Chapter 3 Can't Take It Any Longer

Chapter 3

Pero hit Vera's name on his contact list and she answered on the second ring, which pleased him since he hated to be kept waiting. In fact, she'd proved to be incredibly responsive over the past three days, no matter what time of the day or night he'd demanded her presence, which also pleased him.

Especially as he'd been working her hard. The first day he'd kept her up till midnight in his office, taking notes at a video conference with some of his Silicon Valley team. She hadn't murmured a word of complaint, not even when he'd kept her up for another hour after the meeting had finished. Then he'd woken her at 6 A.M. the next morning to go get his morning coffee. There hadn't been any complaints then either, nor when he'd sent her to a DS Corp, meeting at DS Tower downtown in his stead. Or when he'd sent her to an art auction afterward to purchase a rare Van Gogh landscape that had unexpectedly come up for sale.

Or that second night, at 3 A.M., when he'd gone for a run on his treadmill and then discovered afterward that he was out of his favorite soda, which had necessitated Vera making a run to the nearest 7/11.

Yes, at 3 A.M., she'd answered on the second ring, which even his best assistant hadn't managed.

It was impressive, he had to admit.

"Mr. de la cruz?" she enquired in her cool, calm way.

"I need coffee," he said without preamble. "Espresso, two sugars. Also, get me a plain bagel with cream cheese and lox."

"I can do that for you. When would you like these?"

"Now." He didn't wait for a response, disconnecting the call and tossing his phone carelessly down on his desk before going back to the email he'd been reading. Which he read a second time, just to be sure he understood what it said.

Sure enough, he had. The lead he'd been following for months now had ended up with yet another dead end.

"Fuck," he growled, his mood darkening as he slammed a hand down on the desk, only barely missing his keyboard. He wanted to pick something up and break it, or fling something at the wall and listen to it shatter. Eyeing his phone, he considered throwing that for half a second, then decided against it. He couldn't be bothered getting another, and there were more productive things he could be doing with his fury.

Glancing over at the file he had open on one of his other screens, Pero scowled at it. In between his own work and his half-brother Lorenzo getting in his face about investigating some sketchy behavior in one of their father's accounts, he'd also been fiddling with this particular file. In fact, he'd been fiddling with it for a long time now, gradually accumulating names and dates and locations, trying to put together a picture of a man he'd been trying to find for years. Unfortunately, though, like the lead he'd been following up on today, every single piece of new information he'd received had led precisely nowhere. Which made finding this particular man–his stepfather-incredibly fucking difficult.

And he did want to find him.

Even before the police had discovered him, a small, emaciated teenager in a walled-up room in the back of that house in Queens, Pero had been fueled by thoughts of revenge. It had been the fire that had kept him warm at nights when he'd had nothing but a single threadbare blanket to cover himself, and it was the ice that had kept him cool when temperatures climbed to over a hundred, turning the little room that was his world into an oven.

He'd lain on the sagging bed in that room, planning what he'd do to his

stepfather, the man his mother was trying to keep him safe from. Pero had actually never seen him, but he had no doubt the guy existed, because he'd heard him shouting some nights outside Pero's secret room. He'd been five when his mother had hidden him away-for his own safety, she'd always said-because his new stepfather was controlling and violent, and hated children. However, his mother had told Pero that she needed to stay with him because he was helping her pay off her debts and that as long as he didn't find out Pero existed, everything would be fine. Be patient, she'd told Pero. Once her debts were paid they could both escape, perhaps even try to find Pero's real father. But until then Pero just had to stay there and be quiet and not attract his stepfather's attention. He had to stay out of sight and out of mind. The ghost in the walls . . .

He'd gotten out of that room and that house a long time ago and not with his mother in the end, but the need for revenge burned hotter in his blood than ever.

He wanted to destroy his stepfather, the man who'd ensured that for ten years Pero had to stay hidden in one tiny room. He wanted to destroy him utterly.

Except that prick had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.

It was frustrating, especially given all the resources at Pero's fingertips. He was a goddamn computer genius who not only designed some of the world's foremost digital defense systems, but could hack into them, too, and he could not find one stupid, lousy asshole.

His irritation deepening, Pero pushed himself out of his chair and stalked out of the control room, heading for the doorway to the gym that led off his main office. It was going to be impossible to get any other work done when he was this pissed, and the only way to burn off the frustration was to run it out on the treadmill or bury it under some good, old fashioned weightlifting.

