Wrong Brother, Right Man

And then her ex, John...well, he was a man, wasn’t he? Suffice to say she wasn’t repeating that mistake.

“Food is my job,” he told her and waved a hand to encompass the whole of the office. “This is temporary. A speed bump on the way to my inheritance.”

“Which you will not get if we don’t shift things into your favor,” she reminded him and stood. “Perhaps we should take a tour of the company. Learn some people’s names.”

Get out of this office, where it’s far too easy to imagine non-work-related things happening.

He didn’t move. “I know where accounting is and how to find the bathroom. So I’m good. If we’re going to work together, I should probably know more things about you, not LeBlanc Jewelers. I can read a shareholder report later.”

Fair enough. And she’d practiced her intro enough times to do it while half-asleep. “I’ve been an executive coach for five years, and I worked as a corporate trainer for a Fortune 500 company before that. I’ve worked with the CEO of Evermore and the CFO of DGM Enterprises. I like to knit, and my uncle collects antique cars, so sometimes I go to shows with him on weekends.”

“That’s funny. That’s exactly what the bio on your website says.” Val’s smile had a tinge of smirk in it. Too much of one. “Curious. Did you stick knitting in there because it’s in vogue?”

What was he implying, that she only put that in her bio to make her seem like less of a workaholic? If so, how the hell had he figured that out so quickly? No one had ever questioned that before.

“I can knit. I like to knit.” When she remembered where she’d put her needles. And to buy yarn. Neither of which had happened in about five years.

“No one likes to knit. Knitting is something grandmas do because they can’t handle much excitement. I think you can. And you should.”

That was not a test she had any intention of passing. “I’m sensing that you are not in the frame of mind to start with our coaching sessions today. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

She spun to go find her sanity, but Val beat her to the door. Somehow. It had been a mistake to try to leave, obviously. He leaned on the door in front of her, holding it shut with his body. Forcing her to acknowledge that he had one. The scent of male permeated everything, digging into her marrow.

Suddenly, she could think of nothing but how close he was, how easily she could reach out and touch him. Her skin tingled as his gaze swept her with an almost physical weight, and the awareness she’d been fighting dropped over them both like a heavy cloak.

What was wrong with her that she couldn’t get her brain out of the gutter?

He was a sexy man, no doubt. But not so different from a hundred other men within a stone’s throw, right down to the womanizing bent of his rhetoric. Normally it was easy to keep her distance. Men got the message pretty fast when she froze them out, but she was having the hardest time making ice around a man with so much natural heat.

“Leaving so soon?” he drawled. “We’ve got six months. I’d like to make the most of them. Please stay.”

She crossed her arms over her racing heart, trying to pretend it was because he’d blocked the door and thus her exit. Not because he excited her. He didn’t. Or rather he shouldn’t, which wasn’t the same at all, sadly. “I’m willing to stay if you’ll start taking my skills seriously.”

“I take every inch of you seriously.”

How he managed to turn that into something that sounded like a promise of the carnal variety she’d never know. Probably it was a testament to her state of mind, not his. A guy like Val flirted without conscious thought, almost as a reflex. Woman equaled conquest in his world, so the better course of action would be to ignore his innuendos, get him on a professional footing with her and go on.

“Great,” she said smoothly and wiped her clammy hands as surreptitiously as she could on her skirt. “Then let’s get serious. If you don’t want to take a tour of the building, where would you like to start?”

His gaze drifted along her face to land on her lips, lingering there with such intensity that she felt it way down low in her core, the same way she might if he’d actually traced her mouth with his fingertip. It was ridiculous. Phantom caresses were not on the agenda.

“How do you usually start with clients?” he asked.

Good. Okay. He was in the realm of appropriate work-related conversation. She was the one veering off into things she had no business imagining, like what it would feel like to be kissed by a man who knew his way around a woman. Val did, she could tell.

Sabrina cleared her throat. “Where do you feel your deficiencies are?”

His brows raised. “Who says I have any?”

