Love Or Lust?

Chapter 1

At times, Pero de la Cruz pondered what distinguished a man from a beast. Men did, after all, eat, sleep, fight, and fuck like all other animals. His interest in computers and his appreciation of fine art were his only human traits; otherwise, he was as beastly as they came.

Being human did not really matter to him. In his view, it was overrated.

However, considering what was at his doorstep at this very moment, he was actually quite happy to be human today.

Pero gazed at the enormous array of screens in front of him while leaning back in his enormous black leather chair. While some of them showed feeds from security cameras positioned at key locations throughout New York, others showed feeds from the national news with stock tickers unreeling beneath them. The spreadsheets he had been working on were open on at least two screens, and his email was on a third. At least one of them had a movie playing, and a couple more were focused on social media, primarily Twitter, though he also liked Instagram.

However, at this specific moment, none of those screens had permanently captured his interest.

The screen that provided him with the feed from the security camera on his front door was now the one he was most interested in.

as well as the woman in front of it.

Wearing a simple charcoal skirt and a clean white shirt, she looked immaculate, with her red hair pulled back in a tight bun. Very secretary-like and businesslike in appearance. which, given that she was here for a job interview, was essentially to be expected.

She adjusted her matching charcoal jacket and smoothed her skirt while he watched. She took one quick look behind her before turning back to face his front door.

She had no beauty. He preferred something nice to look at, so it was not ideal that she was not even attractive. However, he had stopped sleeping with his assistants after learning that their performance tended to decline after he put them to bed, so that was not a deal-breaker. On a second glance, her features were not all that bad, but they were too sharp for beauty. Her eyes were pretty, her chin was determined, and her lower lip was nicely full. He could see that it was brown. Despite having red hair, she did not appear to have freckles, and her skin was milky pale.

He looked at the rest of her with a tilt of his head.

She may not have been particularly attractive, but she certainly had the body type he was looking for in a woman. Lots of soft curves, round hips, and full breasts. At least not physically, he disliked having muscles, being skinny, or having any sharp edges. He preferred softness in women, and she was unquestionably soft. Not ugly in a lot of ways.

After giving her some more thought, Pero pressed a button that brought up a second window with her resume and the security feed image.

Vera Swift. Twenty-eight. English. living in the East Village at the moment. had excellent references from every position where they worked as an assistant to high-level executives in Fortune 500 companies. She had a nice figure and seemed capable. A nice mix.

But nothing on her resume mentioned what she had been doing for the past two years, and she had quit her previous job two years prior.

He looked at the woman on his doorstep with narrowed eyes. He occasionally denied entry to prospective employees. Depending on what he decided after giving everyone a quick tour of his home, he occasionally did not even open the door.

However, it was not like he had many options.

He had had at least ten assistants in the last six months alone, and it was now becoming impossible to find someone decent who would genuinely collaborate with him. Even raising the base pay to six figures had not been enough to entice anyone to apply because word had spread about how difficult he was.

There was an issue. He wanted to hire the best, but when the best refused to apply, regardless of how much he offered, he had no choice but to settle for the not-quite-so-good.

Or Vera Swift, whose resume shows a two-year lapse.

After reaching out and pressing the button on the intercom that was resting on his desk, Pero made up his mind. "Show her into the sitting room, John," he ordered.

John, his butler, answered in his typical sulky tones, "Yes, Mr. De la Cruz."

Switching to the entrance hallway, Pero watched as John opened the door, greeted Miss Swift, and led her into the sitting room, where Pero enjoyed entertaining all of the visitors to the house-at least the ones he let in.

After switching feeds once more to the sitting-room cameras, Pero observed her while John led her to a couch before leaving the room and shutting the door.

Her gaze flitted around the room as she clasped her hands in her lap.

It was the most typical room in Pero's enormous home, and he had deliberately designed it to be as opulent and cozy as possible so that he could sit here in his control room and watch people's guards drop.

Vera Swift certainly seemed to enjoy it, looking around at the artwork on the walls, the fireplace with the cheery spray of fresh flowers on the mantelpiece above it, the thick red-and-blue silk hand-knotted rug on the floor, and the shelves with the horribly pricey little trinkets on them. Her posture relaxed slightly as she sat back on the cozy white couch.

People would typically get off the couch and go exploring if they felt alone. Take one of the trinkets or a book off the shelf. They would occasionally approach the window overlooking his Upper East Side street, close to the Met, or the mirror above the fireplace to play with their appearance.

However, none of these actions were taken by Vera Swift.

She stood with her hands clasped lightly together. She looked around her, occasionally turning her head, but that was the only movement she made. There she sat, motionless.

In spite of himself, he scowled at the screen.

Perhaps it was the stillness, the clasped hands, or just the air of containment and reserve that she exuded, but there was something about her. Whatever it was, he found it fascinating.

He pressed a few keys on his keyboard to get a closer look at her by zooming the camera in. She was now looking at her hands as though they were fascinating, and her focus had shifted to them. Now that he was looking more closely, he could see that her lashes were thick and long, and that there was a faint impression of freckles across her nose, concealed by makeup. She appeared to be whispering a prayer as her lovely mouth moved ever so slightly.

Leaning back in his chair, Pero took another look at her resume.

She looked good on paper, and he definitely thought she was at least acceptable when he first saw her. Perhaps a little too young. Certainly, he'd had better luck with older assistants who didn't melt into a puddle of tears at the first hint of criticism or get incensed by his apparently "outrageous" needs. He'd had one woman-she'd been in her late fifties-who'd managed to stay with him a whole three months without complaint, eventually leaving because he'd asked her to order him a selection of women for the night and she'd refused, saying she hadn't been hired to be the "madam of a brothel."

Pero had fired her on the spot.

He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it, and if his assistants either couldn't or wouldn't do their jobs and assist him, then he got rid of them. No second chances.

Be interesting to see what Miss Vera Swift would do with a request like that. Or, in fact, any of the other requests he made of his assistants, some of which had caused a number of them to leave within hours of being hired. Many only lasted a week; rarely did they last a month.

Hiring new people was starting to get old.

Of course, there was the option of being a nicer employer, as one of his earlier assistants had tried to tell him, but he really didn't understand what she meant by that. He suspected it had something to do with changing his behavior. Fuck, like that was ever going to happen. He was the way he was, and he wasn't about to change.

Getting rid of Vera's resume from the screen, Pero brought up another document-the list of other candidates for the position.

It was short.

He scowled at it, irritated. His options were getting narrower and narrower and he didn't like it one bit. Even the temping agencies wouldn't take him on as a client these days, not since he'd blown through five temps in one month, reducing every single one to tears within hours of being hired.

Christ. People were so weak and fragile these days, it was a constant annoyance to him. Still, if the worst came to the worst and this girl ended up only lasting hours or-if he was lucky-a week, he could up the salary again. Money tended to solve most problems in his experience, and it wasn't as if he didn't have plenty of it. Being the illegitimate son of Cesare De la cruz, the owner of DS Corp, one of America's biggest and richest defense and protection companies, wasn't without its perks. Even if his father was one of the biggest pricks on the planet.

Up on the screen, Vera Swift raised her head from her hands and took another look around the room. A small crease had appeared between her brows.

She was probably wondering how long he was going to keep her waiting.

The answer was as long as he fucking well felt like it.