His gym was high-spec and huge-he preferred having lots of room-and it had big, glass sliding doors that gave a view out onto the garden. He liked that, too. Sometimes he had the doors open, so that the scent of the plants and flowers drifted in, making him feel as if he were running through a field or a forest.

Sometimes he kept the doors firmly shut, his attention on the big screens displaying different news channels and various social-media accounts.

Today he kept the doors shut, stripping his clothes off and leaving them in a careless heap on the floor before going over to the shelf unit and drawers where he kept his workout gear. Changing into some workout shorts, a tank, and some running shoes, he went to fill a water bottle from the drinking fountain before going over to the top-of-the-line treadmill and programming in something ultra-tough and punishing.

He was half an hour into his run when suddenly the door opened and Vera came in, a takeout coffee cup in one hand, a paper bag in the other.

Pero didn't bother stopping, merely glancing over at her briefly before directing his attention back to CNN and the news story he was currently following. "I asked for these half an hour ago," he said flatly.

"I'm sorry," the sound of her heels echoed on the gym's wooden floor as she moved over to the shelving unit and placed the coffee and bagel down on it. "I got them twenty minutes ago, but it took me a little while to find you."

The delay irritated him unreasonably. For the past three days, she'd been incredibly responsive so what was the problem now?

"You should know where to find me by now." He didn't bother to mask his annoyance. "The gym isn't that far away."

"I'm sorry," she said repeated, apologetic. "It won't happen again."

Yet he caught it, the briefest of hesitations before she'd answered him.

He kept his gaze on the screen, every instinct suddenly zeroing in on her and that slight hesitation. "One coffee and a bagel shouldn't have taken you that long.

"The café was very busy and there was also-"

"Fucking bullshit. That café knows they make my coffee first before they do anything else." He turned his attention from the screen to stare at her, his irritation at the delay combining with the anger already seething inside him, becoming something hot, explosive. A missile seeking a target. "Give me the truth or else you're fired."

She stood near the door, neat as a new pin in her plain black skirt and boring white blouse. Her hair was in its customary bun, not a curl or strand out of place, and her sharp features were-as usual-completely calm, not a single emotion on them that he could read. Her gaze, too, was unreadable, meeting his without flinching.

"I had a phone call that took slightly longer than anticipated," she said in that cut-glass British accent of hers. "As I said, it won't happen again."

"A personal phone call?"

"Yes." No hesitation this time.

He kept running, his feet hitting the treadmill hard. "About what?"

A slight-so slight that if he hadn't been watching her closely, he would have missed it-flicker in her steady gaze. "As I said, it was a personal-"

"I don't give a fuck how personal it was. Tell me what this goddamn phone call was about that it took up twenty minutes of your time, twenty minutes that I am paying you for, don't forget."

Vera's stubborn jaw tightened minutely. He may not have been good at reading the subtler emotions in people, but he certainly knew when someone was pissed with him and he could tell that she was pissed with him right now.

A bolt of excitement cut through his anger. Shit, if she thought she could take him on then she was more than welcome to try. He could use a good fight.

"It was the hospital," she said after a moment, her red-gold lashes briefly veiling her gaze. "Giving me an update on my fiancé's condition."

Ah, her fiancé. She'd mentioned him in the job interview three days ago, hadn't she? The one in a coma. He was the reason she'd come to work for Pero.

How . . . altruistic of her. Not that he gave a damn about her fiancé. What he gave a damn about was the fact that the lead he'd been chasing for months now had turned out to be a dead end, and he was just fucking pissed about it. And to add insult to injury, she'd taken twenty minutes to get his coffee to him and now it would be cold.

"I don't care what updates you're getting," he snapped. "I pay you a lot of money to be instantly available, not to spend your time receiving personal phone calls."

Her gaze widened fractionally at the annoyance in his tone, which annoyed him further. "What? Is this coming as a fucking surprise to you? It shouldn't. When I say I want you to be available 24/7, I mean it."

Again, apart from that minute widening of her gaze, the expression on her face gave him no hint of what she was feeling. "Then, is there a time that the hospital is permitted to call me?" Her voice contained nothing but a mild query.

