ones. I bet you’re very popular.” He was being sarcastic.
“A necessary evil” was probably the kindest thing she’d been called, usually in an email chain not meant for her eyes.
Was she evil? She would have called her mother that, until she had been backed into a corner herself and now had to think about how she would survive.
“As you say, most people think I’m a computer program. I’ve never concerned myself much with whether people like me so long as your grandmother was satisfied with my work.”
A small lie. She would love a friend, a real one, not an old woman who had forgotten what it was like to be young and curious about the world. One who was scared to let her see any of it, in case it made her leave.
“On the topic of programs,” she said, feeling clammy sweat break on her palms. “It might interest you to know that your grandmother requested I switch exclusively to using your operating system. She had reservations about cloud-based so she purchased the download versions. We use all your business modules, accounting and security, the productivity suite... She wanted to know her most important records and cryptocurrency were backed up and protected against intrusion. She liked that you claim it’s next to impossible to hack. I’m sure you could get in, though. If you had to.”
There. She was inching onto the limb she had chosen.
It might hold her or it might snap and send her plummeting to her death.
LUCRECIA. IT SOUNDED like the Latin name for one of those exotic flowers found in remote jungles. The kind with waxy petals in shades of ivory streaked with lush crimson and mysterious indigo. The kind with a perfume that drew a bee inexorably into her honey trap.
Where she paralyzed and ate him alive.
What a way to go. Gabriel almost didn’t see a downside, except that he’d learned very early not to fall for any sort of manipulation. They’d all been tried—threats, flattery, guilt, false friendship and—frequently—lust. Sex was something he enjoyed like whiskey over rocks or a cool swim on a hot day. It wasn’t something he needed or succumbed to.
Yet this woman had put a coil of tension in him merely by existing and was notching it with each lift of her thick, curled lashes over her piercing blue-green eyes.
To think, he had only come to the house as a last resort, thinking he would fire up his grandmother’s laptop and ascertain exactly what this “Luli” software was all about.
Her wares were soft, all right. In all the right places, despite being draped in the least flattering dress imaginable. The color was wrong for her skin tone, but there was no hiding her catwalk height or her flawless complexion. She didn’t need makeup or adornments. In his mind, she only had to remove that dress and the pins from her hair and she would be perfect.
But she was his employee, he reminded himself, in the same way the workforce of any company became his responsibility and resource after a takeover.
Therefore, while he enjoyed fantasizing each time she threw one of those doe-eyed, speculative glances his way, looking ever so innocent as she let the tip of her tongue dampen her lips suggestively, he refused to let her see it was having the desired effect on him, i.e., Desire.
He definitely didn’t let his carnal reaction blind him to the nuanced threat she was making.
“Why would I need to hack into accounts that belong to me?” he asked, muscles activating as though preparing to face an opponent on the mat.
“You wouldn’t...”
If.
She didn’t say it, but he heard the lilt of suggestion in the way she trailed off.
He set aside his half-finished coffee with a click of bone china meeting lacquered wood.
She swallowed, eyes shielded by her lashes, but she was watching him through them. Cautious. Scared, even.
He let his lip curl to let her know he was amused by her adorable attempt to extort from him.
“You understand I could have you arrested.” Which was a strangely appalling thing to imagine. He had brought charges to bear in the past, when laws had been broken. He never thought twice about protecting himself and always sought justice through due process.
But there were exceptions to every rule, he supposed. Even the rules he made for himself.
“You could bring in the police,” she agreed in that same trailing tone. This time the adjunct was but. “I haven’t done anything illegal, though. Not yet.”
Not yet? “Ah. You’ve planted a cyberbomb.” He ought to be furious, but he was so flabbergasted by her audacity, he wanted to laugh. Did she know who he was?
“May we call them incentives?” Her gaze came up, crystal as the Caribbean Sea. Placid and appealing and full of sharks and deadly jellyfish with stinging tendrils.
His divided mind wanted to watch the shift of color in those eyes as he immersed himself in her even as the other half absorbed the word incentives. Plural.
“Call them anything you like. I’m calling the police.” Even he didn’t know whether he was bluffing. He took longer than he needed to bring his phone from his pocket, though, watching for her next move.
“If I don’t log in soon, a tell-all will release to the press.”
“Has my grandmother been running an opium den? What terrible tales could you possibly have to tell about her?” As far as he knew, Mae Chen’s worst crime was being stubbornly resentful of her daughter’s choice in husband—and rightfully so.
Luli’s face went blank. “I’d rather not reveal it.”
“Because you have nothing.”
“Because your grandmother’s good name would be smeared and she’s been good to me.”
“Yet you’ll destroy her reputation to get what you want from me.”
“I’ll tell the truth.” Her tone was grave, her comportment calm enough to make him think she might have something more than threats of revealing a dodgy tax write-off or a penchant for young men in small bathing suits.
“Something to do with my mother?”
“Not at all.” That seemed to surprise her.
“What then? I’m not playing twenty questions.”
She pinched her mouth together and glanced toward the door to ensure it was firmly closed.
“Human trafficking and forcible confinement.”
“Ha!”
She didn’t laugh.
“That’s a very ugly accusation.” There was a thriving black market in everything from drugs to kidneys, but it wasn’t a shop on Fifth Avenue where women in their golden years could drop in and buy house staff. “Who? You?”
She swallowed. “Ask anyone here how many times I’ve been outside the front door of this house. They’ll tell you today was the first time in eight years.”
“Because you’ve coached them to say that? Are you ring-leading?”
“I’m acting alone. I would be surprised if anyone else knows my situation as anything but a preference for staying inside the grounds.” Her watchful gaze came up. “As I say, it would damage their memory of your grandmother if staff began gossiping. I’d rather you didn’t make serious inquiries.”
“You know as well as I do that without a thorough investigation, it’s very much she said, no one else said. I’ve weathered