Chapter Two
Renzo
HENNESSY STARES AT me in that haughty way of hers that makes me want to jerk her closer and remind her just who she’s dealing with.
Instead, I take a step back to let her pass.
‘After you,’ I say softly. Her withering gaze holds mine as she stalks past me, only she doesn’t take a seat, but walks out of the door.
And even though my gut and logic tell me I should stamp out this defiance, I can’t help but admire her because she is a thoroughbred.
There is a swaggering sensuality to how she moves, to the way she owns the space around her, that mesmerises.
And she knows it.
Gritting my teeth, I follow her into what was Charlie’s office, closing the door behind me. ‘So, where is he?’
Hennessy is gazing out of the window. In the glitzy hotels and clubs she frequents, her beauty, wealth, name and reputation all give her unwarranted power. She can read a room and know exactly who’s in and who’s out, who will play and who will pay.
But here she doesn’t understand the rules. Doesn’t see that she is in over her head. Thanks to the decadent decor of Charlie’s office, she doesn’t look out of place in that dress and heels, but she is out of place, out of her depth, and I intend to make that clear to her.
But first I will put her to work—actual work—and by the time I’ve finished with her she’ll be begging me to buy her out.
‘That’s what you want to talk about?’
Her gaze moves to track a distant plane cutting through the clouds and she pulls her jacket more tightly around her body. My own gaze instantly zeroes in on the taut curve of her bottom.
‘Obviously,’ I say impatiently. ‘It will be a far better outcome for everyone if Charlie can be persuaded to turn himself in.’
‘Far better for you, you mean,’ she says without turning, and her voice is laced with a disdain that makes me want to shake her.
‘Far better for everyone,’ I repeat, ‘including Charlie. So, if you know where he is…’
‘I don’t. But, even if I did, I’m not going to shop my own father.’
‘Don’t be so childish,’ I say, and it’s a relief to think of her as a child, to think of her as off-limits.
My jaw tightens as I take in her mouthwatering silhouette.
Except, she isn’t a child. She’s a woman; she was a woman when I kissed her.
She’s also a temptation that I need to resist. Losing control again like that would not just be a mistake, it would be all kinds of stupidity and recklessness and, unlike Charlie and Hennessy Wade, I don’t do stupid or reckless.
‘You’re not the daughter of some crime boss, Hennessy. And Charlie hiding out like this is hardly going to make the judge look at him favourably.’
She shrugs. ‘Have you tried calling him? I know he’d love to hear about your plans for his business.’
The taunt in her voice sets my teeth on edge.
‘Don’t get smart with me. This is serious. Once news gets out that your father has done a disappearing act, our shares are going to drop through the floor.’
Now she turns. If there was any justice in the world, the scowl on her face should distort her features, but instead it pulls her mouth into a distracting curl.
‘If it’s too much of a challenge for you, then sell me your shares and leave. It’s not as if anyone asked you to march in here and start throwing your weight around.’
‘That is exactly what they asked me to do. As for buying my shares, you don’t have the funds to do that.’
And she will have even less once Charlie is caught and fined. Does she not know that? I feel a savage frustration with both her absent father and the entourage of hangers-on that buzz around her like flies on honey. Where are they now?
Hennessy holds my gaze, then twists away to stare back through the window. ‘I don’t know why you’re getting so out of shape. Charlie will turn up. He got spooked, that’s all.’
‘So, you have spoken to him.’
She hesitates. ‘He left a message.’
As she turns slightly, giving me the benefit of her delicate profile, I clench my jaw, my whole body, against a sudden rush of heat.
She is exquisite. And it’s not just me that thinks so.
Three years ago, I watched a crowded dance floor part when she walked to the bar, just as if she had waved a magic wand.
But I’m not falling under her spell again. I walk towards her, pulling out my phone. ‘So, call him back.’
‘I tried.’ She spins to face me. Accustomed to mixing with women who dress with low-key, professional elegance, I’m unprepared for the jolt of unprofessional lust that tears through me as her jacket falls open and I get a glimpse of her dress.
Made of a figure-hugging black material, it leaves little to the imagination—which is ironic, as my imagination is feverishly offering up all kinds of tempting suggestions as to what might happen if I strip it from her body, and that jacket too… Although I might just burn that.
