Wrong Brother, Right Man

Coolly, she took his measure, clearly amused. “Anyone can do that math in their head. It’s the easiest math problem in the world.”

He could do all sorts of things in his head, but math wasn’t one of them when the majority of his thoughts for the last five minutes had been more of the carnal variety. For example, he could imagine what Sabrina would look like spread out on his desk, cinnamon hair flowing as he pleasured her. And once he’d got that stuck in his head, there was no going back.

She’d be gorgeous as she came. Of course she would. Xavier didn’t do second class.

“You’re hired,” he said.

Smart did it for him in so many more ways than sexy. Combine the two, and he was going to have a very difficult time keeping his hands off Sabrina Corbin for the next six months.

Of course, no one said he had to.

“We haven’t even discussed the contract yet.” Her expression had that not-so-fast feel that raised his hackles. “You should know that I’m very difficult to work with if you don’t take this seriously. I don’t deal well with less than one-hundred-percent focus from my clients.”

As subtle digs went, that one was a doozy. She was essentially saying Don’t flirt with me.

“I can guarantee I will be focused,” he assured her, his smile slipping not at all, and it wasn’t even a lie. He was great at multitasking and, when Sabrina was the subject, focus wasn’t going to be a problem. “I can’t—I won’t—fail at this.”

And with that, his throat tightened, and he did not like the wave of vulnerability that washed over him. But this was so far out of the realm of what he’d expected from his father’s will. Prove you have what it takes, Val, his mother had insisted when he’d railed at her for accepting this insanity.

But why did he have to prove anything? Val had always spun gold out of straw when it came to feeding hungry people. Corporate politics bored him to tears, and Edward LeBlanc had never fully appreciated that Val had taken after his mother instead of him, which was at least half the problem.

“Oh, you will not fail. Not on my watch,” Sabrina promised, her hazel eyes glittering with something mesmerizing. A heat that Val would never have associated with her, if he hadn’t seen it personally. “I thrive when others give up. You might even say it becomes personal.”

A jab at Xavier? Now he had to know. “Because you have a score to settle with my brother?”

She didn’t so much as blink, but recrossed her legs, which was as telling a gesture as anything else she could have done. “Xavier is irrelevant to this discussion. I take my work seriously. I don’t have anyone else to rely on, and I like it that way. I’m a consulting firm of one, and that’s served me well.”

Oh, so she was one of those. Ms. Independent, with no need for a man. “So you dumped him.”

“Are you going to constantly read between the lines when I speak?”

“Only when you force me to.”

They stared at each other until she nodded once. “I can appreciate the need to clear this up prior to working together. For your information, I broke up with Xavier, if you can call it that. We didn’t date that long and were never serious.”

Long enough for Xavier to introduce her to his brother. Of course, thinking over it, Val had run into them at Harlow House, while he’d been on a date of his own, earlier in the summer. Or it might have been May-ish. He’d been seeing Miranda then, who had some wicked moves between the sheets, so Val could be forgiven for failing to precisely recall the circumstances of his first meeting with Sabrina.

“So, you’re in the market for a real man this go around, are you?”

That fell so flat he started looking for a spatula to scrape himself off the carpet.

“If you’re flirting with me, you can stop,” she informed him, and that did not help the temperature.

She didn’t like having to spell it out, that much was clear from her expression. What, she didn’t look in the mirror in the morning? Sabrina was a beautiful woman, dressed to the nines in mouthwatering nylons that begged to be peeled from her body by a man’s teeth. Val could no more stop being turned on by the challenges she threw down than he could stop the sun.

“If there’s a question about that, I’m doing something wrong,” he muttered. “But okay. I’ll reel back the charm. For now.”

She hiked an eyebrow nearly to her cinnamon-colored hairline. “This was charming?”

There was no way to hold back the laugh, so he didn’t bother. Sabrina was a piece of work all right, and he was starting to see why things hadn’t gone so well with Xavier. But Val wasn’t his brother, who bled dollar signs and slept with his bottom line. “Touché. I’ll work on my delivery.”

“You should work on your CEO costume first. You can try on your Romeo act on your own time. After we get you that inheritance.”

