He liked to announce who he was. So there could be no mistake.
When he rounded the great slab that served as his desk, he was not surprised to find that Kendra had trailed after him and now stood uncertainly just inside the door.
“What on earth makes you think that I would do such a thing?” he asked her, genuinely interested in her answer. “The sheer hubris of it. The unmitigated gall. You must rate yourself highly indeed if you imagine you can convince me of...anything.”
She spread her hands out in front of her, a gesture of surrender. It should not have made him so greedy for a taste of her, surely. “I’m not going to pretend to you that my brother Tommy isn’t problematic.”
“You are here anyway. Sent to defend him. Yet what defense can you possibly mount for a creature so reckless and self-destructive?”
“None.”
That surprised him, when he prided himself on never allowing business machinations to surprise him. He stood behind his desk, one finger on the granite surface, and it was only when he realized he was tapping it that he understood he was more agitated than he allowed himself to appear in public.
Balthazar added that to the long list of things he blamed on this woman.
“You did not come here to mount a defense for his sins?”
“What defense could there be?” Kendra asked quietly. “I know my brother’s weaknesses better than you, I assure you. While I cannot imagine why he should find it necessary to fudge the books when he already has more than enough money of his own, it’s clear to me that he did. Even my father, always Tommy’s greatest defender, had nothing to say to help this make any sense. Tommy himself offered no explanation.”
“Of course not. Greed is really quite simple, kopéla. He wanted more. So he took it.”
“I’m not going to pretend to you that I understand every detail of the accounting here.” She lifted her chin, but kept her gaze steady on his, when men twice her size would quail before him. “I understand stealing, however. I’m prepared to pay you back, with interest. Today.”
“And again, you misunderstand.” He smiled then, noting the way she flinched, then tried to hide it. “I don’t want your money. I want your ruin.”
Or her father’s shame, but that would come. Her cheeks had been bright since she’d followed him into the room, but she paled then.
“My understanding is that it added up to two and a half million, give or take. A good chunk of change, I grant you. My father intends to pay it back from his personal account. In cash, if necessary. And there should be no cause for financial ruin.”
Balthazar had spent some time imagining this moment. He relished it.
“You mistake me,” he said quietly. Distinctly. “I am not speaking of money. It is your family I wish to see ruined, Kendra. Your father and his arrogance in particular. You and I both know perfectly well that your family would be tarnished forever if I dragged your brother through the courts. No one would be surprised, mind you, only distinctly horrified in that particular old money way that your Tommy was caught. And I believe the rest of your family might find themselves...less welcome in the circles you all currently enjoy.”
And he would count that a decent start.
She looked distressed for the first time since she’d appeared in his waiting room, and he’d expected that to feel like more of a triumph than it did. “There must be some way I can convince you that you don’t need to do that.”
Balthazar studied her. “What do you have that you think I might want?”
Something in him swelled then, bitter and almost furious, as Kendra swallowed. Hard. Then started toward him with determination stamped all over her face.
If she’d put up a sign advertising her wares on a street corner, she could not have been more obvious.
And he’d expected this, hadn’t he? It confirmed what he’d already suspected. That three years ago, she’d been sent out to that gazebo to see how far she could get with him.
To tempt, then tease.
It had Thomas Connolly’s hands all over it. And damn the man, damn his unforgivable arrogance, but he had succeeded.
Balthazar would rather die where he stood than admit how successful Thomas Connolly had actually been.
Because at first he hadn’t known who she was. He had stood there longer than he cared to remember after she’d left, trying to understand what had occurred. He could not recall the last time a woman had fled from him. Because it had never happened.
Women tend to run toward him, not away.
He had been irritated, courtesy of Isabella, the mistress he’d finished with only moments before Kendra had found him there in the gazebo. And not because any of the insults or accusations Isabella had flung at him had landed. Much less held any weight. He had never cared for her emotional outbursts and had paid them little mind throughout the six months of their arrangement.
But he liked his sex regular and often. Knowing that, Isabella had deliberately forced their conversation that night, well aware that he’d been aching for release.
Isabella might have cried as she’d stormed away from him, but he knew the tears were more for the loss of her access to her allowance than any true emotion. Just as he knew that the moment she stepped back into the light of the party, the tears would miraculously dry up, she would take deep pleasure in having left him unsatisfied and she would begin scouting for a new benefactor.
He had sent an abrupt message to his assistant to cut Isabella off and then had stood there, annoyed.
But then Kendra had appeared.
He hadn’t known who she was and so to him, Kendra had seemed like a breath of fresh air after Isabella’s sultry, cloying, obviousness.
Those soft, rosy cheeks. The hint of freckles across her nose, when he would have sworn no imperfections were permitted in these hallowed halls of the so-called American elite. Her hair had been swept up into something elegant, though tendrils fell down, and the red in it had shone like flame in the soft light from the lanterns outside the gazebo.
