LITMIR.BIZ

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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. “What I meant was...you hired me for a reason. You clearly think you have some areas needing improvement. What is the number one thing that you’d like to be different in one month?”

      The wicked smile that tore through his expression did not bode well. “I’d like to say that you’d unbend enough to have dinner with me. But I assume you meant related to my position as temporary CEO of LeBlanc. Then I would say I’d like to have command of how the staff expects decisions to be made. In the nonprofit world, we do it as a team. I’m the tie breaker. Is that how it works here?”

      “But that’s easy, Val,” she said without thinking. Without even consciously realizing that she’d switched to calling him Val in her head. She rushed on before he could comment or she could stumble over it. “You make the decisions, period, end of story. The rest of the staff doesn’t get a say. That’s the beauty of the corporate world.”

      “That doesn’t sound beautiful at all,” Val muttered. “It sounds like a recipe for getting it wrong.”

      Speechless, she stared at him, grappling for the right words to explain that, in the corporate world, it was expected that the CEO be domineering and opinionated. But maybe it didn’t have to be that way for Val, not in this case since he was only temporarily the CEO. Xavier was domineering enough for both of them, and he’d be back in the saddle throwing his weight around soon enough.

      “I’m not sure how to advise you, then,” she said cautiously. “But we’ll get there.”

      She’d only worked with a handful of CEOs, which was part of the reason she’d accepted Val as a client. More executive clients on her résumé could never be a bad thing and, as she’d told him, there was no backup income if she didn’t have a continual stream of customers.

      “How will we get there?”

      “Together,” she promised with only slightly more confidence than she felt. “I’ve never failed to deliver on a client’s expectations. I’ll work up a plan for the next few weeks, and we can go over that tomorrow.”

      “So, essentially you’re saying that the one thing I’m unsure about is something you can’t advise me on. But you’ll have a plan put together tomorrow.” His gaze burned into her, scoring her insides with his particular brand. “Not today.”

      Something inside snapped. “What are you implying? That I might not be good at what I do because I haven’t got a list of trite strategies to hand you? My coaching is personalized to each client. I have to evaluate where you are in relation to the corporate culture. That takes more than five minutes.”

      “Then, I’m making your job harder by refusing to engage with the rest of the team,” he surmised quietly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

      She blinked. Had he just apologized because he hadn’t taken her suggestion to tour the building? “You shouldn’t apologize. Ever.”

      His brief smile shouldn’t have smacked her as hard as it did. She hadn’t expected to like Valentino LeBlanc. What was she supposed to do with that?

      “Because you’re the forgiving sort?”

      “No, because they’re going to eat you alive, Val.”

      She pinched the bridge of her nose to cover the swirl that had started up in her stomach, a merry-go-round of confusion and awareness and sheer terror. What had she signed up for with this gig? LeBlanc was poised to become a billion-dollar-a-year company. It needed Xavier, not a man who seemed better suited to be drinking wine at an outdoor trattoria in Venice with a lush Italian film star.

      Deep breath. He was paying her to fix that. Quite well.

      Val needed her. More than she’d ever have assumed. Executive material he was not, and the odds were stacked against him almost unfairly. It dug under her skin in a wholly different way than the erotic promise that dripped from his pores. The sensual vibe that wound between them needed to go, or she was going to botch this. She couldn’t. Consulting was going to get her to the next level. Specifically, having a nameplate on the door with her name and the title CEO stamped on it. The more she gleaned from experiences with her clients, the easier that would be.

      Except Val was watching her with those bedroom eyes that said he was imagining her naked and liked it a whole lot. Men generally weren’t allowed to look at her like that. She shouldn’t let him do it either but, just as she was about to say so, he tilted his head and she got distracted by the way his midnight-colored hair fell into his eyes.

      “You don’t think I can do this, do you?” he murmured without a shred of guile. He was genuinely asking.

      She nearly groaned. Boy, she had really inspired his confidence, hadn’t she? “I do. I have absolute faith in you. And myself. The problem is...”

      Brain-dead all at once, she scouted around for a plausible reason why she’d bobbled their interaction thus far that didn’t sound like he’d come on to her inappropriately when, in reality, he’d mentioned dinner one time. She’d shot him down, he’d ruefully suggested it would be nice if she’d reconsider and they’d moved on. He’d moved on. She was the one stuck on how to haul the frosty distance back between them, an atmosphere that she usually created so easily.

      “The problem is,” she repeated, “that I haven’t properly assessed your strengths.”

      Yes. That was exactly it. Brain engaged! If they focused on his strengths first instead of the areas for improvement, there’d be less opportunity for her to stick her foot in her mouth again. And it would help her get a handle on him professionally.

      “That’s not true.” A smile climbed across his face, and it was fascinating to watch it take over his whole body. What kind of man smiled with every fiber of his being? “You know I can cook.”

      Okay. If that’s what he was giving her to work with, fine. “Then tell me how you can use that to succeed here.”

      “Aren’t you supposed to tell me?”

      She shook her head. “That’s not how coaching works. Does the coach pull the quarterback off the field and start throwing the passes himself? No. He guides the player according to his knowledge of strategy, honing it to the specific needs of that athlete. That’s what I do.”

      “Sounds like I’m expected to do all the work,” he suggested with a wink that should have been smarmy. It wasn’t.

      He was far more charming than she’d ever admit. “There’s absolutely no question about that, Mr. LeBlanc. You have a very long battle ahead of you, especially given that you’ve had no exposure to the corporate world. Most men in your position have had years to become...”

      “Hard?” he supplied handily. “And I liked it better when you called me Val.”

      Brittle was the word that had sprung to mind. But from where, she had no idea. CEOs were resilient, resourceful and, above all, in charge. “To become acclimated. It’s a different world than the one you’re probably used to.”

      At that point, he crossed his arms, and it

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