If you hadn’t been quite so greedy, we would not be sitting here now.”
She glared at him. “You’re a fine one to talk of greed. With all you have at your fingertips, you still couldn’t resist taking my company away, could you? Don’t be hypocritical with me, Alejandro.”
Finally, this was territory he understood. He almost laughed in relief. How easy it was to shift the conversation onto things he knew, things that didn’t strip him bare and threaten to expose his soul to her gaze. “It’s business, Rebecca.”
“And it’s personal,” she shot back. “You came after us and didn’t stop until you found a weakness.”
For a moment he thought she was talking about what he’d done to put Layton International into jeopardy, but he realized she didn’t know. If she did, she’d probably launch herself at him the way his mother had tried to attack his father tonight.
He almost told her. Almost explained how he owned the bank that made the loans when no one else would, how he’d dangled the Thailand properties in front of their noses and waited for them to take the leap into debt in the first place. But something stopped him. Now wasn’t the time. He wanted to savor his revenge first, wanted to take her down even farther than he already had.
Wanted her to need him, to beg for his touch the way she once had. She might have been lying about her love for him, but some of that physical need was real. He knew it now, knew it the second he’d turned and seen her on that couch. She’d remembered, same as he had. Her jaw had gone slack, her eyes glazing, and he knew what she saw because he saw it too. It was why he’d had to get out of there.
“It was business first,” he said coolly. “Layton International was no longer relevant. You need me to keep you viable in today’s marketplace.”
“You?” She shifted forward on the seat, her eyes glittering with sudden anger. “What do you know about relevancy, Alejandro? Until a few years ago, you were no one in this industry! What you know about this business could fill a thimble compared to what my father knew, what he taught me—”
“Oh yes,” he ground out, “your precious father, who sent you to do his dirty work instead of facing me like a man. Spare me your analysis, Rebecca. I’m still the one in control of Layton International.”
He thought she would say something else, would let her true colors show now that she’d pointed out his inferior past, but she drew in a shaky breath and fixed her gaze on a point outside the window. The car had been crawling forward for some time. Now it drew to a halt in the Puerta del Sol. Alejandro swore. Women with placards marched and shouted, blocking the square that was the heart of Old Madrid. Protests were common there and they could do nothing but wait as the policiá directed cars down the side streets.
“I have a life. I’d like to get back to it,” Rebecca said after they’d sat in silence for nearly ten minutes. “If you plan to fire me, why don’t you just get it over with and put us both out of our misery.”
“Layton International is your life.”
She bristled. “I have an apartment. Friends. I can’t stay here forever wondering what your plans are.”
He was in no mood to be delicate with her. “You don’t even have a pet fish, Rebecca. You have nothing in your life but work and one or two friendships you maintain.”
Her mouth dropped open as she looked at him. She snapped it shut. “How do you know I don’t have a cat or a dog? Or a boyfriend?”
“I know that you eat Chinese takeout with a friend from a restaurant called Tai Pan on Friday nights when you’re in town, that you buy flowers from a shop called Robertson’s, and that you have a grocery store across the street from your apartment but rarely visit it.”
His investigators were very thorough, though they couldn’t tell him everything. Like when she’d last spent the night with a man. He’d wanted to know, but he’d steadfastly refused to ask for that kind of information. It would show a level of interest in her life he no longer had. All he’d really needed to know was that she had no long-term entanglements. Other than a couple of friendships with other women, there was no one