Negotiating Skills (5 page)

“
I could see how that would
be important,” she said quickly to fill the silence.

“
Good,” he said cracking the
barest of smiles at her.

“
So you can understand how
what happened last night would distress me on more than one
level.”

“
I don’t see…”

“
You saw me in a vulnerable
position,” he said cutting into her response, “At this moment, just
knowing that gives you the upper hand and the only way I plan on
continuing our relationship is to take it back.”

Veronica chose her words carefully.
There was a gleam that shone through his eyes when he spoke now
that was beginning to make her uneasy.

It was obvious that there was nothing
she could say to convince him that what happened last night could
be forgotten. She even agreed with him, but she couldn’t tell him
that. With a retainer contract on the line she had too much to
lose. She took a calm breath, licked her dry lips, and cleared her
throat before speaking.

“
How exactly, do you plan on
doing that,” she asked.

“
By tilting the odds back in
my favor,” he said leaning back in his chair and giving her his
first genuine smile since she walked into the room.

“
To be perfectly blunt
Veronica, last night you saw mine, now it’s time for you to show me
yours.”

Veronica was pretty sure she
was doing a damn good impersonation of a gold fish at that moment.
There was no way that she could have heard him right. Victor Rossi
did not just ask her to
show him
hers
.
No way no
how
.

“
Excuse me,” she asked. The
question sounded lame even to her ears. She cleared her throat and
tried again.

“
You can’t be serious,” she
said.

“
Oh I’m definitely serious,”
he said.

“
This isn’t grade school.
You can’t just ask me to drop my pants just because I got a look at
you in a compromising position,” she exclaimed.

“
Oh, I’m not asking you to
drop your pants,” he said.

“
You’re not,” she asked.
Veronica had another moment of relief before Victor leaned forward
and spoke again.

“
I want you to pull up your
skirt, take off your panties and hand them over to me,” he said
holding her shocked gaze.

“
And I want you to do that
every time you meet with me. I want the knowledge that you’re as
laid bare as I was last night.”

“
You’re crazy,” she
exclaimed. She didn’t bother trying to hide her anger. What type of
person went around demanding panties as retribution?

“
I’m not going to hand
anything over to you except my foot up your,”

“
Think really hard before
you refuse this contract. You saw me in more than just a
compromising position last night Veronica. Just be glad that I’m
not asking you to put on a reciprocal show,” he interrupted
harshly.

“
This is blackmail,” she
spat out.

“
Semantics,” he responded
coolly.

Veronica sat in angry silence for
several minutes just staring at Victor. The man was completely
insane. She dropped her gaze to the retainer contract.

She wanted badly to just get up and
walk away, but he was right. The money from the contract was hard
to ignore. The retainer alone was a big boon, but to have a company
as large as Nile Enterprises in her portfolio was a huge deal. It
gave her business a level of legitimacy that would otherwise have
taken her several years to obtain.

She stared down at the contract a few
minutes more before she made her final decision. In the end it all
came down to how badly she wanted her business to succeed. She
would agree to Victor’s insane demand, but not without stating some
ground rules of her own.

With her decision made, she
straightened her back and locked her gaze firmly onto Victor’s cold
green eyes.

“
I won’t sleep with you,”
she said calmly.

“
I don’t believe I asked for
that pleasure,” he replied, quirking his eyebrow in a way that
Veronica was finding increasingly annoying.

She pressed her lips together firmly.
He was behaving like a jackass. She couldn’t believe that she had
spent all that time fantasizing about such a ruthless
jerk.

“
And no one else will be
aware of this…arrangement except the two of us,” she
continued.

“
I’ve never been one to
discuss private business matters with outside parties,” he said
with a slight smile playing across his lips.

“
Fine,” she said as she
dropped her gaze from his and reached into her purse to pull out a
pen. She pulled the contract forward and signed the bottom page
with hands she fought to keep steady from shaking. After she placed
the pen down, she couldn’t prevent her hands from clutching tightly
on the cool glass top of Victor’s desk.

She pulled in a shaky breath and
raised her gaze back to his. She kept her eyes steady on him as she
pushed back her chair and began to raise her skirt.

“
Not so fast,” he said
harshly, his words halting her movement.

Veronica let her skirt fall back down
to her knees. For a split second, Veronica again thought that
Victor had changed his mind, but his eyes remained cold and she
knew that wasn’t the case.

“
The deal is that you would
show me yours, so come here,” he said gesturing to his side of the
desk.

If it weren’t for his cold gaze
Veronica almost believed that his voice had grown huskier. She
locked her knees to keep them from trembling as she made her way
around his desk.

“
Continue,” he said when she
reached his chair. She watched and struggled hard not to reach out
and slap his smirking face as he leaned back in his chair and
rested his folded hands across his flat stomach.

Veronica felt her knees tremble and
her stomach quaver at his focused stare and tried not to let her
surprise at her body’s reaction show.

As pissed off as she was at his
demands, it seemed as if her body had yet to receive the message
that the recent object of her obsession had turned from a sexy
crush to an arrogant ass. Even now standing in front of him about
to submit to his ludicrous demand, she couldn’t keep a warm flush
from spreading throughout her body and a lick of desire settle in
her stomach.

She didn’t know who she was angrier
with at this point, herself for being so aroused, or Victor for
putting her in such a demeaning position.

