Wrong Brother, Right Man

His brother shook his head. “We’ve got enough on the line already, don’t you think? Besides, if you do bag her, it can only help you.”

“And perhaps you should consider that the reason she dumped you is because you’re an ass. I’m not,” Val shot back, a little more hotly than he’d intended, but the sentiment was warranted. Sabrina was a lot of things but not a faceless notch on the bed post. No woman in Val’s rearview was. He loved being with all the women he’d slept with, loved learning their bodies, their laughs. Quantity did not preclude quality. The more the merrier.

“Which is going to bite you,” Xavier informed him. “Bleeding hearts aren’t her type. They don’t increase profits eight percent, even in six years, let alone six months.”

“We’ll see about that.” Val’s confidence might be a little misplaced, given that his one foray into The Buck Stops Here mentality had made him sick to his stomach. “Maybe some heart is what this company needs.”

“And maybe a solid hand is what LBC needs.” Xavier smirked.

Val’s stomach turned over again. His staff would be fine. They knew not to fold under his brother’s dictatorial style. Somehow, reminding himself of that didn’t make him feel any better. “You’d do well to leave your Tom Ford suits at home and dig into LBC’s mission statement with an open mind.”

His brother flipped him a smartass salute and strode out of the office without a backward glance. Good riddance. Val scrubbed at his face with his hands and trashed the unpalatable coffee without taking a second sip. Maybe he could duck out for twenty minutes and make it to Fuel for Humans Coffee near LBC’s main facility before anyone else showed up.

“Ahh, I see we’re taking our CEO position seriously today.”

Sabrina strolled through the door Xavier had vacated mere minutes before, looking far too fresh and untouchable given the hour. A temperature drop accompanied her as if she’d tucked the Snow Queen into her clutch in order to unleash winter upon the hapless souls in her wake.

Of course, the logical explanation lay with the pronounced hum of the air conditioner. But he liked his version better. What fun was life if you couldn’t see the fanciful in the everyday?

Speaking of his overactive imagination, if she’d been in Val’s bed last night—which he’d envisioned more times than he could count—they’d still be there, and her hair would be tousled from his fingers instead of wound up in that severe bun thing. Seeing her in the flesh doubled his resolve to get to that point. Soon.

“Good morning to you too,” he greeted her gallantly. “I was about to go get some coffee around the corner. Come with me.”

“We can’t leave.”

She crossed her arms over the kelly-green knit top she wore under a classy white suit, the skirt of which hit just above her knees. It shouldn’t have been as sexy as it was, but Sabrina was one of those rare women who had such an arresting vibe that you scarcely noticed what she was wearing. Her appeal came from somewhere beneath, and his mouth wanted to uncover her secrets.

After Xavier’s welcome to LeBlanc, Sabrina’s frost needed to go.

“On the contrary, I’m the CEO. I can do whatever I want. Right?”

“Have coffee delivered, then,” she said with raised eyebrows. “We have a four-week plan to go over.”

Lazily, he spun his chair as he contemplated her, the coaching plan suddenly very far down his list of things to do today. “Only four weeks?”

“We have to start somewhere. At the end of four weeks, I can make some assessments about where we are in your progress, then make adjustments. I have no idea how well you’re going to take suggestions or what you’ll do with my feedback. It will do me no good to have spent time on a six-month plan if you ignore everything I say.”

“So far, you haven’t said much,” he countered. “And if you truly wanted to know how well I respond to suggestion, you should have had dinner with me last night.”

Her expression didn’t change, but her gaze flicked over his face. “Because you expect me to spit out commands of a sexual variety on a first date?”

Oh, man. She was far more charmed by him than she knew what to do with. Excellent. He grinned. “Because I had planned to ask you what you wanted me to cook for you. But I like the direction of your thoughts so much better. Now that we’ve opened that Pandora’s box, what commands would you give?”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head, the hard cross of her arms tightening over her midsection. She must not have realized that action had pulled her blouse down a half inch, displaying a very lovely section of her breasts. “We’re not going there today, Val.”

“You started it, not me.” He held up his hands in mock surrender to distract from the sharp little number this whole exchange was doing on his lower half. Didn’t work. But, then, he was starting to think nothing would, except the obvious.

“We have a professional relationship. If we can’t stick to that, then you can find another executive coach.”

Her expression had none of the heat from yesterday. He was failing with her today, for some unknown reason.

With that warning ringing in his ears, Val sobered. Those contacts with the Botswana government still lay prominently in the center of his desk and, as reminders went of how he’d go down in flames without her, that was a stark one. “I take this very seriously. Please forgive me. Let’s go over your plan.”

She rolled her eyes. “And stop being so conciliatory. Men in the corporate world take no prisoners. Don’t ask for forgiveness, and do not look at me with those puppy-dog eyes.”

He had to laugh. “Is that what I was doing?”

“We’re going to have a problem if you don’t take accountability for the changes you need to make. That’s why you hired me, right?”

No, he’d hired her because she liked to win. And because he had a score to settle with his father but, in lieu of being able to do that, he’d settle for taking a few chunks out of Xavier’s hide. Sabrina was his ticket to that. “I hired you because I need my inheritance. You have a proven track record working with executives to better their ability to lead. Nowhere did I agree to change.”

Sabrina blinked. “Then you’ve already decided that we’ve lost.”

No. That was not happening. If nothing else, he needed that money to undo all the damage Xavier would likely do to LBC without Val there to fix it.

“Sit,” he told her with a head jerk at one of the chairs as his temper started simmering again. Or maybe it hadn’t fully cooled from Xavier’s drive-by earlier.

To her credit, she didn’t argue and just did as he said, which wasn’t going to work either. He wanted a partner, not a lackey. “I’m a team player. Always. I don’t boss people around for the sake of getting my way. If your four-week plan includes strategies to turn me into a corporate shark, you can trash it. I need you on my side. To work with me to use my strengths and gloss over what you perceive to be my weaknesses. Can you do that?”

Sabrina let her spine relax against the back of the chair and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“You promised me yesterday that we’d do this together. You moved me with that speech. Figure out a way,” he said. “And that’s as tyrannical as I’m going to get.”

There was no way in hell he’d let this job-switch mandate turn him into his father. Or, worse, into Xavier. But he was going to use his stint at LeBlanc to show everyone that, while his brother might have been their father’s favorite, Val could and would pass whatever test the old man posthumously threw down in his path—as long as he had Sabrina to help him avoid becoming the soulless corporate type his father had likely hoped this task would shape him into.

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