A Devil In Disguise

He took. That was what he did. At the most basic level, that was who Cayo Vila was.

He’d taken from her and she hadn’t even known it until today, had she? Some part of her—even now—wished she’d never opened that file drawer, never discovered how easily he’d derailed her career three years ago without her ever the wiser. But she had.

She could see the whole rest of her life flash before her eyes in a sickening, infinitely depressing cascade of images. If she agreed to his two weeks, she might as well die on the spot. Right here, right now. Because he would take possession of her life the way he’d done of her last five years, and there would be no end to it. Ever. Dru knew perfectly well that she was the best personal assistant he’d ever had. That wasn’t any immodesty on her part—she’d had to be, because she’d needed the money he’d paid her and the cachet his name had afforded her when it came time to wrangle Dominic into the best drug-treatment clinics and programs in the States, for all the good it had done. And she still believed it had all been worth it, no matter how little she had to show for it now, no matter how empty and battered she felt. Dominic had not died alone, on a lonely street corner in some desperate city neighborhood, never to be identified or mourned or missed. That was what mattered.

But Dominic had only been the first, original reason. Her pathetic feelings for Cayo had been the second—and far more appalling—reason she’d made herself so indispensible to Cayo. She’d taken pride in her ability to serve him so well. It left a bitter taste in her mouth today, but it was true. She was that much of a masochist, and she’d have to live with that. If she stayed even one day more, any chance she had left to reclaim her life, to do something for herself, to live, to crawl out of this terrible hole she’d lowered herself into all on her own, would disappear into the big black smoke-filled vortex that was Cayo Vila.

He would buy more things and sell others, make millions and destroy lives at a whim, hers included. And she would carry on catering to him, jumping to do his bidding and smoothing the path before him, anticipating his every need and losing herself, bit by bit and inch by inch, until she was nothing more than a pleasant-looking, serene-voiced husk. A robot under his command. Slave to feelings he would never, could never return, despite small glimmers to the contrary in far-off cities on complicated evenings never spoken of aloud when they were done.

Worse, she would want to do all of it. She would want to be whatever she could be for him, just so long as she could stay near him. Just as she had since that night she’d seen such a different side of him in Cadiz. She would cling to anything, wouldn’t she? She would even pretend she didn’t know that he’d crushed her dreams of advancement with a single, brutal email. She was, she knew, exactly that pathetic. Exactly that stupid. Hadn’t she proved it every single day of these past three years?

“No,” she said.

It was, of course, a word he rarely heard.

His black brows lowered. His hard gold eyes shone with amazement. That impossibly lush mouth, the one that made his parade of lovers fantasize that there could be some softness to him, only to discover too late that it was no more than a mirage, flattened ominously.

“What do you mean, no?”

The lilt of his native Spanish cadence made the words sound almost musical, but Dru knew that the thicker his accent, the more trouble she was in—and the closer that volcanic temper of his was to eruption. She should have turned on her heel and run for safety. She should have heeded the knot in her belly and the heat that moved over her skin, the panic that flooded through her.

“I understand that you might not be familiar with the word,” she said, sounding perhaps more empowered, more sure of herself, than was wise. Or true. “It indicates dissent. Refusal. Both concepts you have difficulty with, I know. But that is, I am happy to say, no longer my problem.”

“It will become your problem,” he told her, a note she’d never heard before in his voice. His gaze narrowed further, into two outraged slits of gold, as if he’d never actually seen her until this moment. Something about that particular way he looked at her made her feel lightheaded. “I will—”

“Go ahead and take me to court,” she said, interrupting him again with a careless wave of her hand that, she could see, visibly infuriated him. “What do you think you’ll win?”

For the first time in as long as she’d known him, Cayo Vila was rendered speechless. The silence was taut and breathless between them, and, still, was somehow as loud as a siren. It seemed to hum. And he simply stared at her, thunderstruck, an expression she had never seen before on his ruthless face.

Good.

