In her soaring mind, Marcos was mounted on a white charger holding up a flag that read “Virginia.”
And she…well, hers might be a banner. A neon sign. A brand on every inch of her body and possibly her heart. Marcos Allende. God, she was a fool.
“I don’t expect something for nothing,” she said. Her voice throbbed even as a tide of relief flooded her.
It was as if some unnatural force drew her to him, pulled her to get closer and closer. Did the force come from him? From her? If it weren’t for the desk—always the desk between them—where would she be?
No. The obstacle wasn’t a desk. It was everything. Everything. Nothing she could ever arrange or fix or clean.
Marcos raked one hand through his hair, then seized a runaway pen and thrust it into an empty leather holder. “I’ll give you the money. But I have a few requests of my own.”
“Anything,” she said.
His gaze was positively lethal. His hands—they made fists. “There’s something I want. Something that belongs to me. Something I must have or I’ll lose my mind with wanting it.”
A shiver ran hot and cold down her spine.
He wasn’t speaking of her—of course he wasn’t—but nonetheless, she felt something grip inside her as though he were. What would it feel like for Marcos to want her so fiercely? “I…understand.”
“Do you?”
He smiled bleakly at her, then continued around his desk.
He swept up a gemstone globe from the edge and spun it around, a lapis lazuli ocean going round and round. “Here.” His finger stopped the motion, marking a country encrusted in granite for her eyes. “What I want is here.” He tapped.
Tap tap tap.
She stepped closer, longingly lifting a fingertip to stroke the length of the country he signaled. Travel had seemed so far down the line of her priorities she hardly gave any thought to it now.
“Mexico,” she whispered.
His finger slid. It touched hers. He watched. And she watched. And neither of them moved. His finger was blunt and tan, hers slim and milky. Both over Mexico. It wasn’t even a touch, not even half a touch. And she felt the contact in every fiber of her lonely, quivering being.
He turned his head, their faces so close that his pupils looked enormously black to her. A swirling vortex. He whispered, as though confessing his every hidden desire and sin, “I’m after Allende.”
She connected the name immediately. “Your father’s business?”
“The business he lost.”
He set down the globe, and again, his finger. This time the back of it stroked down her cheek. Marcos touching her, Marcos looking so strangely at her, oh, God. He smelled so good she felt lightheaded.
“And you believe I can help?” she asked, one step away from him, then two. Away from his magnificent, compelling force, away from what he made her want.
He scraped a restless hand down his face. “The owner has managed it poorly and contacted me for help.” A tiny muscle ticked at the back of his jaw. “I’m usually a sucker for the ailing, I admit, but things are different in this case.” Disgusted, he shook his head. “I do not intend to help her, you understand?”
“Yes.” She didn’t understand, exactly, but rumors around the office were that no one mentioned Allende to Marcos unless they wanted their head bitten off.
He paced. “I’m taking it hostilely if I have to.”
“I see.”
“I could use an escort.”
Escort.
“I need someone I can count on. Most of all—” he crossed his arms and his enigmatic black gaze bored into hers “—I need someone willing to pretend to be my lover.”
Lover.