‘Your arrogance is truly exceptional, Micha,’ she fired back.
‘Answer the question.’
‘Believe? I don’tbelieve. Iknowhow much I hate you, Micha. Much as that might shock you. If the rumours are true, you’ve built quite the dance card from the women here in Paris.’
‘Careful, Maria. Sounds a little like jealousy to me.’
Maria scoffed. ‘It’s not jealousy, Micha,’ she said sweeping her gaze over him, ‘it’s disgust.’
He threw his head back and barked a laugh, dismissing her put-down. The long column of his neck was stubbled with the shadow of a beard she knew he’d shaved that morning.
Dressed in a three-piece suit, he should have looked all business and boring. But damn it, he looked anything but. The grey superfine wool of the suit was cut to fit him perfectly, with a white shirt made from Egyptian cotton. He filled it all out to perfection.
‘See, I don’t think that you hate me,’ he said circling back round to his earlier question, his tongue sweeping out for barely a second before his teeth plunged into his bottom lip, as he looked at her in a very dominant and utterly unbusinesslike way.
No. This? Here? Right now? He was pure alpha male. A predator stalking its prey.
And she was the prey.
He shrugged off his suit jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, before coming around from behind the large ornate table that had once been used by her grandfather. He came to stand in front of her as he unhooked his cufflinks and pocketed them, before rolling back the sleeves of his shirt, something she found inexplicably fascinating.
He leaned back against the desk, arms folded across his chest—pulling the shirt tight across his chest and biceps beneath the matching grey waistcoat—his gaze running up and down the length of her body insolently,carelessly, heating every single place it touched.
And he knew it too.
Micha took his time, and his fill. Oh, he was aware how crass it was, but at this point he realised that he had very little to lose.
For years, he’d behaved himself. He’d done as Gio wanted, confined himself to the little box that Gio Gallo had put him in, safely away from the proximity of his favouritefemalegrandchild. The gender qualifier wasn’t important to him, but it had been to Gio. Gio, who had all but been near maniacal about who his business empire went to after his death.
Gio had been obsessed with it going to a male of the family—but Antonio wasn’t a Gallo by blood, his adoption by Alessina apparently not enough to satisfy the old man. But a marriage between Antonio and Maria—an adopted grandchild and a female grandchild?—that had seemed just about enough in Gio Gallo’s mind.
And Micha? Oh, he’d been used as the stick to beat or threaten the Gallos with for years and Gio’s death had not changed that. Micha would inherit the entire company, lock, stock and barrel, if Antonio and Maria didn’t marry.
No one, not even the two people he’d once considered friends,moreeven, had ever once thought that he might actually be good at what he did here. That he might actually have added to the wealth of the Gallos—heaven forbid, that he might actually even deserve it. But then…not even Gio Gallo had truly thought that of Micha.
‘Idohate you,’ she ground out from between perfect white teeth, bared at him in a silent growl. ‘And this? This is the last time you’ll ever see me,’ she announced with a flourish.
He smirked, unable to help himself.
‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded, furious that her threat hadn’t been met with trembling knees and chattering teeth.
She must have forgotten that he was built differently than the simpering, pathetic members of the Gallo clan on whom her ire would have worked.
‘You. Threatening me.’
‘It’s not a threat, it’s a promise.’
‘Mmm,’ he said, closing the distance between them in just a few short strides.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, backing up, startled when her legs hit the back of the chair behind her.
‘Whatever I want,’ he replied, unable to take his gaze from her. His eyes searched, scored, imprinted every single moment of her onto his soul. The way that the silk of her shirt shivered when she breathed, the superbly fitting palazzo trousers, pressing against skin and curves he’d never once forgotten.
Oh, they’d not done much as teenagers, no matter what Gio Gallo had thought. No matter what anyone had thought. Heavy petting, the Americans might have called it. But it hadn’t mattered. He’d know her in one hundred years. Blind, deaf and unable to speak, he’dknowher.
But she’d never really known him, had she?
‘Stop it,’ she said, trying to back up again.
