Chapter Six
Breathe in. Breathe out. She could do this.
Lily smoothed the folds of her navy skirt and repeated her introductory presentation lines, the sound bouncing off the tiny, airless conference room where she’d hidden herself away. Her Southern twang on full display no matter how hard she tried to calm her nerves.
But she’d handle it. She had to.
Thanks to Tyson’s revelation about Paul, she’d had no choice but to call for an emergency board meeting days sooner than she would have liked. Not exactly ideal since she’d wanted more time to prepare, but better than finding out about Paul’s treachery after she was out on her ass.
So, ready or not, she’d be professional. She’d be powerful. She’d be authoritative. She’d be everything CEO-like—and she’d convince the head of the board, Don Pierson, and the other board members to give her time to prove she could get the job done.
Even if it killed her.
Which it might.
Especially given how easily a certain Russian rival had managed to get under her skin and rattle the hell out of her. A total jerk one minute and then almost nice the next…and then back to asshole again, bless his totally enraging, black heart.
The man gave her whiplash.
Even now, she could just make out his low, sexy rumble through the thin wall—as he gave his presentation to the very same board.
An hour before her own.
If that bit of treachery wasn’t enough, she’d woken up to a package at her door with an ominous Morning scrawled across the top and the inside chocked full of every single DVD movie referencing Armageddon since the beginning of time.
The only perplexing part? The package also contained a copy of a Page Six story reporting on her legitimate business meeting with Tyson and Kazankov and the reporter’s conclusion that maybe she wasn’t such a sleazy airhead, after all. No compromising pictures. No speculation of an affair.
Since that same newspaper refused to take her calls all day yesterday, she could only suspect Kazankov had pulled some serious strings to make the embarrassing photos disappear.
For her.
So, yes, her adversary confused the heck out of her, which could be another tactic. A small olive branch. Or something else altogether…
The door bounced open, sending her three feet into the air.
“What are you doing in here?” Her CFO and all-around worrier Jim Winslow poked his head inside the small conference room, his wavy brown hair somehow managing to look as if he’d just run through a wind tunnel even though they’d been inside for hours. “Are you okay?”
It took a moment to settle her heart. “Totally fine. Just taking a moment.”
“I see.” Jim fiddled with the door handle. “Do you want me to keep you company? We could go over the numbers again?”
“I’m good. I’ll be out soon. I promise.”
“Okay.” Still, he hesitated, his gaze not quite meeting hers. “I’m sorry again about Paul. I should have known he’d try something like this. I don’t blame you for placing him on probation.”
“It’s not your fault.” While Russell’s eldest had been hostile from the start, Jim had been nothing but kind, insisting he’d never wanted the CEO job, that he far preferred numbers over management.
“Feels like I should have done something,” he confessed.
“Your brother makes his own choices. It’s not your job to save him.”
Their gazes met and held. Alluding to the missteps that had lost both brothers their father’s support wasn’t something they often did. But now she wondered if that had been just one more bit of cowardice on her part. Kazankov certainly wouldn’t have hesitated.
“Paul’s, ah, just a lot like Dad.” Jim’s expression was almost bewildered, as if he still couldn’t quite puzzle out how it had come to this. “Strong, stubborn. Probably why they clashed so much. Of course, things seemed to get a little better when you arrived. Dad was definitely more relaxed…” His voice trailed off.
She really had tried to fix things, but the resentment on both sides was deeply entrenched.
Then there’d been Russell’s frustrating insistence that his past sins were too great to repair, and his best chance for redemption wasn’t by tinkering with history but by trying to offer up a better future.
Except now Paul was trying to bury a figurative knife in her back, and Jim was looking at her as if his favorite toy was broken.
She seized his hand, the thin film of guilt coating her skin making her movements more stilted than she would have liked. “I’m sorry it’s come to this with your brother.”
His gaze locked on her grip as if mesmerized, the tips of his ears turning bright red. “I…I could talk to him.”
“Thank you, but I’ll handle it.”
Russell’s second son was wonderful, but he’d proven time and again that standing up to his brother wasn’t his forte.
“I know…I know you will.” A moist hand covered hers, pressing down harder than was comfortable. “Just like I know you’re going to do great in there today. You have what it takes to save Winslow Industries. My dad wasn’t wrong.”
She blinked hard, suddenly grateful for his tight grip. “I’m lucky to have you as family.” She hadn’t had a lot of dependable kin in her life.
