She’d do whatever she needed to do in order to keep her company alive.
He laughed as he slid into a purple chair and then swept her with a pointed once-over. “You know the name of my company. I was starting to think you didn’t care.”
How did he manage to make understanding the competitive landscape sound so...personal? It was a skill he’d clearly bargained with the devil to obtain.
“I’m good at what I do. Of course I know the names of my competitors.” Cass remained standing near the door. Which she pointedly left open. “You’ve got your appointment. And about three minutes to tell me why you didn’t take the no I gave you earlier and run back to Austin.”
Casually, he swiveled his chair to face her and waved a hand to the empty chair next to him. “Sit and let’s talk.”
She didn’t move. There was no way she could be in close quarters with him, not on the heels of their earlier encounter when he’d barely breathed on her and still managed to get her hot and bothered. At least by the door, she had a shot at retaining the upper hand. “No, thanks. I’m okay.”
“You can’t keep standing. That tactic only works if you inflict it on someone other than the person who taught it to you,” he said mildly.
The fact that he saw through her only made it worse.
“Really, Gage,” she snapped. “Fyra’s executives are waiting in a boardroom for the CEO to arrive. Cut the crap. Why are you here?”
His expression didn’t change. “The rumors about your formula are true, right?”
She crossed her arms over the squiggle in her stomach. “Depends on what you’ve heard.”
“Revolutionary is the word being thrown around,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve heard the formula works with your natural stem cells to regenerate skin, thus healing scars and eliminating wrinkles. Nanotech at its finest.”
She kept her expression schooled, but only just. “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”
Her lungs hitched as she fought to draw a breath without alerting Gage to her distress. The leak was worse than they’d assumed. When Trinity had stormed into Cass’s office yesterday to show Cass the offending blurb in an online trade magazine, she’d read the scant few lines mentioning Fyra’s yet-to-be released product with horror. But it could have been so much worse, they’d assured each other. The trade magazine had few details, especially about the nanotechnology, and they’d hoped that had been the extent of the information that had traveled beyond their walls.
Apparently not.
It was a disaster. Full-blown, made even worse by Gage’s arrival on the scene.
Gage watched her carefully, his sharp gaze missing nothing. “But if my intel is correct, a formula like that might be worth about a hundred million or so. Which I’m prepared to pay.”
Oh, no, he had not just dropped that sum on her. She shut her eyes for a blink. Money like that was serious business, and as the CEO, she had to take his offer to the others for due consideration.
But she knew her friends. They’d agree with her that the formula was priceless. “I told you, the formula isn’t for sale.”
He stood suddenly and advanced on her, clearly over the power play she’d instigated by standing by the door. The closer he got, the harder her pulse pounded, but she blinked coolly as if lethally sexy men faced her down on a daily basis.
“It’s smart business to consider all opportunities,” he said as he leaned against the doorjamb not two feet from her. “If you sell, you don’t have to worry about little things like FDA approval and production costs and false-claim lawsuits. You just roll around in your millions and leave the hard work to someone else.”
The scent of clean forest and man wafted in her direction.
“I’m not afraid of hard work,” she stated firmly as she fought to keep from stepping back, out of the line of his masculine fire. It was a battle of wills, and if she fled, he’d figure out how much he truly affected her.
The man was a shaman, mystical and charismatic. One glance, and she’d follow him into his world of hedonistic pleasure. Or at least that had been true in college. She’d learned a few tricks of her own since then, along with developing a shield around her fragile interior.
His gaze held her captive as he reached out and tucked a chunk of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering far longer than they should have.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked softly, his expression morphing into something almost...warm.