“Will you take my flat from me?” she continued, warming to the topic. Emboldened, perhaps, by his unprecedented silence. By the chaos inside of her that was all his fault. “It’s only a leased bedsit. You’re welcome to it. I’ll write you a check right now, if you like, for the entire contents of my current account. Is that what it will take?” She laughed, and could hear it bouncing back at her from the glass wall, the tidy expanse of her desk, even the polished floor that made even the outer office seem glossy and that much more intimidating to the unwary. “I’ve already given you five years. I’m not giving you two more weeks. I’m not giving you another second. I’d rather die.”

Cayo stared at his assistant as if he’d never seen her before.

There was something about the way she tilted that perfect, pretty oval of her face, the way her usually calm gray eyes sparkled with the force of her temper, and something about that mouth of hers. He couldn’t seem to look away from it.

Unbidden, a memory teased through his head, of her hand on his cheek, her gray eyes warm and something like affectionate, her lips—but no. There was no need to revisit that insanity. He’d worked much too hard to strike it from his consciousness. It was one regrettable evening in five smooth, issue-free years. Why think of it at all?

“I would rather die,” she said again, as if she was under the misapprehension that he had not heard her the first time.

“That can always be arranged,” he said, searching that face he knew so well and yet, apparently, so little—looking for some clue as to what had brought this on. Here, now, today. “Have you forgotten? I am a very formidable man.”

“If you are going to make threats, Mr. Vila,” she replied in that crisp way of hers, “at least pay me the compliment of making them credible. You are many things, but you are not a thug. As such.”

For the first time in longer than he could remember—since, perhaps, he had been the fatherless child whose mother, all the village had known too well, had been so disgraced that she had taken to the convent after his birth rather than face the wages of her sin in its ever-growing flesh—Cayo was at a loss. It might have amused him that it was his personal assistant who had wrought this level of incapacity in him, his glorified secretary for God’s sake, when nothing else had managed it. Not another multimillion-pound deal, not one more scandalous affair reported breathlessly and inaccurately in the tabloids, not one of his new and—dare he say it—visionary business enterprises. Nothing got beneath his skin. Nothing threw him off balance.

Only this woman. As she had once before.

It was funny. It was. He was certain he would laugh about it at some point, and at great length, but first? He needed her. Back in line where she belonged, back securely in the role he preferred her to play, and he ignored the small whisper inside him that suggested that there would be no repairing this. That she would never again be as comfortably invisible as she’d been before, that it was too late, that he’d been operating on borrowed time since the incident in Cadiz three years ago and this was only the delayed fallout—

“I am leaving,” she told him, meeting his gaze as if he were a naughty child in the midst of a tiresome strop, and enunciating each word as if she suspected he was too busy tantruming to hear her otherwise. “You will have to come to terms with that and if you feel it necessary to file suit against me, have at it. I booked a ticket to Bora Bora this morning. I’m sorted.”

And then, finally, his brain started working again. It was one thing for her to take herself off to wherever she lived in London, or even off on a week’s holiday to, say, Ibiza, as he’d suggested. But French Polynesia, a world away? Unacceptable.

Because he could not let her go. He refused. And he wanted to examine that as little as he had the last time he’d discovered that she wanted to leave him. Three years ago, only a week after that night in Cadiz he’d seen—and still saw—no point in dredging forth.

It wasn’t personal, of course, then or now; she was an asset. In many ways, the most valuable asset he had. She knew too much about him. Everything, in fact, from his inseam to his favorite breakfast to his preferred concierge service in all the major cities around the globe, to say nothing of the ins and outs of the way he handled his business affairs. He couldn’t imagine how long it would take to train up her replacement, and he had no intention of finding out. He would do as he always did—whatever was necessary to protect his assets. Whatever it took.

“I apologize for my behavior,” he said then, almost formally. He shifted his stance and thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, rocking back on his heels in a manner he knew was the very opposite of aggressive. “You took me by surprise.” Her gray eyes narrowed suspiciously, and he wished that he had taken the time to learn how to read her as thoroughly as he knew she could read him. It put him at a disadvantage, another unfamiliar sensation.

