Wrong Brother, Right Man. Kat Cantrell
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could play it off as lack of interest if he went a direction she didn’t like.
“You have these layers,” he explained, shaping the air with his fingers as he mimed filtering through them. “They’re fascinating. One minute I think I have you pegged, and then you do something so shocking that I can’t get a handle on it. Have dinner with me. I can’t wait to see what happens on a date.”
She had to laugh at his one-track mind. “You say that as if a woman who veers between extremes is a draw. After you painted such a flattering picture of me as a crazy person, I hope you won’t find this next part shocking. No.”
He watched her with this fine edge, his gaze digging into her layers right here and now, and his slight smile clearly conveyed his anticipation of finding something juicy. What he’d do with it she had no idea, nor did she want to find out. Her frost barrier stayed firmly in place to prevent exactly that. Or, at least, it did with everyone else on the planet. Val acted like it didn’t exist, and she had no idea how to get him on the right page—she didn’t do his brand of passion. Sabrina had tasteful, quiet affairs with even-keeled men who could help her achieve personal goals. That was it.
“The no wasn’t the shocking part.”
“Do tell,” she suggested blandly.
“It’s that you seem to think you’re one-dimensional and that veering between extremes is a bad thing. Life is extreme. We experience so many highs and lows as humans. Why try to stuff that into a box? Let it out, and really feel what’s happening to you.”
What was this conversation they were having? Willingly open yourself up to feel things, like pain and betrayal and suffering? No, thanks. “Um, why would I want to do that, again?”
His dark blue eyes danced. “Because that’s when you get to the amazing part.”
There was no doubt in her mind they’d veered firmly into intimate territory and that Val unleashed would be amazing. Amazingly dangerous, sensual, driving her to extremes, as promised. That sounded like the worst idea in history. She concentrated on avoiding those types of emotions, and any man who spent that much energy indulging in hedonism did not stick with one woman. The signs were all there, in neon. He practically bled erotic suggestion, even in the way his full lips formed words. She’d never believe he’d be satisfied with monogamy.
Which mattered not at all since she wasn’t asking him to apply for the nonexistent position of her lover. They had a professional relationship, and that was the full extent of it.
Speaking of which...there was very little coaching going on thus far this morning, and she needed to get it together. Step in and guide him toward the end goal since he’d made it clear he either couldn’t or wouldn’t rein himself in.
“Val.” She held up a finger as he cocked a brow. “No. Back to business. I threw away the plan because it’s useless at this point. But you’re still my client, and I promised you that we’d get your inheritance. We’re going to concentrate on that. There’s nothing else between us.”
“Right now, yes,” he agreed readily. “But not forever.”
So sure, are you? She shook her head. “We need to focus here, Val. I’m treading on some shaky ground without the proven strategies that I just abandoned. I need you to be on my side if I’m going to be on yours.”
He let another indulgent smile spill onto his face. “Are you admitting you have vulnerabilities? And here I thought you weren’t embracing your highs and lows.”
“I’m not admitting anything of the sort,” she shot back primly. “I’m saying this is uncharted water. If I’m not reshaping you into a CEO, what am I doing?”
“Winning,” he said succinctly. “Just as soon as you figure out if we’re on shaky ground or in uncharted water.”
The man was going to unglue her. “Are you deliberately trying to sabotage this?”
He abruptly extricated himself from behind his desk and sidled around it to end up on her side of it, leaning against the edge as he towered over her. This close, his masculine scent couldn’t be ignored, and her needy, treacherous insides sniffed it out instantly, inhaling him in one gulp.
Mayday! Val was not for her. She had rules about dating clients, rules about men like him, rules about her rules. Why was all of that so hard to remember when he pursed his perfect lips and watched her with undisguised wickedness sparking in his expression?
“I’m deliberately trying to get you out from behind your walls so we can work together. You’ve got more land mines ringing you than a military outpost in Iraq. I get that I’m asking you to do this gig differently than you’re used to, and that there’s no tried and true formula that fits me. I trust that we’re going to figure it out. Together,” he stressed.
Trust. That was a word that didn’t get thrown around in her world very often. But if she’d engendered his, great. That was a fantastic first step. Unfortunately, it was the first in a long line of them.
“Then you have to trust me when I say that the first step is that makeover.” Please, God, get him the hell out of this office, and make him go somewhere else. “You need a wardrobe that tells people that you’re the one who makes the decisions. Then you don’t have be a shark because people already recognize your power even before you open your mouth.”
He nodded once and extended his hand. “You have to come with me. That’s part of the deal.”
“What? No. I’m not going with you.” She needed decompression time, best done miles and miles away from Val.
“Yes,” he said simply and wiggled his fingers. “We’re a team. I need your critical eye. What if the suits I get give people the wrong message? Come on. We can talk about next steps at the same time.”
Yeah, no, that was not happening. She did not take men shopping for suits. Or anything else. That was entirely too intimate an activity. “That’s what the tailor is for. You explain what you’re looking for, and he creates it. When you’re spending five grand on a suit, they tend to be a little better than average at customer service.”
“This is why you have to come,” he returned without blinking an eye and pushed his hand further into her space. “Because there is no way I can actually hand someone my credit card to purchase suits that cost five thousand dollars. You’re going to have to do it for me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Seriously?”
Judging by the mulish glint in his gaze, she had two choices. She could test out which one of them could hold out the longest or give up now since he didn’t intend to concede. He’d spent the better part of fifteen minutes laying out how this coaching assignment needed to work differently than her other ones, and either she could climb on board his crazy train now or keep fighting him—and losing.
“Fine,” she spit out for the second time this morning, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. “But I can stand on my own.”
He didn’t move his hand. “The offer to help you out of your chair has nothing to do with your abilities and everything to do with my character. The faster you learn that, the easier this is going to go.”
That sank in much more quickly than she would have credited and, for God knew what reason, she believed him. Or, rather, she accepted that he thought it was true. She’d expended an enormous amount of energy trying to be accepted into a man’s world, and letting one treat her like a woman didn’t get her anywhere but frustrated. Val was in a class by himself and probably really didn’t get the dynamic, nor would he if she explained it. So she opted to skip the lecture about sexual politics in the c-suite and clasped his hand.
The shock of it swept over them, and he didn’t even bother to hide the result. Awareness swamped her, heightened by the decidedly carnal edge to his smile as he pulled her to her feet, which didn’t diminish the snap, crackle and pop in the least. He still leaned on the desk, only now