The Tycoon's Defiant Southern Belle Page 0,3

want me to buy up the businesses?” he asked softly when she didn’t reach up to retrieve her cat. He stepped closer to her, releasing her hand but only to take her arm so he could lead her down the long hallway. “I’ll walk you home and you can tell me all about your own plans for the town.”

Jade didn’t like the sound of amusement in his voice. “What makes you think that I have plans for the town?”

Angelo chuckled, a deep, rusty sound. He seldom laughed. He rarely found anything in life amusing. As he’d grown up, he’d discovered the hard way that life wasn’t fair or fun. Life was hard. One had to fight, scrape and claw to maintain one’s hold on one’s assets. He never laughed at life, one approached life as if it were a war with every battle mercilessly fought.

At least until this prickly beauty walked into his life. “I supposed I can just sense these things about people,” he came back. He leaned down to open the door for her, ignoring the claws from the cat as the fluffy animal dug into his skin to maintain his balance on his shoulder.

Jade shivered as his warm hand touched her upper arm, feeling that same electric current spark down her spine and leaving a tingling sensation all over her body.

He had a point, she supposed. And it was true about her own plans for the town. If she had her way, everyone would just stay put and life would carry on exactly as it had been ever since she and her mother had moved to Sullivan Island in South Carolina fifteen years ago. “I don’t have a plan, necessarily,” she said and walked out of the house. Initially, she was relieved to be out of the house and back in the humid, night air. But that was before they reached the edge of the patio. She was just about to carefully step down but then he grabbed her around the waist and effortlessly lifted her off of the crumbling patio to the weed-choked grass below, leaving her gasping in surprise, her hands grabbing onto those hard, fascinating muscles in his upper arms.

It took her a long moment to re-gather her thoughts after that. “But…” she said, wondering why he was looking down at her like that. “Um….It’s just that, everyone here was doing fine until you came along and started buying up all the businesses.”

“I am only interested in pharmaceutical companies and patent holders. There are several very strong, very good companies in this area that are being underutilized. What’s the harm in building up the local economy?”

Jade shook her head, knowing that the man wasn’t being completely honest. Walking through the forest, she tried to focus only on her anger with this man’s brutal business tactics and not on how large or muscular he was. She wasn’t the type of woman to be interested in bulky men. She preferred substance! “You’re not just buying up local companies. You’re buying up companies all over the United States and meshing them all into one, large, homogeneous group.”

He waited for her to continue, his hand reaching out to steady her when her foot caught in one of the rotting logs. “And what’s the problem with that?” he asked.

Jade huffed as she stepped around several more fallen trees, not wanting the man to touch her any more. Her mind went blank and it was hard to argue when one couldn’t remember what one was arguing about. “They aren’t individual companies any longer. They aren’t competing with each other and pushing to find the next best thing in health care. You’re buying up too many companies, Mr. Donati.”

“Perhaps I have other ways to induce competition.”

She let out a guffaw that sounded too loud in the intimate night air. “I’d like to see that happen. And what are your plans for your new house?” she demanded as she stepped into her own yard filled with her moonlit gardens. Turning to face him now that the threat of embarrassing herself over a tumble had diminished. “You’re probably going to tear that down and build a string of cookie-cutter houses, aren’t you?”

Angelo wondered what she would do if he bent down and kissed her. He liked her fire and her courage. Hell, he liked a whole lot about her, he thought. No one had ever challenged what he did before. Even Dominic and Zayn, who were his best friends since childhood, never questioned