His arms dropped to his sides and she was free, but she didn’t trust her legs to support her if she moved. Then he spoke.
‘So, Miss Paxton, back to business. How do you intend to honour the debt of one million pounds plus that your father embezzled from Westwold?’ he demanded, his cold, black eyes holding hers.
‘I don’t have to,’ she said, breathing fast. ‘It is not my debt.’
‘True, but much as you seem to dislike your father, and insist you do not need his money, apparently—as you confirmed—your mother is in an expensive nursing home and she does. Unless, of course, you earn enough to keep her as well as yourself.’
He raised a brow and took a step back, his gaze raking over her from top to toe, assessing her worth as if she was a slave on the block.
‘You are certainly beautiful enough on the outside, with all the attributes a man could want.’ He eyed her comprehensively again. ‘But you might have to work on your technique if the fiasco between us the other night was typical of your bedside manner.’
Sally stared in shock and outrage as the full import of his words sank in. Then her face paled to a deathly white as in her head flashed an image of her mother in bed, her once glorious red hair now a faded grey, her body half-paralysed. She had suffered more than any human being should have to endure, and no matter what Sally thought of her dad, she knew it would break her mother’s heart completely if her husband was branded a thief and sent to prison. She could not let it happen, and she could not deprive her mother of the care and comfort of the nursing home for whatever amount of time she had left.
Sally searched Zac’s harshly controlled features as if she had never seen him before. He had everything—looks, wealth and power—and he used it ruthlessly, looking down on lesser mortals like some pagan god.
Suddenly she was fed up and bristling with anger. She had always thought that a man who was dependent on the female members of his family to protect his honour didn’t have much of that commodity to start with. Yet here she was, she thought furiously, an intelligent, hardworking adult female, put in this invidious position by two men: her father, a spineless jerk, and Zac Delucca, a titan among men but with a positively medieval attitude.
‘For your information—’ she eyed him with contempt ‘—I have a full-time job in a museum, and while I am quite happy with what I earn, museums are not noted for extravagant salaries. So, no, at the moment I could not pay the nursing home fees,’ she told him bluntly, while silently racking her brain for a solution if her feckless father really was in deep trouble.
She had very little savings, and she spent any spare cash she had on her mother. Paying for accommodation every weekend to be near her was not cheap, but if she managed to sell her apartment she could use the money she gained to pay for her mum and rent somewhere else. So far she had received one ridiculously low offer from a property developer, which she had refused, but now she would accept it, she decided.
‘But if you give me time a month or so I could afford to support my mum.’ It suddenly occurred to her that her dad could do the same—sell his grandiose apartment and pay Delucca back. ‘And if you drop the charges against Dad between him and I we could almost certainly pay you back.’ She had to think positive. Anything else was too degrading.
‘Interesting, but no. Your father has stolen from the company for years, and he has run out of time.’
For a defeated second it occurred to her that if her mother died quickly the problem would disappear. ‘Oh, my God,’ she groaned, despising herself for the horrific thought.
Zac took her chin between a finger and thumb and tilted her head up to face him.
‘Praying will not help you, Sally, but I might!’ His heavy-lidded eyes glinted with a calculating light. ‘I could be persuaded, with the right encouragement, to accept the monetary loss and refrain from charging your father with theft and so keep him out of prison.’
His hand slipped from her chin to curve around her throat, and a strong arm closed around her waist to pull her into contact with his long, hard body. There was no mistaking his meaning.
‘If you are really good I will allow him to draw his present salary—in a more menial position, of course—until he reaches the retirement age of sixty, in twelve months, and I will also allow him to keep his generous pension, both of which he would forfeit if found guilty of fraud. With the money he has stolen it should be more than enough to allow him to fulfil his commitment to his wife.’
The blood drained from her face, and she was trembling with a mixture of fear and fury at his insulting proposal. ‘You bastard!’ Her blue eyes flashed at him.
‘Such language for a lady—you do surprise me, Sally,’ he mocked. ‘And I am not, in the true sense of the word. My parents are long dead, but they were married when I was born.’
‘And I am not some wh-whore to—to—to…do…’ She stuttered to a stop—something she had not done since she was a child.
‘I never actually said you were.’ One dark brow arched sardonically, and a ruthless smile curved his sensuous mouth. ‘What I am proposing is quite straightforward. In exchange for my saving your father from prison and allowing him to stay in my employ, you will become my mistress.’
She swallowed hard, her strained features reflecting her shock and confusion. Zac could not be serious…
In fact, he could be lying about her dad. But then she remembered her father’s conversation earlier. He had said he had ‘overlooked’ a rule or two, as if it was nothing to worry about. She had assumed it was to do with his penchant for bedding his secretaries. ‘Is it true? About my father stealing?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘I do not lie, Sally. Your father has been swindling the company regularly for years, extremely cunningly. The amounts he took were small enough to be explained away as errors before I bought the company, but over a decade or more they became big enough to add up to a considerable sum. When Raffe took charge of the London headquarters he smelt a rat, but even he was not sure, and it took both of us to track where the money had gone,’ he responded with a wry twist of his lips. ‘So what is it going to be, Sally? Your father disgraced and broke, or you becoming my mistress?’
It was unthinkable. But deep down inside Sally knew he was telling her the truth. She also knew that for her mother’s sake she could not let her dad go to prison.
‘Why me?’ she murmured to herself. Didn’t she have enough to suffer, watching her mum dying? And now she had no choice but to agree to Zac’s outrageous demand.
She wasn’t an idiot, and not for a minute did she kid herself he was doing it for anything other than revenge. A million pounds was small change to him. And she was no financial expert, but, if her dad had been stealing for years, surely technically it was the previous owner who had lost most of the money, not Zac? But the blow to his ego she had dealt him by saying no on Monday, and then insulting him in public last night, were not things a man like Zac Delucca was going to forgive and forget in a hurry.
‘Look at me.’ His arm tightened around her waist and the hand at her throat slipped around the nape of her neck to tilt her head up to face him. ‘You know why, Sally. I want you badly, and though you try your best to ignore the sexual chemistry between us you want me. If this is the only way to have you, then so be it.’
She had not realised she had spoken out loud, and she opened her mouth to deny his assumption. But his mouth had found he