“Oh,” she replied, her voice brittle. “Did you expect that I would maintain a perfectly made-up face while swimming for my life? Of course you did. I doubt you even know what mascara is. That it requires application and does not, in fact, magically appear to adorn the eyelashes of whatever woman happens to gaze upon you.”
It took far more strength than it should have to keep from rubbing at her eyes again, at the mascara that had no doubt slid off her own lashes to coat her cheeks. It doesn’t matter, she snapped at herself, and found she was surprised and faintly appalled at the force of her own vanity.
“I don’t want to think about your mascara or your made-up face,” he replied in that deceptively smooth voice of his, the one that made her bones seem to go soft inside her skin. “I want to pretend this day never happened and that I never had to see beyond the perfectly serene mask you normally wear.”
“Whilst I, Mr. Vila, could not possibly care less about what you want.”
That amused him. She could see his version of laughter move across that fierce, fascinating face, a kind of light over darkness. She had to swallow against her own reaction, and told herself it was the sea. The salt. The exertion. Not him. Not the aftereffects of a kiss that the water should have long since washed away.
God, she was such a terrible liar.
“What you do and do not care about,” he replied in a voice gone smooth and sharp, like finely honed steel, “are among the great many things I do not want to know about you.” His hard mouth crooked into a cold, predatory version of a smile. Dru would have preferred to come face-to-face with a shark, frankly. She reckoned she would have had far more of a chance. “I know you are perfectly capable of discerning my meaning, Miss Bennett. I’ll wait.”
Dru was treading water again, and while the words she wanted to hurl at him crowded on her tongue, she gulped them back down, a bit painfully, and reviewed her situation. The truth was, she was tired. Exhausted. She had used up all her energy surviving these last years; she had precious little of it left, and what she did have she’d wasted on this contest of wills with Cayo today.
As if to underscore that thought, another wave crashed into her face, making her choke slightly and then duck down beneath the water. Where, for just a second, she could float beneath the surface and let herself feel how broken she was. How battered. Torn apart by this confusing day. By the long years that had preceded it. By kisses that never should have happened and the brother who never should have left her like this. She felt her body convulse as if she was sobbing there, underwater. As if she was finally giving in to it all.
It had been too much. Five long years of worrying and working and imagining bright futures that she’d never quite believed in. Not fully. But she’d tried. When Dominic was free of his addictions, she’d told herself. When she worked so hard because she wanted to, not because she had to. She’d dreamed hard, and convinced herself it could happen if she only worked hard enough. She’d dreamed her way out of her rotten childhood into something brighter, hadn’t she? Why not this, too?
And then had come that terrible day when she’d received the news that Dominic was dead. She’d had to trail Cayo through a manufacturing plant in Belgium, acting as if her heart hadn’t been ripped from her body and stamped into oblivion half the world away, not that Cayo had noticed any difference. Not that she’d let him see it. She’d made certain that all of Dominic’s bills and debts were paid, while a squat and encompassing grief hunkered down on her, waiting. Just waiting. She’d ignored that, too. She’d reasoned it was her job to ignore it, to pretend she was perfectly fine. She’d taken pride in her ability to be perfect for Cayo. To fulfill his needs no matter what was happening to her.
Reading that email early this morning in London and seeing her years with Cayo for the sham they really were had landed the killing blow. It was the final straw. And part of her wanted simply to sink like a stone now, deep into the embrace of the Adriatic, and be done with all of this. Just let it all go. Hadn’t Dominic done the same, at the end of the day? Why shouldn’t she? What was she holding on to, anyway?
But Cayo would think it was all about him, wouldn’t he? She knew he would. And she couldn’t allow that. She simply couldn’t.
She kicked, hard, and shot back up to the surface and the sun, pulling in a ragged breath as her gaze focused on Cayo. He still sat there, noticeably irritated, as if it was no matter to him whether she sank or swam, only that she was disrupting his afternoon.
Somehow, that was galvanizing.
