Blush(112)

“You’re killing me here, woman.” Drawing her knees up beside his hips, she braced her open hands on his chest. Cruz found it damn hard to suck in air. Her small breasts hung over him like mounds of whipped cream with cherries on top. “Were the board members also part of the China deal?”

“No. China was all Miles and Candice. She fooled everyone with that disguise. Including the last guy, whom she apparently hired in a skid row bar and showed my photograph to. Too bad she came to the office pretending to be me so she could do a press conference on the street outside to preempt anything I had planned. Black Raven is still uncovering more—something I’d like you to be doing to me right about now.”

When he didn’t respond she gave an exasperated sigh and kept her body still, but she was over him, caging him with her arms and legs and hot little snatch that begged to be fucked until neither of them could walk.

“If there’s any connection, they’ll find it,” she told him, her chest indicating that, like him, she was having a hard time not panting like a wolf in heat. “I—I do know that Basson and Candice opened the faux Blush factory in China and were selling knockoff Blush products to Chinese markets. Then they saw an opportunity for Candice to impersonate me so I’d be discredited and vilified in the press, scheming to ensure Blush’s stock prices plummeted.

“What brought in Interpol was Basson getting sick and greedy with an Internet kiddie porn ring run out of the factory. They closed in yesterday— a joint task force, intersecting with the police investigation, and also the information from the private security firm I hired.”

“I doubt your father left Candice in the poorhouse. What did this woman really want? Was it financial?” People killed for five dollars. It was a case of supply and demand, and it wasn’t always the people who worked their asses off who got the big payday. Others stole and/or killed for it.

“Candice had the shares left to her by my father, and a place on the board. But she wanted more. Wanted to be the face of Blush. Knowing her, I speculate that she wanted the fame more than the fortune. She and Basson had been having an affair soon after she married my father. Okay. I have to admit, that was a freaking shocker! I had no idea, no clue that they even knew one another to say more than hi to. For three years she’d been seducing or coercing board members to side with her, claiming I was squandering stockholders’ money with my wild schemes and do-good projects.”

He’d surmised most of what she was telling him, and while Black Raven Security hadn’t breached client confidentiality, Cruz got just enough to add the new info to what he knew, or what he suspected. “Investment company being prosecuted?”

“Hell yes. The people responsible have already been rounded up and taken into custody. You saw Miles being taken out in cuffs. On his way to prison. He’ll be tried for conspiracy to commit murder with Candice and several board members as accomplices.”

“Class A felony. Solicitation to commit a violent crime. Solicitation to commit murder. Several counts, and international child pornography? ” He shook his head. “They’ll have the book thrown at them.” Cruz placed his hands on her narrow back. For a strong woman she felt almost fragile in his arms. Her strength was her will, and her inner capability. But no matter how indomitable she might be, she was no match for a well-placed bullet.

She blinked, and murmured, “Ow.”

“Sorry.” He’d squeezed her too tightly, and she gave him a questioning look. Cruz relaxed his fingers spanning the small of her back, but didn’t drop his hands as he dragged in a shuddering breath, then held it for several beats, and he was shocked at how badly it ripped at his lungs. His chest felt constricted, and that had nothing to do with Mia’s weight surrounding him like a warm satin blanket. Cruz shut his eyes for several moments as he gathered himself. “She bled out in my arms. I thought your stepmother was you.”

Her soft mouth trembled, and her eyes welled in sympathy. “Oh, Cruz—”

“I died on the sidewalk this afternoon, Mia. I was gutted. It was . . . devastating. Soul-wrenching. I remembered the way your eyes lit up when you looked at me. Blue fire, so pure, so good, it was hard to live up to the person you saw me to be. I remembered the taste of your mouth, and the words you didn’t need to say because you showed me how you felt every time we made love. I remembered the silky slide of your hair against my belly as you gave me everything, in every way I never imagined I wanted. I remembered your compassion, your humor, and the dizzying fragrance of your skin. . . . I will never smell a tuberose without my brain and heart being filled to the brim with . . . you. And I realized, as I held her, that the woman in my arms wasn’t—couldn’t be—you. She didn’t feel like you, didn’t smell like you—I raced through your building like a madman. Your staff was afraid I was a deranged madman come to kill you. An irony of monolithic proportions,” he said dryly, using his thumb to wipe away a tear shimmering on her eyelashes. “When I finally made it to the boardroom—when I realized I was being given a second chance—it was as if the sun went supernova and poured into every cell of my body.”