The Highest Price to Pay Read Online Free PDF Page A

it, trying to make the tingling sensation ease.
    “I am not overly concerned with fashion. I leave these sorts of decisions to you.”
    “I have decision-making power?”
    He turned to face her, the impact of his golden eyes hitting her like a physical force. “If I sat down at one of these sewing machines you would get nothing. I leave you to your expertise, you leave me to mine.”
    That was more than she’d expected from him. Far more. And yet, it didn’t exactly inspire warm fuzzy feelings. He was right. If she walked, he had nothing. Nothing but sewing machines he didn’t know how to use. An interesting realization. She’d underestimated her own power in the situation. And she would use it. She had to.
    “So you’re not expecting to dress my models for me?” she asked, keeping her voice stilted, cool.
    “I never said I was.”
    “Your reputation goes before you,” she said archly. “I thought I was dealing with a pirate. Someone who makes his living by preying on the bounty of others.”
    He chuckled, a rusty sound, as though he were unaccustomed to it. “All those stories you’ve read about me.”
    “They aren’t true?” she asked, hoping, for some reason, that they might be lies. That he wasn’t the callous, unfeeling man the media made him out to be.
    “Every last one of them is true,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers. “
All
of them. My decisions are made for my own benefit. It is not charity that I allow you this measure of control, it is what’s best for the company, and what’s best for my wallet. That’s the beginning and end of it.”
    It wasn’t spoken like a threat. His voice was smooth, even as ever. Controlled. He was simply stating what was. But just like that, the glimmer of hope was replaced with a heavy weight that settled in her stomach, made her feel slightly sick.
    “Right, well, I guess I’ll take what I can.” She hated that he made her feel so nervous, so unsure. She usually did better than this. She was accustomed to taking command of whatever room she was in, accustomed to having the control over conversation and interaction.
    She didn’t seem to have it in his presence. She couldn’t even control her body’s response to him. She wasn’t even sure what to call the response. He scared her, which made her angry. He was attractive and when he looked at her the appraisal of his compelling gaze made her stomach twist. It was confusing. A mass of jumbled feelings she just didn’t have time to sort through.
    She breathed in deep, hoping to find the numbness that helped her get through life. That helped her get through uncomfortable moments. That helped her deal with people who wanted to hurt her.
    She couldn’t find it, couldn’t shield herself from the things he was making her feel. He looked at her, looked at her as though he could see right through all the walls she’d spent the past eleven years building to partition herself off from the world. And she felt naked. Like he could see the worst of her scars, into her, past the damage on her skin.
    “Do you have pictures of this dress?” he asked, pulling her out of her thoughts, his focus on the business at hand helping rebuild some of her crumbling defenses.
    “I take pictures of every piece. I have them in my portfolio.”
    “Excellent. Email it to me and I’ll send it to Karen at
Look.
”
    “Yeah, I’ll do that.”
    He turned to go then. Without even saying goodbye. It was like his mere move to exit should be sufficient. Standing in her own studio, he managed to make her feel like she was the one who had been dismissed.
    She gritted her teeth against rising annoyance. Annoyance and something else that made her feel hot all over, made her face prickle.
    She opened her laptop again and got ready to send the email to Blaise, using the address he’d so helpfully provided on the loan paperwork, those documents that gave him so much power.
    So much power over her. She hated that. Hated him a little bit,