Chapter Two
ASHLEY HELD NICO GALLETTI’S gaze with effort, although everything in her screamed to look away, and fast. She’d worked so hard on not hiding, not cringing or apologising for anything any more.
But, dear heaven, this moment, this man, challenged the inner strength that had been so hard-won after the pain and shame of her childhood.
Why was he looking at her as if he hated her?
It didn’t help that he’d caught her unaware—with her blouse unbuttoned, for heaven’s sake!
The memory made her cheeks scorch all over again.
Any normal person would have had the decency to apologise and retreat.
Any decent man would have been embarrassed by his faux pas, or even alarmed that his accidental over-step might be construed as some kind of sexual harassment.
Not Nico Galletti. He’d simply stood there and glared at her while she’d inwardly burned and quaked, refusing to look away as she’d buttoned up her blouse and tried to ignore the heat blooming across her skin and stealing through her body as his narrowed gaze had kept hers.
It had been a petty power play on both their parts, but she wasn’t going to concede an inch if she could help it.
But the episode had given her an unfortunate insight into the utter ruthlessness of her adversary.
She already felt as if she had the measure of the man, and she feared it was ominous for both her and her company.
Now Ashley waited for him to speak while he simply cocked his head, his steely gaze sweeping slowly over her in a way that made Ashley’s entire body heat all over again in unexpected—and unwanted—awareness.
Her blouse might be buttoned up, but she felt as if he were slowly stripping her naked, although she didn’t think there was anything sexual about his gaze; it was merely considering.
The heat, Ashley was pretty sure, was humiliatingly one-sided, and she was determined not to reveal her response.
So, fine, the man was clearly incredibly good-looking.
She couldn’t deny such a basic and overwhelming fact, especially when she basically never came across men like him.
Her employees were women or science nerds, and so were the investors and inventors she dealt with.
No one like Nico Galletti had ever walked through her door before.
He stood several inches over six feet, with a lithe yet powerful body encased in a grey silk suit, his dark hair cut close and threaded with silver at his temples that somehow only added to his predatory, panther-like appeal.
As for his face…it was all sharply bladed cheeks and a knife of a nose, the unrelenting hardness of those features alleviated by thick, dark lashes and a mobile mouth that, annoyingly and embarassingly, Ashley’s gaze kept being drawn to.
In some hidden, feminine part of herself, she imagined those lips parting, coming closer, kissing…
Oddly, she thought she knew exactly what they would feel like—warm and dry, soft yet hard at the same time, and surprisingly sweet…
Good grief. What was wrong with her, imagining that man’s mouth at a time like this?
She had no business thinking about him as anything but her enemy.
He so clearly thought of her as his, which she really didn’t understand.
Why, Ashley wondered again, did this feel so personal?
Galletti didn’t seem all that interested in enlightening her, and Ashley wasn’t interested in begging for information.
The man already had her on the back foot as it was.
Needing to hide her confusion—both about Galletti’s hostility as well as her own extremely inconvenient response to him—she decided to go on the attack. After decades of being defeatist, being the one to deliver the thrust would feel good.
And so, steeling herself, she subjected him to the same lingering once-over he’d just given her, letting her mouth twist sardonically as her gaze deliberately wandered up and down his body, unable to keep from noting—again—the hint of the defined muscles of his chest and abdomen beneath the expensive white cotton of the shirt that clung to them.
The broad shoulders, the long legs, that face…
She saw the surprise flare in his eyes, irritation mixed with amusement by her wandering gaze, and didn’t know whether to be gratified or cowed. If she was trying to pull off a power play, she had a feeling she’d failed—big time.
She crossed her arms and tilted up her head so she was looking down her nose at him, which was a little challenging when he was at least eight inches taller than her. ‘Whenever you feel ready,’ she drawled, ‘You can speak, you know.’
‘You don’t,’ Galletti remarked dryly, seeming completely unimpressed by her examination of him, ‘Seem at all interested in currying my favor.’
‘Oh, and does that annoy you?’ The words slipped out before Ashley could help them.
