‘Oh, for goodness’ sake—call a spade a spade, Bastien!’ Lilah countered in exasperation. ‘At least look at the lengths you’re willing to go to to make me do what you want...does that strike you as normal?’
‘Sexual satisfaction is extremely important to me,’ Bastien parried, studying her with cool gravity. ‘I don’t feel any need to explain that or to apologise for it.’
Lilah felt like someone beating her head up against a brick wall. Bastien didn’t listen to what he didn’t want to hear. He went full steam ahead, like an express train racing down a track. He saw what he wanted and he went for it, regardless of reason and the damage he might do.
‘Delilah... I would treat you well...’ Bastien murmured huskily.
‘What you’ve suggested...it’s out of the question—impossible!’ she exclaimed in a furious outburst of frustration. ‘Not to mention downright sleazy!’
Bastien lifted a lean tanned hand and scored a reproving fingertip along the strained line of her lush lower lip. ‘I am never, ever sleazy...’ He positively purred. ‘You have a lot to learn about me.’
Subjected to even that minor physical contact, she felt her whole skin surface break out in enervated goose bumps and jerked back a hasty step.
‘What I’ve learnt today, just listening to you, is more than enough,’ she stressed in biting rejection. ‘You talk as if you’re playing some amusing game with me, but what you’re proposing is offensive and unthinkable. And nothing you could hope to offer would persuade my father to accept a job that would literally sell me to the highest bidder as part of the deal!’
Bastien scanned her flushed and furious face and the sapphire-blue eyes shooting defiant sparks at him. ‘Only an idiot would suggest that you tell your father the truth and nothing but the truth,’ he derided. ‘All you would need to tell your family is that I have offered you your dream job, which will entail a lot of foreign travel and an enviable lifestyle.’
With a reflexive little shudder at that Machiavellian suggestion, Lilah snapped, ‘My goodness, you have absolutely everything worked out!’
‘But will you take the bait?’ Bastien breathed in a roughened undertone. ‘You have until ten tomorrow morning to make your decision and choose an option.’
‘You haven’t given me even one reasonable or fair option,’ Lilah condemned bitterly.
‘If you don’t give me your answer tomorrow I will sell,’ Bastien warned her with chilling bite.
Her narrow spine went poker-straight with the force of her resentment and her slender hands knotted into fists. It was far from being the first time she had been in Bastien’s company and had longed to knock his teeth down his throat.
In the smouldering silence, Bastien released his breath in a hiss of impatience. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this between us, Delilah. We could discuss this over dinner tonight.’
Lilah flung him a shaken and furious look over her shoulder as her perspiring hand worked frantically at the doorknob. ‘Dinner? You’ve got to be joking! Anyway, I’m already booked,’ she fibbed, refusing to give him the idea that she sat in every night.
‘To see who?’ Bastien demanded, pressing a hand against the door to prevent her from opening it.
‘That’s none of your business.’ Refusing to fight for control of the door, Lilah stood back and folded her arms defensively. ‘Nothing I do is any of your business. You may own Moore Components, but that’s the only thing you own around here.’
Dark eyes glittering brilliant as stars, Bastien flung the door wide for her exit. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that, koukla mou.’
Lilah hurried downstairs and straight into the cloakroom, needing a moment before she returned to work and faced Julie and her curiosity. She was shaking and sweating, and she held her trembling hands below the cold tap while snatching in a deep sustaining breath, praying for self-control.
Unfortunately Bastien had struck her on her weakest flank. The very idea that she could rescue her family from their current predicament had turned her heart inside out with hope and desperation. And what about all the other people whose lives would be transformed by the opportunity to regain the jobs they had lost? Jobs in a revitalised business which would be much more secure with Bastien’s backing? All their former workers would be ecstatic at the idea of the factory reopening.