She would not go under again, she understood then, as she stared up at him, at this man to whom she’d sacrificed herself, day in and day out, thanks to her own rich fantasy life. She would not break, not for Cayo, not for anything.
How could she? She was already broken.
And there was a strength in that, she thought, wiping the water from her face and pretending she didn’t feel a heat beneath her eyes that indicated it was not entirely the sea she was scrubbing away.
I promise you, Dominic, she thought fiercely, her own little prayer, I will walk away from this man at long last and I will take you to Bora Bora the way you always wanted. I’ll give you to the wind and the water the way I swore I would. And then we’ll both be free.
So she swallowed back the bitter words she would have liked to throw out to make herself feel better about just how much of a fool she’d been and swam over to the side of the boat. She reached up to grip the edge of it. Cayo shifted, moving that taut, tense body of his even closer. He was more furious than she’d ever seen him. She could feel it as easily as she felt the sun far above, the sea all around.
“Fine,” she said, tilting her head to look up at him as if none of that bothered her in the least. “I’ll get in the boat.”
“I know you will,” he agreed silkily. Furiously, she thought. “But while I have you here, Miss Bennett, let’s talk terms, shall we?”
Dru let go of the gunwale with one hand and used it to slick her hair back from her face. The twist she’d carefully created this morning in London was long gone now, and she imagined that the dark mass of her hair hung about her like seaweed. Happily, she was certain that Cayo would deeply disapprove of it. That little kick of pleasure allowed her to simply raise her brows at him and wait. As if none of this hurt her. As if he didn’t hurt her at all.
“I imagine that this entire display was a calculated effort to get me to recognize that you are, in fact, a person,” he said in that insufferable way of his, so very patronizing, that Dru would not have been at all surprised if it had left marks.
“How good of you to ignore almost everything I actually said,” she murmured in a similar tone, even as she eyed him warily.
“I will double your salary,” he told her as if he hadn’t heard her.
Dru was forced to calculate how very much money it was that he was offering her, and wonder, for the briefest treacherous second, if it was truly necessary to escape him … But of course it was. She could stay with him, or she could have her self-respect, whatever was left of it. She couldn’t have both. Today had certainly proved that.
There were so many things she wanted to say, but the way he looked at her made Dru suspect that if she said any of them, he would leave her in the water. She knew exactly how ruthless he could be. So she only held on to the side of the small motorboat, bobbing gently along with it in the rise and fall of the waves, and watched him.
“I’m cold,” she said crisply, because there were minefields in every other thing she might have thought to say. “Are you going to help me into the boat?”
There was a brief, intense sort of moment, and then he leaned over, slid his hands beneath her arms, and hoisted her up and out of the water as if she weighed no more than a child. Water sluiced from her wet clothes as her feet came down against the slippery bottom of the small boat, and she was suddenly aware of too many things. The sodden fabric of her skirt, ten times heavier than it should have been, wrapped much too tightly around
her hips and thighs. The slick wetness of her blouse as it flattened against her skin in the sea breeze. The heavy tangle of her wet hair, tumbling this way and that in a disastrous mess. All of which made her feel much too cold, and, oddly, something very much like vulnerable.
But then she looked up, and the air seemed to empty out of her lungs. And she did not have to see his eyes to know that he was staring at the way her soaking-wet clothes molded to her curves, and, a quick glance down confirmed, left nothing at all to the imagination. Her blouse had been a soft gray when dry, but wet it was nearly translucent, and showed off the bright magenta bra she’d worn beneath.
Dru couldn’t process the kaleidoscope of emotion that shifted through her then: chagrin, embarrassment, that horrible vulnerability, those underwater sobs threatening to spill out once again. She looked longingly at the sea once more, and if she hadn’t been so cold she might well have tossed herself right back into it.
“Don’t even think about it,” he gritted out, and then several things happened simultaneously.
