Page 8 of Boardroom Sins

“I have a proposition for you,” he says abruptly.

I blink. Add that to the list of words I don’t have the capacity to process right now, like “Stop,” “No,” and “Please don’t.”Proposition. What’s that?

I decide to ask that exact question. “A proposition?”

“A special project.” He taps ash from his cigarette onto the floor. No one’s going to tell him he can’t.Isure as hell am not. “You would report directly to me.”

My brain continues to stutter. “To you? But I work for?—”

“Kir.” He says his son’s name like it tastes sour. “Yes. I’m aware. This would be different.”

“Different how?”

“You’d be transferred to my office. Better title, better compensation.” He pauses, looks around, and adds, “Better hours, presumably.”

I almost laugh. Then I almost cry. Fortunately, I don’t do either one. I get the feeling Mr. Lazarev wouldn’t appreciate something as mushy as female feelings. “And what would I be doing, exactly?”

His eyes don’t leave mine. “Nothing you can’t handle.”

It sounds like a promotion.

It also sounds like something I should probably run very far away from.

“Can I think about it?” I ask.

“No.”

“That’s not really?—”

“Fair?” There’s that twitch again. It’s no closer to a smile than it was the first time around. “No. You’re right. It isn’t.”

He waits. The cigarette burns down between his fingers.

I realize, with a sinking feeling, that this isn’t actually a question at all.

“I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“Everyone has choices, Ms. Everett.” He drops the cigarette on the floor and grinds it out with the toe of his shoe. “Some are just less pleasant than others.”

He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a card. It’s plain white, heavy stock, with nothing on it but a phone number in raised black ink.

“Monday morning,” he says. “Eight o’clock. Fiftieth floor.”

I take the card. My fingers brush his. His skin is warm. Warmer than I expected. Almost scalding, actually. That’s surprising: I would’ve expected the man who looked like winter incarnate to be as cold as winter, too.

“And if I don’t show up?” I ask, shocked even as the words leave my lips.

I wish I could take them back. Am I insane? Why am I rebelling against a man who (a) just saved my life and (b) could crush my skull between his fingers like a grape?”

Lukas is already turning away and walking toward the elevator. But when he hears me speak, he pauses and looks back over his shoulder. And for the first time, his lips curve into something that’s tantalizingly close to a smirk.

“I think you know better than that.”

The elevator doors open. He steps inside. Turns to face me.

“Oh, and Ms. Everett?”

I can’t move. “Yes?”