Ugh. That hadn’t been so smoothly done. Might as well announce that he’d thrown her off-kilter. “What I meant was...you hired me for a reason. You clearly think you have some areas needing improvement. What is the number one thing that you’d like to be different in one month?”

The wicked smile that tore through his expression did not bode well. “I’d like to say that you’d unbend enough to have dinner with me. But I assume you meant related to my position as temporary CEO of LeBlanc. Then I would say I’d like to have command of how the staff expects decisions to be made. In the nonprofit world, we do it as a team. I’m the tie breaker. Is that how it works here?”

“But that’s easy, Val,” she said without thinking. Without even consciously realizing that she’d switched to calling him Val in her head. She rushed on before he could comment or she could stumble over it. “You make the decisions, period, end of story. The rest of the staff doesn’t get a say. That’s the beauty of the corporate world.”

“That doesn’t sound beautiful at all,” Val muttered. “It sounds like a recipe for getting it wrong.”

Speechless, she stared at him, grappling for the right words to explain that, in the corporate world, it was expected that the CEO be domineering and opinionated. But maybe it didn’t have to be that way for Val, not in this case since he was only temporarily the CEO. Xavier was domineering enough for both of them, and he’d be back in the saddle throwing his weight around soon enough.

“I’m not sure how to advise you, then,” she said cautiously. “But we’ll get there.”

She’d only worked with a handful of CEOs, which was part of the reason she’d accepted Val as a client. More executive clients on her résumé could never be a bad thing and, as she’d told him, there was no backup income if she didn’t have a continual stream of customers.

“How will we get there?”

“Together,” she promised with only slightly more confidence than she felt. “I’ve never failed to deliver on a client’s expectations. I’ll work up a plan for the next few weeks, and we can go over that tomorrow.”

“So, essentially you’re saying that the one thing I’m unsure about is something you can’t advise me on. But you’ll have a plan put together tomorrow.” His gaze burned into her, scoring her insides with his particular brand. “Not today.”

Something inside snapped. “What are you implying? That I might not be good at what I do because I haven’t got a list of trite strategies to hand you? My coaching is personalized to each client. I have to evaluate where you are in relation to the corporate culture. That takes more than five minutes.”

“Then, I’m making your job harder by refusing to engage with the rest of the team,” he surmised quietly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

She blinked. Had he just apologized because he hadn’t taken her suggestion to tour the building? “You shouldn’t apologize. Ever.”

His brief smile shouldn’t have smacked her as hard as it did. She hadn’t expected to like Valentino LeBlanc. What was she supposed to do with that?

“Because you’re the forgiving sort?”

“No, because they’re going to eat you alive, Val.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose to cover the swirl that had started up in her stomach, a merry-go-round of confusion and awareness and sheer terror. What had she signed up for with this gig? LeBlanc was poised to become a billion-dollar-a-year company. It needed Xavier, not a man who seemed better suited to be drinking wine at an outdoor trattoria in Venice with a lush Italian film star.

Deep breath. He was paying her to fix that. Quite well.

Val needed her. More than she’d ever have assumed. Executive material he was not, and the odds were stacked against him almost unfairly. It dug under her skin in a wholly different way than the erotic promise that dripped from his pores. The sensual vibe that wound between them needed to go, or she was going to botch this. She couldn’t. Consulting was going to get her to the next level. Specifically, having a nameplate on the door with her name and the title CEO stamped on it. The more she gleaned from experiences with her clients, the easier that would be.

Except Val was watching her with those bedroom eyes that said he was imagining her naked and liked it a whole lot. Men generally weren’t allowed to look at her like that. She shouldn’t let him do it either but, just as she was about to say so, he tilted his head and she got distracted by the way his midnight-colored hair fell into his eyes.

“You don’t think I can do this, do you?” he murmured without a shred of guile. He was genuinely asking.

She nearly groaned. Boy, she had really inspired his confidence, hadn’t she? “I do. I have absolute faith in you. And myself. The problem is...”

