LITMIR.BIZ

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you aren’t even going to try?”

      “I only have one thing to say on the subject. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      “IS THAT SUPPOSED to intrigue me?”

      Annoyance coursed through Ferro’s veins and the blame rested squarely with Julia Anderson. But then, it often did. The woman was a menace.

      And she was continuing the trend. No one spoke to him like this. No one treated him like this. But then, very few people were so close to being equal with him. Julia’s company had come up from nowhere five years ago and had fast gained worldwide popularity. Anfalas was dedicated to bringing the technology fantasies were made out of into reality.

      Needless to say, her vision was a popular one. Creative vision combined with an aptitude for all things tech that came naturally to her in a way he hadn’t witnessed with anyone but…well, anyone but himself. It made her quite formidable.

      Though she fancied herself more formidable than she was. She’d proven that without a doubt today. Acting as though she could turn his offer around on him? Assume the power in the situation?

      Not likely.

      “It was,” he said. “And it did.”

      “Did it?” She crossed her arms beneath small, perfectly formed breasts and tilted her head to the side, blond hair cascading over her shoulder in a wave. She was dressed in all black, her signature look. Ridiculous when they lived on the California coast, but he imagined she thought it made her look like a badass.

      In his estimation, it made her seem like a pale, spindly, wannabe-goth chick, but she hadn’t asked his opinion.

      “There has to be a reason you’re breathing so hard,” he said. “It’s either interest in the project or in…me.” He flashed her his best smile, the one he knew for a fact made women melt in their overpriced shoes. He had the attraction game down to a fine art. He was an expert in enticement. Ironically the women he’d always worked to entice hadn’t truly needed it, but they liked to play like they did. Liked to be seduced. It made them feel desired, and when a man could make a woman feel desired…he ended up with all the power and no need to strong-arm.

      “Well, it’s not interest in you, so we can check that off the list,” she said, her lips tight.

      He’d honestly thought as much. Julia seemed to have a serious aversion to him. But he could use that against her just as effectively as he could use a feigned seduction. There was always an in with people. Always a vulnerability. A weakness.

      Except with him. Not anymore. Eventually a weakness was hit at too many times and it healed over with scar tissue far too thick to penetrate again. Ironic, how a weakness could develop into the hardest point to breach. But it had happened in his life.

      “So it must be interest in my plan. In which case, I would ask you to come inside where we might speak privately.”

      “You have security that rivals the Pentagon, I’m pretty sure we’re private anywhere on your property.”

      “I never take chances.”

      “Is paranoia a cultural thing?”

      “What?”

      “Are all Italians similarly paranoid?”

      “Perhaps if they grew up on the streets of Rome. That has a tendency to make you a little paranoid.” A little paranoid. A little lawless. It had a way of searing the conscience so that all the bad decisions just rolled off like water.

      Well, not quite all of them. But that was all right, too. Because some lessons needed to be remembered.

      “All right. Well. I can see how that might make you a bit more…cautious. More so than me because…the suburbs of Ohio aren’t exactly mean.”

      “Now that we’ve gotten the basic information easily found in our bios out in the open, would you like to come in and hear what I have to say?”

      She squinted, blue eyes glittering from behind a thick fringe of lashes. “Not especially. But I will.”

      “So, I do intrigue you.”

      “Don’t let it go to your head.”

      “This way.” He put his hand on her lower back and he felt her tense beneath his touch. She was certainly jumpy around him. No melting. No lingering looks. The woman didn’t respond in the way other women did. It would make her more difficult to manipulate. More difficult, but not impossible.

      “Would you do that to a male colleague?” she asked once they were through the double doors of his home and in the spacious antechamber.

      “Can’t say that I would. But you are not a man, so stop asking me to treat you like one.”

      “I want to be treated like an equal.”

      “Was that somehow not treating you like an equal?”

      “I…well…you were treating me differently.”

      “Different is unequal in some way?”

      “Did you ask me here to debate gender politics or are you going to show me to your study and give me your spiel?”

      “The latter.” He walked down the marble halls, appreciating the opulence of his home with each step he took. Appreciating that it was his.

      He’d spent too many nights on cold cobblestone not to appreciate it. And too many other nights in soft beds that belonged to other people. And honestly, in the end, he wasn’t certain the cobblestone wasn’t the better option.

      The hall opened up into another room with a broad arched doorway, one that reminded him of old buildings in Italy. Places that were far too grand to allow him admittance. So he’d built them for himself, now that he could afford them.

      Antique furniture that cost more simply because it was old decorated the room, another possession he’d acquired simply because he could. Same with the marble busts and old vases. Things he’d bought because, before, they were things that museum docents and shopkeepers wouldn’t even let him look at.

      Now he owned them. Now he owned whatever he wanted. The cost of it had been high enough that he felt entitled to reminders.

      Julia sat in the biggest chair in the room, maroon and wingback. She crossed one slim, leather clad leg over the other and leaned back, tapping her patent black stiletto heel on the hard floor.

      “Spill it, Calvaresi.”

      “I want to partner with you and present our plan to Barrows. We can land the account together. And, I have it on good authority, we will easily remove Hamlin from the equation forever if we play our cards right.”

      “What?”

      “To which piece of the statement?”

      “All of it. But start with Hamlin.”

      “He’s on the downward slide. He’s in so much debt that the only thing that could possibly save Hamlin Tech at this point is a major new account. Barrows. If we don’t partner on it, odds are, he gets it. And the bigger picture here, Julia, is not so much you or I getting the account as it is being able to get rid of a key player in our industry.”

      “That’s…well, it’s dastardly, is what it is.”

      “I’d twirl my mustache if I had one,” he said, his tone dry.

      “I’m serious, why bother to take Hamlin out?”

      “Is it your goal to be more successful than him? To steal his customers and cut into his market share?”

      “Yes,” she said.

      “Well, it’s my goal, too. It’s my goal to do it to you, too, but I can put that on hold because I see an opportunity here. Frankly Hamlin

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