"No," Pero said, nettled. "Now go and get me another fucking coffee and this time make it hot." He turned his attention back to the screens and hit the button on the treadmill that controlled the incline, turning the thing into a goddamn mountain he was running up, because he wasn't feeling any better.

If anything, he was feeling even angrier.

You wanted a fight, and she's not giving you one.

He bared his teeth at the journalist on the screen, the sound of his feet pounding on the treadmill drowning out the journalist's voice.

Yeah, he did want a fight. It had been a while since he'd had an actual person to yell at-not since his last assistant had fled the house in tears. And the guy had been the fifth male assistant who couldn't deal. Jesus, what was fucking wrong with people these days? Men who weren't man enough to handle a fight. Women who collapsed like sandcastles at the first hint of anger.

Vera would be a good opponent.

Pero turned his head and glanced at the gym doorway where she'd been standing. But it was empty.

Something shifted and tightened in his gut. She was so calm, so contained. Her back was always so straight, and there was never a hair out of place. He'd yelled at her, and she hadn't collapsed. She'd accepted what he'd said and turned around and walked out to do his bidding.

Fuck. What would it take to get her to lose her cool? He'd like to see what that might be. It wouldn't help him find another lead, but it would give him something to do with his anger, it would give him a target. And that was better than running endlessly on this fucking treadmill.

The thing in his gut tightened further, an electric thrill. Anticipation.

He reached out and hit the button again, upping the speed, the feral grin on his face deepening. Yeah, time to see what prim little Vera Swift was made of.

Ten minutes later, the sweat pouring off him, the muscles in his legs screaming, the anticipation inside him pulled even tighter as the door opened and Vera came in again, another takeout cup in her hand. "Your coffee, Mr. de la cruz."

Pero gestured to a small table near the treadmill. "Put it here."

She moved immediately, collecting the bagel she'd brought in earlier and carrying it, along with the hot coffee, over to the table. As she bent to put them down, he found his gaze lingering on her hair, all coiled neatly at the nape of her neck by what looked to be a thousand of those damn pins.

His fingers itched with the urge to do the same thing he'd done three days ago, when he'd pulled those pins out and her hair had fallen down around her shoulders, the color of apricots or peaches, or a flaming sunset. It felt so soft, like raw silk. He liked pretty things, and she wasn't pretty. But her hair was. Maybe he should make her wear it down and not be restricted to that goddamn bun. Christ, he'd love to touch it again . . .

Vera straightened and turned to him, politely expectant. "Your coffee, Mr. de la cruz. Hot, as per your request. Anything else I can do for you?"

Pero hit the button on the treadmill, slowing it down and getting off it. Pausing, he grabbed the towel hung over one of the treadmill arms and gave his face a cursory wipe before slinging it around his neck. Then he stood there and stared at her.

She looked back at him, her gaze steady.

Fuck, she was so calm, as if nothing would faze her. Not even being told that she couldn't answer calls from the hospital where her fiancé lay in a coma.

For what reason? What on earth was she dealing with? Would she be affected by anything? Perhaps he would discover. would undoubtedly be more fruitful than constantly contemplating that goddamn dead end he had encountered.

Pero clutched his towel's ends. "What do you think about me telling you that you could not answer personal calls?"

"You made it very clear that I would be fired if I did not follow your instructions." Her voice was as clear as a frost in early winter. "I would rather not lose my job."

Well, shit, he did not want that response.

"You are not even going to argue with me?" He walked slowly toward her, watching her face intently. "No protest word at all?"

Except for the arch of one delicate red-gold brow, she remained motionless. "What is the point?"

Nothing in her tone was sarcastic or confrontational. Nevertheless, that brow... Was that difficult? Fuck, he hoped so. He desired for her to oppose him.

He moved closer to her, taking a few more steps while examining her face with narrowed eyes.

He had been too preoccupied with work-related matters to give her much attention in the last few days. Then there was the lead he had been attempting to pursue. He had been able to focus on other things because she had handled all of his requests so amicably and without drama.

He was listening now, though. He was, indeed.

He asked, "Do not you want to know what is going on with your fiancé?" "Or are you just indifferent?"

For a moment, something ignited in her eyes, but he was unable to identify it.

Naturally, I would like to know. I just want to avoid getting fired any more. He was intrigued by the fact that her tone still had a sharp bite to it.

He approached her even more closely, skulking toward her and staring into her eyes. However, Vera just calmly stared back at him with her hands clasped in front of her, just as she had been doing for the previous few minutes.