Then again, maybe he should get this interview over and done with as soon as possible. Might as well see if she was as good in person as she looked on paper.

Pero pushed the button on the intercom again. "Take her into my office, John."

"Very good, Mr. De la cruz."

Pero lounged back in his chair, watching as John entered the sitting room, going over to where Vera Swift sat. She gave him a pleasant smile, betraying no sign of impatience, all calm self-possession, as if she could have quite happily sat there for another couple of hours.

Fuck. Maybe he should let her. Maybe he should have tested her further, the way he did sometimes with people who intrigued him.

Ah, but there was plenty of time for that.

In the privacy of his control room, Pero bared his teeth as Vera disappeared through the sitting-room doorway, on her way to his office.

Looked like his day was just about to get interesting.

* * *

There were two chairs in Pero De la Cruz 's office. A huge black-leather executive chair that sat behind the dark oak monolith of his desk, and a much smaller, much more uncomfortable-looking one that sat in front of it.

Vera didn't need to guess which one was meant for her. She walked straight toward the uncomfortable-looking one as soon as De la cruz's butler showed her into his office.

And, indeed, as she sat down, it was as uncomfortable as it looked.

Then again, she'd spent much of the last two years sitting around in many different sorts of uncomfortable chairs, so it wasn't anything she wasn't used to.

She was used to waiting, too.

The office was deathly silent, not even the noise from the city penetrating from outside.

Vera folded her hands in her lap, resolutely ignoring the flutter of nervousness in her stomach. Just like she resolutely ignored the doubt that was also sitting there.

Before she'd gotten the interview for the job, she'd asked around the few job contacts she had left, trying to get what information she could about New York's most reclusive billionaire and the position she'd seen advertised on an online job site. A position with a salary that seemed almost . . . obscene.

And then her friends had told her why the money was obscene. Because Pero De la Cruz was the biggest bastard to walk the earth and no one wanted to work with him. "Run and run far, far away" had been the opinion of her contacts

Unfortunately, though, Vera was not in a position to run far, far away.

She needed money, and she needed obscene amounts of it. Fast. And the position of Pero De la Cruz 's personal assistant seemed the best and easiest way of getting it. Certainly, much easier than stripping, which had been one brief thought that had occurred to her at 2 A.M. the previous night.

No, she didn't really want to do that, nor did she want to do any of the other seedy-sounding jobs that had also been on that same job website, offering the same kind of money and making Pero De la Cruz 's job offer look like a ticket to paradise.

Vera gave a small inward sigh, resisting the urge to check her phone just in case there had been any updates on Charles. He'd contracted an infection recently, which was worrying since the immune systems of coma patients weren't exactly robust. Then again, the doctors had told her they'd contact her if there was any change in his condition, and they hadn't, so presumably everything was fine.

Didn't stop the worry though, which was not what she needed right now.

Ruthlessly pushing aside her anxiety, Vera looked around the room instead, trying to distract herself.

She'd tried to do some research on Pero De la Cruz , but surprisingly hadn't managed to find much. He was some kind of computer genius and managed the tech arm of DS Corp, one of the U.S.'s biggest weapons companies. He was also reputed to be a recluse, never leaving his Upper East Side mansion, and was infamous for treating his staff very, very poorly indeed.

He'd also clearly designed his office to intimidate anyone sitting in it.

The walls were dark green, half paneled in dark oak, and lined with heavy oak bookshelves, all stuffed full of officious looking leather bound tomes. There was a huge stag's head hung on the wall behind the desk, the antlers gleaming lethally in the dim light coming through the windows, the animal's glass eyes directed on the chair she was currently sitting in, which was unnerving.

The desk itself was massive, looking like it had been carved out of a single tree, the chair behind it as imposing as a throne. There was nothing on desk itself but a slim, black computer screen.

Vera frowned at the room in general. It definitely wasn't comfortable, like the sitting room she'd just left. There was a chill in the air and a dark heaviness to the atmosphere that was . . . oppressive. And it might have gotten to her if she hadn't spent the last two years in different hospital waiting rooms, dealing with officious and self-important medical staff.

But she had. So she didn't feel either oppressed by the atmosphere or intimidated. She only felt irritated at being kept waiting. Though she was starting to think that might be intentional, too, and given what she'd already heard about Pero De la Cruz , she wouldn't be at all surprised.

To pass the time, she hummed under her breath, a song from Evita, one of her favorite musicals, and went over the last meeting she'd had with the manager of the private hospital Charles was currently staying in. The woman had given Vera a new fee schedule, which was pretty much going to bankrupt her if she wasn't careful. In order to pay for his care, she'd already used up the money she and Charles had saved to buy their own home, and if she wanted to keep him where he was, getting the best treatment he could, she was going to have to find another way to pay for it.

This job in other words.

At that moment, a door behind the desk opened, and she nearly jumped because it had been half-hidden by one of those enormous bookcases, and she hadn't noticed it before.

A man walked through it.

Vera blinked.

She hadn't been able to find any images of Pero De la Cruz , so she had no preconceived ideas of what he looked like. But in some dim region of her brain, she'd constructed the impression of a small, nasty little man, because in her experience the most difficult men were always small and nasty.

Apparently, Pero was neither.

Her first impression was that he was big. Actually, no, not just big, he was giant. He towered over that monolithic desk like Godzilla over a tiny Japanese skyscraper, and she hadn't missed the fact that his head had almost brushed the top of the doorframe as he'd walked through it.

And he wore a suit, which she found confusing since he wasn't built like any businessman she'd ever worked with. In fact, he was built more like a pro-wrestler or heavyweight boxer than some tech genius, the dark gray suit jacket pulling tight over massive shoulders, insanely muscled arms, and a hard, broad chest.

She swallowed, her gaze roving helplessly over his impressive physique, trying to reconcile her hazy idea of small nastiness with the massive, muscled reality, before finally settling on his face.

She felt something kick hard inside her.

His features were rough, but there was a brutal sort of masculine charisma to them that she found almost mesmerizing. A hard blade of a nose, strong jawline, and broad, carved cheekbones. His eyes were as black as his shaggy hair, his gaze holding hers with an intensity that stole the breath from her lungs.

He stood there only a minute, staring at her, and then he was moving with the easy, loping stride of a wolf or a panther, coming straight toward her. And she found herself tensing up in her chair, bracing herself as if she was standing in the path of an avalanche and there was nowhere for her to run.

He stopped in front of her, standing between her and his huge desk, looming over her, making her feel like she was the size of an ant.

His eyes glittered and there was something feral in them, something that made her mouth go dry and fear curl up tightly in her chest. She could suddenly see why Mr. Pero De la Cruz had difficulty finding a personal assistant who lasted longer than a week.

"So," he said without any niceties at all. "You want to be my assistant?" His voice was deep, harsh, with a gravelly quality to it that for some reason felt like a velvet cloth rubbed roughly against her skin.

She stiffened, not liking the sensation. In fact, she didn't much like the punch-to-the-gut response to him, full stop. She rarely let people get under her skin, but she had a feeling that if she wasn't careful, he could. It would pay to proceed with caution from here on out.

Controlling her instinctive irritation at his rudeness, Vera met his gaze calmly. "Yes, that's the general idea."

"Why?"

The abruptness of the question caught her off guard. "Why do I want to be your assistant, you mean?"

