Chapter Three #2
“I—” Oladele sounded perplexed and took a step to follow Siobhan.
“When did you hire her?” Joaquin asked with acute suspicion, attention pinned to the lavatory door that had closed behind Siobhan.
“She started at the beginning of last week. Why? Do you know her?”
“I’m not sure,” he lied. Hell, yes, he knew her. His body had recognized her with a pulse of animal lust the second he glimpsed her, roaring in a way that nearly overshadowed his astonishment at seeing her here of all places. “Can I see her file?”
“Her credentials are excellent. She’s actually overqualified—”
He shot Oladele a look that had her pressing her lips into a line.
“But if that’s something you would like to review yourself, I’ll go to my desk and forward it,” she said mildly. “I don’t have access to those documents on my phone.”
“Thank you.”
At that moment, the board members began filing out of the meeting room.
Oladele moved into the sea of bodies flowing toward the elevator.
Still twitching with aggression from that volatile meeting, and now at this unexpected interloper, Joaquin kicked the stoppers out of the doors at the end of the corridor, closing it into privacy.
Then he walked into the ladies’ room, checked that there was only one pair of feet in the stalls, and turned the lock on the main door.
“Siobhan.”
“What the hell?” The stall door clapped open. “You can’t be in here.”
She stepped out, pale face flushing red with high emotion, every bit as enticingly beautiful as he remembered.
He had to consciously keep his gaze from wandering to the open collar of her striped shirt and well-cut, single-button blazer. Her outfit was professional and conservative, exactly as it should be for her role as assistant to their head of legal.
He still found her entirely too sexy.
“I just acquired the building with the company.” He leaned on the partition that separated the sink area from the vanity nook. “I can go anywhere I want. What are you doing here?”
“In this room?” She pointed to the floor. “Trying not to vomit over the fact that I slept with a married man. Who has children. You absolute disgusting scumbag. How dare you lie to me about something like that?”
Her anger was incendiary. Thrilling. She radiated the energy of a typhoon, terrifying yet awe-inspiring. There was also something perversely gratifying in her temper. She wasn’t merely offended. How dare you lie to me. It was personal. She was jealous.
He shouldn’t like that. At all. But he did.
“You’re referring to Zurina?” He lifted one patronizing brow. “She’s my sister-in-law.”
“Oh.” Her hard boil of fury simmered down to an annoyed scowl. She narrowed her eyes on him, though. “You really aren’t married? Because—”
“I am exactly as I presented to you when we met. You are the one with something to explain. How the hell do you come to be working for my father?” That was highly suspicious. Highly.
“I don’t.” She was taken aback. “I work for Oladele. Aside from when your father walked by us ten minutes ago, I’d never seen or spoken to him.” She moved to the sink to wash her hands.
“You want me to believe your working here is a coincidence?”
“Unless you planned it, then yes. That’s exactly what it is. I told you I was starting a new job covering a mat leave.”
“You let me believe that was in Australia. Or San Francisco.” He didn’t know what he’d thought, but he sure as hell hadn’t imagined she was coming here.
“You said you live on your plane. Maybe if you’d stuck around, instead of skittering away like a spider under a door, I would have told you I was coming to Madrid.
” She shook out a cloth hand towel and wet it under the tap.
“You could have simply let me leave without asking me to come back. That second trip down the hall really was a walk of shame.” She gave the wet towel a hard wring and dabbed a corner of it under her eyes, fixing her smudged makeup.
Tears? He might have been more disturbed by that if he wasn’t seeing them here, amid an outright war with his father.
“Zurina called me with an emergency.” He hadn’t liked leaving without a word, but he hadn’t relished knocking on doors to find her, then trying to explain.
He hadn’t liked that there’d been a part of him that had leaped toward asking her to accompany him. For that reason, a clean break had seemed easier. Safer.
But the clean break hadn’t happened.
“Go back to explaining how you’re here,” he demanded.
“You really think I’m here by design? Until Oladele said it a few minutes ago, I didn’t know your last name.” She pivoted to face him, forcing him to quit ogling the shape of her ass in her blue trousers.
“You didn’t investigate the company you were applying at?” he asked skeptically.
“I used a placement agency. They gave me an abstract, but I wasn’t told it was LV Global until I’d been offered the job.
I spoke to Oladele at one point, but that was about my duties.
When I did look it up, it said the president had passed away over a year ago and that his father had come out of retirement to run things.
” She threw the damp towel in the laundry basket.
“Frankly, I didn’t need to know more than that.
My priority was to be closer to my sister and gain experience in legal.
I’ve been meaning to read more about the company, but I’ve been busy moving continents and visiting with family. ”
This all seemed too tidy for him to believe. On the other hand, there was very little on line that linked him to his father. He certainly didn’t take any pains to acknowledge his relationship to Lorenzo.
She waved at the door. “Is Oladele out there, wondering why you’re accosting her EA in the toilet?”
“She’s downstairs.” He stole a quick glance at his phone. The file hadn’t been forwarded yet so they had another minute. “You can’t work for me.”
“I don’t. I work for Oladele.”
“She works for LV Global, which I have just acquired. You work for me.”
“So? Are you unable to be professional because we had a brief interaction in the past?”
“Interaction,” he scoffed. In the past? It was two short weeks ago. Still a very vivid memory that he relived at least once a day. In the shower. It was all he could do not to think of other uses for that counter ledge right now.
Dios, her effect on him was as strong as it had been when he’d first glimpsed her. Stronger, now that he knew what a volatile match they were. Distracting.
“What do you want to call it?” She held her chin up, mouth tight, stare as cold as ice. “You made it clear it was nothing significant. I feel the same.”
Liar. She was too angry for him to believe that. And, try as he had to diminish it into a pleasant but trivial memory, he couldn’t.
“Blame fate. She’s having a laugh, I suppose.” Her lips stretched in a facetious smile before she added in a mutter, “But if you think I made a choice to see you again, you’re wrong.”
He narrowed his eyes, surprised how deeply that got under his skin.
His phone pinged, notifying him of Oladele’s email.
“She’s on her way back.” He unlocked the door and peeked out, then held it open. “My office.”