“Of course I will not sue you,” he continued, forcing himself to keep an even, civil tone, and the rest of himself in check. “I was simply reacting badly, as anyone would. You are the best personal assistant I’ve ever had. Perhaps the best in all of London. I am quite sure you know this.”

“Well,” she said, dropping her gaze, which he found unaccountably fascinating. She said something almost under her breath then, something that sounded very much like that’s nothing to be proud of, is it?

Cayo wanted to pursue that, but didn’t. He had every intention of cracking her wide open and figuring out every last one of her mysteries until he was sure that none remained, that she could never take him by surprise again, but not now. Not here. Not until he’d dealt with this situation the only way he knew how.

Which was to dominate it and contain it and make it his, by whatever means necessary.

“As you must be aware, however,” he continued, “there will be a great number of papers to sign before you can leave the company. Confidentiality agreements being the least of it.” He checked the watch on his wrist with a quick snap of his arm. “It’s still early. We can leave immediately.”

“Leave?” she echoed, openly frowning now, which was when it occurred to him that he’d never seen her do that before—she was always so very serene, with only the odd flash in her eyes to hint at what went on in her head. He’d never wanted to know. But this was a full frown, brows drawn and that mouth of hers tight, and he was riveted. Why could he not tear his attention away from her mouth? The lines he’d never seen before, making the smooth expanse of her forehead more interesting somehow? It made him much too close to uncomfortable. As if she was a real person instead of merely his most prized possession, exhibiting brand-new traits. Worse, as if she was a woman.

But he didn’t want to think about that. He certainly didn’t want to remember the only other time he’d seen her as anything more than his assistant. He didn’t want this woman in his bed. Of course he didn’t. She was too clever, too good at what she did. He wanted her at his beck and call, at his side, where she belonged.

“My entire legal team is in Zurich,” he reminded her gently. “Surely you have not forgotten that already in your haste to leave?”

He watched her stiffen, and thought she would balk at the idea of a quick trip to Switzerland, but instead, she swallowed. Visibly. And then squared her shoulders as if a not-quite-two-hour trip on the private jet was akin to a trial by fire. One that she was reluctantly willing to suffer through, if it would rid her of him.

“Fine,” she said, with an impatient sort of sigh that he did not care for in the least. “If you want me to sign something, anything, I’ll sign it. Even in bloody Zurich, if you insist. I want this over with.”

And Cayo smiled, because he had her.

CHAPTER TWO

BY the time the helicopter touched down on the helipad on the foredeck of the gently moving luxury yacht, Dru had worked herself into what she could only call a state.

She climbed out of the sleek little machine only when she realized she had no other choice, that the pilot was shutting it down and preparing to stay on board the great yacht himself—and Dru did not fancy spending who knew how long sitting in a helicopter simply to prove a point. She was quite certain that Cayo would leave her there.

On some level, she was bitterly aware she really should have expected he’d pull a stunt like this. Unabashed abduction. Simply because he could.

So, in spite of the fact that she wanted to put whole worlds between them, she found herself following Cayo’s determined, athletic stride across the deck, too upset to really take in the sparkling blue sea on all sides and what she was afraid was the Croatian mainland in the distance. The sea air teased tendrils of her hair out of the twist that had been carefully calibrated to withstand the London drizzle, and she actually had a familiar moment of panic, out of habit, as if it should still matter to her what she looked like. As if she should still be concerned that he might find her professional appearance wanting in some way. It appalled her how deep it went in her, this knee-jerk need to please him. It was going to take her a whole lot longer to quit the Cayo Vila habit than she’d like.

And the fact that he had spirited her away to the wrong country didn’t help.

“You do realize this is kidnapping, don’t you?” she demanded. Not for the first time. The difference was that this time, Cayo actually stopped and looked at her, turning his dark head slowly so that his hard gaze made every hair on her body prickle to attention. She sucked in a breath.

“What on earth are you talking about?” he asked silkily. At his most dangerous, but she couldn’t let that intimidate her. She wouldn’t. “Nobody forced you to come on this trip. There was no gun to your back. You agreed.”

