The Argentine's Price

CHAPTER FIVE


“I HOPE you aren’t busy today.”

Vanessa jumped and dropped the pen she was holding into the cup of tea on her desk. She looked up and saw Lazaro standing in the doorway of her office.

She looked down into her tea then back up at tall, dark and handsome intruder. “In some cultures it’s considered rude to sneak up on people.”

“I didn’t sneak. You were deep in thought, or something like that.” He walked in and put both of his hands on the back of the chair that was positioned in front of her desk. “I wanted to talk to you about your plans for Pickett. Being your principal shareholder, it’s very much a vested interest of mine.”

“I thought you were going to impart your wisdom to me. That is what you do, right?”

“Yes, that is what I do. Do you know why I’m so good at consulting, Vanessa? Why I make more than any of the CEOs I give consultations to?”

“Why?” she asked, her tone dry.

“Because I’m not stuck in the past. I have no loyalty to tradition or convention. I know how to increase profit, and I’m equipped to see new ways of doing things because the old style of business means nothing to me.”

Vanessa gritted her teeth. “Well, tradition means a lot to me. To my father.”

“And that’s probably the source of most of your problems.”

“It’s probably also why we’ve lasted as long as we have,” she said stiffly.

“Until now. Now you need change. I’m bringing it. I’ve been over the expense reports from the past five years, and you might be interested in knowing that there was a sharp decline in sales and production the year before you took over. So it isn’t all your fault.”

Vanessa bit her lower lip, forcing herself to hold back a string of colorful and inventive expletives. “I know that. I told you changing markets have …”

“Made it difficult to compete. The fact is, Vanessa, if you want to keep the bulk of your production in the U.S. you won’t be able to compete. But you can change what you’re offering.”

“Change what, exactly?”

“The future is in environmental sustainability. Responsible waste-disposal practices, using recycled materials. You might not be able to offer the cheapest product, but you can offer the safest, the most ethical.”

“It would require some fairly aggressive campaigning.” She started looking around the desk for a pen.

“In your teacup.”

She felt the blush creep up her neck and over her cheeks. “I’ll just get a new one.” She opened her desk drawer and rummaged until she found a non-soggy pen.

“It would require some changes to the factory, to materials, to a lot of things actually. And it will cost.”

“I’m not exactly swimming in resources.”

“You could take a loan from your future husband.”

Lazaro watched as Vanessa’s cheeks flushed with angry color. “No.”

“We have an agreement, Vanessa. I intend to honor it.”

And he intended to let Michael Pickett know just how much control he was assuming of his assets. That he didn’t have just his daughter, but that he’d played the part of savior for the venerable Pickett family business.

“I am not getting myself into that much debt. Not with you.”

“Not a loan, an exchange. A fair one, I think.”

“Hardly. I feel like you’re … buying me.” She spat out the last words as though they were distasteful.

“Do you want to back out?”

She snapped her mouth shut, tightened her jaw. “I don’t …”

“Because if you do, make no mistake, I don’t make idle threats. I will push the board to appoint a new CEO of Pickett, Vanessa.”

She curled her fingers around the pen she was holding, angry color spreading from her cheeks down to her collarbone. “Are you always going to hold your power over my head? For the rest of our lives? Because that might be the one thing I just can’t deal with.”

A stab of regret hit him hard in the chest. Making threats wasn’t really his style. But something about the Pickett family, about the whole situation, brought things out in him that were normally dormant. Rage, a reminder of what it was to feel truly helpless, to feel as though his life wasn’t really his own, but belonged to those with power over him.

“You don’t have to worry about that, Vanessa, provided you don’t back out of our agreement.”

“I won’t,” she said tightly.

She looked at him, her dark eyes hard, her lush lips thinned into a tight line. He wanted to kiss her until her lips softened, until she was as desperate as he was. Until she begged.

Later. There would be time later. He wasn’t about to let her manipulate him with his desire, even if she was doing it unknowingly. And he was certain she didn’t know. She didn’t give him any coy looks, no knowing smiles or flutters of her thick, dark lashes.

