in your body. You trust everyone,‘ Rafael growled, just appalled by the thought that someone else might still take advantage of her. Driven as he was by emotions that he didn’t even bother trying to understand, it suddenly became imperative that she stayed, but she was shaking her head.
‘This time I’ll employ a stranger. Someone with good references.’
The thought of a total stranger sitting across a desk from her, giving her advice that might be completely useless, made him cold. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Stay here with me and I’ll help you with your finances. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. It’s the perfect solution.’ Satisfied that he was now back in control, he was more than a little disconcerted to see her shake her head again.
‘No. Definitely not. I don’t need your help.’
He looked at her with naked incredulity. ‘You’re refusing me?’
She flushed slightly. ‘I can do it by myself. I don’t need your help.’
‘Offhand I can’t think of anyone who needs it more.’
She lifted her chin and he saw the flash of determination in her eyes. ‘I need to do it by myself. I should do it by myself. And anyway, why would you be able to do a better job than me?’
‘Because I have extensive experience with liars and cheats and you have none,’ he slotted in helpfully, wondering why they were even having this conversation. ‘It’s perfectly obvious that I should help you.’
‘It’s not obvious to me.’ There was a stubborn note in his voice and he decided that perhaps she simply hadn’t understood him correctly.
‘Let me just spell out what I’m trying to say here. I’m proposing to give you all the money you could possibly need to keep your business solvent, straighten up your accounts and then appoint someone from my team to look after your finances from now on.’
‘That’s very generous of you.’
Confident that he was now in familiar territory, he smiled. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
‘But I don’t want you to do it.’
The smile froze on his face. ‘You don’t?’
‘No.’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘Well, actually I’d be silly to turn down the offer of someone from your team to help me in the future because at least then I know that I have someone I can trust, so yes to that, thank you, but I don’t want anything else from you.’
‘I’m offering you money.’
‘I know. I don’t want your money. And I’m sure you have better things to do with your time than help me understand the figures. You’d find it horribly frustrating.’
Never having encountered a woman who didn’t want money from him, Rafael found himself at a loss. ‘I want to help you,’ he said quickly, surprised to find that he actually did. He couldn’t stand the thought of anyone taking advantage of her. ‘In order to shift your father from the business you’re going to need your facts straight.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’ She bit her lip and looked at him. ‘You’d help me with the figures? Really? But you must be horribly busy with your own business. You’re always glued to your computer screen.’
‘My work isn’t particularly demanding at the moment,’ he lied swiftly, ‘so I’d be more than happy to go through your accounts with you.’ And he’d make sure that she took his money, too, although he was prepared to postpone the inevitable argument about that subject.
‘I’m infuriating to teach. I’m terrible with numbers.’
Unable to conceive of a single situation in which he’d find her infuriating, Rafael shrugged dismissively. ‘I’m brilliant with numbers, so that’s fine. Although you’ll have to tell me the best way to go through them so that you understand what I’m saying.’
‘Oh.’ Her cheeks were pink. ‘My father never cared whether I understood or not. He just told me the figures.’
‘And they were the wrong ones.’ Resisting the temptation to punch his fist through something to relieve his mounting tension, Rafael urged her towards the table that only moments earlier had been the scene of their passionate encounter. ‘Sit down. I’m going to teach you to handle numbers.’
She hesitated. ‘My flight leaves Rio in four hours.’
‘You won’t be on it,’ he informed her immediately. ‘I don’t want you to leave.’
She gave a faint smile. ‘Because the sex between us is so amazing?’