A Ruthless Proposition Page 4

  Dante was still grimly focused on his iPad, and Cleo went back to greedily watching the passing scenery, trying to commit as much of it to memory as she could while longing to be out there exploring the wonderful mix of old and new. She loved the wooden buildings that looked as if they’d been around since the Middle Ages, tucked away down alleys and overshadowed by aggressively modern monolithic skyscrapers. Nothing escaped her attention, and she tried to file away the interesting bits, wanting to research and read up on buildings, museums, and shops that captured her interest. All of which helped keep her mind off Dante’s disturbing presence.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Praise Jesus! They had doughnuts! Cleo barely noticed all the bowing and talking around her as her senses homed in on that single, all-important fact. By now she was so hungry she actually felt faint, and if she could only get her hands on one of those gorgeous hoops of sugary goodness, all would be right with her world. She nodded dazedly at the half circle of somber-looking businessmen in dark suits bowing to her and was barely aware of the tall, dark presence looming beside her as her eyes drifted again and again to the tempting display of coffee and pastries set up over to the side.

  The painfully prolonged polite greetings finally over, she stealthily drifted over to the table of goodies. She was just a finger’s length away from a chocolate-glazed precious with her name written all over it when a firm hand clamped down on her elbow. Her empty stomach sank to the bottom of her sensible shoes, and she stared up at her boss with what she knew was the most effectively pathetic hangdog expression in her arsenal. But he was having none of it; his jaw was clenched so tightly she was amazed his teeth didn’t crack. She gave one final forlorn look at the doughnuts before he led her to the long conference table in the center of the room.

  “Try to pay attention,” he muttered in her ear as he planted her into a seat that, cruelly, faced the delicious spread just a table’s breadth away from her.

  What followed was the longest, most boring and torturous three hours of Cleo’s life. The meeting was conducted entirely in Japanese, which Cleo didn’t speak but Dante most certainly did, and quite fluently too from what she could tell. She didn’t know why she was there. He had a Dictaphone recording the meeting, so even if she’d been able to understand what was going on, she wouldn’t have had to take notes anyway. All she could do was stare at the doughnuts and other delicious goodies in front of her and imagine how they tasted. At one point a fly landed on her doughnut. It took everything she had not to jump up with a primal scream and chase it away. Instead, she watched in revulsion as it crawled over every inch of her beautiful doughnut. She nearly sobbed in disappointment, gave up on the chocolate one, and shifted her attention to a gorgeous éclair on a different platter. But when that bastard fly, which she had now named Damaso Jr., landed on her éclair as well, she slumped back in her chair and stared glumly down at the blank notebook in front of her.

  She picked up her pen and started scribbling. Hoping to at least look busy, she composed truly awful haiku and observations about the people seated around the table.

  Her attempt at describing Dante:

  Hard of abs he is

  Beautiful to look at sure

  My God what a dick

  Okay, maybe that last line was a little ambiguous. Was it an insult or a compliment? Even Cleo wasn’t sure.

  After several even worse attempts, Cleo gave up on the haiku. She segued into doodling, occasionally looking up and nodding to make it seem like she was listening to every incomprehensible word being spoken. She glanced over at Dante and was delighted to note that he’d perched his dark-rimmed spectacles on the tip of his nose. She’d seen them before, of course, but loved how truly nerdy they made him look. Sexy-nerdy, but it was a flaw and she’d take it.

  The only other woman present, Ms. Inokawa, also slanted surreptitious glances at Dante and smiled demurely every time he spoke with her. If not for the calculating gleam in her pretty eyes, Cleo would have thought the woman sweet and slightly shy, but beneath all that saccharine sweetness beat the heart of a scheming seductress. And she had her sights on Dante.

  Well, she was welcome to him. All Cleo wanted was a doughnut. Maybe that caramel one, it looked like the fly had skipped—damn it. Sure enough, as if drawn to it by her thoughts, the fly landed on that one too. By the time the meeting was over, the damned thing would have—

  “Miss Knight?” She jerked upright, realizing Dante had been trying to get her attention.

  “Uh . . . yes?”