He folded his arms, the fabric of his jacket pulling tight across his massive shoulders, and stared at her with the same kind of unblinking intensity as a great cat would stare a deer it would quite like to eat. "That's what I asked. Don't make me repeat myself."

She blinked at the roughness of his tone. Okay, so she was starting to get more of an idea of why this man was considered so difficult. He was rude. Then again, she'd dealt with rudeness before, quite frequently. In fact, she'd gotten quite a name for herself as being an assistant who could handle difficult people, so she was pretty sure she could handle Pero De la Cruz , despite whatever rumors there were about him.

"Well," she began carefully, "I'd like this job because it sounds like an exciting opportunity to-"

"Bullshit."

"Excuse me?"

"I said bullshit." His arms dropped and suddenly he was walking away from her, going over to the window and glancing out, then coming back over to where she sat and circling her.

He moved with a kind of restless, kinetic energy crackling around him that made her feel unsettled. That made her want to keep her eyes on him in case he did something. Though what, she had no idea.

"Stop talking to me about opportunities and ex-partners."

Chapter 2

Pero watched with interest as the color leached out of Vera Swift's milky skin. The pupils of her pretty brown eyes had dilated, the darkness swallowing the glints of pure gold that he'd seen flash in the depths as he'd circled around her. Glints of temper or fear, he wasn't sure. But he'd like to find out. In fact, there were a whole lot of things he'd like to find out about her. Now, preferably.

He didn't question why he wanted to know, because he didn't question himself much generally. It was only that there was something about her that he found . . . intriguing. He liked surprising people, or rather, he liked shocking them, and yet apart from that initial widening of her eyes as he'd walked through the door into his office, Vera Swift hadn't shown any signs of shock or even surprise. She'd merely sat there with her hands clasped in her lap, those sharp features of hers betraying nothing but calm. And she'd looked at him like . . . Fuck, he didn't know. Only that he hadn't seen a woman give him that kind of look before. Normally they either stared at him like he was something good to eat or they ran the hell away.

Not prim Miss Swift, though. Apart from that initial shock, her gaze had been detached almost. As if he was a problem she had to solve.

He decided he didn't like it. Not one bit.

"The rumors are true," she echoed in that prissy little British accent, one red-gold eyebrow lifting as if he'd said something completely ridiculous and she was humoring him. "Are they indeed?"

Which would have been infuriating if she hadn't been pale, revealing the delicate dusting of freckles across her nose. Getting up in her face had scared her, no doubt about it.

He didn't move, staring into her eyes, watching for more telltale signs that his nearness bothered her. Yet apart from a certain rigidity in her posture, she gave no sign that it did.

"Yes," he said flatly. "They are. Now answer my fucking question. Why do you want the job?"

A normal person would have been moving restlessly in their seat, disturbed by the fact that he was so close and possibly by his crude language, but not Phoebe. She sat very still, self-contained, and utterly self-possessed, matching him stare for stare.

"I want the job because it pays well," she replied, her tone as flat as his. "And because it's better than stripping."

Honest. Good. That was a start. He liked honesty.

"How do you know stripping isn't something I might want you to do?" Her skin was incredibly fine-grained and smooth. Soft, too, he'd bet anything.

"I would assume you have other people who could do that better than I could." Her voice was calm, but pink tinged her cheekbones.

Pero reached out and trailed a finger across the pretty color, and sure enough, her skin was as soft as he'd imagined.

She became even more motionless but didn't pull away. "Is this still an interview for your personal assistant?" she asked levelly. "Or are you interviewing for another position?"

He very much wanted to cup her cheek in his hand, feel her skin against his palm, and since he was a man who never denied himself anything he wanted, he did just that, sliding his fingers along the line of her jaw, letting his palm press against her cheek.

Fuck, so soft. Like a rose petal.

Her pupils dilated more, whether in shock or something else, he couldn't tell, but that was the only response she gave.

She smelled good. Not of those intense, deeply sexual perfumes that the women who usually came to his house wore, but of something else. It was a simple, sweet smell that reminded him of his garden. Was it . . . jasmine maybe?

"What other position would there be?" He let his thumb trace the line of her cheekbone. "My personal assistant is there to provide me with everything I need. Everything I want."

"I see." Her voice remained infuriatingly calm. "If providing you with what you want includes touching, then I'm happy to find someone else who can let you do that."

He gave her another stroke. "What if what I want to touch is you?"

"That might be a problem. I have a fiancé."

Pero frowned in genuine puzzlement. "How is that a problem?"

Some expression he couldn't interpret rippled over her face, which annoyed him. Though he had no problem with reading people's most basic feelings, such as fear or anger or desire, he had difficulties with reading complicated or subtle emotions. Normally this didn't bother him since he interacted with very few people and those he did interact with, he didn't much care about. But for some reason, right now, the fact that he couldn't read Verawas profoundly irritating.

"It won't be a problem," he said, before she could respond. "Because whether you have a fiancé or not makes no difference to the requirements of this job." He let his hand fall from her cheek and straightened. "Which are as follows. This is a live-in position. My assistant needs to be available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They are required to fulfill any requests I care to name, without argument and without protest."

Vera didn't move, the expression on her face was exactly the same as when he'd had his hand on her cheek. She seemed utterly unfazed by anything he'd said. "I see. So, to be clear, I have to live here and be on duty twenty-four hours a day?"

He scowled at her. "Didn't you hear me when I said I don't like to repeat myself?"

"I just wanted to be sure I heard you correctly," she said in the same level tone. "Your requirements are not . . . usual."

"I don't give a shit whether they're usual or not. Those are the requirements, and they're not up for discussion." Abruptly restless, he turned away from her, moving over to the window that gave a view out to the walled area that was his private garden, pausing there to check the weather. It was brilliantly sunny, which added to his general irritation.

Summer in New York always made him even more restless than he was normally.

"When you say you require every request to be fulfilled, do you mean . . . anything?"

He stared at the greenery below him, noticing that one of the rose bushes looked like some insects were getting to it. Shit. He was going to have to get John to speak to the gardener again. "Of course, I mean anything," he said brusquely. "I get what I need when I need it. End of story."

"What if I can't provide that?

"Then you're fired."

There was a pause.

Sensing some kind of emotion coming from her, Pero swung around. "What?" he asked.

Her gaze was calm. "I didn't say a word."

"No, but you have opinions, don't you?" He moved away from the window. "One thing you need to be clear on, Miss Swift, is that I do not pay for anyone else's opinions. I'm not interested. The only opinions that matter are mine. Is that understood?"

Her expression didn't give so much as a flicker. "Yes, that's understood."

He moved behind her, but she didn't turn, her gaze directed instead to the stag's head above his desk. "All you have to do is whatever I need, whenever I need it. That's all. And in return, I'll pay you six figures." He paused, looking down at the top of her red-gold head. Not a curl, not a single wisp of hair escaped the bun at the nape of her neck. It was coiled neat and tight with small, practical brown hairpins. "Six figures every three months."

Her head turned quickly to the side, and he couldn't help baring his teeth in a feral smile. Money, it always came down to that. Offer people enough and they'd do anything for you. Anything at all.

Even things they wouldn't normally do.

"That wasn't in the advert." A certain sharpness had entered her tone.

"No, because I've just decided to up the salary right now."

"Why?" Again, her voice was sharp, and this time there was an edge of demand to it that should have made him angry and yet didn't.

