One
She was ready to beg him.
Virginia Hollis shuddered. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out the back window of the sleek black Lincoln as it wound along the darkened streets of Chicago. People strolled down the block, hands in their pockets, chins neatly tucked to their chests to shield their faces from the biting wind. Men held cell phones to their ears; women struggled with their shopping bags. One glimpse made it seem like such a regular evening. An ordinary night.
But it wasn’t ordinary. It couldn’t be.
Because Virginia’s world had stopped turning.
The men who’d knocked on her door this morning had had a message for her, and it had not been a kind one.
She inhaled deeply and glanced at her simple black dress and the delicate strappy heels on her pink-toed feet. It seemed important for her to look nice—not just respectable, but sophisticated, noble—because the favor she was to ask was anything but.
And she could think of no one else to ask but him. God. Just thinking of humiliating herself like this in front of him made her stomach churn.
Nervously, she tugged on the pearl strand draped around her neck and tried focusing on the city again. The pearls were smooth under her fingers, genuine and old, the only thing Virginia had been able to salvage from her mother’s belongings.
Her father had lost it all.
Bet by bet, he’d lost the cars, the antiques, the house. Virginia had watched with a combination of helplessness and rage. She’d threatened, screamed, pleaded with the quickly aging man, all to no avail.
There was no stopping him. No stopping the gambling.
There was nothing left now.
Nothing but her.
And she could not, could not, turn a blind eye to those men—to the threat they posed. To the threat they had succinctly delivered. No matter how much she frowned upon what her father did, and no matter how many times she’d promised never again to speak to him about it and he continued gambling anyway, he was her father. Her only family.
Once he’d been a businessman. Respected, admired even. Now it saddened her to think what she’d become.
Virginia didn’t know how much he owed. She’d rather not know. All she knew was the deal she’d struck with those three surly men that morning. She had a month to come up with one hundred thousand dollars, during which time they would leave him alone.
In her wildest dreams, Virginia had never imagined coming up with that amount of money, on such little time. But while she couldn’t, Marcos Allende could.
The little hairs on her arms pricked to attention at the thought of him. Her boss was a quiet, devastatingly handsome man. Some said he was gifted; his touch was that of a Midas. While Virginia had only been his assistant for a year—his third of three assistants, because it seemed one alone couldn’t handle the daunting task of having him as boss—in that length of time, she had seen enough of him to agree.
The man was out of context.
He was bold, ruthless and proud. Single-handedly, he’d spotted, bought and righted troubled companies, and he’d created an empire. He inspired respect and admiration among peers and fear among his enemies. Judging by the overwhelming number of phone calls he received from the female population of Chicago, Virginia could tell they adored him. And in Virginia herself, the man inspired things she dared not consider.
Every morning when she stepped into his office, he would study her with that dark, compelling gaze and disturb every inch and atom of her body with the hot intimacy in his eyes. She would always try to act professionally, to look away when his stare became inappropriately long. But his eyes had a way of undressing her, of speaking in silence, of summoning visions in her mind about him and her and skin and sweat. Yet tonight she was on her way to him for one purpose only, and she reminded herself that her visit to his lair at such a late hour might not be welcome.
With his assistants he was always the firm, quiet boss, but Marcos Allende was reputed to have a hell of a temper, one she might witness tonight for the very first time.