Exquisite Revenge Read Free

explanation as to why you don’t want me to invest in O’Brien then I’m afraid this meeting is over. I don’t deal in riddles.’
    His voice rumbled through her and Jesse folded her arms across her chest tightly. Feeling unbelievably threatened, sheblurted out, ‘He’s practically bankrupt … his business is in tatters … surely he has nothing to offer you?’
    Luc Sanchis’s mouth tightened. ‘At the risk of repeating myself, once again I’m afraid the onus is on
you
to tell me why you’re so interested in him.’
    When Jesse was obstinately silent for a long moment he said, with an icy bite of reluctance, ‘O’Brien still has stakes in Eastern European construction that I’m interested in acquiring before it’s too late to salvage anything.’ He shrugged one wide shoulder. ‘If that means saving O’Brien in the process then so be it. You have to admit that I can claim a far more legitimate interest in his concerns than you.’
    Jesse’s brain hurt; what he said made perfect sense. At first she’d thought Luc Sanchis must be in league with O’Brien, but she’d checked him out and his reputation was pristine. Not a hint of misdeed or corruption, which an association with O’Brien might have indicated. And he had no previous connection to O’Brien. He’d literally come out of nowhere as a last-minute saviour.
    Luc Sanchis shifted on the desk now, and Jesse felt his renewed interest with a shiver of foreboding down her spine.
    ‘Why haven’t you just gone directly to O’Brien with a better offer?’
    Jesse paled, not wanting to remember her first face-to-face meeting with O’Brien the week before. She should have expected Luc Sanchis to ask the most logical question of all, but inside her head she was wondering hysterically what he would do if she was to blurt out the full, ugly and lurid truth of her relationship with O’Brien.
    She avoided his eye. ‘I have my reasons.’ It was a pathetic non-answer, but she couldn’t explain that, having confronted O’Brien once already, she couldn’t approach him again. She’d burnt her bridges in that meeting but had only done it becauseshe’d thought she was safe—that no one else would bail him out before it was too late.
    The reason why she couldn’t be cool and calm and answer Luc Sanchis’s questions with logical answers was because this had nothing to do with business; this was about hurt and pain. Grief and suffering. And, above all, revenge. How could she even begin to make someone else understand the whirling cauldron of dark emotions inside her? She’d lived with this for so long …
    Luc Sanchis unfolded his tall frame from the desk and stood up. Jesse couldn’t help her gaze going to him, as if pulled against her will. His face was stern. He’d had enough.
    ‘Whatever your mysterious reasons are, the question is this: who wants to invest in him more?’
    Jesse could sense Luc Sanchis’s intractability. She might be powerful in her own right, having built up a multi-million-pound IT software business, but she couldn’t compete with this man if he chose to fight her.
    She had to make him believe it didn’t mean that much to her. When it meant
everything
.
    ‘Look,’ she said now, with a studied nonchalance that belied the thumping of her heart and the bead of sweat forming between her breasts, ‘I’m willing to double the amount you’ve offered O’Brien if you’ll drop your plans to invest.’
    Luc stared at Jesse Moriarty. He didn’t like the questions she was posing in his mind with this determination to match his offer—
more
than match it. She obviously desperately wanted O’Brien. Something inside him hardened. The problem was, so did he. He’d worked far too hard and long to let this opportunity pass. Especially not for some prickly slip of a woman who was starting seriously to irritate him with those huge eyes and the way colour flooded her cheeks so easily—as if she didn’t knowingly use that to good