No, it excited him.

"You don't get to ask the questions, Miss Swift." He reached out to take one of the hairpins, slowly sliding it out of the tightly coiled mass of hair. "Like I said, this position requires total obedience, and if I don't get it, you don't get paid."

"If I take the job," she amended.

Pero dropped the hairpin on the ground and reached for another one. "You haven't answered my question."

"Which one?"

"About why you want the position." He dropped the second pin and reached for a third, tugging it slightly.

Clearly feeling the tug, she shook her head, as if trying to free her hair from a branch that had caught it.

"Keep still," he growled, pulling the third pin free.

She let out a soft breath. "What are you doing?" The question was perfectly calm and yet . . . was there an undercurrent of something there? Some kind of reaction?

"I want to see what your hair looks like." He reached for a fourth pin. "Answer the fucking question."

She went very still, which pleased him. "I did. I told you I wanted the money."

"Why do you want the money?"

"Why does anyone want money?"

"You're supposed to do whatever I say, not answer questions with questions." He eased out a fifth pin then went on to the sixth. Fuck, she had a lot of hair. "Last time. Why do you want the money?"

"I see. This is a test. Very well." She was silent for a moment. "I need the money because my fiancé is in hospital. He's been in a coma for two years, and I'm coming to the end of my savings. The care in this particular hospital is very good, and I'd like him to stay there."

Another man might have felt some sympathy for her, or even felt sorry for her. But Pero felt neither. He generally didn't like to feel much at all beyond basic, physical pleasures, and certainly other people's traumas were of no interest to him. Not when he had his own to deal with.

"If you want money, you'll have to work for it." He picked out the last few pins and discarded them with the rest on the floor, watching in fascination as the coil of hair began to loosen and fall down her back in thick, red curls. "I'm not a fucking charity."

If his harsh words had any impact on her, she gave no sign. "Obviously," she said, her tone cool. "If it was charity I wanted I would have used GoFundMe."

"Or you could try stripping." Reaching out, he pushed his fingers through her hair, watching as the coil began to break apart into a glorious fall of red-gold curls. The strands felt silky against his skin, soft, too.

"Apparently I still might if I take this job."

That cool note was in her voice again, and for some reason it sounded like . . . amusement? Strange. Why the hell would she find something she didn't want to do funny?

He looked down at her, sifting her hair through his fingers, that sweet, flowery scent rising around him. "You'd do it if I asked you to." He didn't make it a question.

"Or else you'd fire me, of course." A pause. "I should warn you that I draw the line at getting rid of bodies."

Pero frowned. Then he eased his fingers from her hair and prowled around her chair so he could see her face. She stared back at him, absolutely calm, as if he hadn't suggested he might want her to strip for him. As if she hadn't had a complete stranger take down her bun and run his fingers through her hair.

"And if I wanted you to?" he demanded.

She gave him a pleasant if impersonal smile, her lovely hair falling down around her shoulders, softening her sharp features. "Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now, is there anything else I should know?"

* * *

Phoebe's heart was beating uncomfortably fast and her scalp was prickling all over from the feeling of his fingers in her hair, but she absolutely refused to let any sign of her discomfort show.

Six figures every three months was worth any kind of provocation. Even letting a complete stranger touch her. Even having his fingers in her hair, taking out her hair pins and scattering them on the floor.

She'd expected him to be difficult, but she hadn't fully realized just how difficult until now. Until he'd touched her cheek without asking. Until he'd run his thumb across her cheekbone. Until he'd taken her hair down . . .

It had been a long time since anyone had touched her. Certainly, the last time anyone other than her stylist had touched her hair had been when Charles had pushed it behind her ear as he'd kissed her good-bye, just before he'd left on that business trip to Vermont. That had been two years ago.

She hadn't wanted anyone's touches since then and still didn't. And that included Pero de Santis. But for six figures every three months? Hell, she'd even change her stance on the stripping thing.

Verasat still and calmly met Pero's black eyes. She badly wanted to fix her hair, but she ignored the urge to put it to rights. No point in letting him know he'd bothered her. He'd probably only repeat the same bad behavior if he did or maybe do something even worse.

In many ways, he reminded her a little of her father, who'd always been demanding and self-centered. He hated fuss, too, and Verahad found that the best way to handle him was not to argue, but simply give in without drama. That discovery had come in handy with many of the executives she'd worked for in New York, and she suspected it would come in handy now.

Pero said nothing, the pressure of his impenetrable inky gaze like a hand pressing down on her. He was standing close, giving no regard whatsoever to her personal space, that wild energy he gave off crackling against her skin like electricity.

It was unnerving.

"You understand you'll have to live here?" he asked in that same harsh, abrupt way.

"Yes."

Having to live here was another thing she hadn't expected, but on thinking about it, she decided it wasn't a problem. The apartment she'd once shared with Charles could get lonely at nights, the silence reminding her acutely of a man who shouldn't be in a hospital bed but back at home with her. As the months had passed, she'd toyed with the idea of moving, going somewhere else, somewhere smaller. But then, what if he woke up? What if he wanted to come home? She had to make sure his home was still there for him if that happened.

"I should warn you that I don't sleep much," Pero said. "And if I want something in the middle of the night, you'll have to wake up and get it for me."

Again, that wouldn't be a problem. Her own sleep had been disturbed for two years now, and getting up and having tasks to do was certainly better than lying awake thinking. "I can deal with that."

Pero took a couple of steps back and put the heels of his hands on the desk, leaning back against it and curling long, powerful fingers over the edge. "I might want anything in the middle of the night." That hard, uncompromising gaze held hers. "Sex for example."

Perhaps this was another test to shock her. In which case, he was going to be disappointed.

Veralifted a shoulder. "Then I'm sure I can arrange that for you."

He didn't move but his gaze drifted down her body in an openly appraising look. "And what if I want sex with you?"

Her heartbeat sounded weirdly loud in her head and she could feel her cheeks heating. Which was annoying. He didn't want her, of course he didn't, so why the comment should unsettle her, she had no idea. This was merely yet another test. He did seem to be a man who liked to push people.

"Again, we'd have to cross that bridge when we come to it," she said, making sure her voice was completely calm.

His gaze narrowed, zeroing in on her like a sniper with a target. His features were completely unyielding, as if they'd been carved out of granite, and she had the odd impression that if she flung herself at him, his body would feel just as hard, too. She'd probably break herself or shatter or-

Good God, why was she thinking about flinging herself at him? She wouldn't, not in a million years. Why would she? She was engaged, and it didn't matter that the man she was going to marry was in a coma. She still loved him.

But would you have sex with him? If he asked? For six figures?

Veraignored that thought, too, keeping her hands clasped in her lap, meeting Pero's disquieting stare.

He said nothing, the silence around them becoming not so much awkward as heavy, dense. As if she was standing on a mountain top and the clouds were rolling in.

Then abruptly he pushed himself away from the desk and turned, heading toward the mysterious door behind his desk without another word.

Vera blinked at his retreating back. Was he leaving? Was the interview over? "Mr. de Santis? Is that it? Do I have the job?"

He reached for the door handle, gripping it in one long-fingered powerful hand. Then he paused and turned back to her, his expression hard. "Do you want the job?"

It's not like you have a choice.

"Yes," she said firmly, ignoring the disquiet that coiled in the pit of her stomach. "Yes, I do."