“
Sometime this century
please,” he said arrogantly. He no longer looked in her eyes.
Instead he kept his eyes fixed squarely below her waist.

Steeling herself against the need to
physically hurt him, Veronica kept her gaze trained on him as she
clasped her skirt in her fists and pulled it up to her waist. She
saw Victor stiffen and hoped that he was just as uncomfortable as
she was.

She held her skirt up with one hand
and reached down to hook her fingers into the hip of her blue lace
thong with the other. She paused only briefly before pulling it
down over her lips and releasing her fingers to let the patch of
lace pool at her feet.

She was about to smooth her skirt back
down over her hips when Victor’s hands reached forward in a flash
and grabbed her hips firmly in his hands.

“
I gave you more than just a
few seconds worth of a look last night,” he said
huskily.

“
I’m pretty sure I’m owed
more than just a quick peek now,” he said as he moved her over
slightly.

Veronica felt the cool glass top of
his desk graze her ass as he shifted her over. Her muscles felt
frozen. The moment his hands clasped her hips she felt such a rush
of heat she was afraid to speak. It burned so quickly, she
struggled to keep it from fogging up her mind
completely.

She stood quietly, locked in a shocked
haze of heat, as his hands leaned her back against his desk. The
movement caused her legs to splay open slightly, just enough to
give him a full view of her pussy.

His thumbs stroked across her hips and
down slowly to the crease of her inner thighs. He kept his touch
light, his fingers never touching the aching juncture between her
legs.

“
I wouldn’t have figured you
for the clean shaven look,” he murmured.

His softly spoken words jolted her out
of her frozen state. She stiffened abruptly and straightened away
from the desk.

“
Fuck you,” she said as she
shoved his hands away and smoothed her skirt back down to her
knees.

She marched back around to the other
side of the desk and crossed her arms protectively around her
chest.

“
The VP’s have arrived sir,”
came Marie’s disembodied voice into the room.

Victor reached across his desk and
pressed his intercom button.

“
Go ahead and show them in,”
he said smoothly.

Veronica watched as he swiveled his
chair to the side and leaned forward to grasp something from the
floor. She bit back an outraged shriek when he straightened up and
she saw he held her blue thong in his hand. He rolled it up quickly
and stuffed it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He
chuckled huskily at her outraged look.

“
It’s show time,” he said
softly enough for her only her ears as Marie ushered in the
executives for the demo presentation.

Several hours later
Veronica was trying
hard to pull herself
out of the rabbit hole that had become her life. She sat at a
private table nursing an amaretto sour in one of Downtown Miami’s
most posh restaurants.

Normally she would be happy to be
sipping a drink after a long and stressful day. Unfortunately she
wasn’t by herself or surrounded by friends, instead she sat
panty-less, surrounded by Victor Rossi and the VPs of Nile
Enterprises.

There wasn’t enough alcohol in the
world that could make the situation less uncomfortable. She knew
because since they arrived at the restaurant after her
presentation, Veronica began trying to drown out her frustration
with drinks.

It was times like these that she
cursed her Haitian ancestry. She often joked with her friends that
rum was such a staple in her country’s diet that it would take more
than a gallon of alcohol to get her good and drunk. It wasn’t
really that far from the truth.

She was on her tenth drink and only
had the slightest of buzzes. She frowned down at her drink and
figured she would have to stop soon before she got liver poisoning.
She shifted in her seat to uncross and re-cross her legs while
trying hard not to blush when the motion reminded her of her in
flagrante state.

Unfortunately, when she shifted, her
thighs lightly brushed Rossi who somehow managed to seat himself
next to her when they first arrived at the restaurant.

She gritted her teeth and resisted the
urge to turn and scowl at him.

He was completely to blame
for her miserable mood. In the course of one afternoon he had
managed to save her business and ruin her mental health all with
one request.
Now it’s time for you to show
me yours
. She gave a mental
snort.

Ignoring her earlier decision to stop
drinking, Veronica raised her glass to her lips and downed the rest
of her drink.

“
If this project continues
to stay within the timelines, we should have no problem pushing
this out to all of our properties by the end of the
year.”

Veronica swiveled her head to look at
Adrian Garcia, Ross’s VP of finance. The man had been in an excited
mood ever since they left the office. The others nodded their heads
and continued to speak excitedly to each other.

Under normal circumstances, Veronica
would be enjoying herself and basking in the praise the VPs heaped
on her. After completing her presentation, the VPs expressed how
pleased they were with her progress. Apparently, the company was
poised to take over a large property management firm in Georgia
named Continental.

A key factor in the takeover timeline
was how quickly Nile Enterprises could integrate Continental’s
finance and accounting department with their own. The new features
she recently added to the application would make that integration
virtually seamless.

When it was suggested they go out to
celebrate, Veronica tried to excuse herself, but Rossi had insisted
she attend. She briefly considered arguing with him, but the
excitement of the VPs and the hard look in Rossi’s eyes, told her
to save her energy.

Thankfully the restaurant was only a
short walk from the building that housed Niles Enterprises. The
moment they arrived, the group was ushered into a private section
of the restaurant and been given the VIP treatment.

The service they received didn’t
surprise Veronica. If anything it served to increase her anger,
reminding her that Rossi was a rich man used to people tripping
over themselves to please him.