As he stepped into the foyer, the receptionist at the front desk, who only looked about twenty, clambered to standing, seeming terrified by his presence.
‘You—you must be Mr. Galletti…?’
‘That’s right.’ He kept his voice clipped. He was going to fire every single person on this floor, and there was no need to get their hopes up with even a modicum of friendliness. ‘If you could let Miss Woodward know I’m here…or, better yet, just show me the way to her office.’
There was enough steel in his voice to have the receptionist stammering that Ashley Woodward’s office was the last one on the right. He gave a terse nod before striding down the hall. He looked forward to surprising Miss Woodward with his unannounced arrival; he already had her on the back foot, but what he really wanted was her sprawled on the floor. Tripped up completely with no recourse, begging for his mercy on her knees, which he would coldly refuse…just as she had once so coldly refused him.
Yes, that was a pleasant thought indeed.
He rapped once on the door before immediately opening it and standing on the threshold of the office. He’d had an image in his head of this moment, he realised—Ashley Woodward looking like the haughty princess he remembered, elegant and aloof as she stood behind her desk in a huge corner office, her icy hauteur melting into shocked fear when she realised just what was happening to her company, to herlife.
Nothing about what greeted Nico lived up to that vision. Who was this dishevelled-looking woman with her hair in tumbled disarray, her blouse unbuttoned and a stick ofdeodorantin her hand? For a second, he couldn’t make sense of it: the woman in her simple blouse and skirt, both of which looked decent but cheap; the scrap of lacy bra he glimpsed from beneath her unbuttoned blouse moulding to high, firm breasts with creamily ivory skin; the cramped and unremarkable office she stood in. It didn’t even have awindow. Had he gone into the wrong room? He looked around, as if for clues, while the woman let out an indignant squeak of protest.
‘Don’t you normallywaitfor someone to say it’s okay to come in?’ she demanded as she hurled the deodorant onto the desk and pulled the sides of her blouse together. ‘Let me guess. You’re Nico Galletti.’
That voice. It was so different, without the elongated syllables and cool, cut-glass accent of the Ashley Woodward he’d once known, but it still possessed that upper-class lilt that had once made him struggle to soften his own Brooklyn accent. ThiswasAshley Woodward—looking very different, but still essentially the same.
‘Considering this is only going to be your office for about three more minutes, I decided to dispense with the niceties,’ he replied in a cold drawl before nodding at her blouse. ‘But I suggest you button that up.’
‘And I suggest you turn your back,’ Ashley snapped. ‘If you’re a gentleman.’
Nico let out a laugh of genuine amusement. ‘Oh, but I’m not a gentleman.’
‘Why is that not a surprise?’ Ashley muttered as she thrust her chin up defiantly in a way he definitelydidn’tremember, keeping his gaze the whole while. She began to button up her blouse so that intriguing scrap of lace and glimpse of creamy skin was hidden from view.
Perversely and annoyingly, Nico felt the loss. For a few taut seconds, he let himself be entranced by that enticing, disappearing view of her long, slender fingers slipping in and out of the button holes of her cheap blouse, a faint flush pinkening her porcelain cheeks. The way Ashley Woodward unblinkingly held his gaze the whole time with those deep, emerald eyes was strangely erotic, considering he was pretty sure she wasnottrying to inflame him—although perhaps he shouldn’t put such a pathetic ploy past her. Sixteen years ago, she’d flirted with him on her father’s command. Was she so deluded as to think the same cheap ploy would work twice?
Never. Although, Nico had to acknowledge, Ashley Woodward looked more furious than flirtatious, the colour deepening in her pale cheeks, her narrowed eyes sparkling like slits of jade, her hair in tumbled gold waves about her shoulders. He felt something in him stir in response and he decided he’d had enough of the accidental— or not—strip tease. Ashley Woodward had beguiled him once. He would not allow her to do so again.
‘I think you knew full well I wasn’t a gentleman already,’ he remarked coldly, and Ashley frowned, her golden eyebrows snapping together as she shook her head, so a few more curling tendrils framed her face and fell about her shoulders. As beautiful as she was, she looked a mess—her skirt crumpled, her hair falling from its pins, a ladder in her nylons from thigh to ankle. He realised she wasn’t even wearing shoes. Was all that a ploy too? Did she think this made her more approachable? Was she hoping he’d havepityon her?
Again, never.
‘Why would I know that?’ she asked, sounding both curious and exasperated. She bent down to hunt for her shoes, giving Nico a pleasant view of her rear, her skirt stretching taut over the firm flesh. ‘I don’t know anything about you,’ she continued, jamming one sensible pump on her foot and then the other. ‘Except the fact that you swooped in and took over my company for no reason at all that I can figure out. It’s like…like you had avendetta, when I’ve never seen you before in my life.’
She shook her head in disgust as she straightened and finished tucking in her blouse before meeting his gaze directly once more, her jade eyes flashing but also disconcertingly clear and seemingly empty of guile.
For a second, truly flummoxed, Nico could only stare. All right,thishe hadn’t expected. He’d envisioned Ashley Woodward as furious, scornful, dismissive…or hurt, woebegone, weeping. He would have taken any of those reactions in his stride and enjoyed milking them for what they were worth… But Ashley Woodward was acting as ifshe didn’t remember him.
Could it be possible? Could that tumultuous scene in the Woodward ballroom, when he’d been dragged away inchains, have been so insignificant to her that she’d forgotten her part in sending an innocent man to jail? A man she’d flirted with and evenkissed, all as a way to trap him further. Had she managed to forget that too? Or what about the sham of a trial, when she’d sat stony-faced in the second row, never looking him in the eye once? For two weeks she’d come every day. Had she forgottenthat?
Nico hadn’t forgotten any of it. At twenty years old, he’d been both beaten down and hardened by his childhood of near-constant struggle, and walking into the Woodward ballroom had felt like stepping into a fairy tale. It was the first time he’d worn a dinner suit—Chase Woodward had lent him one—or tasted champagne. The first time he’d felt as if his life had possibility and hope. And Ashley Woodward, with her tinkling laugh and shy smile, had been, ever so briefly, part of that.
Of course, it hadn’t taken him long to realise she’d just been entertaining him on her father’s orders. Later, during the trial, the prosecuting attorney had argued that Nico had not only been helping himself to Chase Woodward’s money, but to his daughter as well. He’d painted a picture of a man beset by greed and shameless entitlement, which had so clearly been part of Woodward’s plan.
And Ashley had been part of all that… Nico would never forget the completely cold look on her face when he’d been handcuffed right in front of her. Moments before, they’d shared a sweet yet lingering kiss. And then, when he’d begged her to help him, she’d turned away without a word.
Shehadto remember. This was some elaborate ploy, pathetic and absurd, to make him take pity on her. Or was it an even more pathetic power play—an attempt to make him feel wrongfooted and at a disadvantage, as if he was so unimportant she couldn’t even remember his arrest and trial? The old Woodward arrogance showing itself yet again…
Whatever the reason, Nico wasn’t buying it.
‘For someone who is purportedly a CEO of their own company, your memory skills are sadly lacking,’ he told her coldly, but all he got was a blank stare in return.
‘My memory skills?’ she repeated. ‘Of what?’
Annoyance bit deeply. ‘This little game might be amusing to you, Miss Woodward—or maybe it’s a last roll of the dice—but it won’t work.’
She shook her head slowly, her arms folded under her high, firm breasts. ‘Mr Galletti, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
