He’d been the last man standing when Vernon Lowell disappeared—for both the company and his family. Because he’d left with not only his clients’ money, but the majority of his family’s, as well. So even though the last man sometimes wanted to yell and rage at the unfairness of it all, at the grief and shame that often pounded within him like a second heartbeat—at the death of his own dreams—one thing the last man couldn’t do was slip up or falter.
He couldn’t afford to. Literally.
“Josh, did you hear what I said? Of course you didn’t.” Haley Shaw, his executive assistant, snorted, answering her own question before he could respond. “Or you’re just ignoring me, which you should know by now doesn’t work. Whatever you’re doing now can be put aside for just a few moments. This is important,” she insisted, an edge invading her tone.
“Haley. Not now,” he said without glancing up from his spreadsheet.
“Well, I’m sorry to interrupt,” a brisk, husky but very feminine voice that carried zero hint of apology interjected, “but I’m afraid it’s going to have to be now.”
Two small hands with slender, unadorned fingers flattened on either side of his computer monitor. Surprised, all he could do for several long seconds was stare at those delicate hands. At the short, unpolished nails, the thin map of light blue veins under sun-kissed skin. Why did he have the odd but strong urge to place his mouth right on the joint where hand met wrist—and sip?
Hell. They were fucking hands.
The mental but mocking admonishment didn’t stop him from traveling up the lengths of her arms clad in white sleeves to slim shoulders partially hidden by light brown and gold-streaked hair, past a graceful neck and slightly pointed but stubborn chin with its slight indent to a face that—goddamn.
Deliberately, he eased back in his office chair, careful to control all the muscles in his face. He forced himself to maintain the cold, aloof expression that he’d adopted and mastered fifteen years ago as a defense. But inside...inside, lust slammed into him like a hurricane intent on leveling every structure in its path. And right now he was the only thing remaining, and Christ, he was shaking right down to his foundation.
Thickly lashed silver eyes that gleamed with barely suppressed anger. Striking cheekbones that lent a bold strength to otherwise ethereal features. A gently sloped nose and a mouth that had him gripping the arms of his chair like they were the last lifeboat that kept him from drowning. Thing was, he wanted to leap from the safety of the raft and dive into that wide, full-lipped mouth. Teach it what it was created for. Show it how it could give both of them the filthiest of pleasures...
His heartbeat echoed its thundering rhythm in his cock, pounding out a need that ricocheted through him.
Unsettled by his visceral reaction to this stranger—a stranger who had barged into his corporate office uninvited—he narrowed his eyes on her, allowing the corners of his mouth to curl in a derisive snarl.
Haley heaved a sigh. “Joshua, let me introduce you to Sophie Armstrong,” she said, a thick coat of resignation painting her words.
“I don’t know a Sophie Armstrong,” he stated coldly to his assistant, although he didn’t remove his gaze from the woman in front of him. Maybe some instinctual part of him recognized that she was the biggest threat in the room—a threat to his schedule, his carefully laid-out day...his control.
“The name would be familiar if you bothered to answer any one of my phone calls or emails.” She snorted, cocking a dark eyebrow. “I’ve been trying to contact you, Mr. Lowell, and you’ve ducked and dodged every attempt.”
He frowned. Yes, he’d been busier than usual lately, but he would’ve remembered if she’d reached out to him. “I’ve never ducked or dodged anyone.” Not even when he’d desperately longed to. “Especially someone who doesn’t have enough manners or sense to not force herself into a place of business where she wasn’t invited or wanted without an appointment. Now that you’re here, you have exactly thirty seconds—twenty-nine more seconds than I would give anyone else—to explain what the hell you’re talking about.”
Others would’ve—had—recoiled and backed down from the hard, ice-cold fury in his voice. But Sophie Armstrong didn’t even flinch. Instead, she met his glare with one of her own. A quicksilver flash of surprise flickered within him. He wasn’t arrogant, but he also acknowledged his appeal to the opposite sex. Understanding his money proved just as much of a lure as the appearance he’d inherited from his handsome father, he never lacked for female attention. Or sex.
But to this woman, he might as well be Quasimodo taking a break from his Notre Dame tower to hang out in the Black Crescent offices. Sophie Armstrong didn’t bother to employ any advantage her beauty might press—not that it would. But she didn’t know that.
No, unless antagonism passed for charm these days, she was confrontational and contemptuous.
And goddamn, if it wasn’t hot.
She reached into the bag over her shoulder, withdrew a stack of papers and slapped the pile on his desk. “That’s what I’m talking about. All the emails I’ve sent you. And I can pull out my phone and scroll through and play every voice mail—there are fifteen of them. All asking you to reply in a timely manner. Apparently, your idea of timely and mine don’t coincide because I meant at least a couple of days and yours apparently runs along the line of seasons in Narnia.”
The snort slipped from him before he could contain it. He shouldn’t be amused. And he certainly shouldn’t let her see it.
“You have five seconds left,” he informed her, leaning forward and with a will that had been forged in the fires of desperation, humiliation and pride over a decade
