Chapter Two #2
He held her gaze. ‘I’m not the monster here, Princess. Nor am I a social worker. Laying off staff is part of the process. It’s not personal. It’s business.’
‘Right!’ Her eyes scanned his face, deliberate and unflinching. ‘So, in some parallel universe where I didn’t own this business, you’d still be going out of your way to shut it down?’ She was shaking her head. ‘This is solely, entirely personal. Only you’re too much of a coward to admit it.’
‘Says the woman whose perfected the art of never admitting anything. You just keep smiling that Mona Lisa smile and acting like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.
But that’s what it is. An act. Because for all your airs and graces, you’re not a princess of Troy.
You’re a Trojan horse. Just like your father. ’
Her eyes widened almost as if he had slapped her.
‘And you’re a crook, just like yours. The only difference is, you haven’t been locked up yet.’
Holding her gaze, holding on to his temper by a thread, he took a step closer and saw her hands ball into fists. She stayed where she was.
‘I’m going to enjoy taking control of your business.’
Her irises were very green then against the black of the pupils, and he stared into them, unable to look away, not wanting to look away.
Wanting to do more than look—
Her sharp intake of breath brought him back to his senses.
‘Then take it. Now. If that’s what you want, I’ll resign.
I can cite personal reasons or conflict with the board.
Whatever.’ She lifted her chin a little higher, and he caught a glimpse of the pale underside of her jaw and the pulse beating frantically against the thin skin.
‘Whatever?’ He raised an eyebrow.
She ignored him. ‘I’ll step down as CEO. I’ll get my things, and I can leave right now.’
This wasn’t something he’d anticipated. From everything his father had told him, Henry Appleton was the most self-serving man on the planet. But Cassie looked not just ready but eager to go.
Or perhaps she just wanted to get away from him. Which made more sense, and yet it didn’t please him.
‘I’ll leave right now,’ she repeated, and he heard emotions he couldn’t name in her voice. He hated that she could do that. That she could keep a part of herself separate from his plans. ‘On one condition. You have to keep my staff.’
She was offering herself up as some kind of sacrifice?
‘And why would I do that?’
‘Why wouldn’t you? I might not be innocent in your eyes, but you have to admit that the people who work here are.’
‘I don’t have to admit anything.’
‘But they haven’t done anything to you. And shutting down the business makes no sense. Because despite your propaganda to the board and my shareholders, we’re doing well.’
‘We’, not ‘I’, or ‘my business’. Her words with their suggestion of loyalty and team effort piqued him. But he had to get a grip.
‘Not as well as you could be.’
That wasn’t strictly true. The business had grown, but she was very selective about their clients.
Almost too selective, and for a moment, he wondered why.
Wondered, too, what it was about Cassie that made him want to reach out and cup her cheek, pull her close, take that mouth of hers and kiss the rigidity out of her body.
Cassie’s shoulders straightened, and she met his gaze. ‘Then make it do better. Or perhaps you don’t think you can.’
There was a challenging note to her voice, but he didn’t rise to it. He didn’t need to. Instead, he shrugged. ‘Staff often leave after a takeover. And besides, in the parallel universe where I keep your business running, I would want to choose my own people.’
‘That would be a mistake.’
He stared at her, stunned not just by the direction the conversation was taking but by the fact that he was even having it at all. So shut it down, he told himself. But that would mean ending this meeting, and he found that he wasn’t ready to do that. Wasn’t ready for her to leave yet.
‘My people know the business inside out,’ she said stubbornly. ‘All of them have been with me from the start.’
They had? That surprised him. But probably they were all chums of hers.
‘Replacing them with your own people would be counterproductive.’ Her eyes narrowed, and the tilt of her chin sent a shadow down the curve of her cheekbone. ‘Assuming, that is, that in your parallel universe, you’re still a businessman and not running a charity.’
She paused, and he waited, and then she waited, and he almost laughed, because it was funny. Cassie had no pieces left on the board except a pawn, and yet she was not giving up. Not giving in. It was a stubbornness he recognised in himself.
But they were nothing alike, he told himself savagely, welcoming the surge of anger that accompanied the thought.
‘I don’t want to own a PR company.’
