As often happened, Henri had voiced what Ramon had already been thinking. “It’s a matter of response time. Some of your work can be done remotely, but when a crisis arises, like today’s, we need you on the spot to defuse it.”
Her mouth tightened. He could see her wheels turning, searching for an alternative. He knew why she was acting like this and he was losing patience with it.
“Perhaps we could coax your father out of retirement?” he said facetiously.
“Don’t think I’m not tempted.”
“Stow your grudge, Isidora. You’re a professional. Act like one.”
She lifted haughty brows. “It’s not my ability to keep things professional that I’m worried about.”
“If I was the least bit interested in frostbite below the belt, you’d have something to worry about. I’m not.”
He always hit back. Always. It came from never wanting to be a victim again.
But when her nostrils pinched and she sniffed like she’d taken a hard jab to her slender middle, he felt a pang of conscience. A shadow of hurt might have flickered in her eyes, but she moved behind her desk, ducking her head and sliding a nonexistent tendril of hair behind her ear, the screen of her hand hiding her expression from him.
When she lifted her face again, it was flushed, but her expression was one of resolve. “I’ll hand in my resignation by the end of the day.”
The floor seemed to lurch beneath his feet. Her antipathy ran that deep?
As he searched her gaze, unable to believe she was serious, her pupils expanded until her eyes were like black pansies, velvety. Yet disillusioned and empty.
For one heartbeat, the world around him faded. A quiet agony that lived inside him, one he ignored so completely he barely knew it existed, seared to life, flashing such acute pain through him that his breath stalled. Fire, hot and pointed, lit behind his breastbone.
He slammed the door on that dark, tangled, livid place, refusing to wonder how she had managed to touch it by doing nothing but trying to retreat from him.
Why would she even suggest it? The job she held, as someone still fresh from school and not yet twenty-four, was unprecedented. Nepotism had played a part, sure, but she brought a rare and valuable quality to the position: trustworthiness.
Ramon would not be the reason his sisters lost a precious ally.
He wasn’t a man who begged, however. Racetracks were not conquered by being nice. She already hated him so there was no point in trying to charm her. Meanwhile, that strange split second of confused feelings left him with the scent of danger in his nostrils. It fueled his need to control. To dominate. To conquer.
He came down on her with the same lack of mercy he showed anyone else who might threaten him or his family.
“Cariño, let me explain what will happen if you resign.” He moved to lean on her desk again.
She was standing now, blinking with wariness. She stiffened, but she didn’t fall back.
He caught a light scent off her skin, something natural and spicy with an intriguingly sweet undertone. Herbs and wildflowers? The base, primitive animal inside him longed to get closer and find out.
Perhaps he would get the chance, he thought darkly, as he continued.
“I know you’ve signed confidentiality agreements, but given your antagonism toward me, I don’t trust you not to take what you know about us to the highest bidder. I will make your life extremely difficult if you walk out of here. There won’t be other jobs available to you. Not at this level.”
A renewed flush of color swept across her cheekbones. “If that’s your way of trying to make me warm up to you, ‘hash-tag friendship fail.’”
“Prove your loyalty to our family. Do what we pay you very well to do.”
“Me.” She pointed at her sternum. “You want me to prove my loyalty to your family.”
“Yes. And quit editorializing on mine.” He ignored a stab of compunction. “You know nothing about my capacity for loyalty or anything else.”
“I know what I need to know,” she assured him bitterly. “But if you’re going to make threats against my career, fine. I’ll take the high road and show you what loyalty really is. I’ll stay because I care about your sisters and because my father would come out of retirement if I quit. His devotion to your family is that ingrained. I never told him that you slept with his wife or he might feel differently. And don’t say they were divorced!”
She jabbed her finger at him.
He narrowed his eyes, warning her she was standing on the line.
“It would gut him to know what you did and unlike you, I’m not someone who enjoys making other people miserable.”
“I said ‘difficult,’ hermosa. If you want me to make your life miserable, I can arrange that quite easily.”
“Job done, hermoso,” she said with a smile that went nowhere near her eyes. “Will you excuse me? I have a press conference to arrange.”
“Isidora,” he said gently, without moving. His eyes clashed with her gaze in a way that kept his muscles tight and his skin tingling with exaltation in the battle. “I care about my sisters and your father. That’s why I’m allowing you to continue with us, and not firing your ass for insubordination. Mind your manners, or you will discover exactly what kind of man I am.”
WITH FURY BURNING a hole in the pit of her stomach, Isidora did her job and sent out the notices that a press conference would be held in the media room of Sauveterre International’s Paris tower. The skyscraper in Madrid was its twin, built the same year on the same specifications. Until today, Ramon had worked out of that office, which was why she had not requested a transfer back to her home country, where she could be closer to her parents.
She desperately wanted to call her father with the news that Ramon was retiring. Her father had been a fan of all types of racing long before his client’s son had begun entering grand prix races at a mere nineteen years. After showing some talent for racing while learning evasive driving, Ramon had spent an inheritance from one of his grandparents on a car and team, much to the late Monsieur Sauveterre’s dismay. Ramon had won that first year and had won or placed in nearly every race since.
Some of Isidora’s most cherished memories involved catering to her father as he parked himself in front of the television for a twenty-four-hour endurance race, or biting her nails alongside him as cars zoomed through the narrow streets of Monaco. In the beginning, she hadn’t been so much a fan of racing as she was of her father’s passion and delight in having a companion while he watched.
Of course, by the time she was twelve, she had definitely been a fan of one particular driver, heart pitter-patting as Ramon rocketed through turns and occasionally spun out only to straighten and take over the lead once again.
Ramon’s winning streak, coupled with his Sauveterre name and the fact he represented both France and Spain, made him more than a darling in the racing world. It set him on a level beyond infamous. Demigod.
He had certainly dazzled her young heart.
But after That Day, which had actually been an early morning, when she had bumped in to Ramon leaving her mother’s house wearing rumpled clothes, a night’s stubble and a complete lack of remorse, she had stopped watching the races with her father. She had claimed she was too busy with university, and would go to her deathbed before she admitted she had watched alone, in dorm rooms, or plugged into her laptop, tucked away in a solitary corner of the library.
She hated Ramon Sauveterre, but she had always needed to know he survived to race