CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREE
P UT LIKE THAT , she had no choice, Sydney thought, panic scrabbling in her throat. But, of course, she’d never had one because the choice was between two equally unpalatable options. The classic rock or hard place. Deep blue sea and the devil.
Remembering Noah’s twisted face as he’d reeled off her faults in that cold, hissing voice, she shivered. In some ways, too many ways right now, Tiger had more power over her than Noah had ever had. And yet, although he was making her feel nervous and tenser than she’d ever felt, that wasn’t the same thing as being scared.
The worst part was that she had chosen Noah. There had been no threat hanging over her. At eighteen she had found his authority and rigour thrillingly exotic. He had been so unlike her family, so articulate and emphatic, and she had been hooked.
Had put herself on the hook, she thought, throat tightening at her naivety. No , not naivety. To be naive was to be credulous and clueless about how the world worked. But she was a Truitt, she knew how it worked and, more importantly, how often it failed to work. She had been stupid and smug, believing herself to be different, better than everyone around her. And she had been better academically. She’d worked hard and she’d liked school. There had been rules to follow, and she’d found it relaxing to know what she had to do and where she had to be at what time.
Because home had been far from relaxing. It had been chaotic and overwhelming, and she’d always been on edge, always worrying about what was going to happen next. Noah had seen that, and exploited it, flattering her and isolating her and telling her ‘hard truths’; telling her she deserved better.
Now she could see that his ‘honesty’ and principles were a mask for his cruel, controlling nature, but back then she had wanted to believe him so badly that she had ignored all those red flags in his behaviour until it was too late and she was living in his world—if it could be described as living.
But that was then. Now she understood that to be that certain, that uncompromising, had a dark side. A dangerous side that was best avoided.
Her gaze shifted an inch to where Tiger stood watching her, the potency in his gaze undeniable. Unavoidable.
Because she couldn’t avoid this man unless she let him call the police, and faced the consequences. And she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t fight for her brothers’ freedom from behind bars.
Then again, how could she pretend to be his girlfriend?
Her arm twitched, the point of contact where his fingers had pressed against her skin tingling as if he were touching her now. If she agreed to that, then he would have to touch her, kiss her even. And she knew how he would kiss, could see his hand in her hair the better to hold her as he pressed his mouth against hers.
She took an unsteady step backwards, shivers running over her skin, her head spinning with shock and an intense, alien longing for something she didn’t recognise or know how to process.
‘What about your security team?’ She waved her hand in the direction of Carlos. ‘And your head of IT? They think I’m public enemy number one. Isn’t it going to look a little bit weird if we suddenly start “dating”?’
He shrugged. ‘We use white hats all the time to challenge the integrity of the security system. Obviously, it has to look real or nobody takes it seriously. If I tell them this was one of those occasions, then that’s what it is. The only opinion that matters on that subject, on any subject in this building, is mine. And it’s not just an opinion.’ He lifted his chin and there was a dark gleam in his eyes that made her breath catch. ‘It’s more of a directive.’
His voice was quiet. Matter-of-fact because he wasn’t bragging or bigging himself up. He didn’t need to. The truth of his words was stamped into every curve and line of his gorgeous face.
Her pulse was racing. Tiger might be the most dangerous man she had ever met and yet she wasn’t scared of him in the physical sense. Her fear was that he would somehow sense the heat she could feel blooming inside her.
‘Even if that’s true I don’t see how it’s going to work,’ she said firmly, because she had to try, had to make him see that she would be better employed as a cyber-security asset. ‘This isn’t Halloween. I won’t just be putting on some costume for a couple hours. You’re asking me to convince people that I’m someone I’m not and I’m not an actress.’
He stared down at her, his golden gaze steady and unblinking. ‘Are you saying that Abi and Hannah are in on this? That they know you’ve been hacking my system?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Are you sure?’ he persisted. ‘Perhaps I should have someone bring them in and I can see what they have to say.’
She glowered at him. ‘You know they haven’t got a clue about any of this.’