  “I asked if you got that?”

  That? What? Wait, had they finally said something in English and she’d missed it? Damn it.

  “Yes. Yes, I did.” She tapped the page of her open notebook as if to confirm her words, and when his eyes followed the movement, she hastily closed the book, not wanting him to see her scribbles. His brow lifted and his head tilted as his eyes burned into hers, and she smiled breezily up at him. She’d just check his Dictaphone later to figure out what it was she’d missed. No problem.

  “Well?” he asked. Crap. Now what?

  “Yes, I got it,” she repeated slowly, as if to an inattentive child. His eyes narrowed dangerously. God, he was scary when he did that. Okay, so maybe this was something he wanted done right away. That wasn’t good at all. She’d have to cop to the truth. She leaned in toward him and was a little offended when he leaned in the opposite direction.

  “I didn’t quite get the last bit,” she confessed, and his eyes flared with what looked like disgust. How was she supposed to know they’d suddenly switch to English? Okay, so she should probably have been paying closer attention, but after three hours of nothing but Japanese, she was bound to have zoned out at some point.

  “I want you to arrange a meeting with Craig, Josh, Ryan, Tanaka-san, Inokawa-san, Watanabe-san, and myself for three thirty this afternoon.” Cleo ducked her head as she quickly scribbled the information on a blank sheet in her notebook.

  “You may use this conference room for the meeting, Knight-san,” Ms. Inokawa said in her breathy little voice, shocking the hell out of Cleo with her English. Could they all speak English? If so, how rude of them to not once acknowledge her lack of Japanese. Then again, she was just the assistant, who couldn’t even do the only thing that had been required of her at this meeting efficiently.

  The meeting was apparently adjourned, because the men bowed and shook hands, Ms. Inokawa was speaking in that charmingly girlish voice, all the while smiling sweetly, while Cleo was left to her own devices, alone at the table. She got up—ostensibly to stretch—and finally made her way over to the fly-tainted, stale-looking pastries.

  “Knight, get on those phone calls,” Dante growled from the other end of the room. Cleo swallowed down her resentment before fishing out the company phone to contact the architect, the contractor, and Ryan Blake—the company’s legal representative—all of whom were staying at the same hotel as Cleo and Dante. After a series of meetings with the three men the previous day, the boss had wanted to meet with the Japanese alone this morning in order to straighten out the mess he believed the other men had created. So if he was calling them back in, it must mean he’d made some headway in that morning’s meeting.

  The speed at which they all answered their phones attested to the fact that they’d probably been anxiously awaiting her call, and Cleo set up the meeting within minutes. Dante was still amicably chatting with the Japanese trio, but the moment she disconnected the second call, he looked at her with a raised brow. She nodded in response to the question she could see in his eyes, and he went back to his conversation without acknowledging her affirmation. Stifling her irritation at his rudeness, she started compiling a list of all the documentation they would need for the second meeting. She was well engrossed in that task when Dante’s voice, coming from directly behind her, startled her back into the present.

  “Are you coming? Inokawa-san has arranged lunch for us,” he informed her, and Cleo bit back a groan of relief. She jumped up quickly before he could revoke the invitation, and swayed slightly as the lack of food and jet lag hit her. His hand caught her elbow and steadied her.

  “What’s going on with you?” he hissed.

  “I haven’t eaten much of anything since the in-flight meal yesterday morning,” she hissed back. “So excuse me for feeling a little light-headed.”

  “Nonsense. You had dinner last night and breakfast this morning.” He waved his hand dismissively, refuting her claims with innate arrogance.

  “No, you had dinner and breakfast. You told me we’d have a dinner meeting and ordered only enough for yourself, and if you consider that one piece of bacon and mouthful of eggs I gobbled down this morning breakfast, then you and I have seriously different ideas of what constitutes a healthy meal.”

  His brow lowered as he considered her words; then he tilted his head toward the pastries on the nearby table.

  “And this is why you’ve been staring at that table like an addict eyeing her next fix?” Okay, is that a glint of laughter in his normally enigmatic gaze? That was . . . different.

  “I’m starving,” she said flatly, unamused by his amusement.

