Grace stared at him. ‘I suppose that’s the nature of business. It sometimes takes longer than you think to get off the ground. If you look at the figures you’ll see that we’ll soon be in profit.’
‘I’m well-acquainted with the figures, Miss Thacker.’ He dropped the accounts on the table. ‘And I only have one question.’
One question?
Grace straightened in her chair, feeling a wave of relief. She’d braced herself for hundreds of questions all exploring the company accounts in minute detail. And she’d been dreading it. ‘Please ask your question.’ She gave him a sunny smile and he watched her for a moment, his eyes fixed on her face.
‘Tell me, Miss Thacker, how do you sleep at night?’
CHAPTER TWO
THE sunlight poured through the windows and Rafael Cordeiro watched as the colour fled from her cheeks.
Your game’s up, beauty, he said to himself, wondering how she could have been so naïve as to think that he wouldn’t discover what was going on in her company. Not that she hadn’t been clever, because she had. The numbers added up. Most people wouldn’t have spotted what he had.
Most people didn’t have his lack of faith in human nature.
At first glance her accounts appeared to reveal nothing more than a business that was slow to get off the ground. And her apparent desire to be friendly and chatty was a strategy that might well have succeeded with a man less cynical and experienced with her sex than him. Grace Thacker came across as engaging, enthusiastic and refreshingly open.
A different man could have been impressed by her admission of disappointment that her business should have been in profit by now.
A different man might have allowed himself to believe in her innocence.
It was fortunate for him, and unfortunate for her, that his speciality was greedy, unscrupulous women. Had that not been the case, his suspicions wouldn’t have been roused and he would never have discovered that Café Brazil wasn’t what it claimed to be and that Grace Thacker was a long way from being the caring, magnanimous employer that she pretended to be.
The fact that she had the nerve to turn up here and beg him to keep pouring money into her little scam was yet another testament to her greed and lack of conscience.
In normal circumstances he would have allocated one of
his staff to sort out the problem, but in Grace Thacker’s case he’d decided that he was going to deal with her personally.
Looking at her polished nails and shiny hair, he felt a slow, burning anger build inside him. She looked pampered and secure and it was quite obvious that she didn’t know the meaning of the word hardship. Did she have any idea how it felt to be cold and hungry? Did she know what it felt like to try and sleep without a roof over her pretty little head?
No, of course she didn’t. Why would she?
He was willing to bet that the biggest struggle in her life so far had been deciding which heels to wear with which outfit.
When she’d contacted him, requesting a meeting, his initial reaction had been to refuse. Why waste his time on her? But then he’d decided on a different approach.
Retribution.
Grace Thacker had shattered lives and was about to shatter more.
She should be made to face the consequences of her unscrupulous behaviour. She should be made to suffer. He hadn’t decided how yet, but he was working on it.
And looking at her now, dressed in a suit that had undoubtedly cost an obscene amount of money, wearing shoes that shrieked of sex, expecting him to extend his loan in her business, he knew he’d made the right decision.
Just how far, he wondered idly as he admired her slender ankles and the soft curve of her calf, was she prepared to go in her attempts to persuade him? It was a pity for her that he never allowed his sex life and his business life to overlap because the chemistry between them had been live and electric from the moment she’d caught her heel on the walkway. She’d stooped to release her shoe and that action had allowed him a tempting vision of lacy white bra and creamy cleavage. Her silky sheet of blonde hair had swung forward over her face and her lips had parted in a soft gasp as she’d struggled not to lose her balance.
For a moment the anger simmering to life inside him had been overwhelmed by a surge of masculine lust so intense that it had bordered on the painful.
And then she’d noticed him. And had clutched at her briefcase like a lifebelt. That gesture alone had been sufficient to quench his libido and remind him of the reason she was here.
Money.
Aside from the shiny hair, the tempting cleavage and the long legs, Grace Thacker was no different from any other greedy woman.
Dark memories swirled up from the recesses of his mind but he pushed them away with ruthless determination, instead turning the full force of his anger onto Grace Thacker.