"Then it's yours. You start in an hour."

Verastared at him in shock. "Wait . . . What? An hour? But I'll need to get back home to-"

"John will organize to have your stuff brought to you," he said curtly. "You should find everything else you need here already. An hour, Miss Swift. Be ready."

And then before she could ask him any more questions, he'd disappeared through the door, shutting it very firmly behind him.

Veraallowed herself a glare in the door's direction. Ridiculous. Did he really expect her to take up the position within an hour of being given it? There was so much to prepare. She had to get home and organize her things, go to the hospital, and give the staff her new contact details. Tell her parents she had a new job and would be living somewhere else. And . . . and . . .

Not so much to do.

Vera let her breath out. Well, maybe not, but still. An hour? He really expected her to start what was sounding like a very difficult job without any preparation at all?

Apparently, he does.

At that point the door to the office opened and James, the butler, came in, his craggy face expressionless. "Mr. de la Cruz has requested that your belongings be brought here, Miss Swift. If you could kindly let me have your apartment key and a list of items, I'll make sure that happens as quickly as possible."

God. This was moving too fast. Far too fast. She needed to get home and sort through her stuff, not have someone else do it for her. What if she forgot something important? And did she really want some complete stranger going through her knicker drawer?

"Miss Swift?" John prompted.

Come on, pull yourself together. This isn't how you deal with unexpected changes. You cope. You handle it. And apart from anything else remember. Six figures. Every three months.

Vera Shook herself. "Yes, of course. Do you have something I can write about?"

Five minutes later, after she'd collected her discarded hairpins and given a list of items to James, plus a few instructions on what not to touch in the apartment, Verawas escorted upstairs and through the hallways of the house to what would be her rooms.

Nervousness and a certain amount of trepidation sat in her gut, though she did her best to ignore them, looking around her at the house to distract herself instead.

It seemed much bigger on the inside than it had looked on the outside, with great long hallways, stairs spiraling up to other floors at various intervals, and lots of doors leading to many different rooms. It was almost maze like. And there was hardly any furniture. A hall table there, an armchair shoved into a corner there, a shelf or two against a wall.

What there was a lot of, though, was art.

Paintings lined the dark walls, along with beautifully shot photographs, all, without exception, landscapes. Of cities. Of jungles. Of mountains. Of deserts. There were none of the people whatsoever.

Interesting. Did he have something against people, or did he just prefer nature?

As they passed one long, artfully framed panorama shot, clearly taken from the top of a mountain, Vera murmured, "I see Mr. de la Cruz enjoys the outdoors."

"Yes," John answered. "Mr. de la Cruz admires landscapes."

"Lucky he has lots of walls in that case." She glanced over her shoulder at the long hallway stretching behind her. "This house is certainly much bigger than I thought it was."

"Mr. de la Cruz bought the whole block. The buildings have all been renovated into one house."

Vera Stared at the butler in surprise. Well, that certainly explained why the house felt so big inside. "That's . . . what? Five houses? Seems an awful lot of room for one man."

"Mr. de la Cruz likes his space," John replied with finality, indicating that was the end of the matter.

But she couldn't resist pushing a little. "They say he never leaves his house. Is that really true?" She could hardly imagine it was. There was something so vitally alive about him, a kind of raw, animal vibrancy that didn't go with the image of a man huddling inside his house, too afraid to go out.

It would be like putting a lion, or a tiger, in too small a cage.

John did not respond, his expression forbidding, so Vera let it go. She expected to find out the truth soon enough.

Finally, John led her through an ornate door and into a spacious and surprisingly light set of interconnected rooms.

There was a bedroom painted a delicate shade of mint green, with huge windows covered in swathes of sheer, billowy white curtains, and an honest-to-God four-poster bed in one corner. Off the bedroom was a small sitting room painted in the same shade, with lots of bookshelves full of books and a comfortable looking white couch and armchair. There was a bathroom off the bedroom, too, white-tiled, with a separate shower and bath that looked big enough for an entire football team.

It was rather lovely, she had to admit. Not to mention unexpected. The decor was feminine and romantic, that made her think that Pero de la Cruz had definitely not had a hand in planning it. Though maybe she was doing him a disservice. Maybe there was a hidden romantic underneath that hard, intensely masculine exterior of his.

The thought made her smile. No, there was nothing romantic about him, she'd bet her life on it.

"Anything else I can get for you?" John asked, already moving toward the doorway, clearly impatient to get on with whatever it was he did.

"No, I don't think so. Oh, I suppose Mr. de la Cruz will . . . what? Call me when he wants something?"

"Yes," John said. "He will." And before Veracould ask him anything more, the elderly butler vanished through the doorway, pulling it firmly shut behind him.

Vera Stood for a minute in the middle of the room, feeling the sudden silence settle down on her like a heavy weight, combining with the nervousness and considerable trepidation to form a thick, hard lump in her gut.

Had she really done the right thing in taking this job? It clearly wasn't going to be easy, not with Pero as an employer. He was . . . strange.

In fact, this whole set-up was strange.

Vera Moved over to the windows, pushing aside the gauzy curtains, peering out. For some reason, she half-expected there to be bars over the glass, but there was nothing marrying the view down into what looked to be a stunningly beautiful garden.

There were small trees and shrubs and beds of colorful flowers. White shell paths wound through the foliage, and she could even see the sunlight catching on the drops of a fountain in one corner of it.

She leaned her head against the glass, half-smiling. New York could be wonderful like that, with small emerald gems of gardens hidden behind imposing brick walls or behind the gray facades of buildings. It reminded her of the rose garden in London her father was fanatical about maintaining, though that garden had been planted much more rigidly than this one here was.

There was a wildness to the garden below her window, a certain untamed quality to it that her father would have never allowed in his rose garden.

Rather like Pero de la Cruz himself.

Her scalp suddenly prickled at the remembered sensation of his fingers in her hair, the skin over her cheekbone tingling from where he'd stroked it.

Vera frowned and pushed him out of her mind. It was not time to think about her employer; instead, she needed to prepare for her new job.

She let the curtain fall and sat down on the bed, placing her handbag in her lap and searching for her phone. Bringing it out, she punched in the hospital's number, giving them her new details about which they sounded completely uninterested. After that, she quickly checked the time, then called her parents to let them know that she finally had a job and would be living somewhere else temporarily.

Her mother answered the phone on the second ring, sounding the way she always did, light and slightly out of breath, as if she'd been running to get the phone. "Oh, Phoebe! I'm just on my way out. Why do you always call at such an inconvenient time?"

Once, her mother's first words every phone call had been "How is Charles?" Now, they were either about how inconvenient Phoebe's call was or questions about why hadn't she called sooner.

"Sorry," Verasaid patiently. "I just wanted you to know that I have a new job."

"But how wonderful!"

"Yes, it is. But it's a live-in arrangement. Which means I won't be at the apartment for a little while."

"Sounds fabulous! Oh, Phoebe, I do wish you were back here. Your father has decided to give dinner to those stuffy old colleagues of his and . . ." Her mother rambled on, repeating the same list of complaints and slights that had been the soundtrack to Phoebe's life for years. She did not ask anything about Phoebe's new job, which was exactly what Vera expected given that her mother was only interested in herself.