“Family. Right.” His shoulders sunk a tiny bit. “I’m…I’m lucky, too. I—”
“Is she in there?”
No, no, no. Her traitorous body flushed even as she shook her head, scattering a good number of the pins she’d spent shoving into her scalp to make a professional, tight bun.
Kazankov was already causing her to unravel.
“Actually, she’s—” Jim never got to finish.
A big hand slapped the space above his head. The door slammed open, bouncing against the wall.
A way-too-smug, entitled barbarian shouldered her CFO out of the way, the first traces of five o’clock shadow on Kazankov’s chiseled jaw doing something unpleasant to her insides. Something decidedly unwidow-like.
With his loosened red tie, rolled-up shirtsleeves, thick, muscular forearms, and mane of dark chocolate hair, he looked like the type whose ancestors had thrown a woman over their shoulder, ransacked the village, and took whatever they wanted.
Not too different from his current way of doing things, actually.
“What are you doing in here?” he barked. “Don’t you know there’s a better conference room down the hall?”
Great. Now he was suggesting she was stupid as well as slutty.
She slapped on her best, unruffled smile. “Gee. Thanks. I hadn’t realized. I’ve only been to the board’s meeting place a few hundred times.”
“So you were avoiding me.”
Sugar biscuits. The man was blunt. And far too quick for her piece of mind.
But she had this. There’d be no more dirty talk. No more supposing she saw a heart where there wasn’t one. No more of anything except cool professionalism.
“I can’t imagine why I would want to avoid you.” Her voice was pure saccharine. “It’s always pleasant to visit together.”
He stalked fully into the room, making the space a hundred times smaller. “I prefer the ballbuster who’s threatening me with Armageddon to the nice-girl act.”
“Well, lucky for me, I don’t care what you think.”
His arctic eyes sliced right through her. “You sure about that?”
Her breath stuttered in her lungs, but she recovered fast. “Unfortunately, I can’t trade pointed questions with you right now.” She started toward the door. “I have a board to convince to vote in my favor.”
Kazankov shifted, blocking the exit. “They asked for a twenty-minute recess to stretch their legs.”
“That’s reasonable.” Shoot. She’d wanted to get the darn thing over with. The thought of speaking to the whole board, but especially the head, Don Pierson, curled her stomach.
“My presentation went well by the way. Very persuasive. In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.” She had been. And she knew it had gone well. She suspected the jerk did everything well.
Not going there, remember?
“Should we could go back to the main conference room and wait?” Jim piped up from somewhere in the background. With Kazankov standing between them, she couldn’t even see her CFO.
“You go.” Her nemesis didn’t bother turning around to address Russell’s son. “I need to speak with your boss alone.” His gaze turned challenging. “Unless I was right before and you were avoiding me so you wouldn’t be shaken up before your presentation.”
“You can go, Jim.” Yes, she was fully aware Kazankov was manipulating her, but she wasn’t about to turn tail and run. “I’ll meet you there in a minute or two.”
Jim didn’t even bother with good-bye, but she didn’t blame him. He was terrified of the Iceman.
She should have been, too.
“That guy does a piss-poor job of taking care of you.” Her rival slid the door shut with the heel of his shoe. “You should hire security. After yesterday’s mess with the reporters, I’d think you’d make it a priority.”
The man was truly unbelievable. “You’re the reason I had to fire my last crew. And I’m a little busy here trying to hold on to my company.”
“Do a better job choosing next time. You need professionals looking after you, not some low-life amateurs.”
“Is that your way of telling me you pose some kind of danger?”
Scowl deepening, he moved closer. “Any bastard who harms a woman deserves a special place in hell.”
Out of nowhere, the past threatened to pull her under, a dark flurry of meaty fists pounding the mental locks fashioned to keep it sealed up tight.
“Armageddon?” Kazankov’s soft rumble ripped her from her memories. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing…I’m…fine.” She shook her head, his skeptical look egging her on. “I can’t even imagine what brought about this momentary bout of almost-empathy, but I hope it passes soon. I don’t want or need anything but your A-game.”
“You sure about that, Lily?”
Ah. The way he said her name. A low rumble that sounded like a command. Like he was already deep inside her.
No, no, no…
“What are you really up to, Kazankov? What do you really want?”
