was inscrutable, his manner relaxed. ‘Where is your own block of money coming from?’ Smooth as silk, he kept the discussion fixed to his own agenda.
Her breath shuddered on an overwrought sigh. ‘None of your business,’ she muttered, then got up and paced tensely away from the desk.
‘It is if you borrowed from Peter to pay back Paul, so to speak,’ he pointed out. ‘Which would only make the bottom figure here worse, not better.’
‘I have money left over from my mother’s bequest,’ she told him reluctantly.
‘No you don’t.’
‘What—?’ Stung by his quiet certainty she spun to stare at him.
Instantly she felt under attack. It was his eyes, and the knowledge of truth she could see written in them.
‘Your mother’s money went on paying back debts years ago,’ he informed her. ‘After that you spent the next few years selling off the family heirlooms one by one, until there were very few left worth selling. Then came the quiet period when your father behaved himself for a couple of years—or so you believed. When it all started up again, you resorted to selling off small plots of land on the far edges of your family estate to wealthy businessmen who were looking for somewhere to build a country retreat. But the council eventually put a stop to that, quoting the rape of country heritage law or some such thing.
‘So what’s left to sell, Caroline?’ he asked. ‘The ancestral home, which is already mortgaged to the hilt? Or the few heirlooms that are left—which probably belong to the bank already, on paper at least? Or maybe you were thinking of paying me back with the commission you earn working for those London-based interior designers who pay you peanuts for your considerable knowledge of all things aesthetic, to hunt out pieces of artwork and various objets d’art to decorate the homes of their wealthy clients?’
It was like being pummelled into the ground by a very large mallet. She had never felt so small in her whole life.
‘What next, Caroline?’ He pummelled her some more with the soft pound of his ruthless voice. ‘What could you possibly have left that would appease any bank holding a debt the size of yours? Yourself, maybe?’ he suggested silkily. ‘Are you thinking of prostituting yourself to the highest bidder so that Daddy can keep on feeding his addiction because he can’t help himself?’
‘Stop it!’ she choked. ‘Just shut up—shut up!’ She couldn’t listen to any more! White-faced, totally demolished, she stared at him in blank incomprehension as to why he was being so cruel. ‘How do you know all of this? Where did you get your information? How long have you been compiling that—’ she waved a shaky hand at the thick wad of paper sitting on the desk in front of him ‘—dossier on me?’
‘Information can be bought any time, anywhere, so long as you have the money to pay for it.’
‘And that makes it all right to pry into my life?’ she cried. ‘Why, Luiz—why?’ She just didn’t understand it! ‘What did I ever do to you to make you want to pursue me in this h-horrible way? It was you that once used me, remember!’ she added painfully. ‘You slaked one of your lusts with my body, night after wretched night, then went off to slake your other lust at a card table with my father!’
‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ he gritted, and he was suddenly on his feet. Tense—like her. Angry—like her. As bitter as hell—like her.
‘Oh, that’s rich!’ Caroline scorned him. ‘When it comes to your faults, you don’t want to talk about it! Yet you’ve just taken great delight in listing my faults and failings—and even had the gall to call me a prostitute!’
‘I made it an option, not a fact,’ he corrected. But he looked pale—pale enough for Caroline to know that she had touched a raw nerve somewhere inside his ruthless soul.
‘And we both know who sold himself for the pot of gold, Luiz,’ Caroline persisted angrily. ‘We both know that your motive for keeping me in bed with you was so I couldn’t be keeping an eye on my father!’
‘All right, let’s have that one out,’ he decided, swinging round the desk to begin striding towards her.
Caroline wanted to back off, but hell could freeze over before she would let herself do so. He arrived, big and threatening, right in front of her.
‘You think I prostituted myself for the pot of gold seven years ago.’ She had hit a raw nerve, Caroline confirmed. ‘So let’s just see which one of us can delve the depths this time. Here’s the deal, Caroline. Take it or leave it,’ he announced. ‘Sleep with me tonight and I won’t play your father.’
Sleep with him? He was lucky she didn’t wing her hand at his face! ‘Well, if that isn’t mixing business with pleasure—what is?’ she spat at him in disgust.
‘No—no,’ Luiz argued. ‘This is called mixing pleasure with pleasure.’ And he was even smiling, the black-hearted devil.
‘Go to hell,’ she told him, then spun on her heel with the intention of walking out of there as fast as she damn well could.
‘The offer holds only as long as it takes you to open that door,’ Luiz fed swiftly after her.
Her footsteps stilled, though her heart-rate didn’t, it raged on right out of that door and onto the next flight out of this awful place! She converted that rage into a different kind of action by wheeling back round to face him. Luiz didn’t need words to know what she was thinking. And his answering shrug spoke for itself.
‘Everyone has a price, Caroline,’ he taunted silkily. ‘I am just trying to ascertain your price, that’s all…’
‘I’ll never forgive you for this,’ she breathed.
‘By that, are you trying to tell me that it would hurt you to go to bed with me?’ he questioned smoothly.
From feeling chilled she went hot—hot with discomfort. Because, after what they had just almost done in the pool room, there was no way she could pretend that sleeping with Luiz would be anything but a whole lot of pleasure!
A light suddenly began winking on the desk console, saving Caroline from having to make the worst decision of her entire life.
Luiz swung back to his desk, sat down in his chair again, then reached out to flick a finger at a switch. ‘Yes?’ he prompted.
‘It’s time we were leaving,’ the same deep voice Caroline had first heard through the narrow gap in the pool room door informed him.
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully on Caroline. Quite unexpectedly she began to shake so badly that she just had to sit down. The chair she had just vacated was nearest. Almost stumbling over to it, she lowered herself down as Luiz murmured a quiet, ‘Two minutes, Vito…’ and cut the connection.
Too long spent riding a roller coaster of too many shocks and worries had shaken her insides to pieces. She stared helplessly at Luiz, and knew he was waiting for her to voice her surrender to him out loud.
On a sharp stab of pain she flicked her eyes away, because she couldn’t bear to look at him and give him that surrender.
It was then that she saw it. ‘Oh, good grief,’ she gasped. She had only just noticed the scorpion crawling down the wall behind him. The picture was so life-like that she actually reared back in the chair to take instinctive avoiding action. ‘Luiz—that thing is hideous!’
‘But effective,’ he smiled.
It was then she remembered that the first business he had ever owned outright had been a small nightclub in New York called, as he had informed her rather deridingly, The Scorpion, and bought from an old friend whose deteriorating health had forced him to accept a quieter way of life. Within two years Luiz had sold the club on to a big inner-city developer for the kind of money that had allowed him to give his own life new direction. ‘And I haven’t needed to look back since,’