The Secretary's Bossman Bargain

His words jerked through her, one in particular filling her with outrage. Tumble!

She began to quake. A chilling frost seemed to seep into her bones.

Stalking around her, he fell back into his chair, was sucked back into his computer, and began writing.

“Tumble,” she said.

He set down the pen and met her gaze. The man was mute as wallpaper.

She signaled with trembling fingers. “For your information.” She wanted to fling her shoe at his face, to shred every single paper on the pile she’d neatly organized atop his desk, but she clenched her eyes shut for a brief moment. “I do not want a tumble!”

Several times, Virginia had imagined how their parting would be.

Not even in her nightmares had she imagined this.

She couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him, didn’t dare glance up to make note of his expression.

Stricken by his lack of apology, she choked back words that wanted to come out, hurtful things she knew she would regret saying, words about being sorry she’d met him, sorry she loved him, sorry she was pregnant by him, but staring at the top of his silky black hair, she couldn’t. Instead she said, “Goodbye, Marcos.”

And Marcos…said nothing.

Not goodbye. Not chiquita. Not amor.

But as she waited by the elevator, clutching her suitcase handle as though it was all that kept her from falling apart, a roar unlike any other exploded in his study. It was followed by an ear-splitting crash.

The clock read 1:33 p.m.

He had what he wanted, Marcos told himself for the hundredth time. Didn’t he? And yet the satisfaction, the victory, wasn’t within reach. Perhaps because what he really wanted was something else. Someone else.

The pressure was off his chest—the lawyers were currently sealing the deal. Allende for a couple of million. Marcos now owned every single share of stock in the company, had recovered every inch and centimeter and brick and truck of what Marissa had taken from him.

It had not taken much at all to bend her to his will; the woman had nothing to bargain with. Marissa had to sell or she’d go bankrupt. She’d held no more attraction for him, as she’d thought, no temptation. After a few harsh words from him and a few tears from her, there had finally been a bit of forgiveness between them.

And with that, everything had changed. By her admittance to defeat, she’d unwittingly granted Marcos the opportunity to color his past another shade that wasn’t black.

He felt…lighter, in that respect. But heavy in the chest. So damned heavy and tortured with

a sense of foreboding he couldn’t quite place.

“You needed me, Mr. Allende?”

His heart kicked into his rib cage when Virginia strolled into his office five minutes after he’d issued the request by phone.

Yes, I need you. I do. And I’m not even ashamed to admit it anymore.

Dressed in slimming black, she held a manila file in her hand, and a few seconds after she closed the doors behind her, Marcos spoke. “You left before the ten minutes were over.”

Silently she sat and fiddled with her pearls, her eyes shooting daggers at him when she spared him a glance. “I realized you wanted your space, so I indulged you.”

Those last words came barbed, as though he’d once spoken them in sarcasm and she were flinging them back at him. She looked tired, his Miss Hollis, he noted. As though she’d slept less than an hour and tossed around for all the rest. Like he had.

He didn’t understand her anger very well. But they’d had plans to speak afterward, had been sleeping together so delightedly he hadn’t expected the loss of her last night to affect him like it had. Were ten minutes too much to ask?

“Ten minutes, Miss Hollis. You can’t even grant me that?”

“You were being—” As though offended by her own thoughts, she bolted upright in the chair, spine straight. “Something of a jerk.”

He choked. “Jerk! This spoken by an opinionated little brat I’ve spoiled rotten?”