He certainly didn’t need one that came loaded with so many links to the past. Taking over her business by force was a way to reclaim something of what his father had lost.
Something of what he’d lost when his dad went to prison, and he’d gone back to Greece to live with his grandfather. Seizing control was a way to rebalance the scales in his favour.
It was revenge, plain and simple. Only now it appeared that it was more complicated than that.
Yes, Cassie had been vanquished, crushed.
But it didn’t feel like enough, even though everything had gone according to plan. He had anticipated her confusion and panic correctly, and as expected, she had raged against him. He’d assumed that she would keep fighting him. He had wanted her to fight him. That was where the victory lay.
That and watching her plead for mercy.
Only now she was basically handing him her business on a plate.
On condition that he keep her staff on the payroll.
And he wanted to tell her that in any other situation, it was exactly what he would do, at first anyway.
Typically most mergers resulted in some staff restructuring, but despite his reputation and his current level of wealth, the consequences of a person losing their job, their income, everything they took for granted still resonated loudly in the fascia of his body.
He had never admitted that even to himself, and that he should be thinking it now, here, in the presence of this woman, jolted him almost as much as the realisation of how perilously close his emotions were to the surface.
The wrong emotions.
The feeling of sadness, of being hollowed out with fear and loneliness. Of how he’d felt stepping onto the flight to Greece that very first time. Feelings that he never wanted to experience again and had successfully buried.
Until now, with her.
It was Cassie’s fault he was feeling like this. Like a boxer with his arm curling back to land the knock-out blow on the reigning champion, only for his opponent to suddenly declare they were quitting the match.
It didn’t matter that she was pleading, because she wasn’t pleading for herself.
But for her staff.
Firing a bunch of innocent people felt like something Henry Appleton would do without losing sleep. Only how would acting like Henry be revenge?
But now that he was here, he could see that revenge was just the starting point. What he wanted was closure. However, none of the outcomes on offer here in this room seemed likely to result in anything approximating that.
His stomach knotted. Andreas wasn’t the only person who had served a lifetime in prison. Antaeus had waited two decades for what was essentially a moment in time. And okay, Cassie was going to lose her business, and her resignation might seem like a defeat in theory, but it was too quick.
What he needed was to keep her tethered to the uncertainty, the fear, and the direct consequences of his actions. Forcing her to remain in his orbit, under his direct influence, would put her at his mercy for longer and allow him to truly savour the power he now wielded.
She wanted out, so he would make her stay.
Refuse her resignation and give her a task to complete. Something impossible that would keep her scurrying in his wake.
The Greek in him almost purred with satisfaction.
It was perfect. A game without rules that he would win ultimately.
And in the meantime, he could keep pulling her strings, making her work and suffer for an unattainable goal.
All he had to do was sit back and watch and see how far he could push her.
How far would she go?
He felt a pulse of hunger so intense it made his head spin as his brain offered up a tempting slideshow of what ‘how far’ might look like. Batting away an image of a semi-naked Cassie, her body blurring with his on a bed that looked exactly like his bed in Pelion, he met her gaze.
‘Let me get this right. You leave. In exchange, I get to keep a business I don’t want and continue paying your staff for jobs I don’t need them to do. And that’s your best offer, is it?’
He didn’t wait for her reply. Instead he shook his head.
‘I think you can do better than that, Princess,’ he said softly, and maybe all those warnings about the dangers of tinkering with time were right, because bringing his past into her present seemed to have messed with his mind.
Why else could he be so distracted by that pulse dancing down her throat?
Why was he having to stifle the urge to lean in and capture that twitching skin beneath his lips?
‘So, no, I’m not going to accept your resignation.’
‘I thought you wanted me out of here.’
The flush to her cheeks made the green of her irises pop.
‘And I thought you wanted me to keep Trojan Princess up and running, keep your staff in their jobs.’
‘I do.’
‘Then you’re going to have to change my mind. And you can’t do that if you’re trying on tiaras in your townhouse.’
He watched her nostrils flare slightly as she let his jibe slide off her skin. He could see her mind racing, thoughts jostling with one another as she fought to stay calm and focused. ‘And how am I supposed to change your mind?’ she said tightly, crossing her arms in front of her body.
Which shouldn’t have been arousing.