"That sounds terrible, mum," Vera said, only half-listening, her mind already preoccupied with whether the items she requested from her apartment were the correct ones and what she would do if she would forgotten something. All her mother required was soothing anyway, not actual input.

Another five minutes and more soothing noises later, along with the usual gentle "No, I'm not coming home quite yet" statements, Vera disconnected the call and sat on the bed, fighting the feelings of vague frustration that always filled her after a phone call with her mother.

Then, just as she'd begun the laborious process of pinning her hair back into place, her phone buzzed again with a text message that looked to be a long list of instructions. It was from Pero.

Vera slid the last pin into place, smoothed down her skirt, and picked up her phone.

Okay, Pero de la Cruz. Bring it on.

She was ready

Chapter 3

Pero hit Vera's name on his contact list and she answered on the second ring, which pleased him since he hated to be kept waiting. In fact, she'd proved to be incredibly responsive over the past three days, no matter what time of the day or night he'd demanded her presence, which also pleased him.

Especially as he'd been working her hard. The first day he'd kept her up till midnight in his office, taking notes at a video conference with some of his Silicon Valley team. She hadn't murmured a word of complaint, not even when he'd kept her up for another hour after the meeting had finished. Then he'd woken her at 6 A.M. the next morning to go get his morning coffee. There hadn't been any complaints then either, nor when he'd sent her to a DS Corp, meeting at DS Tower downtown in his stead. Or when he'd sent her to an art auction afterward to purchase a rare Van Gogh landscape that had unexpectedly come up for sale.

Or that second night, at 3 A.M., when he'd gone for a run on his treadmill and then discovered afterward that he was out of his favorite soda, which had necessitated Vera making a run to the nearest 7/11.

Yes, at 3 A.M., she'd answered on the second ring, which even his best assistant hadn't managed.

It was impressive, he had to admit.

"Mr. de la cruz?" she enquired in her cool, calm way.

"I need coffee," he said without preamble. "Espresso, two sugars. Also, get me a plain bagel with cream cheese and lox."

"I can do that for you. When would you like these?"

"Now." He didn't wait for a response, disconnecting the call and tossing his phone carelessly down on his desk before going back to the email he'd been reading. Which he read a second time, just to be sure he understood what it said.

Sure enough, he had. The lead he'd been following for months now had ended up with yet another dead end.

"Fuck," he growled, his mood darkening as he slammed a hand down on the desk, only barely missing his keyboard. He wanted to pick something up and break it, or fling something at the wall and listen to it shatter. Eyeing his phone, he considered throwing that for half a second, then decided against it. He couldn't be bothered getting another, and there were more productive things he could be doing with his fury.

Glancing over at the file he had open on one of his other screens, Pero scowled at it. In between his own work and his half-brother Lorenzo getting in his face about investigating some sketchy behavior in one of their father's accounts, he'd also been fiddling with this particular file. In fact, he'd been fiddling with it for a long time now, gradually accumulating names and dates and locations, trying to put together a picture of a man he'd been trying to find for years. Unfortunately, though, like the lead he'd been following up on today, every single piece of new information he'd received had led precisely nowhere. Which made finding this particular man–his stepfather-incredibly fucking difficult.

And he did want to find him.

Even before the police had discovered him, a small, emaciated teenager in a walled-up room in the back of that house in Queens, Pero had been fueled by thoughts of revenge. It had been the fire that had kept him warm at nights when he'd had nothing but a single threadbare blanket to cover himself, and it was the ice that had kept him cool when temperatures climbed to over a hundred, turning the little room that was his world into an oven.

He'd lain on the sagging bed in that room, planning what he'd do to his

stepfather, the man his mother was trying to keep him safe from. Pero had actually never seen him, but he had no doubt the guy existed, because he'd heard him shouting some nights outside Pero's secret room. He'd been five when his mother had hidden him away-for his own safety, she'd always said-because his new stepfather was controlling and violent, and hated children. However, his mother had told Pero that she needed to stay with him because he was helping her pay off her debts and that as long as he didn't find out Pero existed, everything would be fine. Be patient, she'd told Pero. Once her debts were paid they could both escape, perhaps even try to find Pero's real father. But until then Pero just had to stay there and be quiet and not attract his stepfather's attention. He had to stay out of sight and out of mind. The ghost in the walls . . .

He'd gotten out of that room and that house a long time ago and not with his mother in the end, but the need for revenge burned hotter in his blood than ever.

He wanted to destroy his stepfather, the man who'd ensured that for ten years Pero had to stay hidden in one tiny room. He wanted to destroy him utterly.

Except that prick had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.

It was frustrating, especially given all the resources at Pero's fingertips. He was a goddamn computer genius who not only designed some of the world's foremost digital defense systems, but could hack into them, too, and he could not find one stupid, lousy asshole.

His irritation deepening, Pero pushed himself out of his chair and stalked out of the control room, heading for the doorway to the gym that led off his main office. It was going to be impossible to get any other work done when he was this pissed, and the only way to burn off the frustration was to run it out on the treadmill or bury it under some good, old fashioned weightlifting.

His gym was high-spec and huge-he preferred having lots of room-and it had big, glass sliding doors that gave a view out onto the garden. He liked that, too. Sometimes he had the doors open, so that the scent of the plants and flowers drifted in, making him feel as if he were running through a field or a forest.

Sometimes he kept the doors firmly shut, his attention on the big screens displaying different news channels and various social-media accounts.

Today he kept the doors shut, stripping his clothes off and leaving them in a careless heap on the floor before going over to the shelf unit and drawers where he kept his workout gear. Changing into some workout shorts, a tank, and some running shoes, he went to fill a water bottle from the drinking fountain before going over to the top-of-the-line treadmill and programming in something ultra-tough and punishing.

He was half an hour into his run when suddenly the door opened and Vera came in, a takeout coffee cup in one hand, a paper bag in the other.

Pero didn't bother stopping, merely glancing over at her briefly before directing his attention back to CNN and the news story he was currently following. "I asked for these half an hour ago," he said flatly.

"I'm sorry," the sound of her heels echoed on the gym's wooden floor as she moved over to the shelving unit and placed the coffee and bagel down on it. "I got them twenty minutes ago, but it took me a little while to find you."

The delay irritated him unreasonably. For the past three days, she'd been incredibly responsive so what was the problem now?

"You should know where to find me by now." He didn't bother to mask his annoyance. "The gym isn't that far away."

"I'm sorry," she said repeated, apologetic. "It won't happen again."

Yet he caught it, the briefest of hesitations before she'd answered him.

He kept his gaze on the screen, every instinct suddenly zeroing in on her and that slight hesitation. "One coffee and a bagel shouldn't have taken you that long.

"The café was very busy and there was also-"

"Fucking bullshit. That café knows they make my coffee first before they do anything else." He turned his attention from the screen to stare at her, his irritation at the delay combining with the anger already seething inside him, becoming something hot, explosive. A missile seeking a target. "Give me the truth or else you're fired."

She stood near the door, neat as a new pin in her plain black skirt and boring white blouse. Her hair was in its customary bun, not a curl or strand out of place, and her sharp features were-as usual-completely calm, not a single emotion on them that he could read. Her gaze, too, was unreadable, meeting his without flinching.

"I had a phone call that took slightly longer than anticipated," she said in that cut-glass British accent of hers. "As I said, it won't happen again."

"A personal phone call?"

"Yes." No hesitation this time.

