Out of Hours...Her Ruthless Boss: Ruthless Boss, Hired Wife / Unworldly Secretary, Untamed Greek / Her Ruthless Italian Boss

‘As I recall,’ Cormac replied in a voice of cutting precision, ‘you were the one trying to get me into your bed.’

‘Only because you made it that way! Didn’t you?’ She laughed, a broken sound of pain and lost dignity. ‘You manipulated—played—me as you’ve played Jan, and Stears and every other person you’ve ever come across. So it would be my idea. My fault.’

‘You’re jumping to conclusions—’ Cormac began in a hard, warning voice, but Lizzie shook her head. She couldn’t bear to be managed and manipulated now. Not when she knew.

She knew. So much. Too much.

‘You said you didn’t know how much you could give,’ she recalled, her fist still pressed to her mouth. ‘I know the answer to that!’ It came out in a cry, a cry of plaintive hurt that she choked back, biting on her knuckles, torn between fury and pain. ‘You said you didn’t want to hurt me! What a joke.’

There was a tic in Cormac’s jaw. His face was otherwise impassive.

‘What?’ Lizzie demanded. ‘Don’t you have any more tricks up your sleeve, Cormac? Another way to manipulate me? You must have been laughing at me, how I fell for every soft, stupid line you gave me.’

‘I was never laughing at you,’ he said.

‘No, you were playing me! Playing me like a fish on a line, and I let you…’ She spun away, pressed her hands to her eyes, desperate to stop the tears. She wouldn’t cry in front of him. Not now. Not ever.

‘Why?’ she asked after a long moment when the only sound was her own ragged breathing. ‘Why did you do it?’ Her voice came out stronger. ‘What more is there for you to possibly gain? My humiliation? Is that what you want?’

‘Lizzie, you’re making more of this than there is,’ Cormac said after a moment. ‘What I said was true. I want you. You can’t fake desire—’

‘That’s all it was!’

‘I never said it was more.’

‘Yes, you were very careful with your words.’ Lizzie turned around, gave a sharp little laugh. ‘Covering your tracks, no doubt. How long were you going to keep up the charade, Cormac? Pretending that you actually cared about me? Letting me believe that you were—different. Deeper. How long? About thirty-six more hours?’

His eyes raked her and he inclined his head, gave a small smile of acknowledgement. ‘About that.’

‘I was so desperate to believe you were a good man, that underneath that hardness there was—’

‘There was what?’ Cormac strode to her, grabbed her shoulders. ‘What were you thinking, Lizzie? That this was real? That I’d suddenly fallen in love with you, cared about you?’

Yes. She stared at him, horrified, transfixed. She bit hard on her lips to stop herself from crying out.

‘Yes, I played you,’ Cormac gritted out. His eyes glittered with fierce determination, as if he wanted her to know. As if he wanted her to be hurt. ‘I used you. I thought Hassell would be more convinced of our marriage if there was something real to it.’

‘But this isn’t real!’

‘You believed it was.’

Lizzie wondered if she would be sick. She felt sick. Sickened.

‘As I remember,’ Cormac continued coolly, ‘you were begging me to make love to you, no strings, no promises. You understood the rules.’

‘But you were lying,’ she whispered. Her stomach roiled. ‘The whole time you were lying.’

‘Did it matter if you believed it?’

She shook her head, closed her eyes as if she could blot his words out. Blot out reality.

This was Cormac. This was that man…so far from what she’d hoped. What she’d let herself begin to believe.

Cormac exhaled in disgust. ‘You’re pathetic,’ he said. He released her with a contemptuous shrug. ‘Look at you, Lizzie. Look at your life. Living in that mausoleum of a house, clinging to your pathetic memories of happy families, giving everything for your no-good sister—’

Lizzie gasped, but he continued, his voice hard, cutting. He knew the truth and he wielded it like a weapon.

‘You’ve been so desperate to fall in love with me because you don’t have anything else. Twenty-eight years old and a virgin? I bet you’d never even been kissed before this weekend. I bet you’ve never even had a man look at you before. I gave you clothes, I wined and dined you, I woke you up.’ He bared his teeth in a feral smile. ‘Consider it a favour.’

‘You bastard—’ She struck out at him, hopelessly, for he caught her flying fist in one hand, curled his fingers around her own.