inhaled sharply, outrage flushing her cheeks with colour. ‘I’m wasting your—who the hell do you think you are?’
‘I believe I’ve already introduced myself. Now it’s your turn.’
‘I...what do you want with...with Sage?’
‘That is a confidential conversation she wouldn’t wish me to have with anyone else, I’m certain of it. Unless she wants her dirty laundry aired for everyone to inspect?’ he taunted.
There was no immediate comeback this time. Eyes he could now see were a dark, vibrant green inspected him with an extra layer of wariness. Her breathing was measured, but he could see the pulse leaping at her throat, the minuscule nervous twitch of her fingers.
‘Fine. I’m Sage Woods. Now would you care to tell me what this is about?’ she demanded.
Xandro opened his mouth to do just that. To demand to know the whereabouts of her brother. He wasn’t sure what made him pause. Or what made him leap up onto the stage in a single bound to tower over her. Perhaps he wanted to look into the whites of her eyes and judge for himself whether she was as duplicitous as her brother. She was certainly daring enough.
But his actions certainly hadn’t been because of the invisible pull tugging at him or the need to find out whether the creamy perfection of her skin was real or just the play of the stage lights.
This time she stumbled back several steps, her eyes widening so the green stood out in vivid, shockingly vibrant colour. Colour he couldn’t immediately look away from.
‘What...what are you doing? I’ve told you who I am. Tell me why you’re here right now or I’ll—’ She stopped abruptly and balled her fists.
Xandro wondered again why he was prolonging this exchange. Surely it wasn’t because the woman in front of him held the thinnest fascination for him. ‘You’ll...what?’ he invited.
‘I’m not into telegraphing my intentions in advance. Take another step towards me and you’ll find out.’
For some absurd reason, despite the churning inside him, he wanted to laugh. His buzzing phone reminded him that outside of this auditorium, outside of this time and place, there was a thief in possession of something vitally important to him.
And the key to finding him was standing in front of him, preparing to defend herself with a martial arts move she was telegraphing loud and clear, despite her assertion otherwise.
‘Until forty-eight hours ago, your brother, Benjamin, was employed as a senior security guard in charge of elite clients at my VIP casino in Vegas. For reasons I’m yet to discover, he decided to help himself to money and property that didn’t belong to him, after which he disappeared. My sources tell me you’re in touch with your brother. You will tell me when you last spoke to him, and where I can find him.’
He knew his instincts to get closer to her had been right when he caught the faint snag in her breathing. No matter what came next, he now had the advantage of knowing she cared about her brother. Just as he knew that even though she tried to hide it by clearing her throat, whatever she was about to say wouldn’t be welcome.
‘I’m sorry, Mr...?’ She raised a neatly sculpted eyebrow. ‘Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name—’
‘Xandro Christofides,’ he supplied, his gaze trained on her face, reading her every micro-expression. ‘Your brother worked his way up from croupier to VIP security in the last eighteen months at the Las Vegas branch of Xei Hotels and Casinos. But I’m sure you know all of this.’
Her gaze swept over his shoulder for a second before reconnecting with his. ‘You’re wrong. I have no idea where Ben is, Mr Christofides.’ She kept her gaze on his for another bold second after her blatant lie, then stepped back. Xandro watched her walk towards the stage door, bend to pick up a small backpack before she looked over her shoulder. ‘And even if I did I wouldn’t tell you.’
SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE said that.
It had been unnecessary. And stupidly provocative. An emotional response when she should’ve given a calm, clinical dismissal. Just like she’d trained herself to. Bullies fed on emotional reactions. Hadn’t she learned that the long, hard way as a teenager?
So why did she say that? Why had she provoked him?
Probably because she’d wanted to annoy the overbearing man the same way he’d annoyed her by interrupting her training session. The session she’d paid hard-earned money for. The private session she used to settle herself and regain her peace of mind. Sage wasn’t ashamed to admit she needed these sessions like she needed oxygen. A successful audition was her ultimate goal, of course, but to her dancing would always be more than a career. She’d sacrificed so much to even get here.
She’d had more right to be on that stage than he had. So why had she walked away like that?
Because those silver-grey eyes and all that leashed animal power had threatened to knock every piece of common sense out of her head the moment he’d prowled to the edge of the stage and stared up at her from a position that should’ve been inferior, but had somehow made her feel small and vulnerable. Singled out. In a way that awakened disturbing memories. And yet it’d been a little different...
Or perhaps it’d been the moment he’d leaped oh-so-gracefully onto the stage and prowled towards her like a marauding predator intent on prying the information he needed from her.
Regardless of that, she should’ve stepped up to him and just coolly dismissed the man. But no. Once again, she’d let her control slip, lashed out in response to Xandro Christofides’s deliberate baiting.
She’d threatened him with bodily harm, for goodness’ sake, when she of all people knew how destructive that was!
Sage suppressed a shiver at the unwanted memories, and hurried along the back corridor that led to the locker rooms of the Washington Performance School.
Her skin still tingled from the charged almost-contact with Xandro Christofides. She could hear his deep, rumbling voice in her ear, feel the electricity sparking from him sizzling along her nerve endings.
‘You will tell me when you last spoke to him, and where I can find him.’
No please or thank you from the infuriating man. She was certain he was like that all the time, tossing orders around like confetti at a wedding and expecting people to jump.
Except she’d stopped jumping at orders, had drawn a very painful, but definitive line at being controlled. She was no longer willing to be anyone’s puppet, to have her strings pulled this way or that to suit what her parents deemed her destiny. It had come at a huge cost—one she was still paying.
She wasn’t about to let the enigmatic stranger add to her woes.
Good heavens, he’d been too much. Too handsome, too incisive, too...everything! And he’d probably seen through her half-truth.
It was true she had no idea where Ben was. They weren’t scheduled to make their pledged once-a-month call for another two weeks, and the last she’d heard from him he’d still been in Las Vegas.