She blushed easily, her skin turning pink with nerves, embarrassment or anger. Her reactions seemed honest. He wasn’t used to dealing with people who possessed Vanessa’s straightforward manner. He was used to games, had gotten very good at playing them, at holding his cards close to his chest. Vanessa stripped that ability from him. She brought things to the surface, emotions, he wasn’t used to dealing with. He wasn’t about to allow her that sort of control. She’d turned him into a blind fool twelve years ago, a stupid boy who’d let the Pickett heiress walk all over him.

He was past that now. He would not be manipulated.

“You’re right, querida, you won’t. Because if you do, I will seize control of everything. I have that power.”

“I believe it,” she said, her words clipped. “But right now you’re in my office. So I think the power might be in my favor.”

Pride, unexpected and unwanted, made his chest expand. Pride and a strong measure of lust. He liked it better when she stood up to him. Liked it better when he saw a spark set fire to her dark brown eyes. It made his blood run faster, having her challenge him.

“Going to call security on me?” he asked.

“Do I have to?” She pursed her lips and cocked her hip to the side.

“Only if you can’t handle me yourself.”

“I’m more than capable. I’m not a little girl.”

No, she wasn’t. Not even close. His heart thundered heavily in his chest, the desire, the need to reach out and touch her almost overwhelming. But he couldn’t afford to feel anything. Not now. Not when he was so close.

He forced his thoughts back on his goal, on his reason for being there. “Good. Busy tonight?”

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I don’t know. Am I? Do I have a choice?”

Annoyance surged through him. “Do you think I’m taking total control of your life?”

“I don’t know what you expect from a little wife,” her words taunting, arousing, infuriating.

His heart thundered hard in his chest. She was making him out to be some kind of a tyrant. She was making him feel like one. He didn’t like it, he didn’t want her to see him that way, and he had no idea why he should care. When she hadn’t seen him as the enemy, she’d seen him as beneath her.

He rounded the desk and she stood, hands on her round, shapely hips, a deadly glitter in her eyes.

“I expect you to attend events on my arm,” he said. “I expect to use your connections to make advantageous business deals. And I expect this.” He hooked his arm around her waist and drew her to him.

She was breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling against his chest. He realized he was breathing hard too. To hell with fighting it. She was his now, no longer off limits to him.

See. Want. Have.

He put his hand on her face, cupped her cheek, touched her soft lower lip with his thumb. “I want this,” he said, his voice sounding rough, strained, even to his own ears.

He dipped his head and kissed her. Her lips parted beneath his. He wasn’t certain whether it was in shock or supplication, but he wasn’t going to stop and analyze it either.

She would be his now. Finally. His. All the longing, the lust that he’d carried around with him for so many years, aching and unsatisfied no matter how many women had warmed his bed since …

She tasted the same. Just as he remembered. So utterly unique, unforgettable. The only woman who had ever made him lose his head, the only woman who had ever rejected him. The only woman whose memory lingered after years of separation. Most women were a vague impression after a few days. Not Vanessa. She had stayed vivid and powerful in his mind.

And it had only been a shadow of the reality.

Actually kissing her, the velvety slide of her tongue against his, the soft sigh of satisfaction she made against his lips, her fingers curling around the fabric of his shirt as she held on to him, anchoring him to her, that was better than anything in his memory. It made his blood run like liquid fire through his veins, made his body pulse with need, made him hard and aching with the necessity of burying himself inside her.

She stole any semblance of control with the softness of her lips.

He slid his hand around the indent of her waist, the curve of her hip. She had changed physically. Her curves were softer, more womanly. More enticing. He’d been a boy twelve years ago, but he was a man now. And she was all woman.

Vanessa felt empowered by his passion, his anger. He was trying to show her that he had the power, but in one intense rush, she realized that she was the one who held it, because his hands, sifting through her hair, were unsteady, his body was hard with arousal. For her. Because of her.

He deepened the kiss and she took his bottom lip between her teeth, nipping the tender skin, showing him that she wasn’t going to be passive, in this or anything else, needing badly to stake a claim on him, as he was doing to her.

A growl rumbled in his chest and he took a step, backing her into her desk. She heard her pencil holder fall onto the floor, its contents scattering. She didn’t care.

There was nothing. Nothing but this. This battle of wills and the all-consuming passion that was taking over her mind, her body.

His fingers crept beneath the edge of her top and she was arched into him, powerless to do anything else. And that sudden loss of control, that concession to his power, made a jolt of reality slap her in the face.

