ForHisSakeBlankEditionHTML Read Online Free PDF

to me and swear she was mine. I pressed
the heels of my palms against my eyes, wondering if I still had a packet of
aspirin in my jacket pocket and where I could get a stiff drink to wash it down
if I did.
    “Headache?”
    My hands came away from my face, and my eyes flew
open. I had imagined that voice, willed it into being. She couldn’t actually
have been…
    I twisted my head to look over my shoulder, then turned to face her. Chloe. In
a white blouse and conservative black skirt suit, but with all that wild brown
hair loose about her shoulders and her movements as fluid as though she’d just
come from the balcony dance floor after a samba lesson with Tia, she was a
vision of two worlds overlapping. The serious East Coast
environmental lawyer and the sensuous submissive who always melted against me
when I pulled her hair and ground against her while calling her Miss Bloom.
    “Chloe, what in God’s name are you doing here? Did…
Did the seniors bring you in on this? You agreed to that? I didn’t ask them to,
really.” I’d never have forced her to be a part of this.
    She wouldn’t answer me until she stood no more than
a breath away, and I caught myself swaying so slightly toward her. Chloe gave
me a nervous, even guilty little smile then. “No, they don’t know I’m here.”
    “Then why…?”
    She reached up with those pale, delicate fingers and
began to rub little circles along my aching temples. The questions that were
backed up in my throat dissipated, until all that was left was a groan under my
breath.
    “That depends” she said, “on how you answer my questions.”
    The involuntary crook of my brow sent a flare of
pain through my head. “And those are?” I grumbled.
    “Which of the allegations are true, Adrian? I need
to know.”
    My eyes sank closed, unable to resist the warm
languor spreading out from her fingertips and through the muscles in my face. I
knew she shouldn’t have been here, but she was, and she felt so damn good just
touching me, just standing near.
    “I did bribe a public official in Natal, over the
demonstration project permits, and I did file false environmental documents for
the eco park .”
    “But why? You could’ve gotten those permits without resorting to bribery or falsifying
the environmental studies.”
    Finally opening my
eyes, I trailed my fingertips along the back of her smooth hands and gave her a
small, chagrined smile. “Because with twenty thousand acres involved, that
could easily have taken five years, even ten. So we only did the studies for
the areas immediately surrounding the project sites, and I paid people to
overlook the discrepancies. I was… I was just too bloody impatient to take the
long road.” Too eager to prove I wasn’t my father’s son. And now it was going
to cost me everything. “This is my fault, Chloe, completely.” Not Penn’s or
Daniel Vaz’s . They might have been holding the gun to
my head now, but I had loaded it for them.
    Only when Chloe stepped
up flush with me and looked into my face did I realize I had bowed my head and
begun to recoil from her. “That’s it?” she asked. “Out of all
the charges, those of the only ones with actual merit?”
    “Yeah,” I breathed.
“But they’re enough, aren’t they?”
    “In that case, I’m here for you , Adrian. We’re going to get
you out of this.”
    I tilted my head and
peered hard at her, at those deep brown eyes rimmed with such thick black
lashes, at the determined line set between those lush lips. Then I shook away
thoughts that belonged back in the city where we’d said goodbye four nights
ago, that belonged on Ilha de Flor. “If the senior partners didn’t call you
here… Chloe, you’re going to get yourself in serious trouble, and I won’t allow
it.”
    One corner of her mouth
curled upward. “Don’t raise your voice. It will make the headache worse.”
    “And just how do you
propose to help me by losing your job and getting yourself censured?”
    “I