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Emma didn't flinch. She picked up her spatula and casually continued folding the lemon frosting.
"Oh, no," Emma said, widening her eyes in a mask of perfect, lethal innocence. "I told you this old house has infrastructure issues. The router must have overheated." Emma scooped up a generous dollop of the pale yellow frosting with her index finger, smiling smugly. "Maybe with the twenty quid you saved on my flour this morning, you can buy yourself a personal hotspot, Ms. Sterling."
Victoria had had enough. The irritation over the café, the rain, and now this blatant sabotage finally reached its boiling point. She turned her head slowly, her dark eyes flashing with a dangerous resolve. Emma’s arrogance was the perfect target. Victoria had decided she was done being the butt of the joke.
"Since you’re done working, this is for tomorrow," Emma continued, totally oblivious to the impending danger, looking at her coated finger. "But I can't tell if I went too heavy on the zest. I hope it's not too sour."
Emma lifted her hand, fully intending to pop her finger into her own mouth to taste it.
She never made it. With a motion so fluid and unexpectedly fast that it blurred, Victoria closed the distance between them. She took two sharp steps forward, fully obliterating Emma’s personal space.
Before Emma could register the shift, Victoria’s hand shot out. Her elegant fingers clamped firmly around Emma’s wrist, stopping her hand mid-air.
Emma's body suddenly went rigid. She knew that grip. She had felt those fingers pin her to a mattress, demanding absolute surrender. Victoria’s skin was ice against Emma’s heat, her hold unbreakable. Unmistakable.
Emma's eyes snapped up, finding herself mere inches from Victoria’s face. The New Yorker’s gaze was heavy and with no hesitation. There was no trace of the flustered woman from an hour ago; this was pure focus.
Without breaking eye contact for a microsecond, Victoria pulled Emma’s hand gently but unstoppably toward herself. Emma’s heart gave one violent thud against her ribs before taking off like a runaway freight train. The spatula in her left hand slipped from her loose grip, hitting the edge of the glass bowl with a loud clack that echoed in the silent kitchen.
"Not too sour," Victoria murmured, her voice a low, gravelly velvet. Her gaze dropped to Emma’s parted lips for a heartbeat before rising back up, pinning Emma in place. "Though I'd appreciate it if you saved your little digital pranks for something less expensive than my acquisitions. Keep that in mind next time you try to cut my cord, Ms. Hayes."
The silence in the kitchen was thick with an electricity so dense it could have been carved with a knife. Emma opened her mouth, but not a single sound came out. Her entire repertoire of witty comebacks and quick defenses had been vaporized in three flat seconds.
Deeply satisfied, Victoria offered a cutting smile. She walked past Emma to the shelf, reached behind the plastic box, and calmly clicked the power cord back into the router, restoring the connection with a quiet flash of green light.
Emma remained where she was, her wrist burning and her face on fire. She stared at the empty doorway for a solid minute before gripping the edge of the marble island to steady her knees.
"Holy shit," she whispered to the empty room.
Chapter Eleven
Victoria
The click of the master suite door shutting behind her sounded unusually loud. Victoria leaned her back against the solid oak wood, staring into the empty room.
Her pulse stuttered, a low hum vibrating under her skin. She raised a hand, pressing her fingers against her own mouth, the ghost of lemon frosting and the heat of Emma’s skin still lingering on her lips. A sharp pulse of arousal shot straight down her spine. The look on Emma's face—wide-eyed, derailed, completely at her mercy—was intoxicating.
Victoria walked toward the en-suite bathroom, her reflection catching in the antique mirror. Her eyes were dark, her pupils blown wide. She had meant to put Emma Hayes in her place, to silence her arrogant mockery. Instead, she had just set a match to a powder keg.
She turned on the cold tap, splashing water over her wrists to shock her system back into corporate mode. You are here to secure an acquisition, she reminded herself strictly. You are here to run down a six-month clock.
But as she reached for a towel, a wicked and unapologetic smirk touched the corner of her mouth. She had to stay under this roof for six full months. If Emma insisted on playing games, Victoria had absolutely no intention of acting like a saint. If they were going to be trapped in this drafty house for six months, she might as well make them interesting.
She walked back into the bedroom and opened her laptop on the small writing desk. She still had an hour before the link would go live—plenty of time to build the kind of bulletproof presentation Richard Vance expected.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up satellite maps, soil surveys, and local tax records. By the time the calendar alert chimed on the screen, her heart rate was steady, her expression locked down, and the dossier ready.
She clicked the link. The screen split into two frames. On the left, Harrison sat in his New York office, looking impatient. On the right was Richard Vance, a billionaire developer who always looked like he was five minutes away from firing someone.
"Ms. Sterling," Vance barked, skipping any pleasantries. "Harrison tells me you have my UK flagship."
"I do, Richard," Victoria replied, her tone effortless and sharp. "I am currently on-site in the Cotswolds. The property is a sprawling Victorian estate on over an acre of prime, unlisted land with private woodland access. It is secluded, exclusive, and perfectly suited for your luxury retreat."
"Zoning?" Vance demanded.
"Currently zoned for commercial hospitality. We bypass the residential rezoning completely," Victoria lied effortlessly, knowing she had six months to force the paperwork through. "I am running a comprehensive audit to finalize the valuation, but I guarantee you won't find a better footprint in England."
For the next twenty minutes, she dismantled any possible doubt. Victoria walked them through slide after slide of property boundaries, projected margins, structural expansion footprints, and traffic flow models, delivering the pitch with the razor-sharp precision that had built her reputation in Manhattan.
