CHAPTER TWO
“WHAT?”
Ilona Callas’s eyes widened as Leander shot to his feet and came around his desk toward her. In fact, there was a split second where he glimpsed genuine fear flare behind her startled gaze.
Then she blanked her expression and seemed to subtly rebalance her weight, but her knuckles turned white where she held her shiny black handbag. The tendons in her neck stood out with distress.
With a disconcerting swerve in his chest, Leander veered across the room to throw ice into glasses. He opened a bottle of sparkling water, glugging it over the cubes, using the action to steal a moment of reassessment.
Marriage to the illegitimate Pagonis daughter had already occurred to him as the ultimate means to his revenge, of course it had. For a decade and a half, he had mulled every possible path into their empire.
He had set aside approaching Ilona for several reasons, the primary one being that it would tip his hand. Making a stealth move on her company had put him in this first, fail-safe position of having a foot in the door. Morally, he had balked at romancing a woman under false pretenses, even one whose family he categorically despised.
Now that he had met her and she had brought it up, however, marriage returned as a possibility. That stark fear he had just witnessed was concerning, though. It had even briefly eclipsed his blinding desire to destroy the Pagonis family. Much as he wanted to make them pay, terrorizing a woman with sexual threats was not something he would ever do, under any circumstance.
Most especially if he was trying to talk her into marriage.
Is that what he wanted, though? Marriage? To her?
“I realize you didn’t steal the tech yourself, but you’ve lived off those profits, Ilona. That’s how your father was able to invest in your company. That’s why I’m coming after you along with the rest. You don’t get to be a Pagonis only when it works to your advantage.”
There was such a loaded silence behind him, he glanced over his shoulder.
Her glower at his back quickly reconfigured into calm dignity. “I just offered to make good on that.”
She had and he was still puzzling through that offer.
He set the fizzing glasses on the coffee table, nodding at her to join him as he took his customary armchair.
After the briefest of hesitations, she came to perch on the corner of the sofa farthest from him, ankles crossed, hands folded, demeanor one of polite interest.
Damn, but she was beautiful. He had noted that, too, in his many online research trips, but he was far more interested in whether a woman had an engaging personality or a unique perspective on life that challenged his own.
Still, he was red-blooded enough to react to Ilona’s unadulterated sex appeal. She had a supermodel figure—tall and slender, but rounded in all the most alluring places. Her bone structure was delicate, but her depthless brown eyes were steady and unflinching. Her shiny black hair was clasped behind her neck. Her manicure and makeup were natural shades. Even her lipstick was a nude shade with only the barest hint of berry pink.
Somehow that was more tantalizing than garish red, drawing his gaze back to her wide, lush mouth again and again.
She wore simple gold jewelry—hoops in her ears, a chain with an ornate knot that sat in the hollow of her throat and a ring designed like ivy that twined toward the knuckle on her middle finger. Her clothing was a classic navy skirt suit with a pinstripe and a white shirt with its collar popped. Her shoes were a matching blue-black with red soles.
She wasn’t flirting or throwing out lures, though. So he wasn’t sure why he felt such a tremendous pull. It had accosted him the moment she had entered his office, quiet and graceful as a ballerina. Slithered, he had told himself of her near-silent entry. He wanted to view her as a viper, like Midas.
She was too sensual looking to be a cold-blooded reptile, though. He couldn’t tell what she was beneath her understated, faultless demeanor.
Inexplicably, a hummingbird came to mind, one that appeared pretty and small when she was still, but with a heart that was beating a mile a minute. He didn’t know that, but he sensed the way she remained alert, ready to dart away at the least startling movement.
She didn’t touch her water, didn’t fidget or press him to speak. She sat very quietly, exactly as his receptionist had reported she had behaved in the pressure cooker, the room in the reception area where he sequestered those he didn’t really wish to see.
Rather than grow overheated and angry at his rudeness, or trying to maximize her time by making calls, Ilona had sat and waited.
Waiting was hard. Leander knew that because he had had to wait for his opportunity to take Midas down. The wheels were in motion but had yet to pick up momentum. Marriage to Ilona could provide the rocket fuel, but thinking about something like that and doing it were very different.
She was a Pagonis and not to be trusted.
On the other hand, she held a stake in the company. Pagonis International was publicly traded, but the family owned a substantial interest. Their father had bequeathed his shares equally between his three children. His widow owned a similar amount and the family always voted together, maintaining control.
But what if Leander could disrupt that? At the very least, marrying into that family would allow him to reap some of the financial benefit that should have been his all along.
He nodded, warming even more to the idea of capturing this reluctant little pawn.