Brain-dead all at once, she scouted around for a plausible reason why she’d bobbled their interaction thus far that didn’t sound like he’d come on to her inappropriately when, in reality, he’d mentioned dinner one time. She’d shot him down, he’d ruefully suggested it would be nice if she’d reconsider and they’d moved on. He’d moved on. She was the one stuck on how to haul the frosty distance back between them, an atmosphere that she usually created so easily.

“The problem is,” she repeated, “that I haven’t properly assessed your strengths.”

Yes. That was exactly it. Brain engaged! If they focused on his strengths first instead of the areas for improvement, there’d be less opportunity for her to stick her foot in her mouth again. And it would help her get a handle on him professionally.

“That’s not true.” A smile climbed across his face, and it was fascinating to watch it take over his whole body. What kind of man smiled with every fiber of his being? “You know I can cook.”

Okay. If that’s what he was giving her to work with, fine. “Then tell me how you can use that to succeed here.”

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me?”

She shook her head. “That’s not how coaching works. Does the coach pull the quarterback off the field and start throwing the passes himself? No. He guides the player according to his knowledge of strategy, honing it to the specific needs of that athlete. That’s what I do.”

“Sounds like I’m expected to do all the work,” he suggested with a wink that should have been smarmy. It wasn’t.

He was far more charming than she’d ever admit. “There’s absolutely no question about that, Mr. LeBlanc. You have a very long battle ahead of you, especially given that you’ve had no exposure to the corporate world. Most men in your position have had years to become...”

“Hard?” he supplied handily. “And I liked it better when you called me Val.”

Brittle was the word that had sprung to mind. But from where, she had no idea. CEOs were resilient, resourceful and, above all, in charge. “To become acclimated. It’s a different world than the one you’re probably used to.”

At that point, he crossed his arms, and it was as telling a gesture as anything he’d done thus far. “What do you think I’m used to?”

The defensive posture put her on edge. She was stumbling again, with few handrails to grasp. He wasn’t a typical client who wanted to leapfrog over the men ahead of him in line to the corner office and had hired her to give him an edge. Val was clearly sensitive, with land mines and trip wires in odd places. Things she had little experience with.

But she couldn’t tell him that.

“You’re used to an environment where people are working toward common good.” She assumed so anyway. All she knew about his charity was that it fed homeless people, an admirable cause, but likely had nothing in common with the corporate world. “LeBlanc is for-profit, and that makes it instantly more treacherous. If you want to succeed, you’re going to have to listen to me and do exactly as I say.”

His brows lifted. “Now that’s the best proposition I’ve had all day. By all means, Ms. Corbin, I’m at your complete command. Tell me what you’d like me to do.”

Her brain automatically added to you to the end of the sentence, and she flushed. He hadn’t meant that. Had he? “Call in your c-suite, and let’s get the lay of the land.”

With a nod, he levered his hips away from the door, grazing her in all the right places—wrong places—as he reached behind him to open the door. Scrambling backward, she landed in the center of his spacious office. Her pulse raced as if she’d recently lapped the building, but why she couldn’t fathom. He was just a man.

He called out through the open door to his admin, asked her to gather together the staff that reported to him and swung the door wide. The cloak of awareness eased a bit, and she dragged air into her lungs. Val strode past her to take a seat at the desk again.

As people began to file into the room, his expression hardened into something more suited to a CEO. Where had that come from? Fascinated, she edged toward the back wall as LeBlanc’s vice-presidents ringed the desk.

“Thanks for joining me on short notice,” Val told the eight men and women who had answered the summons, meeting each one’s gaze in exactly the same manner that she would have advised him to if he’d asked. “We’re in for an interesting ride over the next few months. I’m not Xavier, nor do I pretend to be, but I will keep this company afloat. I hope you’ll all stick around to see how it plays out. If not, there’s the door.”

As Val jerked his head toward it, Sabrina’s pulse faltered for an entirely different reason. Val had morphed before her eyes into a force to be reckoned with.

He’d been toying with her. Throat tight, she watched him lay down his authority with the people he needed most to have his back, struggling to rearrange everything she’d learned about him today.