She showed no signs of being bothered by his closeness, revealing nothing at all about her thoughts.

For reasons he did not want to investigate, it both enthralled and enraged him.

"What is the duration of your engagement?" He made a demand. How many days? How many months? Years?

Something he could not read flashed in her eyes again. "Is it really appropriate to talk about my personal life?"

"If I say it is, it is."

She tightened her beautiful full bottom lip. "Five years."

"Five years?" His astonishment was obvious. "If you are going to wait five years to get married, what is the point of getting engaged?"

"We both agreed that we wanted to wait a little while." She took a quick look at the coffee cup resting on the table. "Do you want your coffee?" It should not become cold.

He disregarded that. "Whatever became of him?"

"I apologize." That delicate eyebrow, another arch. "Who happened to?"

"You are engaged," he said. "And do not act as though you have no idea what the fuck I am talking about."

Vera's eyelashes briefly dropped. "He was on a business trip when he was in an automobile accident." Her voice was rock steady and cool. severe damage to the head. He has spent the last two years in a coma.

No point in a fight. If she refused to give him the target he was after, how could he get some of this anger out? If, without even a brief protest, she simply provided him with the answers he desired?

Maybe he had to be tougher. Maybe he had to be tougher.

He moved closer and closer, encroaching on her personal space with each step. Although she remained motionless, he could see her posture stiffening as tension suddenly built up inside of her. He also noticed a golden flash of reaction in her brown eyes.

At last. Fucking finally. A reaction.

* * *

Vera stood her ground. She didn't want to give him an inch, especially not when he was the type of man who wouldn't take just one mile, he'd take a million. The previous three days had taught her that, if nothing else.

He was a demanding person. Ruthless. Fierce. Impatient. He was also arrogant and domineering, and she knew it was his way or the highway. In everything.

He would have been insufferable if she had not found the energy he exuded so captivating. It perplexed her that, while the past three days as his assistant had been the most difficult she would ever done, it was also the most exciting.

After two years of boring, crappy temp jobs so she could focus on caring for Josh, she would forgotten how good it felt to have every day be different and challenging.

She also felt extremely satisfied because she always gave him exactly what he asked for, without protest or fuss, causing him to look at her with a vaguely suspicious expression on his intense, handsome face. As if her obedience did not meet his expectations, and he was expecting a different reaction from her. He knew the reaction would be unpleasant.

Except she never gave him one, and it always made his suspicious expression even more suspicious, which only added to her satisfaction.

It was dangerous to enjoy something like that, but she could not stop herself.

For far too long, the only men she would had contact with were either medical personnel or people lying unconscious in beds. And after a while, no matter that all the doctors and nurses had told her that Josh could hear her voice, those long hours of one-sided conversations had taken their toll. It was good to have someone look at her and see her. React to her. Even if that reaction was negative, she preferred that to nothing.

The only problem was that Pero de la cruz was not an unconscious man in a hospital bed. And that pushing him-even in the small, subtle way she pushed him-meant him pushing right her back.

She was horribly aware of that right now, with him standing right in front of her, towering over her the way he had when she'd had her interview in his office. She thought she'd gotten used to his size, to his raw, primal energy, but apparently she hadn't. Not when he was only inches away and dressed in nothing but a tank and shorts, a towel around his neck.

His magnificent body gleamed with sweat, the fabric of his tank sticking to his chest and stomach, the damp cotton outlining the hard-packed muscle of his torso. He smelled of sweat and spice, and it wasn't . . . unpleasant. In fact, it made something inside her shift and turn, like an animal waking up from a long sleep.

You should step away from him.

The thought echoed in her head, an instinct she didn't know was there kicking in, making her want to back away and put some distance between them. Except she couldn't think why. Yes, he was her boss and wouldn't hurt her, that much she was sure of. So there was no reason to give any ground.

Instead she took a slow, silent breath, trying to ignore the strangely mesmerizing masculine scent of sweat and spice, trying to quell that equally strange shifting sensation in her stomach. Meeting his gaze as calmly as possible.

It was difficult though. His stare was dense as a black hole and pulled at her in almost the same way. Like a compulsion, she couldn't look away.