The boat lurched forward, no doubt in response to some signal of Cayo’s, and Dru would have toppled against him had he not grabbed her around the waist and deposited her on the pristine white cushions next to him. She had the impression of his strength and heat, and there was that wild, desperate surge of desire inside of her that made her hate herself anew, and then she was sitting beside him as the boat headed toward the boarding deck of the great yacht, wet skirt itchy and awful against her and her hair flying madly in the wind.
Cayo did not speak again until they were safely back on board, and one of his silent and expressionless crew members had draped a very warm, very large towel over her shoulders. She aimed a grateful smile at the head steward as she wrapped the soft towel tight around her, and then felt very much like the poster child for Les Misérables when she directed her attention back toward her former employer. Pathetic and bedraggled whilst Cayo, naturally, gazed down at her like some kind of untouchable Spanish god, all of his dangerous beauty gleaming in the last of the day’s sun.
The crew members disappeared as if they could see the coming storm closing in on them. If she had had any sense at all, she would have done the same. Instead she stood there and waited, her back straight as a ruler and her expression, she hoped, as serene as possible when she was still so wet and wrecked. Cayo slid his sunglasses down his haughty blade of a nose and regarded her with a glint in those dark gold eyes that should have cowed her at fifty paces—and he was much closer than that.
“I’m sure you know precisely where there are extra clothes on this yacht,” he said quietly. She didn’t trust that tone. It suggested great horrors lurking beneath it. “I suggest you avail yourself of them. Then come find me. We will behave like civilized, professional people. We will discuss the terms of your continued employment in more detail. And we will pretend that the rest of this day never happened.”
Dru forced a smile. She told herself she was entirely uncowed.
“I was cold and wanted to get out of the water,” she said. “I’m still quitting.” She shrugged at his incredulous expression. “I can either tell you what you want to hear and then disappear at the first available opportunity, or I can be honest about it and hope you’ll let me leave with some dignity. Your choice.”
He was looking at her as if he had long since destroyed her with the force of that incinerating gaze alone, and was looking at some ash remnant where she’d once stood. She gazed back at him, and told herself the goose bumps were only from the cold.
“Surely we left dignity far behind today, you and I,” he said in a very low voice that seemed to shiver through her, or maybe she simply shivered in response, she couldn’t tell.
“Your choice remains the same,” she managed to say as if she hadn’t noticed. As if it didn’t matter. As if this was easy for her and she didn’t feel something far too much like a sob, like despair, clogging the back of her throat. “Dignity or no.”
For a moment, there was no sound but the ocean breeze, and the waves against the hull of the yacht.
“Go clean yourself up, Miss Bennett,” Cayo said then, so softly, dark and menacing and his accent too intense to be anything but furious, and it all should have scared her. It really should have, had there been any part of her left unbattered. Unbroken. “And we’ll talk.”
But when Dru walked into the luxurious, dark-wood-paneled and chandeliered study that was part of his expansive master suite some time later, she was not, she knew very well, “cleaned up” in the way that he’d expected. He was standing at his desk with his mobile phone clamped to his ear, talking in the brusque tone that indicated he was tending to some or other facet of his business. She could probably have figured out which facet, had she wanted to, had she listened attentively as she would have done automatically before—but she didn’t want to do any of the things she’d done before, did she? They’d all led her here. So instead, she simply waited.
And she wasn’t surprised when he turned to look at her and paused. Then scowled.
“I must go,” he said into the phone and ended the call with a jerk of his hand, all without taking his eyes from her.
A stark, strained moment passed, then another.
“What the hell are you wearing?” he asked.
“I was unaware there was a dress code I was expected to follow,” she replied as if she didn’t understand him. “The last woman I saw on this boat, only an hour or so ago, appeared to be wearing dental floss as a fashion statement.”
“She is no longer with us,” he said, his eyes narrow and hostile, “but that does not explain why you are dressed as if you are …” His voice actually trailed away.
“A normal person?” she asked. She’d known he would not like what she wore, hadn’t she? She’d chosen these clothes deliberately. She could admit that much. “Come now, Mr. Vila. This is the twenty-first century. This can’t be the first time you’ve seen a woman in jeans.”
