Gone with the Wolf - By Kristin Miller Page 0,20
figures. Looked left, down another hallway just as elegant as the other. She’d stepped out of Drake’s bedroom and right into the Louvre. She hadn’t remembered seeing such elegant masterpieces the night of the office party—he must’ve had his valuables moved out. Golden blankets of sunshine spilled through the massive skylights, casting favorable light over his entire great room. Artwork in gold-trimmed frames and elaborate tapestries covered the walls while knights in full armor seemed to guard every closed hallway door.
“Do you honestly believe I’m capable of something like that?” Drake followed her winding flight down the stairs, his hand sweeping over the banister moments behind hers. “If you’d slow down a minute we could clear some things up.”
Emelia couldn’t stop. She had to move so she could think straight. What was she implying, anyway? That Drake slipped something in her coffee so he could have his way with her?
On the outside, Drake masterfully played the part of a lying, shrewd businessman. But Emelia got the feeling that it was a show, a staged front to hide a warm vulnerability beneath the chilly persona. There had to be more to Drake than an expensive suit and a multibillion-dollar business.
No matter how much she disliked his business practices, she knew he wouldn’t take advantage of her physically. It was female intuition. A sixth sense. She trusted her gut, which meant she trusted him. On some level.
“No,” she said finally. “I don’t think you’d stoop that low.”
She charged around a marble statue at the foot of the stairs—a woman lying on the ground, with a fanged beast gently cradling her from behind.
Fangs. Last night, hadn’t she seen…hadn’t Drake’s teeth looked…abnormal?
Stopping as if she’d seen a ghost, Emelia spun around and nearly crashed into Drake’s chest. His teeth were perfectly straight and brilliantly white. Probably veneers. The shock from the whole incident, mixed with the rain and the panic episode, must’ve screwed with her vision.
“You can accuse me of being a ruthless businessman, and I might even agree with you on certain occasions,” he said.
Finally, an admission of Drake’s callous business practices; now they were getting somewhere.
“But I’d never push myself on a woman.”
The vein on his neck fluttered madly, capturing Emelia’s interest. He seemed so calm and controlled, like a steadily rolling storm, yet his heart was racing. She’d been right in her assessment of him—Drake hid beneath a stoic, controlled image even though passion roiled beneath the surface. Emelia bet that if someone studied Drake long enough, they would get to know all his tells. If he wanted to keep his fortune, Emelia thought, he should stay far away from the poker tables.
“Women deserve to be treasured and treated with respect,” he said, as Emelia continued to study the telling vein. She got the feeling he whispered from a dark, secret part of his soul. “I’m sorry that I’ve made you think I could do something like that, even for a second.”
Then and there, Emelia got one thing straight. Drake had passion for the words he spoke. He hadn’t studied the Romancing Women for Dummies handbook that her ex-fiancé had apparently lived by, where a guy was allowed to say anything to get a woman in the sack. The gleam in Drake’s eyes was hard, yet honest. As though he’d never whispered words holding more truth. Drake was a different breed. A rare creature in the social jungle—a man who stood up for a woman, despite her calling him evil a week earlier.
He was an accomplice to murder, Emelia reminded herself, and the man who would put her out of business. How could she forget so easily? Seemed the more she stared into his dark, brooding eyes, the more he made her forget the reason she was here.
“Sleaze or not,” Emelia said, desperate for fresh air, “there was no reason for you to get all stabby on my thigh. We should’ve already been at the police station reporting what happened.”
She turned her back on him and marched around a set of leather couches to the opposite end of the great room. Even though she’d put space between them, Drake’s gaze bore into her back, heating her through and through. He slid behind her insanely fast, grabbed her hand, and spun her around.
“We can’t go to the police. The report will become public record. Do you know what the media would do to me if they got wind of the situation? They’d twist the story into some kind of bar fight that