The Argentine's Price

The Argentine's Price
Maisey Yates

Литагент HarperCollins EUR

It’s time for the housekeeper’s son to collect his dues… Lazaro Marino will stop at nothing to reach the top. He’s climbed his way out of poverty, but there’s still one thing that’s been denied him: entry into the highest echelons of society. And blue-blooded heiress Vanessa Pickett is the key to unlocking the door to all that he desires…With her business in crisis, Vanessa is desperate. A marriage proposal of the utmost convenience will give both Lazaro and Vanessa everything they need… But, for Vanessa, this deal with the devil comes with a startling price…

She looked at the cool, hard man standing in front of her. To him, this was business. Another way for him to climb to the top. She just had to see it the same way. She couldn’t afford to involve her heart.

“I didn’t have much of a choice, did I?” she asked.

“Not any that had a better outcome. And you’re a smart woman. You know that the end result is all that matters.”

She wanted to be that woman. She tried to be that woman. Because that was the woman that was going to pull Pickett out of the red.

“Pickett Industries is all that matters,” she said slowly, feeling as if virtual shackles were tightening on her wrists even as she spoke the words.

About the Author

MAISEY YATES was an avid Mills & Boon

Modern

Romance reader before she began to write them. She still can’t quite believe she’s lucky enough to get to create her very own sexy alpha heroes and feisty heroines. Seeing her name on one of those lovely covers is a dream come true.

Maisey lives with her handsome, wonderful, diaper-changing husband and three small children across the street from her extremely supportive parents and the home she grew up in, in the wilds of Southern Oregon, USA. She enjoys the contrast of living in a place where you might wake up to find a bear on your back porch and then heading into the home office to write stories that take place in exotic urban locales.

Recent titles by the same author:

THE HIGHEST PRICE TO PAY

MARRIAGE MADE ON PAPER

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Argentine’s Price

Maisey Yates

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

For my brother, Kyle.

My partner in crime from the beginning. Long may it continue. And for Lisa, fellow caffeine consumption queen and brain-stormer extraordinaire.

CHAPTER ONE

“YOU’RE buying up my company’s stock. Why?” Vanessa clutched her silver purse tightly in her hand and tried to ignore the heat and anger curling in her stomach as she addressed the tall man in black. Lazaro Marino. Her first love. Her first kiss. Her first heartbreak and, apparently, the man who was attempting a hostile takeover of her family’s company.

Lazaro’s dark eyes flicked over her and he handed his glass of champagne to the slender blonde standing on his left. It was clear from his dismissive manner that he saw the woman as little more than a cup-holder in a designer gown. Well, Vanessa imagined she was a little more than that to him, in his bed at least.

Her cheeks burned, the images in her head instant and graphic. How did he do that? Thirty seconds in his presence and he had her mind in the bedroom.

She stared just past Lazaro, at the painting on the wall behind him, in order to avoid those dark, all-too-knowing eyes of his. She could feel his gaze on her, warming her, turning her blood to fire in her veins. Instant. All-consuming. Still. After all this time. It threw her right back to the summer she was sixteen, when mornings had been all about the hope that he would be there, working on the grounds of the estate. So that she could sit and simply look at him, the boy she wasn’t even permitted to talk to.

The boy who ultimately inspired her to break the rules, rules that had been sacrosanct before that.

It was inconvenient that the boy had become a man who still had the power to make her pulse race. Even when he was only a picture in a magazine, looking at him was a full-on sensory experience. In person … in person he made her feel as if her skin was too tight for her body.

“Ms. Pickett.” He inclined his head, a lock of obsidian hair falling forward with the motion. Not an accident, she was sure of that. He had that look about him. That sort of hot, can’t-be-bothered-to-get-too-slick look. It gave the impression he’d gotten out of bed, combed his fingers through his thick black hair and thrown on a thousand-dollar suit.

And for some reason it was devilishly sexy. Probably because it was easy to imagine what he might have been doing in that bed, what activities might have prevented him from having adequate time to get ready …

She blinked furiously, redirecting her thoughts. She was not going down that rabbit trail again. She wasn’t some naive sixteen-year-old anymore, imagining that the fluttering in her stomach was anything more than the first stirrings of lust, imagining that a kiss meant love. No, she wasn’t that girl anymore, and Lazaro Marino didn’t have any power over her.

She had power. And she would remind him of that.

“Please,” she said, turning on her CEO voice. “Call me Vanessa. We are old friends after all.”

“Old friends?” He chuckled, a dark, rich sound that made her blood heat. “I had not thought of us as such. But if you insist, Vanessa it is then.” His accent had smoothed in the twelve years since she’d seen him, but he still said her name as he always had, his tongue caressing the syllables, drawing them out, making her own name sound impossibly sexy.

Age looked good on him. At thirty, he was even more attractive than he’d been at eighteen. His jaw a bit more square, his shoulders broader. His nose was different, slightly crooked, the imperfection adding to his mystique rather than detracting from his otherwise perfect face. She wondered if he’d broken it in a fight. It wasn’t impossible. The Lazaro she’d known had been hotheaded, passionate in every conceivable way. And there had been many times when she’d wondered what it might be like to have all that passion directed at her—and one wonderful occasion when it had been. When he’d made her feel that she was the only woman, the most important thing in his world. Lazaro could lie more effectively with a kiss than most men could with a thousand words.

Vanessa tightened her grip on her purse and took a step back, fighting the rising tide of heat and anger that burned in her stomach, trying to keep herself calm. Unaffected. At least in appearance. “Do you think we could talk?”

“Not here to socialize?” he asked, one black eyebrow quirked.

“I’m here to talk to you, and it’s not a social call.”

A small smile tipped up the corners of his mouth. “I’m certain you donated to the charity on your way in. Or was that not on your list of priorities tonight?”

Vanessa bit the inside of her cheek, fighting to maintain composure. Taking the glass of champagne out of Lazaro’s human cup-holder’s hand and throwing the contents of it onto his very expensive suit might be satisfying, but it wasn’t what she was here for.

Still, there was no way she was going to allow him to pretend that he was somehow a philanthropic marvel and she was a snobby rich bimbo who walked into a charity event for the company and the liquor and didn’t bother to leave a dime.

“I wrote a check as I walked in. You can ask up front if you like.”

“Generous of you.”

“We need to talk. Without an audience.” She flicked a glance at the group he was with. A lot of beautiful socialites, some of whom she recognized, not the sort of women she’d ever been permitted to associate with. Money did not mean class, as her father had always said, and that meant certain people had always been patently off limits to her.

Lazaro among them. Although, for one, heady week, she had defied that command.

“This way, querida.” He put his hand on her lower back and she cursed the low cut of the gown she was wearing as his palm made contact with her skin. His fingers were calloused, rough from labor still, even after years of white-collar work.

She remembered how those hands had caressed her face, her body. They had been rough then, strong and hot. So very hot. She shivered slightly, thankful that her body chose the moment they stepped out into the chill, Boston air before the reaction hit. At least this way she could blame it on the weather.

The art museum’s grand terrace was lit up by paper lanterns strung overhead. A few couples were secluded in dark corners, talking with their heads pressed together, or not talking, enjoying the feeling of seclusion.

Of course, there was no seclusion. There were reporters, there were other people. This was the sort of event her father wouldn’t want her to come within a mile of. Discretion was the cornerstone of her father’s value system. And of hers.