She had stopped before him like a startled fawn, her gleaming eyes wide, her sensual lips parted.
Balthazar did not believe in innocence. And yet that night, he had been tempted to imagine she might be the exception that proved the rule.
She had proved him wrong in short order.
No innocent could possibly melt like that, arching back beneath the onslaught of his need, his longing, both pounding through him like a storm. No innocent would open herself up to him so eagerly, then come apart in his palm so readily.
He’d been so hard he’d ached, another new sensation. He’d wanted to peel her out of the dress she wore, lay her out beneath him on a wide bed in a room with a locked door and sate himself fully.
Instead she had turned away, then run.
And when he’d finally made his way back into the tedious party, astounded at what had happened to him, everything had made a sickening kind of sense.
Thomas Connolly, the pompous git, had been making a speech with his family arrayed behind him. Smirking Tommy, the sort of vicious alcoholic heir who thought his money would protect him from his sins. The overtly medicated wife, looking blank and distant even up close.
And Kendra, the daughter, Balthazar understood in that instant was as corrupt as the rest of them, for all she had stood beside her mother, reeking of the innocence he knew she did not possess.
Eighteen months later, when the first discrepancies in Skalas & Sons’ accounts with the Connolly family’s shipping concern appeared, Balthazar could have made his move. But he had remembered that night, the sheer heat of Kendra in his hand, and had waited.
He had not merely allowed Tommy his rope. He had spooled it out himself so there could be no doubt whatsoever when Tommy hung himself with it.
Balthazar told himself it was triumph, not disappointment, that pound
ed in him as Kendra came to stand just there on the other side of his desk.
Because he should have known that night three years ago that she was like the rest of her family, whether he’d known who she was or not. That he’d been fooled for even a moment gnawed at him.
There was no such thing as innocence. Not in his world and certainly not in her morally bankrupt family. For his part, Balthazar had been raised a Skalas, which was akin to walking forth with a golden target on his back. He had never had a single friend—or woman, or colleague—who had not betrayed him, or could be prevailed upon to betray him, for the right price.
A lesson he had learned young.
His own brother would cheerfully stab him in the back if it benefited him. Balthazar had no doubt about that. It was why he and Constantine had split things up neatly between them. Better not to offer each other the temptation, they’d decided.
The threat of mutually assured destruction kept them friendly enough, no matter what the tabloids said. They were the only thing they had, after all.
Something that was certainly not true of Kendra Connolly.
“What exactly are you offering me?” he asked her, trying to keep his tone even when inside, he raged.
She was close enough now that he could read her expression. Or try. He could have sworn what he saw there was something like misery. Or apprehension.
Or, a cynical voice inside him chimed in, she’s merely good at what she does.
Too good.
Because he was certain, for a moment, that he could detect a faint tremor in her lips. Before she firmed them into a straight line and he became equally certain he’d imagined it.
“Name your price,” she invited him.
“I am more interested in what it is you think I want.” He eyed her as he would any conquest, business or personal. Assessing profit and loss. Looking for weaknesses to exploit to his benefit. “What can you imagine you have to offer that I do not already have?”
She spread out her hands again, though this time it read as less of a surrender.
“Me,” she said.
Balthazar watched that pulse in her neck react. If he didn’t know better, he would think that she was desperate when he felt certain that she was not. That this, like that night three years ago, was nothing but more deception.
“I think you overestimate your charms,” he said with cruel deliberation. “Do you really imagine you are worth more than two million dollars?”
She blanched at that, but stood her ground. “Of course.”
“I do not wish to insult you,” he murmured. Though that was a lie. “But I would not pay a single dollar for something I could get for free. In abundance. And do.”
“And here I thought you preferred to keep mistresses,” she shot back at him, to his great surprise. “Hardly free, is it?”
“You should be less opaque.” Balthazar shrugged. “One night to clear your brother’s debt? That is not so appealing. But a mistress? Mine for as long as I am interested? That is a different proposition altogether. Though far more...strenuous.”
Her lips were pressed tight together. If he was not mistaken, her hands had started to curl into fists before she dropped them to her sides.
“Marvelous,” she said with a certain brightness he could see was false. As she, herself, was false, no matter his body’s response. “Is that what you want?”
“Normally I am the one who makes this offer.” He smirked. “It is not pressed upon me by a woman desperate to clear the name of a brother she would be better off disowning.”
“Families are complicated.”
“I thought my family was complicated. I am forever reading fables the media has created to explain things between my brother or myself. Or tales of my late father.” He studied her, then affected a measure of outraged astonishment. “But I will confess, when I granted you this appointment, I never expected this.”
Her chin lifted higher. “What did you expect?”
“Excuses.” He eyed her until she flushed. “What a martyr you are, Kendra.”