She should be angry with him for making her tell him all about Josh, and certainly she should be angry with him for forbidding her the hospital's phone calls, especially when Josh's infection was proving to be stubborn and sticking around. Dimly, she was angry. But she knew that wouldn't help and was more likely to get her fired than anything else, especially given he'd already stated he wanted her to do what he said without protest.

Far better to accept his orders and swallow the anger, to keep calm and keep her eyes on the money.

Luckily, she was very good at keeping calm. She'd had a lot of practice after all.

"Two years?" Pero's voice was rough, gritty. "He's been in a coma for two years?"

"Yes." She kept her tone even, not allowing even a hint of the sadness she felt whenever she thought about the time passing to color it.

His dark gaze intensified, as if there were words written on her face in invisible ink and he was trying to read them. "Has he woken up then? Is that why the hospital was calling you?"

Vera swallowed back the sudden constriction in her throat at his bluntness. At the thought of Josh just "waking up." "No. He has an infection that won't go away. Also, they were reminding me about the new fee schedule."

"What fee schedule?"

She really didn't want to talk about this, not with him standing there, all sweaty and hot and pinning her in place with those burning black eyes of his. "Hospital fees," she said levelly. "Your coffee, Mr. de la cruz. Please. It's getting cold." And she really didn't want to have to go back a third time. Not given the strange looks the café staff had directed her way on her second visit.

But Pero's attention had clearly locked onto her, and nothing was going to distract him. She'd seen him like this a couple of times now, firstly at that video conference the night she'd started working with him, and then when she'd had to go into DS Corp downtown to attend a meeting in his stead. He'd been on the phone with her via a video link, and in both of those meetings the way he'd zeroed in on the subject at hand had been almost frightening. As was his absolute refusal to let the subject go until he'd gotten whatever it was he wanted out of it.

He was not a man who was distracted by anything-unless he wanted to be.

"What about the fees?" The question only just stopped short of an outright demand.

Great. She was going to have to tell him, wasn't she?

Annoyance was a small, hot thread winding through her. Josh wasn't anyone's business but hers, and she did not like questions being asked about him. About the accident. About their future. About anything.

"I'll get this heated up for you," she said in a last-ditch effort to distract Pero, reaching out for the coffee on the table.

Pero moved, so fast she had no time to react, his hand flashing out to grab her wrist, preventing her from reaching the cup. And instantly something in her brain flared white hot as his long, strong fingers wrapped around her wrist.

Heat flashed up her arm, the sensation so foreign and strange it made her go stiff with shock.

Pero's gaze never moved from hers. He watched her with all the intensity of a hunter. "You know how I hate to repeat myself, Vera." His voice was thick with menace. "Don't make me have to."

Breathe. Just breathe. In. Out.

Vera inhaled silently then let it out, trying to get her muscles to relax. Difficult when every part of her wanted to rip her hand away from him then turn around and walk out of the room.

But, of course, she couldn't do that. Never make a fuss, never show a reaction. Never displaying weakness in front of those who would exploit it, she'd learned that early on, both from her mother's emotional blackmail and from her father's relentless criticism. Give them nothing but a calm, smooth front and all those little hooks, those little barbs would slide right off.

She ignored the grip on her wrist, and the fact that he was standing closer than was comfortable, kept her expression absolutely neutral. Giving him nothing to react against. "Fine. The hospital fees are going up, which means that if I want to keep him where he is, I have to find the money for it. Luckily, working for you will help. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"Which hospital?" Pero's fingers remained wrapped around her wrist, his black eyes locked onto hers. "Where?"

The thread of annoyance pulled tight inside her. Why was he being so persistent? Why did he want to know? She'd pegged him as being like her father, demanding and selfish and uninterested in anyone but himself, the way rich men often were, and certainly nothing had happened in the past three days to make her revise her opinion.

Yet now he was staring at her as if she was keeping secrets from him, demanding to know all about Josh and the situation with the hospital.

Part of her was desperate to tell him where he could shove his questions and yet another part, the part that was far more sensible, whispered that she should just give him what he wanted, because then he'd leave her alone.

"Why are you so interested?" The words came out of her before she'd had a chance to stop them, all sharp-edged with the annoyance she'd been desperately trying to mask. "It's none of your damn business."

His head went back as if she'd hit him, and his nostrils flared, a black spark igniting in his midnight eyes. Then his hard mouth widened in a fierce, savage kind of smile.

And Vera knew she'd made a terrible mistake