Which, of course, meant that she had proved his point for him, she thought furiously, a fraction of a second later. The dark gleam in his eyes told her that he had been waiting for her to reach that conclusion.
Squaring her shoulders, Sydney lifted her chin. ‘You’re missing the point,’ she said, not bothering to hide her anger and frustration. ‘I wasn’t acting because I was an assistant to Katherine.’
‘True, but you were also hacking my business for personal gain.’ He shook his head. ‘Time’s up, Ms Truitt. Make your choice.’
‘It’s not a choice. It’s blackmail.’
His mouth twisted into a smile that made her heart thud heavily in her chest. ‘No, this is retribution.’
She hated him then. Hated how he was making it seem as though he were being so reasonable when the reality was that he was bending her to his will.
‘And just so we’re clear, I will take silence as a refusal,’ he added softly.
‘This isn’t legal.’
‘But hacking is?’ he said coolly. ‘My lawyers can find a workaround. All you need to do is sign whatever I send you.’ His eyes held hers as he tapped his expensive watch. ‘Last chance. Yes, or no?’
‘Yes,’ she said through gritted teeth and the look of satisfaction on his face made her want to scream and throw things at his head.
‘Good.’ He sounded calm, relaxed even, as if the outcome of their conversation had never been in any doubt.
‘We leave tomorrow. I’ve had my lawyers draw up an NDA and you’ll need to sign that before you leave the building. You can wait out there. Then I’ll get a car to take you home and see you to your door. Wouldn’t want anything happening to you on your way home. I mean, there are so many unscrupulous people around these days,’ he added, pulling his phone from his pocket.
Was that it? Sydney stared at him in confusion and a mounting anger as he began scrolling down the screen.
‘You can go,’ he said softly without looking at her. ‘Unless you want to type out a couple of emails for old times’ sake.’
She felt her cheeks grow hot. ‘You know, I’m starting to think that maybe prison wouldn’t be such a bad option.’
He straightened then, and held out his phone. ‘Shall I make the call or would you rather do the honours?’ he said in that dark way of his that made her pulse dance along her limbs. ‘I guess not,’ he added as she shook her head. ‘In which case I think we’re done here.’
There was a beat of silence.
‘Not quite’ she said stiffly. Ignoring the hint of shame that flared inside her, she drew a deep breath, because it had to be done. ‘We haven’t discussed my fee.’
Now his gaze rose to meet hers. ‘Your fee?’ he repeated, his mouth curving downwards in a way that thudded through her in time to her heartbeat.
The flash drive was in Tiger’s possession so Harris Carver wouldn’t be paying her now. Not that she was about to share that piece of information with the man in front of her. Finding out that she had a buyer and that it was Carver would be an unnecessary distraction at this point in the negotiations. What mattered was getting hold of some money, and fast. So, she was just going to have to brazen it out. There was no way around it.
‘I need money,’ she said flatly.
He didn’t like that. Didn’t like a woman asking to be paid to be his ‘girlfriend’. But then it must be a first, she thought, trying to ignore the burn of his gaze. A man as beautiful and wealthy as Tiger McIntyre would have women queuing up to be invited, however briefly, into his bed.
‘Tough.’ His eyes were dark and dangerous then. ‘Your fee is your freedom, Ms Truitt.’
Which was true but didn’t make her feel any better. For a moment she contemplated appealing to his soft side and telling him the truth about her brothers. But admitting that her family were petty criminals was hardly going to help her case. And besides, Tiger was not some housecat. He didn’t have a soft side.
Suddenly and fiercely, she wanted this over. Wanted to get out of this vast air-conditioned office that somehow felt small and crowded and hot because of him.
She shook her head, because she had to try. ‘Right now, my freedom isn’t enough.’ Which hadn’t always been true, she thought, with a jolt. Trapped in the house down that dirt track, miles on foot from the nearest road, body stiff from tiptoeing on eggshells, she had dreamed of freedom as a woman in a desert dreamed of finding water.