“This is not Switzerland,” she pointed out, trying to keep her rising panic at bay. “It doesn’t even resemble Switzerland. The sea is a dead giveaway and unless I am very much mistaken, that is Dubrovnik.”

She stabbed a finger in the general direction of the red-roofed, whitewashed city that clung to the rugged coastline off the side of the yacht, and the walls and fortress that encircled it so protectively. The blue waters of the Adriatic—because she knew where she was, she didn’t need him to confirm it so much as explain it—were as gorgeous and inviting as ever. She wanted to throw him overboard and watch those same waters consume him, inch by aggravating inch. Only the fact that he was so much bigger than she—and all of it sleek and smooth muscle she did not trust herself near enough to touch—prevented her trying. And only barely prevented her, at that.

He didn’t glance toward the shore. Why should he? He had undoubtedly known where they were going the moment he’d mentioned Zurich back in London. He’d certainly known when they’d landed in a mysterious airfield somewhere in Europe and he’d hurried her onto the helicopter before she could get her bearings. This was only a surprise for her.

“Did I say Switzerland?” he asked, that voice of his deceptively soft and all the more lethal for it, while his gaze remained hard. “You must have misheard me.”

“Exactly what is your plan?’ she threw at him, temper and fear and something else she couldn’t quite identify sloshing around inside her, making her feel like a bomb about to detonate. “Am I your prisoner now?”

“How theatrical you are,” he said, and she had the impression that he was choosing his words carefully. That much harsher words lurked behind that quiet tone that she knew meant he was furious. “How did you manage to hide that so long and so well?”

“You must have mistaken me for someone else,” Dru hurled at him. “I’m not going to mindlessly obey your commands—”

“Are you certain?” That black gold gaze of his turned darker, harder as he cut her off. It made her feel oddly hollow, and much too hot. She assured herself it was anger, nothing more. “If memory serves, obedience is one of your strengths.”

“Obedience was my job,” she said with some remnant of her former iciness. “But I quit.”

He looked at her for a long, simmering moment.

“Your resignation has not been accepted, Miss Bennett,” he snapped out, fierce and commanding. As if she should not dare mention the matter again. And then he turned his back on her and strode off across the gleaming, sun-kissed deck as if it was settled.

Dru stood where he’d left her, feeling a little bit silly and more than a little off balance in her smart office clothes and delicate heels that were completely inappropriate for a boat. She stepped out of her stilettos and scooped them up in her hand, trying to breathe in the crisp sea air. Trying to curl her now-bare toes against the cool deck as if that might ground her.

Trying to breathe.

She moved over to the polished rail and leaned her elbows against it, frowning at the rolling waves, the gorgeously craggy coastline beckoning in the distance, rich dark greens and weathered reds basking in the sun. She felt it all twist and shift inside her then, all of the struggle and agony, the sacrifice and frustrated yearning. The grief. The hope. The brutal truth some part of her wished she’d never learned. It all seemed to swell within her as if it might crack her open and rip her apart—as if, having finally opened the door to all the things she’d repressed all this time, the lies she’d told herself, she couldn’t lock it back up. She couldn’t pretend any longer.

Misery rose inside her, thick and black and suffocating. And fast. And for a moment, she could do nothing but let it claim her. There was so much she couldn’t change, couldn’t help. She couldn’t go back in time and keep her father from dying when she and Dominic had still been toddlers. She couldn’t keep her mother from her string of lovers, each more vicious and abusive than the last. She couldn’t keep sweet, sensitive Dominic from choosing oblivion, and then courting it, his life and his drugs getting harder every year, until it was no more than a waiting game for his inevitable and tragic end.

The long, hard breath she took felt ragged. Too close to painful.

