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 was as telling a gesture as anything he’d done thus far. “What do you think I’m used to?”
The defensive posture put her on edge. She was stumbling again, with few handrails to grasp. He wasn’t a typical client who wanted to leapfrog over the men ahead of him in line to the corner office and had hired her to give him an edge. Val was clearly sensitive, with land mines and trip wires in odd places. Things she had little experience with.
But she couldn’t tell him that.
“You’re used to an environment where people are working toward common good.” She assumed so anyway. All she knew about his charity was that it fed homeless people, an admirable cause, but likely had nothing in common with the corporate world. “LeBlanc is for-profit, and that makes it instantly more treacherous. If you want to succeed, you’re going to have to listen to me and do exactly as I say.”
His brows lifted. “Now that’s the best proposition I’ve had all day. By all means, Ms. Corbin, I’m at your complete command. Tell me what you’d like me to do.”
Her brain automatically added to you to the end of the sentence, and she flushed. He hadn’t meant that. Had he? “Call in your c-suite, and let’s get the lay of the land.”
With a nod, he levered his hips away from the door, grazing her in all the right places—wrong places—as he reached behind him to open the door. Scrambling backward, she landed in the center of his spacious office. Her pulse raced as if she’d recently lapped the building, but why she couldn’t fathom. He was just a man.
He called out through the open door to his admin, asked her to gather together the staff that reported to him and swung the door wide. The cloak of awareness eased a bit, and she dragged air into her lungs. Val strode past her to take a seat at the desk again.
As people began to file into the room, his expression hardened into something more suited to a CEO. Where had that come from? Fascinated, she edged toward the back wall as LeBlanc’s vice-presidents ringed the desk.
“Thanks for joining me on short notice,” Val told the eight men and women who had answered the summons, meeting each one’s gaze in exactly the same manner that she would have advised him to if he’d asked. “We’re in for an interesting ride over the next few months. I’m not Xavier, nor do I pretend to be, but I will keep this company afloat. I hope you’ll all stick around to see how it plays out. If not, there’s the door.”
As Val jerked his head toward it, Sabrina’s pulse faltered for an entirely different reason. Val had morphed before her eyes into a force to be reckoned with.
He’d been toying with her. Throat tight, she watched him lay down his authority with the people he needed most to have his back, struggling to rearrange everything she’d learned about him today.
Valentino LeBlanc’s middle name might well be chameleon. Which made him dangerous in more ways than one. She could not trust him, that much was clear and, come hell or high water, she had to stop letting him blindside her.
The next morning, Val arrived at LeBlanc shortly after six. No one else had arrived yet, which had been his goal. Gave him time to acclimate, which had been the number one necessity he’d gleaned from Sabrina yesterday.
As he settled into the CEO’s chair with a cup of coffee—which he’d bet half his inheritance was not Fair Trade or even very good—from
