LITMIR.BIZ

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first.

      Because Val was now sitting behind the desk? It was no secret that she’d always been attracted to powerful men. Xavier had checked all her boxes. He was a good-looking man who commanded people’s respect by virtue of his presence alone. You could tell he helmed a vast corporation the moment you looked at him. Authoritative and decisive, he ate weaker people for breakfast, and he was perfect for someone who liked her men unemotional.

      Emotions ruined everything, especially when they were hers.

      Xavier was exactly her type: a man who could provide plus-one services, interesting conversation, and the occasional sleepover without either one getting the wrong idea. Though she hadn’t gotten that far with Xavier. Instead, she’d lost interest in him almost immediately. Case in point: the moment he’d walked out of the CEO’s office a few minutes ago, she’d forgotten about him.

      Valentino LeBlanc checked none of her boxes. Sensuality wafted from him in a long wave that caught her in places it shouldn’t. His hair was too long, his lips too full and his eyes—they had a depth that she’d have never considered attractive. Vulnerability was for losers. But he carried himself in a way that promised there was more to him than the ability to feel things.

      Val tilted his chin, and long, inky strands of hair fell against his cheeks. Her fingers itched to sweep it away.

      “And you should get a haircut,” she told him decisively. Back on track. Finally.

      “Eating is more than a basic need, by the way,” he said, deliberately not letting her change the subject. “I know a lot about food. How it can control you. How the lack of it can cause you to do things you’d never contemplate under normal circumstances. But, in the right scenario, it can become a form of expression. Art. Let me cook for you.”

      Oh, not a chance. He was likely a savant in the kitchen, turning spaghetti sauce into a seduction and, next thing she knew, he’d boost her to the counter, thighs spread and dinner forgotten as he made love to her.

      That did not sound appealing in the slightest. It didn’t. Except for maybe the spaghetti sauce, the seduction and the part where a man would be between her legs. She sighed. It had been too long since she’d had a date. Clearly. But, even so, she’d never been a sex-on-the-counter type. It was too...passionate.

      She worked hard not to inspire that kind of abandon in a man. Hell, she didn’t even know if that was in her own makeup, nor did she want to find out.

      “I’m here to do a job, Mr. LeBlanc.”

      She needed clients, not a man she’d have to shed sooner rather than later. They all cheated eventually, and she enjoyed men enough to date them but not to hang around for the eventual evisceration. Her father should have been enough of a warning, with his multiple affairs that had hurt her mother over and over. She scarcely spoke to her father anymore and she was still too mad at her mother for putting up with it to have much of a relationship with her either.

      And then her ex, John...well, he was a man, wasn’t he? Suffice to say she wasn’t repeating that mistake.

      “Food is my job,” he told her and waved a hand to encompass the whole of the office. “This is temporary. A speed bump on the way to my inheritance.”

      “Which you will not get if we don’t shift things into your favor,” she reminded him and stood. “Perhaps we should take a tour of the company. Learn some people’s names.”

       Get out of this office, where it’s far too easy to imagine non-work-related things happening.

      He didn’t move. “I know where accounting is and how to find the bathroom. So I’m good. If we’re going to work together, I should probably know more things about you, not LeBlanc Jewelers. I can read a shareholder report later.”

      Fair enough. And she’d practiced her intro enough times to do it while half-asleep. “I’ve been an executive coach for five years, and I worked as a corporate trainer for a Fortune 500 company before that. I’ve worked with the CEO of Evermore and the CFO of DGM Enterprises. I like to knit, and my uncle collects antique cars, so sometimes I go to shows with him on weekends.”

      “That’s funny. That’s exactly what the bio on your website says.” Val’s smile had a tinge of smirk in it. Too much of one. “Curious. Did you stick knitting in there because it’s in vogue?”

      What was he implying, that she only put that in her bio to make her seem like less of a workaholic? If so, how the hell had he figured that out so quickly? No one had ever questioned that before.

      “I can knit. I like to knit.” When she remembered where she’d put her needles. And to buy yarn. Neither of which had happened in about five years.

      “No one likes to knit. Knitting is something grandmas do because they can’t handle much excitement. I think you can. And you should.”

      That was not a test she had any intention of passing. “I’m sensing that you are not in the frame of mind to start with our coaching sessions today. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

      She spun to go find her sanity, but Val beat her to the door. Somehow. It had been a mistake to try to leave, obviously. He leaned on the door in front of her, holding it shut with his body. Forcing her to acknowledge that he had one. The scent of male permeated everything, digging into her marrow.

      Suddenly, she could think of nothing but how close he was, how easily she could reach out and touch him. Her skin tingled as his gaze swept her with an almost physical weight, and the awareness she’d been fighting dropped over them both like a heavy cloak.

      What was wrong with her that she couldn’t get her brain out of the gutter?

      He was a sexy man, no doubt. But not so different from a hundred other men within a stone’s throw, right down to the womanizing bent of his rhetoric. Normally it was easy to keep her distance. Men got the message pretty fast when she froze them out, but she was having the hardest time making ice around a man with so much natural heat.

      “Leaving so soon?” he drawled. “We’ve got six months. I’d like to make the most of them. Please stay.”

      She crossed her arms over her racing heart, trying to pretend it was because he’d blocked the door and thus her exit. Not because he excited her. He didn’t. Or rather he shouldn’t, which wasn’t the same at all, sadly. “I’m willing to stay if you’ll start taking my skills seriously.”

      “I take every inch of you seriously.”

      How he managed to turn that into something that sounded like a promise of the carnal variety she’d never know. Probably it was a testament to her state of mind, not his. A guy like Val flirted without conscious thought, almost as a reflex. Woman equaled conquest in his world, so the better course of action would be to ignore his innuendos, get him on a professional footing with her and go on.

      “Great,” she said smoothly and wiped her clammy hands as surreptitiously as she could on her skirt. “Then let’s get serious. If you don’t want to take a tour of the building, where would you like to start?”

      His gaze drifted along her face to land on her lips, lingering there with such intensity that she felt it way down low in her core, the same way she might if he’d actually traced her mouth with his fingertip. It was ridiculous. Phantom caresses were not on the agenda.

      “How do you usually start with clients?” he asked.

      Good. Okay. He was in the realm of appropriate work-related conversation. She was the one veering off into things she had no business imagining, like what it would feel like to be kissed by a man who knew his way around a woman. Val did, she could tell.

      Sabrina cleared her throat. “Where do you feel your deficiencies are?”

      His brows raised. “Who says I have any?”

      Ugh. That hadn’t been so smoothly done. Might as well announce that he’d thrown her off-kilter.

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