‘Grateful?’ The word barely escaped his clenched teeth.
‘Yes.’ She pulled her brows into a delicate frown. Ignored the jelly-like quiver in her knees. ‘You were in a sticky situation and I was being helpful.’ Not to mention reckless and impulsive and out of her mind crazy. Lord help her. Whatever she’d done, it was either very clever or very, very stupid. ‘Or would you have preferred I set Carlos straight about us?’
‘Dio.’ He threw his tuxedo jacket over a lounge chair, ripped his bow tie from around his neck. ‘I should have known you’d have another stunt up your sleeve.’
Oh, now, that was rich. ‘You brought me here tonight,’ she reminded him. ‘Not the other way around. I couldn’t have foreseen your client turning up.’
‘But you didn’t waste a second in twisting it to your advantage, did you?’
She let out a clipped laugh. ‘And you made no effort to correct his notion that we’re a couple. I’m not a mind-reader, Leo. How was I to know I shouldn’t play along?’
‘It was simple, Helena.’ He enunciated each syllable as if she were missing a few critical brain cells. ‘All you had to do was keep your mouth shut. Oh, but wait—’ he flung his arms wide ‘—you’re a woman. That would have been impossible!’
He tossed down the tie, tore loose the buttons at his throat, raked lean fingers through his thick black hair. Gone was the cool, suave businessman from the charity dinner. In his place stood a man who looked hard. Fierce. Dangerous.
Helena drew a calming breath. She couldn’t bottle now. Not when she could see the future looming with such frightening clarity. The takeover was only the beginning. If her mother thought things were bad now, they were only going to get worse. Leo didn’t want to own ShawCorp; he wanted to destroy it. And when he succeeded her father’s rage would need an outlet. A victim. Helena could not sit on the sidelines. She couldn’t stand idle while her mother became that victim.
‘Look, I... I’m sorry if I made things worse.’ She tried for a softer, more apologetic tone. ‘But maybe we could turn this to our advantage? Come to some...arrangement that would benefit us both?’
He stalked towards her and stopped inches short of their bodies touching—so close she could feel the heat emanating from him. In sharp contrast, his dark eyes carried a chill that needled into her flesh like icy midwinter sleet.
‘Newsflash, Helena. Mutual benefit works best when each party has something the other needs. And, like I told you last night, you don’t have anything I want—or need.’ He spun on his heel and strode to the bar, pulled a large bottle from a black lacquered cabinet.
For her own benefit, not his, she straightened her spine. ‘You need a girlfriend for your client’s party next weekend.’
‘Wrong.’ He fired the word over his shoulder as he uncapped the bottle. ‘On Monday my assistant will advise Santino’s office that I am, regrettably, unable to attend.’
‘Carlos will be disappointed.’
Amber liquid sloshed into a crystal tumbler. ‘He’ll get over it.’
‘And next time you see him? What if he asks about me? Will you pretend there’s still someone special in your life?’
‘That is not your concern.’
‘It is if you pretend that someone is me.’
He turned, the whisky untouched on the counter beside him. ‘I will tell him our relationship ended.’
She dropped her purse on the arm of a sofa and sauntered over. ‘I’m sure his daughter—Anna, was it?—will be delighted by that news.’
Was that a growl in his throat? She lifted the tumbler of whisky, inhaled the eye-watering fumes and, before she could think twice, helped herself to a generous swallow. The fiery liquid shot down her throat and extinguished the air in her lungs, but the molten heat spreading through her innards fired her courage.
Frow
ning, he snatched the glass back. ‘What exactly are you proposing?’
Hope flared. ‘That I attend the party with you in Rome—at your expense, of course—and help you prove to Carlos and his daughter that you’re a happily attached man.’
His brows sank lower. ‘And in return?’
‘In return you defer your divestment of ShawCorp’s assets and keep any announcements under wraps until my father agrees to meet you. In the meantime the company operates as normal and my father retains his position on the board.’ It would give her father a sense of security. A belief, albeit false, that he still wielded some control.
Leo fell silent for long seconds and she imagined his brain ticking through the options.
‘What makes you think your father will come around?’
She hesitated. Chances were he wouldn’t. He was too arrogant, too proud, and that was what she was counting on. Because she didn’t want to prevent her father’s downfall. She only wanted to delay it—long enough for Miriam Shaw to accept some hard truths, come to her senses.