started off on the wrong foot the other night,” he murmured. “We need to work as a team, Chloe, together, not apart, if we have any hope of preserving what your parents built. Full-out warfare is not going to work.”
She arched a brow at him. “Is that an apology?”
“If you like,” he said evenly. “Like it or not, we are in this together. We succeed or fail together. You decide which it is.”
Her lashes lowered. “I agree we need a better working relationship. But this is my company, Nico. You need to listen to me, too. You can’t just run roughshod over me with that insatiable need for control of yours. I know what’s going to make Evolution a success. There’s no doubt in my mind it’s Vivre.”
“Put the rest of the pieces of the plan in place and I might agree. And,” he said, inclining his head, “I promise to listen more. If you stop trying to bait me at every turn.”
Her mouth twisted. “A truce, then?”
A mocking glint filled his gaze. “A truce. We can celebrate by attending the Palm Beach fund-raiser together. It will present a very public united front.”
Her parents’ favorite fund-raiser. A glittering, star-studded musical event in Palm Beach every year in support of breast cancer—a disease her mother’s best friend had succumbed to. Her stomach did a nervous dip at the thought of attending it with Nico.
She tipped her head back to look up at him. “You mean you don’t have one of your hot dates lined up for it?”
Hot in the sense they never lasted with Nico. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him photographed with the same woman twice.
“I haven’t had a hot date in six months,” he drawled. “It will have to wait until Evolution isn’t in danger of falling through the cracks.”
A calculated insult intended to remind her of her irresponsibility and his immutable focus. “However will you survive?” she goaded, skin stinging.
“I will manage,” he murmured, eyes on hers. “Careful, Chloe, we’ve barely gotten this cease-fire of ours under way.”
She sank her teeth into her lip. At the erotic image that one word inserted into her head. It took very little of her imagination to wonder what he would look like in the shower satisfying that physical need, his beautiful body primed for release.
She closed her eyes. She hated him. This was insanity.
The song finished. She stepped hastily out of his arms, smoothing her dress down over her hips. Nico gave her a pointed look. “Ready to leave?”
The concrete set of his jaw said there was no point arguing. He wasn’t leaving her here. He would wait all night if he had to because this was Nico—relentless in everything he did. Patient like the most tenacious predator in achieving what he wanted.
“Yes,” she agreed with a helpless sigh.
He placed a palm to her back as they wound their way through the crowd to say good-night to Lazzero. The heat of it fizzled over her skin, warming her layers deep, a real-life chemical reaction she’d never been able to defuse.
It rendered her silent on the trip home, the warm, luxurious interior of the car wrapping her in a sleek, dark cocoon as they slipped through quiet streets. She was so tired as Nico walked her to her door, she stumbled with the key as she tried to push it into the lock.
His fingers brushed against hers as he collected the keys from her hand and unlocked the door. Little pinpricks of heat exploded across her skin, a surge of warmth staining her cheeks as she looked up at him to thank him. Found herself all caught up in his smoky gaze that suddenly seemed to have a charge in it that stalled the breath in her throat.
“Go inside and go to bed, Chloe,” he said huskily. “And lock the door.”
His intention ever since he’d walked into that bar tonight, she reminded herself, past her spinning head. To prevent her from slipping into Eddie Carello’s hands.
She slicked her tongue across suddenly dry lips. Cocked her chin at a defiant angle. “Mission accomplished. I’ll be in bed by midnight. But then again, you always get what you want, don’t you, Nico?”
His gray gaze was heavy-lidded as it focused on her mouth for an infinitesimal pause. “Not always,” he said quietly.
Then he disappeared into the night.
IT HAD BEEN the champagne talking. Chloe convinced herself of that version of events as she walked to work the next morning. That cryptic comment from Nico on her doorstep, the chemistry that had seemed so palpable between them. Because not once in all the years since their summer flirtation had he ever looked at her like that.
She’d merely been a blip on his radar. A casual diversion he’d regretted when more sophisticated choices had come along. Thinking it had been any more than that would make her a fool where he was concerned and she’d stopped being that a long time ago.
Whatever misguided sense of duty he was displaying toward her, this power trip he was on, Nico’s ambition was the only thing he cared about, a fact she would do well to remember. She’d agreed to this truce of theirs only for the greater good of the company. Because saving Evolution was all that mattered.
She perfected her spiel for Eddie’s agent as she rode the elevator to her office, said good-morning to Clara, whom she’d decided was not only witty but astonishingly efficient, and took the messages her assistant handed her into her office.
Done in antiques, with a Louis XVI writing desk and chairs, ultra-feminine lace-edged, silk curtains and warm lamp lighting, the office that had once been her mother’s wrapped itself around her like a whisper-soft memory. But her mind was all business as she picked up the phone and called Eddie’s agent. A good thing, too, because when she reached him, he told her he was on his way out of town but could have lunch that day before he left.
Apprehensive Eddie would change his mind if it waited, Chloe jumped on the invitation. Unfortunately, his agent wasn’t immediately sold on the endorsement, but in the end he relented, only because Eddie seemed so keen on the project and the actor had a movie coming out at Christmas, just as the massive campaign for Soar would appear.
Chloe floated back to the office and announced her victory to Mireille, who was just as excited as she.
“I,” she informed Chloe, “have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that Lashaunta is interested. She loves the campaign. It really resonated with her.”
Chloe’s heart soared. Lashaunta was a megastar. “That’s amazing.”
“The bad news is that Carrie Taylor is a no. She’s about to represent a competing fragrance. Desdemona,” she concluded, “I’m still working on.”
Which meant they needed to secure their plan B supermodel, Estelle Markov, for Nico to give them the green light. He might approve the plan with only three of their four celebrities in place, but any less than that and Chloe knew she’d be out of luck.
While