He kept running, his feet hitting the treadmill hard. "About what?"

A slight-so slight that if he hadn't been watching her closely, he would have missed it-flicker in her steady gaze. "As I said, it was a personal-"

"I don't give a fuck how personal it was. Tell me what this goddamn phone call was about that it took up twenty minutes of your time, twenty minutes that I am paying you for, don't forget."

Vera's stubborn jaw tightened minutely. He may not have been good at reading the subtler emotions in people, but he certainly knew when someone was pissed with him and he could tell that she was pissed with him right now.

A bolt of excitement cut through his anger. Shit, if she thought she could take him on then she was more than welcome to try. He could use a good fight.

"It was the hospital," she said after a moment, her red-gold lashes briefly veiling her gaze. "Giving me an update on my fiancé's condition."

Ah, her fiancé. She'd mentioned him in the job interview three days ago, hadn't she? The one in a coma. He was the reason she'd come to work for Pero.

How . . . altruistic of her. Not that he gave a damn about her fiancé. What he gave a damn about was the fact that the lead he'd been chasing for months now had turned out to be a dead end, and he was just fucking pissed about it. And to add insult to injury, she'd taken twenty minutes to get his coffee to him and now it would be cold.

"I don't care what updates you're getting," he snapped. "I pay you a lot of money to be instantly available, not to spend your time receiving personal phone calls."

Her gaze widened fractionally at the annoyance in his tone, which annoyed him further. "What? Is this coming as a fucking surprise to you? It shouldn't. When I say I want you to be available 24/7, I mean it."

Again, apart from that minute widening of her gaze, the expression on her face gave him no hint of what she was feeling. "Then, is there a time that the hospital is permitted to call me?" Her voice contained nothing but a mild query.

"No," Pero said, nettled. "Now go and get me another fucking coffee and this time make it hot." He turned his attention back to the screens and hit the button on the treadmill that controlled the incline, turning the thing into a goddamn mountain he was running up, because he wasn't feeling any better.

If anything, he was feeling even angrier.

You wanted a fight, and she's not giving you one.

He bared his teeth at the journalist on the screen, the sound of his feet pounding on the treadmill drowning out the journalist's voice.

Yeah, he did want a fight. It had been a while since he'd had an actual person to yell at-not since his last assistant had fled the house in tears. And the guy had been the fifth male assistant who couldn't deal. Jesus, what was fucking wrong with people these days? Men who weren't man enough to handle a fight. Women who collapsed like sandcastles at the first hint of anger.

Vera would be a good opponent.

Pero turned his head and glanced at the gym doorway where she'd been standing. But it was empty.

Something shifted and tightened in his gut. She was so calm, so contained. Her back was always so straight, and there was never a hair out of place. He'd yelled at her, and she hadn't collapsed. She'd accepted what he'd said and turned around and walked out to do his bidding.

Fuck. What would it take to get her to lose her cool? He'd like to see what that might be. It wouldn't help him find another lead, but it would give him something to do with his anger, it would give him a target. And that was better than running endlessly on this fucking treadmill.

The thing in his gut tightened further, an electric thrill. Anticipation.

He reached out and hit the button again, upping the speed, the feral grin on his face deepening. Yeah, time to see what prim little Vera Swift was made of.

Ten minutes later, the sweat pouring off him, the muscles in his legs screaming, the anticipation inside him pulled even tighter as the door opened and Vera came in again, another takeout cup in her hand. "Your coffee, Mr. de la cruz."

Pero gestured to a small table near the treadmill. "Put it here."

She moved immediately, collecting the bagel she'd brought in earlier and carrying it, along with the hot coffee, over to the table. As she bent to put them down, he found his gaze lingering on her hair, all coiled neatly at the nape of her neck by what looked to be a thousand of those damn pins.

His fingers itched with the urge to do the same thing he'd done three days ago, when he'd pulled those pins out and her hair had fallen down around her shoulders, the color of apricots or peaches, or a flaming sunset. It felt so soft, like raw silk. He liked pretty things, and she wasn't pretty. But her hair was. Maybe he should make her wear it down and not be restricted to that goddamn bun. Christ, he'd love to touch it again . . .

Vera straightened and turned to him, politely expectant. "Your coffee, Mr. de la cruz. Hot, as per your request. Anything else I can do for you?"

Pero hit the button on the treadmill, slowing it down and getting off it. Pausing, he grabbed the towel hung over one of the treadmill arms and gave his face a cursory wipe before slinging it around his neck. Then he stood there and stared at her.

She looked back at him, her gaze steady.

Fuck, she was so calm, as if nothing would faze her. Not even being told that she couldn't answer calls from the hospital where her fiancé lay in a coma.

For what reason? What on earth was she dealing with? Would she be affected by anything? Perhaps he would discover. would undoubtedly be more fruitful than constantly contemplating that goddamn dead end he had encountered.

Pero clutched his towel's ends. "What do you think about me telling you that you could not answer personal calls?"

"You made it very clear that I would be fired if I did not follow your instructions." Her voice was as clear as a frost in early winter. "I would rather not lose my job."

Well, shit, he did not want that response.

"You are not even going to argue with me?" He walked slowly toward her, watching her face intently. "No protest word at all?"

Except for the arch of one delicate red-gold brow, she remained motionless. "What is the point?"

Nothing in her tone was sarcastic or confrontational. Nevertheless, that brow... Was that difficult? Fuck, he hoped so. He desired for her to oppose him.

He moved closer to her, taking a few more steps while examining her face with narrowed eyes.

He had been too preoccupied with work-related matters to give her much attention in the last few days. Then there was the lead he had been attempting to pursue. He had been able to focus on other things because she had handled all of his requests so amicably and without drama.

He was listening now, though. He was, indeed.

He asked, "Do not you want to know what is going on with your fiancé?" "Or are you just indifferent?"

For a moment, something ignited in her eyes, but he was unable to identify it.

Naturally, I would like to know. I just want to avoid getting fired any more. He was intrigued by the fact that her tone still had a sharp bite to it.

He approached her even more closely, skulking toward her and staring into her eyes. However, Vera just calmly stared back at him with her hands clasped in front of her, just as she had been doing for the previous few minutes.

She showed no signs of being bothered by his closeness, revealing nothing at all about her thoughts.

For reasons he did not want to investigate, it both enthralled and enraged him.

"What is the duration of your engagement?" He made a demand. How many days? How many months? Years?

Something he could not read flashed in her eyes again. "Is it really appropriate to talk about my personal life?"

"If I say it is, it is."

She tightened her beautiful full bottom lip. "Five years."

"Five years?" His astonishment was obvious. "If you are going to wait five years to get married, what is the point of getting engaged?"

"We both agreed that we wanted to wait a little while." She took a quick look at the coffee cup resting on the table. "Do you want your coffee?" It should not become cold.

He disregarded that. "Whatever became of him?"

"I apologize." That delicate eyebrow, another arch. "Who happened to?"

"You are engaged," he said. "And do not act as though you have no idea what the fuck I am talking about."

Vera's eyelashes briefly dropped. "He was on a business trip when he was in an automobile accident." Her voice was rock steady and cool. severe damage to the head. He has spent the last two years in a coma.

No point in a fight. If she refused to give him the target he was after, how could he get some of this anger out? If, without even a brief protest, she simply provided him with the answers he desired?

