Picking up the phone from the desk, he rang the security guard at the gate. “Carl, the woman I came in with, what time did she leave?”
He ended the call, sank into the leather chair behind his desk, and thought for a moment. She’d left around eleven thirty. Switching on the monitor, he pressed a few buttons. The CCTV cameras had been installed in his office a couple of years ago; it was useful to go over meetings afterward and study his “opponents’” expressions. Now, he sat back and watched. The screen flickered to life, and he fast-forwarded until he saw Lia come out of the apartment. Wearing his white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, the hem skimming her thighs, she looked beautiful, rumpled, and sexy.
And decidedly shifty.
For a minute, she stared around the room, obviously searching for something before moving to where her pink dress lay discarded on the floor. Glancing at the door, she wriggled into the dress before slipping the shirt from her shoulders. She peered around the office, her eyes fixing on the bank of cabinets lining one wall. After another nervous glance at the door, she edged over then tried to open one. Luc swore; he’d known her innocent act was too good to be true.
His eyes narrowed on the screen as he considered the possibilities. Maybe this had nothing to do with her father; maybe she was a setup, an industrial spy. Someone who knew his past could have set it up easily, known exactly who to use to bait the hook. Hell, she might not even be Jimmy Brent’s daughter. But Harley had recognized her, and frankly she was too inept to be any sort of spy.
Maybe she was just curious. He shook his head in disgust. He couldn’t believe, even now, with the evidence in front of him, that he was hunting for excuses for her, anything to convince himself she wasn’t in league with her treacherous father.
Now, she was tugging futilely at the handles, only giving up when she’d tried each and every one. Standing back, she glared in frustration then kicked the cabinet with her bare foot, scowling and hopping for a moment.
Luc smiled grimly; all the locks in this room were controlled by thumbprint, his thumbprint. There was no way she was getting access to any information. Obviously, coming to the same conclusion herself, she gave up and returned to the desk. After staring at the computer, she shook her head, turned to the chair and seemed to consider it for a minute. Sitting down, she winced slightly; she closed her eyes and twirled.
She got up and headed toward the rest of her things, picking up her jacket but then peering back to the door that led to the living quarters, where he was aware he’d lain blissfully sleeping in post-coital satisfaction, oblivious to the world around him. Dropping her jacket, she tiptoed across the room, through the door, and disappeared. Luc swore again. What was she doing? Probably deciding whether it was safe to murder him in his bed. He shook his head in self-disgust; he must have been out of his mind to let his guard down around Jimmy Brent’s daughter.
But she reappeared a few minutes later and moved determinedly across the room, picked up her jacket, bag, and shoes, and left the office—this time without looking back.
Luc switched off the monitor, slipped the disk from the machine, and locked it in the desk drawer. What had she been searching for? Could she be working for her father? Had Jimmy Brent decided to finally finish what he had started so long ago and take Luc out of the picture?
He didn’t know. But one thing was for sure—he was going to find out.
Chapter Five
“Three weeks is not a long time in the whole scheme of things,” Lia told the horse she was grooming. “I need a little longer, that’s all.”
Given enough time she was sure she would get over this. So what if she went to bed every night and dreamed about him, then woke every morning hot, sweaty, and frustrated? She would get over it. She had to because she refused to end up like her mother. There was no way she was going to wallow in misery over some man for the rest of her life.
“Maybe for a little bit longer.”
Looking back, she couldn’t actually believe she had come up with such a stupid plan, that she had thought for one minute she could pull it off, but when she had found those old letters from her father and realized what he’d done, she’d been furious. Ten years ago, he had taken out a mortgage on their home and then promptly disappeared, taking the money with him. And she needed it back or else risked losing her home.
All she’d wanted was to find him, make him take some responsibility for his family. He hadn’t even met Mike, had never even bothered to visit the son he had fathered before he left.
So, she had been going to put everything right. It didn’t occur to her that her mother had been searching for her father for more than ten years without success. Lia had thought she could walk in and Harley Watson would tell her everything she needed to know. She now realized she had been naïve and foolish to think things would work out so neat and tidy, but she had been desperate and still hurting from her mother’s death.
She couldn’t quite believe that she was going to lose the home she had lived in all her life.
Over the last three weeks, she’d racked her brains trying think of another way out of her problems. She’d even been back to the bank, but she knew it was no good. There was no way they were going to give her a bigger mortgage when she couldn’t even make the payments on the one she already had. The house had been in her mother’s family for generations, but she was going to have to face the fact that she had to sell their home and find somewhere else for her and Mike and Sally, their housekeeper, to live.
The only good thing about the whole mess was that at least now she could forget her father ever existed. And if she could do the same for Luc Severino, erase him from her mind as easily as she could her father, then perhaps she could get on with her life. So far, it wasn’t happening.
She realized bitterly that she hadn’t stood a chance from the moment he’d first touched her. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the way he’d made her feel. She’d been in the hands of an expert, and he had played her with an ease that made her cringe in retrospect. Lia hadn’t known anything could feel that good. A frisson of sensation ran through her at the memory, and she slid down the wall to sit in the straw, hugging her knees to her chest.
The first time he had taken her had been like a storm, like riding a wild stallion, bucking and rearing so all she could do was hold on.
The second time had been slow and gentle and relentless. He had stretched her so tight, taking her to the limit of her endurance time and time again, until she had finally snapped and exploded into a thousand pieces. And, unfortunately, three weeks later she still wasn’t back together again.