Her whole body tensed as he pushed off from the desk and took a step towards her. ‘You’re in no position to negotiate or make demands, Sydney, and I would advise you against thinking that is ever going to change, because it won’t,’ he said, and there was a husky softness to his voice that made her shiver. ‘But it will vex me, which for obvious reasons I would also advise against.’ His gaze narrowed on hers in a way that made her breath go shallow. ‘Put simply, if you want to stay out of jail, you need to keep me sweet.’
Her lip curled. ‘I thought you were on the record for not taking advantage of women,’ she said tightly.
He frowned. ‘I don’t take advantage of women.’
Her eyes narrowed but the stupid thing was she believed him.
Yes, he was taking advantage of the situation but there was a pragmatism to his thought process that she understood. He needed a partner, a woman on his arm who could be relied upon to smile and gaze up at him adoringly and then walk away afterwards without a murmur of complaint and in a weird but logical way she fitted that remit.
Even more weirdly she had often thought how useful it would be to have a man like that to hand.
Since Noah, she had been single and celibate. She’d tried various dating apps but she was always on edge, constantly looking for the signs that she had missed with him because she couldn’t trust them, or herself. Couldn’t let them get close or allow things to get too deep. But there were times when it would be helpful or even just more fun to have a partner of sorts. Someone she could meet for breakfast or to take to weddings or even the occasional party. Someone who was calm and kind and intelligent, who would dance with her and laugh with her without expecting more. Someone who wouldn’t try to curtail and control her when she wanted to move on.
Because she had to keep moving. Keeping one step ahead was the only way to stay safe, and it had worked just fine until today.
Feeling Tiger’s gaze, she lifted her chin. ‘Am I not a woman?’ she said crisply.
She instantly wished she hadn’t said anything because his eyes locked with hers, then moved over her face. Slowly. Then dropped again to the tiny pulse beating at the base of her throat roaming downwards over her quivering body, not missing a detail.
The atmosphere in the office was suddenly so taut that it felt as if it would shatter at any moment.
‘Yes, you are,’ he said slowly, and she felt her body shiver to attention, breasts suddenly and inexplicably heavy, a bud of heat pulsing between her legs.
Behind him the walls of his office seemed to be losing shape and that thing, that twitching, staticky golden thread between them that she had been pretending not to feel since walking into his office for the first time this morning, snapped taut.
Her heart was running free like a herd of wild horses.
‘If there’s nothing else,’ she said after a moment, shifting her weight from one foot to the other like a boxer squaring up to her opponent, because that was what he was. She was clear about that. ‘I’ll just get my things.’
She half expected him to move but he didn’t and, trying her hardest to ignore him, she reached past him for her bag, only, because she was intent on not touching him, her balance was off centre and she teetered sideways.
His hand snaked out so quickly she didn’t see it move, just felt it as he caught her, her breath snatching in her throat as his arm curled around her waist, pulling her upright with such force that she found herself pinned against his warm, unyielding body.
For a moment, she couldn’t process the feeling of him, the heat, the hardness. It was too much.
Except it wasn’t.
Her fingers curled into his shirt. She wanted more. More heat. More hardness. More of him—
And that was a shock because she didn’t like people touching her, didn’t like to be touched.
Until now.
‘Sydney.’ The hoarseness of his voice as he said her name arrowed through her, kicking up sparks inside her so that she felt singed, and the heat of his hand was telling her things about herself she had never known, making her want things—
Her legs were softening, she was melting inside and she reached out to steady herself.
‘Ouch!’
She winced. Her elbow had connected with something and a crash resounded through the cavernous office, yanking her out of her trance-like state.
What the—?
‘Is everything okay in there, Mr McIntyre?’ The man’s voice sounded distant, as if she were dreaming it. But this wasn’t a dream, she was here in Tiger’s office, his chest pressing into hers, the hard shape of his thigh pushing between hers.
Only how could that be?