Valentino LeBlanc’s middle name might well be chameleon. Which made him dangerous in more ways than one. She could not trust him, that much was clear and, come hell or high water, she had to stop letting him blindside her.

Three

The next morning, Val arrived at LeBlanc shortly after six. No one else had arrived yet, which had been his goal. Gave him time to acclimate, which had been the number one necessity he’d gleaned from Sabrina yesterday.

As he settled into the CEO’s chair with a cup of coffee—which he’d bet half his inheritance was not Fair Trade or even very good—from the executive suite’s breakroom, he had to hand it to Ms. Corbin. Acclimation was indeed a great first step.

Now, if only she could keep up a string of next steps, he’d be golden.

The office was still soulless, which he’d long attributed to the fact that his father didn’t have one, but Xavier seemed to have followed in Edward LeBlanc’s footsteps in more ways than one. Now that Val was firmly in the CEO’s chair, he’d started to wonder if it wasn’t the other way around: the corporation had sucked the heart from both father and brother, as opposed to the corporation being a reflection of the men.

That wasn’t going to happen to Val. He still felt like crap for his dictatorial throwdown to the executive staff yesterday. It had been easier to channel his father than he’d liked to admit. All he’d had to do was envision the hundreds of times he’d been called to appear before Edward LeBlanc to explain whatever debacle his father had caught wind of and been disappointed by this time.

So that was the trick? Just act like a conscienceless jerk and profits flowed? Totally not worth the gutting. It weighed on him that he’d conformed, falling into the mold that seemed to be what everyone expected from him, including Sabrina. That wasn’t how he wanted to do things nor the kind of man he was. But what if that was the point of the will—to show Val once and for all that he didn’t belong in the LeBlanc family?

If so, Val hoped his father had a front-row seat in hell for the fireworks.

He’d brought in a sweet potato plant from home that he’d grown himself, and the green spade-shaped leaves made him smile. The potato had rolled from a bulk bag at LBC and, by the time he’d found it behind a pallet of dried fruit, it had already sprouted. It was a crime to waste food in Val’s book, so now it had new life as his one and only office decoration.

For about an hour, Val fought with his laptop, eventually managing to figure out how to log in and set up email without breaking anything, all while resisting the urge to check in on LBC. Then Xavier blew through the door.

He stopped short when he spied Val ensconced in his chair. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here so early.”

“Surprise,” Val said mildly. “I could say the same, only with an at all at the end. Don’t you have a food bank to run?”

His brother’s expression left little doubt as to his opinion about the switch. “I left in a rush yesterday and forgot some paperwork.”

Xavier stood inside the door of his office, running a hand over his unshaven jaw, halfway between his old world and the portal to his new one. It was the first time in Val’s recent memory that his brother had let his appearance go. They didn’t see each other all that often—by design—but Val would bet that Xavier always shaved before coming to LeBlanc. What did it say that he’d change his habits to take Val’s place?

“I’ll take care of any paperwork that has to do with LeBlanc,” Val advised him. “Just point it out. My job now.”

Xavier frowned. “Temporarily. Besides, the will didn’t say it was against the rules to check in.”

Check in equaled checking up on Val, no doubt.

“No. And I’m not arguing that point.” Easing back in his chair, Val tamped down his rising temper. “But this is mine, for better or worse, for the next six months. If you have an issue, why not let me handle it?”

Thank you, Sabrina. She was going to be far more valuable than he’d dreamed and, as his first act toward conquering the task laid out in the will, hiring her had been a good one.

“Fine.” Xavier strode to the bookcase along the south wall and pulled open the glass door, extracted a binder that was a good four inches thick and dropped it onto the desk with a thud. “These are printed copies of contracts we’re—you’re—negotiating with the government of Botswana to purchase interests in diamond exploration. Good luck.”

Val’s head immediately began to swim. “You purchase interests in exploration?”

“You do,” Xavier emphasized, heavy on the sarcasm. “Baptism by fire, my brother.”

