Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Seductive Nights: A Deal with Alejandro

He took her arm and started towards the double doors. ‘You can thank me by letting me see you to your door. You can also tell me why your building doesn’t have a doorman. Or adequate security.’ He eyed the hippy-looking couple who breezed out, then transferred his scathing gaze to the doors that didn’t quite shut behind them.

To counteract what the thought of being enclosed with him in another lift was doing to her insides, she waved his terse demand away. ‘I have a super. Does that satisfy you?’

‘No, it does not.’

Her mouth twisted. ‘Not everyone can afford a Barrington Hills mansion, Alejandro.’

He pressed the lift button. When it didn’t arrive quickly enough, he pressed it again, several times. ‘I don’t live in Barrington Hills.’

‘My parents do.’

He stared at her. ‘And you choose to live here?’

‘Yes,’ she answered simply.

He didn’t probe further, leaving Elise with the feeling that the subject of family was as unwelcome to him as it was to her. What he did probe was the lift button, uttering a skin-flaying Latin curse when the lift made no move to arrive.

Relief and disappointment spun through her. ‘I’ll take the stairs. I’m only on the third floor.’

He whirled with fluid grace and indicated for her to precede him. Battling to suppress her self-consciousness, she hurried up the stairs, and arrived at her door two minutes later, struggling not to pant. Alejandro, on the other hand, had barely broken a sweat.

She unlocked her door. Almost reluctantly her eyes drifted up only to find his waiting for her. ‘Since conventional working hours are out the window, what time do you need me tomorrow?’

‘To avoid another argument, you can arrive at seven.’

Her eyes widened. ‘As opposed to what? Five a.m.?’

He shrugged. ‘That’s when my work day starts.’

‘Dare I ask when it ends?’

‘When the coffee machine threatens to quit. Which it does on a daily basis.’

She laughed. His lips twitched. Then his gaze dropped to her mouth.

The laughter died. She scrambled backwards, bumping her backside into the door. ‘I’ll see you in the morning?’

Penetrating eyes collided with hers. ‘Sí. You will. Buenas noches.’

He departed with the quiet strength and power of a jungle predator. And even though his footsteps barely echoed down the stairs, she found herself listening for them.

Catching herself, she stepped back and shut her door.

Twenty minutes later she was showered and dressed in her favourite sleeping shirt. Sitting in bed, she tugged her laptop close and powered it on. Her buzz disappeared beneath the volume of emails from her mother earlier in the day, then her father demanding responses to her mother’s emails.

She’d muted her phone for her interview with Alejandro and then neglected to turn it back on. She activated the sound and wasn’t at all surprised when the handset rang almost instantly.

The buzz now replaced with cold trepidation, she braced herself and answered the call.

‘Finally! Your father and I were beginning to wonder whether you’d been abducted by aliens,’ her mother snapped, her voice containing a bite that always raised Elise’s hackles.

‘I turned the sound on my phone off when I met with Mr Aguilar. Things got out of hand after that.’ She immediately cringed at the poor choice of words.

She didn’t bother retracting them, because her mother was already enquiring sharply, ‘Out of hand? Are you saying we didn’t get it? Damn, I should’ve handled it myself. But we’re the number one PR firm in Chicago. People beg to come to us, not the other way round. All the same, this commission could’ve been huge for us. You should’ve called us when things started going bad. Ralph! Come here. We have a problem.’

Elise’s grip tightened on the phone, all too familiar anger and hurt welling inside her. ‘Mom—’

‘Your father and I will have to see if there’s any way to salvage it—’

‘Mom!’

‘What?’

‘I signed the agreement with SNV this afternoon.’

Stunned silence followed. Elise tried to breathe through the hurt clogging in her chest.

‘Well, that’s...commendable?’

The question mark hooked like a rusty claw into her. It was the same question mark with which they’d greeted her devastation after being nearly assaulted by a client they’d pushed her into dealing with.

‘Are you sure it wasn’t a harmless pass, Elise?’

‘You’re mistaken. Brian Grey doesn’t normally go for girls like you...’

She breathed through the anguish. ‘Thanks for your rousing belief in me,’ she replied, but the murmur of voices in the background told her they were engaged in a side conversation about her.

Her father took over a minute later. ‘I hear congratulations are in order?’

Again the insidious disbelief that she’d been able to land SNV’s business. ‘Is that a question, Dad?’ she asked stiltedly.

‘You can take that tone all you want, but you’ve made it perfectly clear you’re just passing through the business that kept you in clothes, ponies, and round-the-world vacations, not to mention college tuition fees.’

‘Some of those things were your responsibility to me as my parents. The others I never asked for. And I’m paying you back for my education. Let’s not forget that.’

‘You wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t misled us about your true intentions. We didn’t pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to send you to college to study art. Any fool can draw. You were supposed to make marketing and PR your main focus.’

‘I’m not a fool, Dad. And I graduated with double majors. You just choose to ignore that fact because it suits your argument. I’m sorry I disappointed you and Mom by not wanting what you want, but my life is my own. If you can’t respect that—’

‘Elise—’

Her father was cut off abruptly as her mother took control. ‘Enough of this. These arguments give me migraines and I can’t afford one tonight. We’re entertaining the Greenhills. They’re not as prestigious as Alejandro Aguilar, of course, but both your father and I need to be on top of our games. A commission from them will guarantee us a significant mention in the Tribune. I know you’d rather be doing other things than talking to us, so just forward me a copy of the contract so Accounts can set up a payment schedule with SNV.’

Elise exhaled shakily. She’d tried to bury the futile wish for affection from them, but their cold-hearted indifference to her and everything except climbing the social and financial ladders, despite the shockingly harrowing events of last year, still caused anguish. ‘Mom—’

‘Goodbye, Elise.’

Her mother hung up, leaving her no choice but to swallow the words that never quite managed to pave the way for a non-confrontational conversation.