Tiger was her enemy, but searching inside herself she could feel nothing like loathing or disgust. Instead, her body felt taut and achy and unfulfilled because his hard, muscular chest was still temptingly within touching distance and as he moved her fingers tightened in his shirt of their own accord.
She could feel his gaze pinning her to the floor. She glanced down and saw the lamp from his desk rolling in slow, lopsided circles on the polished concrete floor. Beside it her bag lay on its side, the contents fanned out around it.
‘Mr McIntyre?’ The man’s voice was taut and urgent now.
‘Everything’s fine, Carlos.’ Tiger released his grip and she clutched dizzily at the desk for support. Her whole body felt hollowed out with a hunger she had never felt for any man and she could only watch dazedly as he picked up the lamp and put it back next to the pile of folders.
‘I just knocked something off the desk. It’s all good. In fact, Ms Truitt is just leaving, aren’t you? So you can walk her to the elevator.’
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the shadowy outline of Carlos move away from the door and then her body tensed as Tiger turned towards her, because his pupils had swallowed up his irises so that his eyes were no longer gold, but black.
‘Are you okay?’ He stared down at her, his expression hard, glittering and unreadable, and she nodded.
She couldn’t have answered Tiger’s question aloud. Her breath was gone. Her voice too. Her heart was pounding sluggishly as if she’d been drugged or hypnotised and all her blood seemed to have rushed to her cheeks and her face felt as if it were burning and yet she wanted to lean into him again and the whole thing was so confusing that she couldn’t look at him any more and, ducking down, she began to pick up her things.
‘Need a hand?’
‘No, I don’t,’ she said quickly, but Tiger was already crouching beside her. His nearness made her skin feel unfamiliar, hot and tender and tingling.
‘Don’t,’ she snapped, snatching a packet of tissues from his hand. Her voice sounded high and thin and she understood that it was revealing too much. But she couldn’t do anything to change it without drawing attention to that fact and she had already given away more of herself than was sensible to this man.
There was a long silence as he stared at her for what felt like an eternity and then he spun round and walked around his desk.
‘I’m sure you can find your way out. Don’t forget to sign the NDA. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Make sure you’re ready. If you keep me waiting, it won’t be my security team knocking on your door. It’ll be the NYPD.’
His eyes roamed down over her body in a way that made her feel unsteady. Unclothed.
‘Dress is smart-casual but nothing flouncy or garish. Keep it subtle. Oh, and, Sydney...’ He paused as she turned to face him, and now his gaze was as hot and bright and destructive as a solar flare. ‘A word of warning. Any little voices in the back of your head suggesting you do a disappearing act—you would be wise to ignore them. Otherwise, you’ll find out exactly what happens when you pull a tiger by the tail.’
He hadn’t given her a time, she realised as she let herself into the apartment, no doubt on purpose to punish her for asking for money.
But she had no choice. She needed money and Harris Carver owed her nothing because she hadn’t delivered. Her spine stiffened as she remembered their brief conversation. She hadn’t told him that she’d been caught red-handed, just that she couldn’t hack the McIntyre server. ‘Thank you for letting me know,’ he’d said and then he’d hung up.
And now she was back to square one. Worse than square one, because she had no money coming in. But at least she wasn’t sitting in a police station, which was good, and in a week this would all be over, and really how bad could it be? It was just a different version of what she’d already done, only, instead of posing as an admin assistant, she would be posing as his girlfriend. So put like that, it was just more role-playing, only with a few added complications.
Her heartbeat jerked in her throat. That was one way of describing Tiger.
She felt suddenly exhausted, as if she had just finished a triathlon. As she sat down on the sofa, her phone pinged and, gazing down at the screen, she felt her breath catch in her throat. It was the NDA. She scrolled down to the bottom because otherwise it wouldn’t let her sign, but she didn’t bother reading it. What was the point? She was hardly going to negotiate her terms. Clicking on the screen, she signed in the box and pressed Send.
There. It was done. She wasn’t going to have to face the police.