And she was free of those obligations now, it was true, but she was also irrevocably and impossibly alone. She hardly remembered her father and her mother hadn’t acknowledged her existence in years. She’d built her life around handling Dominic’s disease, and with him gone, there was nothing but … emptiness. She would fill it, she promised herself. She would build a life based finally on what she wanted, not as some kind of response to people and things that were forever out of her control. Not a life in opposition to her mother’s choices. Not a life contingent on Dominic’s problems. A life that was only hers, whatever that looked like.

All she had to do was escape Cayo Vila first.

Another fresh wave of pain crashed through her then, just as hard to fight off. Sharper, somehow. Wrenching and dark. Cayo. Three years ago she’d thought she’d seen something in him, some glimmer of humanity, an indication that he was so much more than the man he pretended to be in public. And she’d taken that night, some intimate conversation and a single, ill-conceived, far too passionate kiss, and built herself a whole imaginary world of possibility. Oh, the ways she’d wanted him, the ways she’d believed in him—and all the while he’d thought so very little of her that he’d blocked her chances for another position in the Vila Group and, in so doing, any kind of independent career. Without a word to her. Without any conversation at all.

With three careless sentences.

Miss Bennett is an assistant, he’d emailed Human Resources not long after that night she’d so foolishly believed had changed everything between them. She’d applied for the job in marketing, thinking it was high time she spread her wings in the company, took charge of her own career rather than merely supported his. She is certainly no vice president. Look elsewhere.

He hadn’t hidden the fact he’d done it, either. Why should he have? It was right there in Dru’s file, had she ever bothered to look. She hadn’t, until today, while doing a bit of housecleaning about the office. She’d been so sure everything was different after Cadiz, if unspoken, unaddressed. She hadn’t minded that she hadn’t got that job; she’d thought she and Cayo had an understanding—she’d believed they were a team—

So help her, she thought now, forcing back the angry, humiliated tears she was determined not to cry, she would never again be so foolish.

She’d known exactly who he was when he’d hired her, and she knew exactly who he was now. She’d spend the rest of her life working out how she’d managed to lose sight of that for so long, how she’d betrayed herself so completely for a fantasy life in her head, built around a single kiss that still made her flush hot to recall, but she wouldn’t forget herself again. It was cold comfort, perhaps, but it was all she had.

She found him in one of the yacht’s many salons, a sleek celebration of marble and glass down an ostentatious spiral stair that was as gloriously luxe as everything else on this floating castle he’d won in a late-night card game from a Russian oligarch.

“It was easy to take,” he’d said with a small shrug when she’d asked why he’d wanted another yacht to add to his collection. “So I took it.”

He sat now in the sunken seating area with one of his interchangeable and well-nigh-anonymous companions melting all over him, all plumped-up breasts and sheaves of wheat-blond hair cascading here and there. He had discarded his jacket somewhere and now looked deliciously rumpled, white shirt open at the collar and his olive skin seeming to gleam. The girl pouted and whined something in what sounded like Czech when she saw Dru walk in, as if it was Dru’s presence that was keeping Cayo’s attention on the flat-screen television on the inner wall rather than on the assets she had on display. As if, were Dru not there, he might actually pay her some mind.

You are fast approaching your expiration date, Dru seethed uncharitably at the other woman, but then caught herself. This was not a cat fight. It wasn’t even a competition.

Dru had spent entirely too long telling herself that it was all perfectly fine with her, that she didn’t mind at all that this man who had kissed her with so much heat and longing in an ancient city, and who had looked at her as if she were the only person in the world who could ever matter to him, slaked his various lusts with all of these anonymous women. Why should it matter? she’d argued with herself a thousand times in the middle of the night while she lay alone and he was off tending to his companion du jour. What we have is so much deeper than sex …

It was all so desperate. So delusional and terribly, gut-wrenchingly pathetic.

She held a shoe in each hand now, like potential weapons, and she allowed herself a grim moment of amusement as she watched Cayo’s ever-calculating gaze move to the sharp stiletto heels immediately, as if he joined her in imagining her sinking them deep into his jugular. He smirked and returned his attention to the television and the almighty scroll of the New York Stock Exchange across the bottom of the screen, as if he’d assessed the threat that quickly and dismissed it that easily.