She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to let him have this control. She shouldn’t feel the way she did, as if she would die if she didn’t have him. Inside of her. Now. On the floor, the desk, wherever.

She couldn’t afford to give him this part of her, to let him have dominion over her body. He would never love her, and if she gave in to this … she would be vulnerable. She couldn’t allow that.

Maybe you can’t have love, but you can have this.

Amazing, all-consuming lust.

No. It would never just be that. Not for her. Lazaro was more to her than just a hard body. And she would never be anything more to him than a simple means of feeding his sex drive.

She let go of him and pulled away, her heart thundering in her ears.

He flicked a dismissive glance in her direction, seemingly unaffected by what had just happened between them. Totally unfair, since her world had had another dramatic shift on its axis.

“I can see it won’t be a problem,” he said.

“What?” she asked, still feeling thick and muddled from the arousal that was crowding all the good, useful information out of her brain and leaving room only for the screaming want that was pounding through her.

“The attraction between us is very strong. That part of our marriage will not be a problem.”

As far as physical attraction went, no, it wouldn’t be. But it would be everything she’d never wanted and then some. A man using her because she was convenient. Because she had status. Because she had things he wanted, not because she was who he wanted.

That he was attracted to her didn’t make her feel all that special. Yes, Lazaro was a sex god with looks that could not be denied, but men tended to like sex from whoever would give it to them. And after that display he was probably feeling pretty positive that getting it would be easy.

“I have work to do,” she said, sinking back into her chair.

“I’ll leave you to it then. Are we on for tonight?”

“What are we doing?” she asked, her eyes wandering to the pen still resting in her teacup.

“It’s a surprise.”

Vanessa watched him walk out of the room and her only thought was that she didn’t think she could take another surprise from Lazaro.

Lazaro touched the velvet box in his coat pocket and cursed the flash of adrenaline that raced through him. It was adrenaline; it certainly wasn’t nerves. He didn’t do nerves. He did decisive action. He didn’t question, he moved forward with confidence. Always.

That was how he’d worked his way up from the ground level of the massive corporation he’d eventually built up with his ideas on how to reinvent the place. It was how he’d built a career, a name for himself. How he’d netted billions in the bank.

He took advantage of every resource and did what had to be done. As he was doing now.

It was extremely fortuitous that one of the art museum’s head curators happened to be on a par with Vanessa’s father as far as social clout went. And even more fortuitous that she was a gossip.

It meant that she would tell anyone who was even half-interested that Lazaro Marino had paid to have the museum empty this evening so that he could ask the woman in his life a very important question.

In Vanessa’s circle, media exposure was seen as vulgar, common. Anyone could earn that kind of notoriety. The First Families and those like them saw class as something you were born with, not something you could acquire. And anyone who wasn’t born with it was somehow less.

The way to spread the word was through careless discretion, nothing half so common as an actual write-up in a newspaper.

He curled his fingers around the ring box and leaned against the terrace railing. Vanessa was due to arrive soon, another detail carefully coordinated with a trail that would be easy to follow.

He heard high heels on marble and looked up. Vanessa was walking toward him, the expression on her face mutinous. She had dressed for the occasion, though, as he’d requested. Red silk this time, hugging her curves. Her lips were painted to match her dress and her dark hair was pulled back into a neat bun. He wished she’d left it down. He enjoyed the feel of the silken strands sliding through his fingers.

He tightened his hold on the ring box. This was what it was about. The ring. Taking his place in the world. The truth was, he didn’t give a damn about what anyone in high society thought of him. But he wouldn’t be seen as beneath anyone, as some sort of trash from the barrio they could despise and lord their power over. He wouldn’t be beneath anyone. And Vanessa was the key.

“What is this?” she asked, looking around the terrace. It was lit by a string of paper lanterns that hung low overhead, just as it had been the night they’d met at the charity event.

“You didn’t guess?”

“I wouldn’t dare try to guess at the inner workings of your mind,” she said, walking to the railing and resting her forearms on the top of it, leaning over, keeping her eyes fixed on the garden.

He moved so that he was standing next to her and pulled the ring box out of his pocket and placed it on the top of the stone railing. “I thought this was an ideal place to make our arrangement official.”

She turned her head sharply, her eyes wide. Then she looked down at the ring box.

“Are you going to look at it?” he asked.

