great, thanks.’ She pulled the file towards her. ‘Anything in particular you want me to watch out for?’
Alejandro shrugged. ‘Read up on the merger. I have a conference call with the Ishikawa brothers tomorrow. You’ll sit in on it with me. You wanted to be my extra pair of eyes. My Japanese is adequate but not expert. You can be my eyes and ears.’
‘Okay.’
She dropped her case on the desk and removed her jacket. The second button of her blouse had come undone. Alejandro shoved his hands into his pockets, irritatingly caught between the need to point it out or ogle the creamy silkiness of her skin.
Several seconds passed.
Elise sat down, opened the file and glanced up. ‘Was there something else, Mr Aguilar?’
‘Leave the door open. There’s no phone or intercom in here. It’ll save you having to get up and come to me if you have any questions.’
Her gaze flicked past him to his office. Her eyes widened a touch.
‘Yes, I can see you from my desk,’ he confirmed.
A whisper of a smile touched her lips. ‘I’ll resist the urge to chew on my nails or burp loudly, then.’
‘That would be very considerate of you, gracias.’
Her eyes widened further and Alejandro suppressed a rare smile. He’d lived so long in the States that most people forgot he was of Spanish origin. And more than one past conquest had been enthralled by his occasional lapses into his mother tongue.
‘I...I didn’t actually mean that, Mr Aguilar. That was just a—’
‘Joke? It may not seem that way to you, but I do know what those are. I’ve occasionally been known to make one or two of them myself.’
One shapely eyebrow lifted. ‘But not recently?’
The reminder of why this deal was going sour darkened his mood. ‘No, Elise. Not recently.’
‘Okay. How’s the headache?’ she asked, then her forehead twitched, as if she hadn’t meant to blurt out the question. Alejandro felt an odd sense of kinship as his own unnerving need for something that had no place in this office threatened to return.
‘No longer an issue. Perhaps we can work towards keeping it that way by getting this merger back on track?’ he said brusquely.
‘Umm...sure,’ she murmured, still looking mildly puzzled.
Alejandro returned to his desk, satisfied that control had been established. Not that it’d been too far from his grasp. Granted, this morning’s revelations had unsettled him.
But he’d never shied away from a challenge. He wasn’t about to start now.
ELISE RESISTED THE URGE to glance into the outer office. She’d already done that far too many times. Thankfully, not once had Alejandro looked her way. His focus on his work was absolute enough to induce envy. He’d taken a few phone calls, one of which he’d conducted at the far end of his office in front of the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows.
For one absurd second, Elise had wondered whether the low murmured conversation involved a lover. She’d jumped away from the thought as if physically scalded. It was beyond none of her business, and straying into dangerous territory she knew better than to approach.
Refocusing on her work between those times hadn’t been a hardship. The intricacies of the merger were staggering and fascinating. But more importantly, the deal Alejandro was chasing would create thousands of jobs. Granted, the merger would also elevate him to top five on the World’s Richest list, but he would be helping thousands along the way.
The other thing she’d noted was the mind-bending scale of philanthropy attached to each year’s estimated earnings. For each year Alejandro achieved the target he’d set his company, he planned to donate a share of the company’s profit to humanitarian projects.
Elise frowned as she finished the charities section. Nothing she’d read so far should make the Ishikawa Corporation want to do anything other than bite Alejandro’s hand off in their haste to secure the merger. If nothing else, they stood to become instant billionaires.
‘You’re frowning.’
She stumbled to a halt, realising she’d entered his office. He was bathed in the mid-afternoon sun, the contrast of olive skin against the rolled-up sleeves of his black shirt striking enough to command her stare. ‘Oh... I’m almost done reading the file.’
‘And?’
‘And the deal...the charity benefits... It’s all amazing.’
‘Amazing directly contradicts that frown.’
She looked away from him, anxiously noting her elevated pulse rate, and crossed over to the drinks tray. ‘Well, I expected to find a thread of dissatisfaction right from the beginning. Something that would indicate they were unhappy. There’s nothing. I’m just wondering why they chose now to throw a wrench in what was from the very start a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’
‘My guess is another party is dangling promises they may not be able to keep.’
Elise picked up a bottle of water and traced her finger across the top. ‘You guess? Sorry, but you don’t strike me as the kind of man who guesses.’
‘And have you known many men like me?’ he drawled.
She flushed, then cursed herself for being flustered at the deliberate taunt. ‘You know what I mean, Mr Aguilar.’
Contemplative eyes probed hers for several seconds. When he held out an imperious hand for water, she picked up another bottle and passed it to him, curbing the urge to roll her eyes.
‘You’re right. I don’t guess.’
Surprise spiked through her. ‘So you know who’s trying to jinx the deal?’
‘Sí, I do,’ he murmured in a tone that sent a shiver down her spine. When he didn’t elaborate, she frowned.
‘Are you going to tell me who it is?’
‘Have you finished reading the report?’
‘Not yet.’
He uncapped the bottle and drained half of it in greedy gulps. Elise stopped herself from staring at the solid column of his throat. Or at the dark stubble that had crept over his jaw in the last few hours.
‘Go finish it. The “who” doesn’t really matter. What I need is a PR strategy on how we can resolve this problem if they remain intransigent.’
She returned to her office, fully aware there was no point pressing him for more information.
When she next raised her head, the view at her window had changed from day to evening, with lights from the