‘But it goes straight to voicemail.’
I shake my head, unsure as to whether it is that shrug or her father’s lack of responsibility that aggravates me the most. But Charlie Wade has never been poor. He doesn’t know how vulnerable poverty makes someone. How it can break them.
My family emigrated to the US for a better life but, whatever dreams my parents had, they never came to fruition.
Money was stretched tight. There was never anything to spare.
Nothing to put aside for a rainy day, let alone a stormy one.
When the random, unjust cruelty of illness struck, they had no safety net, nothing to catch them, Antony or me.
Even now, when my success has pushed poverty to the furthest edges of my life, that fact is never far from my thoughts. It’s what drives me to keep expanding my business, to keep making money and to have control over as many areas of life as possible.
Not that Hennessy has any more understanding of that than her father.
Her life has been one long party. She is as careless as a juggernaut, rolling recklessly through the world, never mind the casualties.
When she was younger, I gave her a pass.
I mean, aside from being parentless and constantly between homes, I was a normal teenager.
But Hennessy likes to play with fire. Hell, she likes poking active volcanoes. And, with that blonde hair and taunting smile, she has a cool-girl gravitational pull that is irresistible to more law-abiding mortals like Antony.
Don’t get me wrong, Antony isn’t blameless, but Hennessy is a poster child for good girls gone bad.
I replay that moment when she so casually derailed my brother’s previously spotless academic career.
Obviously, Charlie didn’t turn up for that meeting with the principal, but frankly it wouldn’t have made much difference if he had.
Hennessy was as brazenly unrepentant about forging an email from me as she was about being caught drunk and dancing half-naked on my lawn.
She hadn’t so much as blinked when she was expelled.
The tendons in my hands tighten.
My lawn.
My home.
Even now, the fact she did that, that she brought her brand of chaos into my personal space, makes a frisson of anger quiver across my skin.
I’ve worked hard to ensure that my home is a safe space.
I have rules, alarms, a state-of-the-art security system—and yet Hennessy just walked right in and turned everything on its head.
‘Surely you must have some other way to get in touch?’
There is silence as she stares past me. ‘I manage just fine,’ she says finally.
I look down at her. She hasn’t moved an inch, but something is different.
There is tension to her posture that feels off, and yet familiar, and for a moment I can’t put my finger on it.
Then I remember what it is. I remember the party in Vegas when that piece of crap she was ‘seeing’ had her cornered and her whole body looked limp, just as if she’d been shot.
There is that same limpness now and, even though she is a menace and a complication I don’t need, I hate seeing her look so diminished. Because she is young, beautiful and alone.
As if she can read my mind, Hennessy meets my gaze, her eyes flashing with defiance. ‘I can look after myself.’
I wasn’t going to bring up what happened that evening in Vegas. Never. But before I can edit my thoughts, I say softly, ‘Not always.’
And now we are back there—by a circuitous route, but back there, nonetheless.
Her face stills. ‘That was an exception.’
Was it? I think back to the moment when I walked into the foyer and saw her backing into the lift with the aforementioned piece of crap demanding that she give him something from her bag.
Drugs, presumably, although she denied it at the time.
Either way, it didn’t feel exceptional. Nobody even looked up, much less reacted.
Except for me.
I didn’t hit him. I’d wanted to, and sometimes I think I should have to make him feel, really feel the consequences of his actions.
Instead, I ‘restrained’ him. Okay, I might have jerked his arm up his back a little harder than was necessary—hard enough that he started to gibber—but by then I had clocked the tell-tale white powder around his nostrils.
Hennessy was instantly furious with me, even more so when I frogmarched her away from the club. But then in the car her bravado crumbled, and she started to cry. Without even realising what I was doing, I pulled her onto my lap.
My mind takes a sudden, sharp, sexual detour as my body tenses around the memory of that moment, reliving the feel of her soft mouth fusing with mine. Without even looking at her, I know she is reliving it too. I know, because I can feel the air darkening around us.
For a moment we stand and stare at one another in a pulsing silence that presses in on us. Her eyes are narrowed on my face. Our mouths are close enough that I feel her warm breath as she exhales, and I breathe in her scent, that teasing, light scent of hers, as I inhale.