All right, this was so clearly not the way to convince Galletti to keep her employees, but it felt as if being combative was her only defence.
Nico Galletti might want her to beg for mercy, but she wasn’t going to.
She had promised herself she would never beg again.
Not even to save your company?
The words, whispered in the quiet of her mind, gave Ashley serious pause.
She’d thought she’d do just about anything for Infinite Innovations.
She had done just about anything: living hand to mouth so she could pour just about every single dollar she earned back into the inventions that meant so much to her; working all the hours of the day and night that God had given her, having zero social life and few friends as a result; holding her head up high even when the world around her had condemned her for her father’s sins, over and over again, until she’d finally started proving them all wrong.
Was a little politeness too much to ask, a little kowtowing, even to a man she already had good reason to despise?
She took an even breath and then let it out slowly. ‘I apologise,’ she said levelly. ‘In my…surprise at this situation, I’ve behaved rudely, and there is never any excuse for that.’
In response to this careful little speech, Nico Galletti’s eyebrows merely lifted a fraction. He looked amused, which was galling. Clearly, he would never consider theirs as a meeting of business equals.
‘That’s the best you can do?’ he queried, folding his arms so the smooth silk of his suit tautened across his impressive biceps. His voice was as smooth as his suit…or a snake.
Ashley already felt the undercurrents of something dark and dangerous swirling around her, pulling her under.
She might only have met Galletti five minutes ago, but she sensed there were aspects to this takeover that she didn’t understand, reasons she couldn’t even begin to guess at.
And, until she knew those, she wouldn’t beg for anything.
‘What is it you want from me?’ she asked evenly, doing her best not to flinch as she met his iron-grey gaze.
His lashes were soft and lush, but the look in his eyes was pitiless, and meeting it made her feel as if she’d slammed into a wall.
Why, oh why, did this stranger act like he absolutely loathed her?
‘Ah, now, that’s the interesting thing,’ Galletti said in a soft, dark voice that held equal parts amusement and menace.
He took a step towards her, challenging Ashley to hold her ground, which she did, if only just. She breathed in the smell of his cologne—something clean and spicy, that seemed as dangerous as everything else about him.
She wasn’t scared, not exactly, but the feeling coursing through her definitely felt like alarm…
as well as a treacherous excitement she was honest enough to admit, if only to herself.
As much as she wanted to, she knew she could not deny there was something intensely magnetic about this man; there was some innate, compelling force to him that made her want to step closer and scamper away at the same time.
Another inch or two forward and she’d feel as if she’d fallen into a vortex of fascination and desire she had absolutely no intention of feeling.
And yet…she still looked at his lips. Still imagined how they might feel on hers—soft and hard, dry and firm, lush and…
Stop.
A shuddery breath escaped her before she could help herself and she drew herself up, dragging her gaze away from the man’s mouth.
As much as she wanted to step forward and sprint back at the same time, thankfully sanity prevailed, and she stayed still, trying not to sway under the unrelenting force of his hard gaze, forcing herself to act like his unaffected equal, even if he so clearly didn’t see her as one.
‘What do I want from you?’ Galletti mused, taking yet another step closer so she could feel his warm breath fanning her face, the heat of his body rolling off in intoxicating waves that caused the heat in her own to flare hotter. ‘The answer to that, Miss Woodward, is…absolutely nothing.’
For a second, Ashley could only stare at him.
The rush of awareness she felt morphed into something even more powerful—hope.
For what she already realised was an infuriatingly futile moment, she thought he meant he didn’t want her company.
That this whole hostile takeover was a bad dream, or a joke. That everything was going to be okay…
But when had anything in her life been okay? When had she ever been handed a happy ending, no matter how charmed her life looked from the outside? No, she’d had to forge everything good for herself, with hard work, blood, sweat and many, many tears.
This was going to be no different, she realised with a leaden certainty as Nico Galletti turned away from her, effectively dismissing her, that magnetic tug she’d felt towards him severed in an instant.