”

  “You want to marry someone twice your age?”

  “Three at least.” She frowned. “I’m only twenty-two.”

  “Now you’re trying too hard.” He couldn’t help it. He laughed openly.

  “Marrying an older man worked out well for your grandmother. She was widowed at thirty.”

  “They say emulation is the sincerest form of flattery.” He folded his arms. “But I am not a pimp. Old men may find their trophy wives without my assistance.” The idea of lecherous, gnarled hands claiming those curves revolted him to the point of violent rage.

  She looked to the window. There might have been a sheen on her eyes and a pout in her lips as she ran out of gambits, but he felt no triumph. He was captivated by the sheer perfection in her exquisite profile, graceful as a cameo carved into ivory.

  She was so remote and untouchable in that moment, his abdomen clenched with craving for something he couldn’t articulate.

  “Very well.” She moved to the laptop and glanced at him. “I’ll undo everything I’ve done if I have your word it will square my debt with your grandmother and I’ll be free to go. No police.”

  He heard the defeat in her tone and experienced loss, even though he had won. He wasn’t ready for this game to end, but he made himself nod agreement.

  She touched the tip of her finger to the sensor.

  “Just to be clear...” She slanted a glance at him.

  Foreboding filled him—and thrill. He had thought she was giving up, but this delightfully tricky wench didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word quit.