  “We’ll remedy that immediately,” he assured her, squeezing her elbow briefly before letting her go completely.

  Cleo tried not to cry while she stared down at the minuscule serving of sushi in front of her. Ms. Inokawa had reserved a trendy sushi restaurant for lunch, and though Cleo wasn’t a huge fan of Japanese food, she’d eat it if she was desperate enough. However, she hadn’t been expecting a child-size portion of food. She wasn’t the biggest of women—dancing kept her lean, and her frame was ideally petite for a dancer—but she had a healthy appetite, and the prettily decorated plate in front of her barely contained enough food to feed a gnat.

  She was about to dig in when a hand clamped down on her thigh and squeezed painfully. Her shocked gaze flew to Dante’s impassive face, and he turned his head to glare at her before nodding toward Mr. Watanabe, who was speaking. She belatedly recalled the cultural etiquette booklet she had speedily read through on the plane, and remembered eating or drinking before your hosts was considered extremely rude. Apparently Mr. Watanabe was going to ramble on for a while before giving the go-ahead to eat.

  She stared at her sushi glumly and took solace in the fact that at least it wouldn’t get cold, and her little friend Damaso Jr. was probably still back in that stuffy boardroom gorging himself on stale doughnuts and éclairs and therefore unable to ruin this meal for her. Mr. Watanabe finally stopped talking, and everybody picked up his or her chopsticks and proceeded to eat with great gusto.

  “Damaso-san, you use chopsticks very proficiently,” Cleo heard Ms. Inokawa, seated on Dante’s left, say in her breathy voice. Seriously? Like the man wasn’t arrogant enough, she was going to stare at him with those big brown eyes and fawn over him because he could use chopsticks? He modestly thanked her for her compliment, and Cleo choked down her sushi, trying very hard not to be sick.

  A few minutes later she nearly was sick when she stared in horror at the plate of sashimi that had just been placed in front of her. Her hand fluttered to her mouth as she swallowed back her nausea.

  “Don’t you dare,” Dante warned, leaning toward her and keeping a pleasant smile on his face to disguise the warning.

  “But they’re alive,” she practically wept in reply. The sashimi shrimp on her plate were writhing weakly and had quite effectively killed her previously ravenous appetite.

  “You don’t like odori ebi, Knight-san?” Mr. Tanaka, who had been chatting shyly with her in broken English, noticed her reaction. “It’s very fresh.”

  “It’s not fresh,” she said from behind her hand. “It’s alive.”

  “Yes.” Mr. Tanaka nodded, smiling encouragingly as he made an eager go-ahead gesture with his hands. “Fresh. Taste. Taste.”

  “I don’t think . . .” She was on the verge of tears, horrified at the thought of the shrimp dying in her mouth. It was hypocritical, sure, but if they’d died even just seconds before being served to her, she would happily have eaten them. But the thought of them dying between her teeth or on her tongue or as they slid down her throat totally grossed her out. She turned pleading eyes on Dante, whose face was completely expressionless. “I can’t.”

  He turned to their companions, said something in Japanese, and they all roared with laughter.

  “Oh, Damaso-san, you are so funny,” Ms. Inokawa chortled.

  “Yeah. Hilarious,” Cleo muttered beneath her breath. A slanted glance from him confirmed that he’d heard her. She directed another distressed look down at her plate, and a pair of chopsticks swooped into her line of vision and grabbed one of the poor creatures.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Knight, I’ll save you from these creepy crustaceans,” he mocked, before dipping the poor thing in soy sauce, hopefully drowning it, and popping it into his mouth. “You’re just prolonging their suffering by letting them writhe like that.”

  She was ridiculously grateful to him for handling the situation even though he had made her the butt of the joke to do so. The incident was soon forgotten, but as the dishes grew progressively more unappetizing—gah! sea urchin—her queasiness and exhaustion made her feel more ill with every passing moment. Lunch stretched on for ages, and when it finally ended, Cleo, who had barely touched a morsel, had a huge headache and felt a little punch-drunk.

