The Italian's Twin Consequences. CAITLIN CREWS
Читать онлайн книгу.
Industries. Uncertainty and speculation.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Combe,” came the reply in her smooth voice, and maybe he was imagining the undercurrent of satisfaction in it. Though he doubted it. “I told you that you weren’t my client. You should have assumed that anything you said to me was in no way confidential.”
Matteo didn’t turn around to face her. He kept his gaze on the window before him, but he stopped looking at blurry, giddy London, and focused instead on the figure he could see in the reflection.
She was dressed in black again, sleek and sharp. Like a blade, he thought.
And he was certain he could feel every hair on his body stand on end. He told himself it was his temper channeling into the ferocious intent he was known for, nothing more. This woman had no idea what he was capable of—but he had every intention of showing her.
“I did not expect confidentiality,” Matteo replied. “But I did imagine you would pretend, at the very least, to get at the truth. Instead, you have made it clear that your mission is to destroy me.”
He waited for her to deny that, but she didn’t.
She didn’t laugh, either, but he was sure he could hear the hint of it in her voice when she answered him. “I don’t need to destroy you. You appear to being doing that job all by yourself.”
“I was under the impression that you were here to perform an impartial assessment, not an assassination.”
She moved farther into his vast, sprawling office. He watched her reflection move across the room, a liquid, rolling walk, all hips and glory, and he stopped pretending that the way she affected him had only to do with his temper. She was wearing another pair of those impossible heels, and Matteo was forced to face the somewhat confronting notion that this woman was not only doing her best to make a fool out of him in front of his business associates—she was single-handedly turning him into a foot fetishist.
He would make her pay for that, too.
“I’m not following you,” came her cool reply. He watched her walk to the front of his desk, then shift to lean against it. She folded her arms over her chest, she cocked out one hip, and he knew she understood every square inch of the power games she was playing. At another time he might have applauded it. “I assume you feel that your character is being assassinated, is that it?”
“With a hatchet, Dr. Fellows.”
He didn’t have to see that smirk of hers to feel it, like one more knife shoved deep into his back. “Your character is your business, Mr. Combe. You explained to me that you felt justified in all of your choices. How, then, could I take a hatchet to your good name? Surely that would only be possible if you felt some sense of shame.”
“Because you are determined, one way or another, that you will make me feel this shame. No matter what it takes.”
“That you’re even discussing the possibility of feeling shame feels a great deal like a breakthrough. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.”
He turned then, holding on to his control by the barest of threads. He could feel temper, yes, but something far darker—and much thicker—pounding in his veins. Making his skin feel too tight. Making his self-possession feel threadbare at best.
But then, this was where he had always operated at his fullest capacity. When he was the most challenged, he shone the brightest.
He hoped he blinded her.
“You will have to tell me what you think it will take,” he growled at her. “Do you require me on my knees? Shall I rend my garments at your whim? You will obviously only be satisfied by a very specific performance. Why don’t you tell me my lines?”
Her smile was placid, but her dark eyes gleamed. “If it is not genuine, Mr. Combe, how can it be counted as real?”
“Tell me, Doctor. How would you know the first thing about genuine sentiment for one’s family?”
He took satisfaction in the way she stiffened, as if she hadn’t expected the hit. Her gaze flashed into something darker and he liked that, too.
“I would strongly caution you against making this personal,” she said, and this time her voice was stern. As if she thought he might back down simply because she sounded like she was in charge.
But Matteo wasn’t her client. As she had amply illustrated.
“Why ever not, Dr. Fellows?” he asked, his voice quiet. But he could tell by the way her chin lifted that she wasn’t fooled by his tone. “My board of directors feels that they can excavate my personal life at will. Why shouldn’t I do the same with the blunt instrument they have sent to do their bidding?”
“Am I...a tool in this scenario?”
“What you are is a woman who has no experience whatsoever in the sorts of relationships that led me to the choices I made at my father’s funeral.”
“You don’t think I’m capable of assessing human relationships. Is that what you just said?”
Matteo felt everything in him focus on his target, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers before he reached out with them and ruined this little trail of breadcrumbs he was leaving for her.
“Your parents are lofty intellectuals,” he told her, as if she might have missed that. “Academics who have spent their lives locked away in elite institutions, catering to children of the rich and famous.”
“I’m going to stand back and wait for the irony to hit. If I were you, I would duck.”
“They had you when they were quite old, relatively speaking. You have no siblings. As your parents were each only children themselves, you have no extended family of any kind. Which made it doubly challenging, I imagine, that they ignored you so thoroughly as you grew up, if their lack of attendance at what might reasonably be considered your milestones is any guide. What I’m suggesting to you is that when it comes to the kinds of familial bonds and debts that govern the lives of most people, your view is necessarily limited by your experience.”
“I live in the world,” she shot back at him, with heat, and he wondered if she knew that she’d betrayed herself. That he could see he’d landed a hit. “Last I checked, the world was filled with human beings and human relationships. In fact, I made those things the focus of my life’s work. Rest assured that even if I never experienced the delight of a house filled with siblings—or even numerous houses shared with one much younger sibling and a whole lot of staff, like you—I have made a deep and comprehensive study of every possible permutation of human emotion.”
“Furthermore,” he said, the way he would if he was in a business meeting and didn’t wish to acknowledge that someone else had spoken, “you appear to lack any actual personal relationships yourself.”
She flushed at that, which told him a great many things he doubted very much she wanted him to know. Then she stood straighter, and he was sure he could see her vibrating with her own temper.
But unless he missed his guess, with decidedly less focus.
“You have absolutely no right to go digging around in my life,” she hurled at him.
“It seems only fair. Since you’ve taken a backhoe to mine.”
“You do realize, of course, that this is more evidence of the kind of antisocial behavior that got you into this position in the first place?”
“I am a man who does my research. I leave nothing to chance. No one who knows me—particularly my board—could possibly imagine that I would allow someone access to me, my thoughts, my entire life, and not perform my due diligence.”
“You must be very proud of yourself,” Sarina said, after a moment, that flush still betraying her emotions. He wanted to touch the heat of it. Taste it, even. “Does it make you feel more in control of this downward spiral of yours to think