Ms. Corbin had a touch of pit bull, which Val appreciated in someone paid to help him succeed. And maybe in a woman he was planning to get naked eventually too. Jury was still out on that one.

All at once, a fair bit of curiosity surfaced about her goal for this gig. “Are you hoping I’ll share?”

“Not on my radar. Winning is.”

And that told him enough to know that he liked her on his side, not his brother’s. If winning was what turned her on, then he was game. He had something to prove to everyone, even if one of the people who most deserved to eat crow was dead. “Great. Where do we start?”

The look she slid over the length of his torso put a little fire in his belly, a total paradox given the chill still weighing down the air. Even that was more of a turn-on than it should have been, and he was sorry the desk was in the way of her line of sight. He’d be happy to let her stare at him if she wanted to.

“For one, you need a makeover,” she announced with zero fanfare.

Speaking of things not being on the radar... He glanced at his untucked button-down, sleeves rolled up the forearms. Which was comfortable and necessary attire when transferring boxes of macaroni and cheese from the stock room to the kitchen. “What’s wrong with the current me?”

“Dress the part,” she advised, “and you’re halfway there. Act the part and you’re at ninety.”

That sounded suspiciously like business-school rhetoric, something he could do without. Val had never faked anything in his life. “What’s the other ten percent?”

“Show up.”

“Got that locked. I work hard.” He sat back in his chair—Xavier’s chair. LeBlanc Jewelers would never feel like home, and he didn’t intend for it to. “But I play harder. Have dinner with me tonight and find out which one I’m better at showing up for.”

Two (#u689feac2-a21f-5dfa-b2d2-25a44475528d)

There was something fundamentally wrong with Sabrina because a yes had formed on her tongue before she could catch it. Fortunately, she didn’t actually say it. “We’re working together, Mr. LeBlanc. We may eat within shouting distance of each other at some point during our association because food is a necessary part of survival, but it will not be a date, and there will be no playing.”

She kept her face composed through sheer force of will and years of practice. Men of his ilk didn’t take a woman seriously unless she had an iron backbone and an immunity to all forms of flirting. Sabrina had both. Valentino LeBlanc had started testing out her weaknesses sooner than she’d expected, but she’d get through to him. Eventually.

Lazily, he spun his chair as he contemplated her, his dark blue eyes a startling warm contrast to Xavier’s. She only vaguely recalled meeting Val a few months ago, and before she’d walked into the CEO’s office, she’d have said he was the boring brother, the one everyone forgot about.

She’d have been wrong. Shocking, uncomfortable awareness of him had ambushed her from the first.

Because Val was now sitting behind the desk? It was no secret that she’d always been attracted to powerful men. Xavier had checked all her boxes. He was a good-looking man who commanded people’s respect by virtue of his presence alone. You could tell he helmed a vast corporation the moment you looked at him. Authoritative and decisive, he ate weaker people for breakfast, and he was perfect for someone who liked her men unemotional.

Emotions ruined everything, especially when they were hers.

Xavier was exactly her type: a man who could provide plus-one services, interesting conversation, and the occasional sleepover without either one getting the wrong idea. Though she hadn’t gotten that far with Xavier. Instead, she’d lost interest in him almost immediately. Case in point: the moment he’d walked out of the CEO’s office a few minutes ago, she’d forgotten about him.

Valentino LeBlanc checked none of her boxes. Sensuality wafted from him in a long wave that caught her in places it shouldn’t. His hair was too long, his lips too full and his eyes—they had a depth that she’d have never considered attractive. Vulnerability was for losers. But he carried himself in a way that promised there was more to him than the ability to feel things.

Val tilted his chin, and long, inky strands of hair fell against his cheeks. Her fingers itched to sweep it away.

“And you should get a haircut,” she told him decisively. Back on track. Finally.

“Eating is more than a basic need, by the way,” he said, deliberately not letting her change the subject. “I know a lot about food. How it can control you. How the lack of it can cause you to do things you’d never contemplate under normal circumstances. But, in the right scenario, it can become a form of expression. Art. Let me cook for you.”