  “Miss Knight, contact the driver and head back to the hotel to draft those e-mails we discussed earlier,” Dante said as the group got up from the booth. She stared up at him blankly, wondering what she’d missed this time. He waved the other three ahead of them, and Cleo tried to focus on his face and what he was saying, which was difficult when she felt like a zombie.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t recall the e-mails you’re referring to,” she said, hating to reinforce his already low opinion of her.

  “There are no e-mails, Knight. Go back to the hotel, take a shower, order room service, and get some sleep. The jet lag, combined with the busy evening and”—his eyes darkened and his voice lowered sexily—“exhausting night you had yesterday, has taken a toll on you. Rest up. I need you to be more alert tomorrow.”

  Oh, thank God.

  “Thank you, sir,” she whispered, for once feeling something akin to affection and gratitude toward the man.

  “Go on now, Knight,” he said, the words brusque and the tone businesslike. “Before I change my mind.”

  She resisted the impish urge to salute, and after he’d followed the other three people out onto the humid, bustling sidewalk, she got out her cell phone to contact the driver.

  Half an hour later, she was back in the air-conditioned splendor of the car and happily chatting with the driver, Daisuke. He spoke fluent English and very sweetly pointed out a few of the interesting sights to her, giving her a brief history lesson while he was at it. Cleo was disappointed when they arrived back at the hotel. She was tempted to venture out on her own, since she had this unexpected free time, but hunger and exhaustion had really taken their toll on her, and by the time she got back to her room, she was dragging so badly that eating didn’t even occur to her. She discarded her clothes on her way to the bed and fell facedown onto the covers. She was asleep seconds later.

  “Miss Knight?” The regrettably familiar masculine voice resonated through Cleo’s pleasant dream. She frowned and turned away from it, happily rejoining the cotton-candy sheep she’d been frolicking with just moments before. The sheep were cute, friendly, and delicious . . . she took a bite out of a particularly friendly fellow’s sugary-pink fleece and relished the sweetness. The sheep baaed and—“Miss Knight!”

  “Sheep can’t talk,” she muttered.

  “What?” the voice asked impatiently. Cleo sighed and reluctantly opened her eyes.

  “Oh. It’s you,” she groused when she met her boss’s intense gaze. She blew her hair out of her face and pushed herself up, only to realize she was wearing just a pair of panties and no bra and didn’t have so much as a sheet covering her. She squeaked and grabbed a pillow to cover her front. She scampered back against the headboard and pulled her knees up to her chest, sandwiching the pillow between her lap and torso. She glared at Dante, who stared back at her impassively from his position at the foot of her bed.

  “I’ve seen it all in exquisite detail before,” he reminded her, and she blushed.

  “What are you doing in my room?”

  “The concierge told me you didn’t order any room service, and Daisuke informed me that you didn’t stop for food en route to the hotel.”

  “And?” she asked belligerently, despite the fact that his words brought her hunger screaming painfully back.

  “I ordered you a late dinner. I figured you might want to freshen up or something before it got here.”

  “A late dinner?” she repeated, trying hard not to be charmed by that sweet gesture. It was the least he could do, after all, since he was the reason she was starving in the first place. “What time is it?”

  “Just after midnight. I got in about half an hour ago.”

  “The meeting ran that late?” she asked, surprised.

  “No, but we got a lot done, and the Japanese wanted to celebrate with a night on the town followed by some . . .” He grimaced and then shook his head. “Never mind.”

  Intrigued by the slight flush darkening his cheekbones, she leaned forward, forgetting momentarily that only a pillow shielded her from his view.

  “Followed by some what?” She pictured strip clubs or those hostess bars she’d read up on, maybe something even kinkier. What else could make him look so uncomfortable?

  “Nothing. It’s none of your business,” he dismissed rudely, but sitting there nearly completely nude, groggy from hours of sleep, and with the room only half-lit, Cleo lost all inhibition and sense of self-preservation and refused to heed the warning in his voice.

  “It can’t be that bad. I mean, everybody knows about the hostess bars and stuff over here. Was it something like that? Did you have some pretty young thing sitting on your lap all evening telling you how handsome and strong you are?”

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