Page 3 of Ruthless Enforcer

“Give me thirty seconds. I’ll make a believer out of you.”

Her lips quirking, her gaze flicks past me toward the room. “I have no idea what you’d rescue me from here, unless it’s warm champagne.”

“Tempting, but no.” I glance over her shoulder. The two men have started moving. “The gentlemen at your four o’clock are considerably less disappointing.”

Her smile fades, but she doesn’t turn to look. “What gentlemen?”

Smart. “The ones who’ve been watching you for the last six minutes.”

“Half the room has been watching me.” She looks at me with her magnificent eyes. “You know who my uncle is, right?”

Those green eyes should come with a fucking warning. I’d ignore it, but still. “Half the room wants your uncle’s money. These two want you.”

Her gaze is frank and direct, like she was trying to see into my soul. “And you don’t?”

Well, fuck. “That’s a different conversation, Duchess.”

The smallest hint of color touches her cheeks.

Lowering my hand, I step close enough that anyone watching will assume exactly the wrong thing. I keep my voice low, easy, the kind of velvet-wrapped calm that gets men to hand over their car keys and women to hand over considerably more. “Now we’re out of time. When I touch you, don’t fight me.”

Her eyebrows rise. “You might want to work on your technique.”

Shrugging, I flash my most winning smile. “I usually get fewer complaints.”

“From the women you kidnap?” She arches her brow.

“The women I rescue are notoriously ungrateful.”

The man nearest the service entrance reaches inside his jacket.

My smile disappears. “Clara, come with me. Now.”

4

CLARA

The cardinal rule under the Whitlock roof has been carved in stone: Whitlocks and Reyeses do not mix. Ever. For any reason.

According to my uncle James, the Reyes family is a “scrouge on this country”—that’s a direct quote. They're the apex predators lurking just past the civilized boundaries of Montana cattle, oil, and politics, trading in blood, silence, and absolute leverage.

Which means, by every logical and moral metric, I have spent the last ten years harboring a silent, thoroughly inappropriate crush on the boogeyman.

My crush on him isn’t something Gabriel Reyes needs to know about—ever.

I’m reasonably sure my face is cooperating to keep the secret. My heart, currently trying to punch its way through my ribs, is another matter.

I’ve never actually met him, but I’ve been keeping tabs on the younger Reyes brother since the first photograph I saw of him. Not that he makes it easy. Gabriel rarely appears in the press. His older brother, Alessandro, the head of the Reyes family, gets most of the headlines. As the enforcer for his family, Gabriel tends to lurk at the edges, looking dangerous and unfairly attractive.

But I know he’s thirty-five, half Colombian, half Irish, and wholly the kind of man sensible women are supposed to avoid. I know what my uncle thinks of the Reyes family and exactly how many generations of bad blood stand between his name and mine.

None of that prepared me for him in person. Yes, I’ve always thought him handsome, but in the flesh, he’s devastating.

He has thick dark hair, a jawline sharp enough to cut glass, and eyes so shockingly, piercingly blue they look almost electric under the museum chandeliers. And then there's his mouth—sculpted, arrogant, marked with dimples that ought to come with a federal hazard warning.

The tattoos disappear beneath a custom black suit that fits him obscenely well. He oozes manliness and sex, and now instead of focusing on my reason for coming tonight, I’m mentally taking off his clothes.

For artistic purposes, obviously. I’m a painter, after all. Not that I normally do nudes, but maybe I just needed the right subject.