Her eyes, that intriguing shade of amber that sometimes looked like gold, glittered. “I would never call myself a martyr.”
“Oh, no? And yet here you are. Sacrificing yourself.” He laughed when all she did was glare at him. “You do not understand how this works, do you? You’re supposed to at least act as if you’re motivated by uncontrollable lust, whatever your true motivations.”
“Tell me what you need,” Kendra implored him, her voice tight. “There’s no need to play all these games, is there?”
“But perhaps what I want from you is the game.”
She looked away then, her throat working. “Very well then.”
“But how will we come to terms?” Balthazar mused, and stopped pretending he wasn’t fully enjoying himself. “There are so many considerations. You will not need my financial support, clearly, as you will be paying off a debt. I will require full access, of course, but that is easy enough. I have any number of properties that will suit.”
“Access,” she echoed. “Full access.”
He laughed. “What is it you think a mistress does?”
She cleared her throat, still looking away. “To be honest, I thought it was a silly, archaic word to describe a rich man’s relationships.”
“You can call it a relationship if you like. In truth, it is a business arrangement. I find it is better to spell out any and all expectations in advance, the better to avoid unpleasant misunderstandings.” He shrugged again, expansively. “I want what I want. When I want it.”
To her credit, she turned back and met his gaze. “By which, you mean sex.”
“Sex, yes. And anything else I desire.” He laughed at the expression on her face. The one she tried to hide. “That could mean accompaniment. The ability to charm business associates at tedious dinners. Clever conversation, sparkling repartee, and all while looking like a bauble most men cannot afford. But if I were you, Kendra, I would focus more on the sex. I require rather a lot.”
He was fascinated by the way her expression changed, then. By the way the color on her face matched. If he didn’t know better—if he didn’t know to his detriment that she was a loaded, aimed weapon—he might have been tempted to think she was doing this against her will. Or if not precisely against her will, without the level of enthusiasm he would have anticipated from an operator like her. Like all the members of her family.
Because surely she had done things like this before or why would they have sent her?
You know she’s done things like this before, he reminded himself sharply. She’s done it to you.
“Are you prepared?” she asked him after a moment, and though her voice was slightly husky, there was no hint of uncertainty about her. She was hiding it well—another indication this was a role she was playing. “If you take me as your mistress, you will be linked with my family. In a way I’m guessing you will not like.”
“I do not think that I am the one who will dislike it most.”
“You and I can stand here and speak of a business arrangement, but I think you know the tabloids will assume that it’s a more conventional relationship.”
“If the tabloids did not make assumptions, they would not exist.” He made a dismissive gesture. “This is of no interest to me.”
“All right then.” She squared her shoulders as if prepared to march forth into battle. “How do these things normally begin?”
He might have admired her bravado had it not been predicated on how little she actually wanted him. And how little she was attempting to hide that fact from him.
“I have not invited you to be my mistress, Kendra,” he rebuked her. Mildly enough. “This discussion, while illuminating, is nothing more than academic.”
“What do you mean, academic?” Color flooded her cheeks again, and he found him
self far more interested than he ought to have been. Fascinated, even, despite himself. “I’m offering myself to you.”
“But you cannot be trusted.” He shook his head sadly. “You are a Connolly, first of all, and by definition a liar. More importantly, you have already attempted to lure me in once.”
“You thought I was attempting to...” When Kendra shook her head it was as if she couldn’t quite get her balance. She blinked. “My mistake. You’re apparently playing strange games. If you did not wish to do business, you should have said so.”
“I admire a woman who can barter. Particularly when what she is bartering is herself. No coy games. No fluttering about like all the rest, never quite getting to the mercenary point.”
Her eyes flashed. “If you’re not interested in the business arrangement you suggested, tell me what would interest you instead.”
Balthazar was intrigued, and that should have worried him when he knew her to be an empty, grasping liar, like all the rest of her family. She was treacherous and as dirty as the rest of them. But he could not deny that he was hard. That he ached for her.
There was only one way to soothe that kind of ache, no matter what manner of woman inspired it.
“This particular kind of business arrangement requires, shall we say, a down payment,” he told her. Matter-of-factly.
“A down payment. On sex.”
“But of course. I prefer my sex—”
“Abundant,” she clipped out. “I heard you.”
“Abundant, yes. But I also require a certain level of excellence, or what would be the point?” He smiled at her, edgily. “All I know about you is that you are selfish. And a tease. And entirely too willing to do your family’s bidding. None of that, I must say, suggests to me that you would be any good at all in the bedroom.”
He thought he heard a sharp sound, like an intake of breath.
“Am I to understand, then...?” Her eyes had gone a brilliant shade of bright amber, but her voice was precise. Crisp and to the point. “That is to say, I assume what you’re asking for is an audition?”
The Secret That Can't Be Hidden (Rich, Ruthless & Greek, Book 1) Page 3
