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Not Just the Boss's Plaything(56)

By:Caitlin Crews


That annoyed him, too.

"Has something happened with the Vila Resort there which requires your    personal attention?" she asked, her voice as calm and unruffled as the    rest of her-as if last night she hadn't sounded so uneven, so  breakable.   As if she hadn't spoken to him the way she would to the  architect of   her despair. As if he hadn't touched her like that, as  though she were   fragile. Precious, even.

What are you so afraid of? he heard her ask again, and it made something inside him seem to tear itself in half.

"It is a part of the Vila Group," he replied, in a voice far short of civility. "It all requires my personal attention."

Her too-knowing gray eyes met his, held for a moment, then dropped to    the tablet she'd placed on the table before her. She smiled when the    hovering staff placed a large silver pot of tea before her, and waved    away the offer of food. And for some reason, her silence felt like a    rebuke.

"We leave tonight," he said, his tone still clipped, though markedly    more polite than it had been. He didn't know why he was responding    meekly instead of as he'd prefer, which involved hauling her up and into    his arms and dealing with all of this sexual tension once and for  all.   No matter what she thought of him-or what he thought of himself,  for   that matter. "Consider it my gift to you for your years of  service, if   you must."

Something flared in her gaze again, then disappeared behind that smooth,    calm wall of hers he found he liked less and less the longer he  looked   at it. He wondered if it was as hard for her to maintain that   courteous,  professional veneer as it was becoming for him to keep his   hands off  her.

He rather doubted it.

"Will this 'gift' count as part of my final two weeks?" she asked    lightly, though when her gaze met his, it hinted of steel. "Because    that's all the time you have left, Mr. Vila. No matter what you choose    to do with it."

"You said it was where you wanted to go," he reminded her, furious-at    her for not accepting what he was reluctant to admit was an olive    branch, and at himself for offering it in the first place. But something    in the way she'd looked at him last night had burrowed deep beneath   his  skin. He could feel it now, like an impossible itch.

"Yes," she agreed softly. "I want to go to Bora Bora." She raised one    delicate shoulder and then let it fall. "I never said I wanted to go    with you."

That sat there between them.

There was no reason at all, Cayo reasoned, that it should feel like a    slap when he could see clearly that she was only being frank. He already    knew what she thought of him. Hadn't she been at such great pains to    make sure of it? No matter how different it might have appeared in the    dark last night? He shouldn't be surprised, if that was what this odd    feeling was. He wasn't.

"Life," he said after a moment, his accent thicker than it should have    been, almost as if his temper was high, which wasn't in the least bit    rational, "is all about compromise."

"Really?" she asked. Her eyes searched his, and she looked somewhere    between amused and genuinely baffled, which somehow made it worse. "How    would you know?"

Cayo tossed back the rest of his espresso and decided he was tired, that    was all. There was no deeper reason for any of this. How could there    be? He hadn't slept. That was why his head was so muddled. Why he  could   not seem to sort through his own thoughts, his own motivations.  Nor  even  his own reactions.                       
       
           



       

"I am finding it difficult to track all of your accusations," he said    after a moment, his tone dry. Almost conversational. "You believe I am a    sociopath, yet last night you told me I am also afraid. Today I am    unfamiliar with compromise. Before, I was Godzilla, was I not?" He was    fascinated by the color that rose in her cheeks, and then equally    intrigued by the way she squared her shoulders, as if withstanding an    attack. "I believe I take your meaning, Miss Bennett. I am a monster    without equal."

Monster. It was only a word, he told himself then, as it seemed to echo    hard in him, recalling that whitewashed village high in the Spanish    mountains, his grandfather's harsh pleasure on his eighteenth birthday.    It is just a word. It means nothing.

"You are a man who assumes that his will is sufficient permission to do    anything he likes," Drusilla said slowly, as if she were considering    each word carefully. "There are no consequences for the things you do."    She reached for her tea, and poured a stream of the hot liquid into  the   delicate cup before her. Her gaze flicked to his, then away. "It  would   never occur to you to care."

He wanted to touch her with a new kind of fury, so intense was his    desire to feel her skin against his. To take that mouth of hers and    learn it, own it, make it his. To follow her down onto the nearest flat    surface and lose himself inside her, at last.

But he did nothing of the kind. He held on to his control by the faintest, thinnest thread. Again.

"Of course not," he said coldly, as if there was nothing steaming up the    air between them, as if there were no tension at all, no desire, no    need. He reached for the Financial Times folded beside his plate and    told himself he was dismissing her as he'd always done before, without    thought. Without a single care, as accused. "That's what I pay you  for."

* * *

It was a remarkably long trip.

I didn't want you to leave, he'd said.

Dru couldn't stop replaying it in her head, again and again. She handled    the packing, the delivery of appropriate clothes for Cayo from the    Milan ateliers he preferred and her own hurried selections from La    Rinascente, the city's premier department store hardly a stone's throw    from the Duomo. She sent out a flurry of emails, made the day's series    of phone calls, and carried out the usual duties of her job,  accustomed   as she was to performing it wherever she happened to find  herself.

But she couldn't seem to get last night out of her mind. The chill of    the air, the inky dark and his hand so soft against her cheek. That    storm in his midnight gaze that had crashed through her, too. That still    did. Why should a few quiet words and a couple of touches affect her    so? Why should she feel as if everything was different, when nothing    seemed to have changed at all?

They boarded one of Cayo's jets in Milan late that evening, and Dru made    her way to her usual bedchamber. She stretched out on the bed and   dared  not let herself succumb to the turmoil inside herself, not when   there  was still the rest of her two weeks to live through. She couldn't   let  herself crack so soon. She'd never survive.

When she woke hours later, they simply went to work as if they were in    the Vila Group's London headquarters rather than on a plane headed    across the planet. She sat right there at his side in the area set apart    for business. She queued up his calls, handling the many details of    each, presenting him with the necessary documents and background    materials he needed, and reminding him of anything he might have forgot    or overlooked as the calls wore on. She prepped the various people who    rang in, alerting them to Cayo's shifting moods and often suggesting    ways to combat them. Between calls, they discussed various strategies  to   employ or different approaches to take to tackle each new issue or    person.

"I'm tired of his games," Cayo said of one mutinous board member at one    point, raking his hands through his hair in agitation. "I want to end    him."

"That's one approach." Dru removed a stack of documents from in front of    him and replaced them with another, larger stack. "Another might be  to   simply work around him the way you did with the Argentina project  last   year. Isolate him. Who will he play his games with then?"