Gone With the Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page A

his desk, folded his arms and crossed his ankles. He exuded dominance, raw and unyielding. “Someone like me?”
    Oh boy. She teetered between telling him what she really thought of him and playing the part of a good little secretary so she could sharpen the dagger she held behind his back.
    Decisions, decisions.
    Why did he have to look so polished in that suit? The stark contrast between the baby-blue hue of his shirt and the fire in his dark eyes was startling. His good looks were more than distracting—they hindered her thought process completely. Is that how he got away with screwing people out of their livelihoods?
    Damn if she’d let him screw with her emotions, too. She pulled a rein on her rapidly firing libido and cinched it around her desire for vengeance.
    “I mean that you’re a savvy businessman. You play with numbers, figures, and loans all day. You play the stock market, and investors of foreign trade, but playing with someone’s emotions? That’s just plain evil.”
    His face didn’t twitch, flinch, flex. Nothing. He barely responded to her presence at all. Like the kiss last night never happened.
    She shouldn’t be feeling like this. He was a serpent in Italian threads. A corporate drone, stuck in the business of trampling kind, hardworking people to advance his own profits. Didn’t he care to talk about what happened with the building he’d presumably acquired? Didn’t he care to discuss how it was possible that she held a deed to the same building?
    “You didn’t think I was evil last night,” Drake said plainly. “Yet the moment you find out who I am, you have no problem insulting me. I’m sorry about lying to you last night, but I thought you’d act differently if I told you who I really was.”
    “Damn Skippy.”
    “Is that a yes?”
    She groaned. Was lack of humor a requisite on the Wilder Financial application? “If I’d known you were my boss, I would’ve been a completely different person. I wouldn’t have finished off that bottle of wine, I wouldn’t have let myself get so tipsy, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have kissed you.”
    His brow furrowed as he seemed to toss over her words. “Tell me, if you think I’m so evil and hate my name so much, why are you working in a building with my name on it?”
    This was it. The moment she’d been waiting for.
    Emelia wanted him to hear her out as she told him about how she’d bought the Knight Owl from her neighbor eight years ago. She wanted to tell him to stick his “legal” plot map in his pipe and smoke it. She’d given years of her life maintaining the Knight Owl and had struggled to keep the bar true to its historically famous roots. She wasn’t about to give it up to Wilder Financial so they could demolish the building and turn it into another stale coffee joint.
    But as Emelia stared into Drake’s warm, mocha-toned eyes, she caught sight of the man from last night. The man who showed her that passion wasn’t something that developed over time, or something you had to work at to achieve. True, skin-searing passion was something you either had, or you didn’t.
    With Drake, she had it.
    “Things are changing in my bar, and I’m struggling to catch up,” she said, offering a smidgeon of truth. “Profits are low, expenses are high, and I needed other income. My temp company placed me here.”
    “But you’ve hated working here so far?”
    Emelia nodded slowly.
    “I see.”
    Maybe if she worked as Mr. Wilder’s secretary for a week, they would build a mutual respect. When he realized there were hearts behind the businesses he was shutting down, maybe he would be more inclined to listen and understand what she’d been saying all along.
    She’d purchased the Knight Owl free and clear.
    It wasn’t her fault that her neighbor took off with the money and then claimed to have sold the entire building to Wilder Financial. The least Mr. Wilder could do was look over her documents and let her keep the bar that was