His gaze fell to her wedding band before fusing with hers, his nostrils flaring. “You’re far from dumb. After yesterday, I’m sure you’ve already figured out exactly what I want from you.”
Her blood surged hot in answer. “Scratch that last question. I don’t care what you want.” She took a wide berth around her potential problem to reach the small, glossy conference table and started gathering her notes double-time.
“You running, Armageddon?”
“Stop calling me that.” A few of her note cards scattered back onto the table. She snatched them up.
“What should I call you, then? Mishka?” He came up behind her. Not close enough to touch. But still, only a few inches back and she’d be pressed against all that warm, hard steel…
“Why don’t you call me Ms. Russell Winslow?” She’d never used the archaic title in her life, but she was a fast-drowning woman grasping for a life preserver.
“I’ll never call you that. It doesn’t suit you at all.”
“You can’t erase the fact that he’s my husband.”
“Late husband,” Kazankov corrected. “And I can pretend if you will.”
In truth, it felt like she’d been pretending far too long.
Heck, she and Russell hadn’t even consummated their marriage.
He’d never asked to see her naked after the first awful time when it became clear that the medicines and illness had stolen his manhood. Frankly, given how traumatized she’d been in those early days of her marriage, she’d been more than relieved. Still, the irony wasn’t lost on her. She, presumed to have been the midlife crisis fuck toy of a wealthy man, had been anything but. And all those side winks and back slaps Russell had gotten when they’d appeared anywhere together…well, it had only made her feel more like a fraud.
Worse, as the years passed, pretending she didn’t crave physical touch, didn’t ache for the weight of another against her skin, didn’t long for the chance to erase the ugly memories she’d acquired before her marriage to Russell, had gotten harder and harder.
But now was definitely not the time to stop pretending.
Whirling around, she put her nose inches from the source of her current turmoil. “You have no idea what suits me.”
“I’m getting there.” Kazankov’s gaze bore into hers. “I’ve been doing my research, and it seems you’ve been keeping secrets.”
Everything inside her froze.
“That’s right. I discovered the classes.” His voice was smug. “The high school diploma. The BA with a focus on business management. The master’s in business, with honors.”
When he said nothing more, her heart stuttered back to life.
“So?” she challenged. Safe. The worst of her secrets was still safe.
“So unless someone else took those courses for you…”
“I worked my behind off to get those grades,” she hissed.
At his satisfied nod, she realized she’d been baited and slammed her mouth shut.
“Then why try and bury those records? Why when I suggested you had no background in business did you say nothing?” He moved closer, the heat of his body inches from hers. “Why settle for playing the ornamental wife for six years when it’s clear you’re anything but?” His too-clever gaze searched hers. “Want to hear my theory?”
“No.”
“I think you don’t tout your credentials because you think they don’t measure up. That because those were online degrees and not fancy certificates from Cambridge or Wharton they’re not good enough.” He shook his head. “But I’ve met a lot of graduates from those places, and I promise you could run circles around all of them.”
She swallowed hard, pain mixing with panic. She’d wanted someone to say those kinds of things to her for so long.
But not this man.
She couldn’t afford for it to be this man.
“A touching theory, but if I were you I’d worry less about the past and more about the present—a present in which you seriously need to stop trying to analyze me and back off.” She slammed her palms against his chest, demanding distance.
He didn’t budge. Instead, a satisfied, hungry smirk played across his gorgeous face. “There she is.”
“Excuse me?”
“My fiery, take-no-prisoners ballbuster. I told you I prefer her to the starched-up, sugary-sweet confection you peddle to everyone else.”
She blinked several times, her battle for control slipping, her nails curling into his suit jacket. “You were pushing me on purpose?”
“Yes.” His eyes darkened to near black. No apology. No remorse in sight.
“Why in the heck would you do that?”
“I don’t fucking know.” He sounded as annoyed as her. “Maybe for the same reason I spent all night lecturing myself to stay the hell away from you and here I am. Maybe for the same reason I’m suddenly getting a hard-on every time I pass a bowl of fruit. Maybe for the same reason that instead of taking you down and closing the deal for good, I’m standing here imagining yanking up that prim skirt and fucking you hard and deep on this table.”
His arrogant, infuriating, beautiful mouth descended toward hers.
Just like that, raw, reckless lust laid all sensible plans to waste.
Six years of pretending ravaged in an instant.
“You bastard.” Surging upward, she met him halfway.