Maybe he had to be tougher. Maybe he had to be tougher.

He moved closer and closer, encroaching on her personal space with each step. Although she remained motionless, he could see her posture stiffening as tension suddenly built up inside of her. He also noticed a golden flash of reaction in her brown eyes.

At last. Fucking finally. A reaction.

* * *

Vera stood her ground. She didn't want to give him an inch, especially not when he was the type of man who wouldn't take just one mile, he'd take a million. The previous three days had taught her that, if nothing else.

He was a demanding person. Ruthless. Fierce. Impatient. He was also arrogant and domineering, and she knew it was his way or the highway. In everything.

He would have been insufferable if she had not found the energy he exuded so captivating. It perplexed her that, while the past three days as his assistant had been the most difficult she would ever done, it was also the most exciting.

After two years of boring, crappy temp jobs so she could focus on caring for Josh, she would forgotten how good it felt to have every day be different and challenging.

She also felt extremely satisfied because she always gave him exactly what he asked for, without protest or fuss, causing him to look at her with a vaguely suspicious expression on his intense, handsome face. As if her obedience did not meet his expectations, and he was expecting a different reaction from her. He knew the reaction would be unpleasant.

Except she never gave him one, and it always made his suspicious expression even more suspicious, which only added to her satisfaction.

It was dangerous to enjoy something like that, but she could not stop herself.

For far too long, the only men she would had contact with were either medical personnel or people lying unconscious in beds. And after a while, no matter that all the doctors and nurses had told her that Josh could hear her voice, those long hours of one-sided conversations had taken their toll. It was good to have someone look at her and see her. React to her. Even if that reaction was negative, she preferred that to nothing.

The only problem was that Pero de la cruz was not an unconscious man in a hospital bed. And that pushing him-even in the small, subtle way she pushed him-meant him pushing right her back.

She was horribly aware of that right now, with him standing right in front of her, towering over her the way he had when she'd had her interview in his office. She thought she'd gotten used to his size, to his raw, primal energy, but apparently she hadn't. Not when he was only inches away and dressed in nothing but a tank and shorts, a towel around his neck.

His magnificent body gleamed with sweat, the fabric of his tank sticking to his chest and stomach, the damp cotton outlining the hard-packed muscle of his torso. He smelled of sweat and spice, and it wasn't . . . unpleasant. In fact, it made something inside her shift and turn, like an animal waking up from a long sleep.

You should step away from him.

The thought echoed in her head, an instinct she didn't know was there kicking in, making her want to back away and put some distance between them. Except she couldn't think why. Yes, he was her boss and wouldn't hurt her, that much she was sure of. So there was no reason to give any ground.

Instead she took a slow, silent breath, trying to ignore the strangely mesmerizing masculine scent of sweat and spice, trying to quell that equally strange shifting sensation in her stomach. Meeting his gaze as calmly as possible.

It was difficult though. His stare was dense as a black hole and pulled at her in almost the same way. Like a compulsion, she couldn't look away.

She should be angry with him for making her tell him all about Josh, and certainly she should be angry with him for forbidding her the hospital's phone calls, especially when Josh's infection was proving to be stubborn and sticking around. Dimly, she was angry. But she knew that wouldn't help and was more likely to get her fired than anything else, especially given he'd already stated he wanted her to do what he said without protest.

Far better to accept his orders and swallow the anger, to keep calm and keep her eyes on the money.

Luckily, she was very good at keeping calm. She'd had a lot of practice after all.

"Two years?" Pero's voice was rough, gritty. "He's been in a coma for two years?"

"Yes." She kept her tone even, not allowing even a hint of the sadness she felt whenever she thought about the time passing to color it.

His dark gaze intensified, as if there were words written on her face in invisible ink and he was trying to read them. "Has he woken up then? Is that why the hospital was calling you?"

Vera swallowed back the sudden constriction in her throat at his bluntness. At the thought of Josh just "waking up." "No. He has an infection that won't go away. Also, they were reminding me about the new fee schedule."

"What fee schedule?"

She really didn't want to talk about this, not with him standing there, all sweaty and hot and pinning her in place with those burning black eyes of his. "Hospital fees," she said levelly. "Your coffee, Mr. de la cruz. Please. It's getting cold." And she really didn't want to have to go back a third time. Not given the strange looks the café staff had directed her way on her second visit.

But Pero's attention had clearly locked onto her, and nothing was going to distract him. She'd seen him like this a couple of times now, firstly at that video conference the night she'd started working with him, and then when she'd had to go into DS Corp downtown to attend a meeting in his stead. He'd been on the phone with her via a video link, and in both of those meetings the way he'd zeroed in on the subject at hand had been almost frightening. As was his absolute refusal to let the subject go until he'd gotten whatever it was he wanted out of it.

He was not a man who was distracted by anything-unless he wanted to be.

"What about the fees?" The question only just stopped short of an outright demand.

Great. She was going to have to tell him, wasn't she?

Annoyance was a small, hot thread winding through her. Josh wasn't anyone's business but hers, and she did not like questions being asked about him. About the accident. About their future. About anything.

"I'll get this heated up for you," she said in a last-ditch effort to distract Pero, reaching out for the coffee on the table.

Pero moved, so fast she had no time to react, his hand flashing out to grab her wrist, preventing her from reaching the cup. And instantly something in her brain flared white hot as his long, strong fingers wrapped around her wrist.

Heat flashed up her arm, the sensation so foreign and strange it made her go stiff with shock.

Pero's gaze never moved from hers. He watched her with all the intensity of a hunter. "You know how I hate to repeat myself, Vera." His voice was thick with menace. "Don't make me have to."

Breathe. Just breathe. In. Out.

Vera inhaled silently then let it out, trying to get her muscles to relax. Difficult when every part of her wanted to rip her hand away from him then turn around and walk out of the room.

But, of course, she couldn't do that. Never make a fuss, never show a reaction. Never displaying weakness in front of those who would exploit it, she'd learned that early on, both from her mother's emotional blackmail and from her father's relentless criticism. Give them nothing but a calm, smooth front and all those little hooks, those little barbs would slide right off.

She ignored the grip on her wrist, and the fact that he was standing closer than was comfortable, kept her expression absolutely neutral. Giving him nothing to react against. "Fine. The hospital fees are going up, which means that if I want to keep him where he is, I have to find the money for it. Luckily, working for you will help. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"Which hospital?" Pero's fingers remained wrapped around her wrist, his black eyes locked onto hers. "Where?"

The thread of annoyance pulled tight inside her. Why was he being so persistent? Why did he want to know? She'd pegged him as being like her father, demanding and selfish and uninterested in anyone but himself, the way rich men often were, and certainly nothing had happened in the past three days to make her revise her opinion.

Yet now he was staring at her as if she was keeping secrets from him, demanding to know all about Josh and the situation with the hospital.

Part of her was desperate to tell him where he could shove his questions and yet another part, the part that was far more sensible, whispered that she should just give him what he wanted, because then he'd leave her alone.

"Why are you so interested?" The words came out of her before she'd had a chance to stop them, all sharp-edged with the annoyance she'd been desperately trying to mask. "It's none of your damn business."

His head went back as if she'd hit him, and his nostrils flared, a black spark igniting in his midnight eyes. Then his hard mouth widened in a fierce, savage kind of smile.

And Vera knew she'd made a terrible mistake