“I … so this is your proposal?” Her eyebrows winged halfway up her forehead, her expression one of pure incredulity.

“I think I proposed already,” he said stiffly.

“Well, but … no, because now there’s a ring.” She didn’t touch the ring box, she just looked at it.

“And most women at this point would be looking at the ring.”

“Why all this?” she asked, ignoring his statement. “The museum and the lights?”

“Because I had to speak to quite a few people to arrange this romantic gesture.”

She nodded slowly. “And they’ll tell other people.”

“Yes. Your social class is just small enough that word travels to everyone in it very quickly.”

She frowned. “Right.”

“I’m sorry, did you want something more public?”

She shrugged. “No.”

Anger surged in him, anger and something else that he couldn’t quite identify. “You’re disappointed?”

“I’m not disappointed. That implies I had an expectation about this moment and, truly, for all I knew, you were going to courier me a ring at my office. But I did have expectations of this moment as far as my life goes.”

“And this doesn’t meet your standards?” he asked, his stomach tightening.

“Not really.”

“You might want to look at the rock before you declare the effort subpar, querida,” he said, conscious of the fact that his accent had thickened with his building anger.

He popped the top on the box and pushed it closer to her. She looked down and her eyes widened. Not a big surprise. Five carats would have that effect on someone like her.

“I hope that’s fitting of a woman of your status.”

Vanessa looked down at the ring, glittering beneath the lantern light. The large, square diamond set into a band of white gold with an intricate, antique-style weave was nestled in cream silk, looking as if it had been made just for her.

There was so much about the moment that seemed made just for her. An empty art museum, a gorgeous man and a marriage proposal. If it had been a real marriage proposal—real in the sense that there was love behind it and not just mercenary business dealings—he would have gotten down on one knee. They would have walked through the museum and talked about their future. They would have felt like the only two people in the world.

If they had never parted, if she had stopped him from leaving that night, maybe it would be real.

Her heart squeezed in her chest and she squelched the thought. It didn’t matter. This was reality. And in reality, he’d shoved the ring in her direction and barely looked at her. He hadn’t even asked the question, and it all just hung between them, awkward and unspoken. Painful. Because this was like some nightmare version of a fantasy she might have created for herself.

“It’s lovely.” She reached out and touched it, hesitant to pick it up, to put it on, because the ring made it all seem real. And final.

And because part of her wanted so badly to wear Lazaro’s ring, so very badly. And that was embarrassing, humiliating. She didn’t really want the Lazaro that had come back into her life with all the finesse of a jackhammer. She wanted the man she used to imagine he was. The man he never had been.

“Don’t you like it, querida?” he asked.

“I love it. It’s beautiful. Perfect.”

“You seem giddy,” he said, his expression flat.

“I love it,” she said, teeth gritted.

“Put it on.”

Anger surged through her, pummeling her tender heart. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

She held her hand out, determined not to be the one to fasten her own diamond handcuffs. He took her hand in his, the heat of his skin on hers sending prickles of electricity through her body, making it nearly impossible for her to cling to the anger that was anchoring her to the balcony, reminding her that this was nothing more than a farce.

He took the ring out of the box and it caught the light. Such a beautiful sign of eternal bondage. She closed her eyes while he pushed it onto her fourth finger. It fit perfectly, and it was more disturbing than anything that it fit. That it somehow seemed right.

She pulled her hand back and brushed her palm down over her skirt, trying to ease the fiery, tingling sensation that was spreading from her fingertips to her wrist.

“How big is it?” Her own voice, the mercenary tone, cooled her off quickly. Reminded her that this was a transaction. Nothing more. Because she had to do something to stop her heart from pounding faster. To keep herself from thinking of all the what-ifs.

“Does it matter?” he asked, his voice as cold as the sick weight in her stomach.

“I’ve heard size matters.”

A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Big enough to satisfy you.”

She swallowed hard, the need to get the upper hand fueling her, choosing her words for her. “I’m not sure about that.”

“The purebred could do better?”

She looked at the ring again. It was beautiful. Perfect. “Possibly.” The lie stuck in her throat.

He jerked back, as though she’d struck him. He looked, just for a moment, like the boy he’d been the night she’d rejected him. Then any vulnerability was gone, replaced with an expression that was as hard as granite.

“I think,” he said, “it’s time we went and had a talk with your father.”