“Wait.” Val quelled the urge to massage his temples as he sorted through how helpless it would sound if he admitted that he couldn’t handle this. “Can you tell me who’s the best person on your staff to advise me about negotiating with an African government?”

“That would be me.” Xavier’s gaze glittered as he crossed his arms and stared at Val. “I always handle the African government because it requires delicacy. And experience. The politics there are beyond anything I’ve seen anywhere else in the world, especially if you want to keep LeBlanc far away from the blood-diamond regions. Hint—you do.”

Great. So Val’s initial thought about being set up for failure had been dead-on. Not only did it extend from beyond the grave but his brother was planning to perpetuate what their old man had started. “No problem. I’m not above a little research. Are there other contracts of a similar nature in that bookcase?”

Xavier nodded once, a curt move that said he didn’t like giving up information but liked the idea of Val taking LeBlanc down even less. “Anything I need to know about LBC before I go?”

“Just that you can’t treat my people like you do the ones here,” Val said easily, not that he was worried about anyone on his staff getting bent out of shape. He’d debriefed them all a few days ago, begged them to give Xavier a chance and told them if it seemed like he wasn’t getting it to carry on in Val’s stead until he could return to the fold.

LBC had stellar, committed people on board, who cared about making life better for those who needed help. They’d keep on doing that whether or not they had the necessary donations to fund the operation, albeit on a much smaller scale if Xavier failed to complete his task. The tenure of the CEO of LeBlanc Jewelers there would be but a blip.

But Val couldn’t resist the opportunity to make things a little more difficult for his brother. “Remember, a lot of the people involved with LBC are volunteers.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Xavier’s scowl could have peeled paint from the walls if there’d been any. Instead, they were covered with this odd wood-grain paneling that always reminded Val of his father’s lawyer’s office. “Are you implying that I might drive them off?”

“Yeah, that’s not even a remote possibility, is it?” The sarcasm might have been a little thick, but come on. Xavier had to realize how he came across. “We do a lot of compromising at LBC. Some months are leaner than others. We try to maintain an even influx of capital but, when you’re dependent on donations, you can’t plan as well. Remember that flexibility is your friend.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Try not to make more of a mess than I can conceivably clean up, all right?”

“Well, there go all my plans to flush my inheritance down the toilet.” Val shrugged as if he didn’t care, which was how he’d long played it with those in his family who saw him as nothing but a dreamer, who couldn’t cut it in the corporate world. Which might be less of a stretch than he’d have credited before today. “Hey, if I screw up, you’re still good. Just do your thing, and you’ll have half a billion dollars to play with.”

“Yeah, that’s comforting.” Xavier pulled a pen from the holder at the corner of the desk and pocketed it. “That was a gift from the daughter of a Russian ambassador. I wouldn’t want to lose track of it.”

Val snorted. As if stealing pens from LeBlanc was one of his top priorities. “Sabrina’s due any minute, FYI. Make yourself scarce unless you want to say hello.”

“You think it bothers me if you sleep with her?”

“I didn’t until now,” Val lied. “Do tell.”

“She’s frigid, man. You’ll have better luck with the president of Botswana than you will with her.”

“Wanna bet?” Val asked pleasantly because, while Sabrina dripped ice cubes as a matter of course, the glimpses of heat between them had kept him awake far longer last night than it probably should have.

And the stakes had gone up. Xavier was still pissed about Sabrina dumping him, which meant Val was doubly interested in rubbing it in his brother’s face when he did score.

His brother shook his head. “We’ve got enough on the line already, don’t you think? Besides, if you do bag her, it can only help you.”

“And perhaps you should consider that the reason she dumped you is because you’re an ass. I’m not,” Val shot back, a little more hotly than he’d intended, but the sentiment was warranted. Sabrina was a lot of things but not a faceless notch on the bed post. No woman in Val’s rearview was. He loved being with all the women he’d slept with, loved learning their bodies, their laughs. Quantity did not preclude quality. The more the merrier.

“Which is going to bite you,” Xavier informed him. “Bleeding hearts aren’t her type. They don’t increase profits eight percent, even in six years, let alone six months.”