“It is the first time I have seen you in jeans.” His voice was hard then, as hard as the way he was looking at her. As hard as the way her pulse seemed to jump beneath her skin. It made goose bumps rise on her arms. “But I had no idea your hair was so …” Whatever flared in his gaze then made Dru’s skin seem to stretch tight and then shrink into her. “Long.”
Dru shrugged as if she was completely unfazed by him and moved farther into the room, settling herself on one of the plush armchairs that was angled for the best sea view through the broad windows. He had been right—she knew where all the extra clothes were stored. All the items that Cayo kept stocked for any unexpected female guests as well as the skeleton wardrobe he kept for both her and him should his business bring them here by surprise.
And by “Cayo kept stocked” she meant, of course, that she did.
After she’d washed away the sea and her own self-destructive reaction to him throughout this long day, particularly that mind-numbing kiss, she had toweled off and then opened up the little emergency suitcase that she’d had installed in the offices and residences he visited most often, scattered here and there across the globe.
Inside the case, a conservative gray suit was pressed in plastic, with two blouses to choose from, one in a pale pink and one in an understated taupe, and a change of underthings in non-racy, uninteresting beige. She’d packed pins for her hair and the proper tools to tame the wavy mess of it into professional sleekness. There was a small bag of her preferred toiletries and another of her basic cosmetics. There were sensible shoes that would go with anything and a black cashmere cardigan in case she’d felt called to appear “casual.” She’d even packed away an assortment of accessories, all conservatively stylish, so she could look as pulled together as she always did even if she’d found herself on board thanks to one of Cayo’s last-minute whims. She’d packed everything, in other words, that she could possibly need to climb right back into her role as his handy robot without so much as an unsightly wrinkle.
And she hadn
’t been able to bring herself to do it.
Instead, she’d let her hair dry naturally as she’d taken her time dressing, and now it hung in dark waves down her back. She’d found a pair of white denim jeans in one closet, much more snug than she liked, which was only to be expected given the gazelle-like proportions of most of his usual female guests, and a lovely palazzo top in a vibrant blue-and-white pattern in another, which was loose and flowy and balanced out the jeans. She’d tossed on a slate-gray wrap to guard against the sea air now that evening was upon them and the temperature had dropped, and had left her feet and her face entirely bare.
She looked like … herself. At last. Yet Cayo stared at her as if she were a ghost.
“Is this another version of throwing yourself overboard, Miss Bennett?” he asked, his voice a lash across the quiet room. It made her heart leap into a wild gallop in her chest. “Another desperate bid for my attention?”
“You are the one who wanted to talk, not me,” she replied, summoning a cold smile from somewhere though she didn’t feel cold at all. Not when she was near him. No matter what he did. “I would have been perfectly happy to remove myself from the glare of your attention. For good.”
That muscle in his lean jaw moved, but nothing else did. He was like a stone carving of simmering rage.
“What if I triple your salary?” His voice was cold and yet grim, his dark eyes flat and considering. “Did you say you lived in a leased bedsit? I’ll buy you a flat. A penthouse, if you like. Pick the London neighborhood you prefer.”
So much of her longed to do it. Who wouldn’t? He was offering her an entirely different life. A very, very good life, at the price of a job she’d always liked well enough, until today.
But … then what? she asked herself. Wasn’t what he suggested really no more than a sterile form of prostitution, when all was said and done? Give herself over to him, and he would pay for it. And she would do it, she knew with a hollow, painful sort of certainty, not because it made financial sense, not because she stood to gain so much—but because she longed for him. Because he would be using her skills and she would be dreaming about one more night like the one in Cadiz. One more kiss like the one today. What would become of her after five more years of this? Ten? She’d put Miss Havisham to shame in her bought-and-paid-for London flat, tarting herself up every day in her corporate costume to better please him, his favorite little automaton ….
A Devil in Disguise Page 5