And yet she couldn’t properly enjoy the feeling because now it was real. Undeniable. Unavoidable.
Her back prickled against the sofa cushions. Back in his office, it had all felt so surreal, so unreal . The whole time she was there she had just kept thinking, This can’t be happening to me. And as she’d walked back into the apartment it had felt even more like a dream. Or a nightmare.
She glanced down at the screen, her pulse twitching.
But it was time to wake up and smell the coffee. By signing that NDA she was bound to Tiger.
Bound.
Remembering Tiger’s warning about pulling a disappearing act, she got abruptly to her feet and began pacing round the apartment. Round and round as she had once paced the home that became a cage.
Could she run?
No point, she thought, a shiver running down her spine. Nobody could run for ever. Which meant she would have to find a place to hide. Only hiding was worse than running.
Her body stiffened as she remembered what it had felt like waiting to be found. Eyes closed. Braced. Breathing between clenched teeth. Waiting for the sound of his voice, his footsteps. Praying for it in the end because the silence was the most terrible thing of all.
Somewhere nearby a dog barked and her legs slowed then stopped.
No, she wasn’t going to run or hide. And she didn’t need to. Okay, it hadn’t exactly gone according to plan, but everything was under control.
Under control? Heat rose up over her chest to scald her face as she remembered how her skin had seemed to dissolve and fuse with his in those few febrile seconds when his arm had slid around her waist and her body had pressed against his.
There had been no control, no will. She had been a creature of basic and compulsive need, impervious to the danger and absurdity of her actions.
Stalking into the kitchen area, she yanked open the refrigerator door, snatched a can of soda and pressed it against her cleavage. The last thing she had been in that moment was in control. Then again, in some ways it was good that it had happened. Now she knew what he felt like up close and if that was as bad as it got...
Only that was the problem. It hadn’t been bad. On the contrary, it had been the most singularly erotic experience of her life.
Maybe, possibly, probably at some point during this sham relationship they would have to get that close again. Maybe they would even have to kiss but it would be brief, performative, but not in any way passionate. It certainly wouldn’t involve tongues or open mouths because couples didn’t kiss like that in public except in the movies.
And she had no intention of ever being that near to Tiger McIntyre in private again.
Staring at his laptop, Tiger frowned. That was the third time he had read that page of the document on screen and he still couldn’t remember a word of it. It made no sense. He was interested in the research, respected the academics who had authored the report, but for some reason it was hard to stay focused. His mind kept drifting off.
He slammed the screen shut and shoved the laptop across the desk so hard that it collided with the lamp and he had to grab at it to stop it falling onto the floor for the second time that day.
His body tensed as a memory of the first time reared up inside his head, hazy at the edges but clear and sharp at the centre so that he could see Sydney Truitt’s wide brown eyes and trembling mouth just as if she were standing there in front of him.
Although if that were the case, neither of them would be standing.
He swore under his breath. What the hell was she doing back in his head? Although it wasn’t really a case of her coming back because she had never left.
His phone pinged and, glancing down at it, he felt his shoulders stiffen as he stared down at her signature. So that was that. It was official. The game was afoot.
Except it hadn’t felt like a game when her body had been pressed against his. Remembering the quivering arc of her body and the way her hand had clung to him, he felt his pulse accelerate. He couldn’t think of many games that involved a loss of will and purpose but, in that moment, he had forgotten why she was there and why he was there.
And it had shaken him deep down. Not just the shock of it happening, but that he hadn’t wanted to let go of her.
Of course, it was understandable, he reassured himself. He had reacted without thinking and the anger and frustration and intimacy in his office had created some kind of chain reaction that had blown away his logic and willpower. But he was back in charge now and when he held her in his arms the next time, it would be on his terms, not hers.
He pictured Sydney’s face, that slight uptilt to her chin, a subtle but deliberate challenge to his authority.
In fact, this whole arrangement was going to be on his terms, as Sydney Truitt would soon find out.