“Now.”
Clearly Henry knew something I didn’t, because unlike me he didn’t appear at all afraid of Caine. “Of course.” He chuckled and then winked at me in a way that worked for him even more than the debonair smile. “Good luck.”
I waited until the door had closed behind Henry before I took in a deep breath and braced myself to interact with Caine. I noted his eyes flickered up quickly from my legs to my face.
I shivered under that Prince of Darkness stare of his.
“In two seconds you’ll be following him out of the door.”
You can do this. Make him hear you, Lex. “Throw me out and I will come back quicker than a boomerang.”
“I daresay a boomerang won’t fare too well against a locked door, Miss Holland.”
“Lock the door and I’ll find other, more creative ways to torment you. I have nothing left to lose at this point.”
Caine heaved an irritated sigh. “You have one minute. Use it wisely.”
God, he really was an arrogant SOB. I pushed down my irritation, reminding myself who he was and what he’d been through. “Two things. First, I lost my job.”
His response to that was to shrug and relax against his desk. He crossed his arms over his chest and then one ankle over the other and hit me with an insouciant “So?”
“So … it’s because of what happened at the shoot.”
“Then I suggest you act more professionally in the future. Now I have lunch to attend to …” He gestured to the door.
“Look.” I held up my hands in something akin to surrender. “I apologize. That’s the second thing. I apologize sincerely—”
“Fucking say it and I will throw you out,” he warned.
“For ambushing you,” I hurried to finish.
He relaxed only somewhat.
“I shouldn’t have done that. I had no idea we were doing a photo shoot with you. I showed up on-set and you were there and I’m in a weird place and I acted emotionally and it was really unfair to you.”
Caine merely blinked at my rambling.
“So I’m sorry,” I finished.
“Fine.” He stood up, his eyes moving over my shoulder, not concealing his impatience.
I took that “fine” as an acceptance of my apology and forged ahead again. “But the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.”
I was treated to another heavy sigh from him. “Tell me again why I should care if the daughter of the man who gave my mother the cocaine that killed her no longer has a job.”
I flinched. “My father’s actions were not mine.”
“Same blood runs in your veins.”
Any hope I had of battling my irritation with his arrogance went flying out the window. “Oh? Cocaine addict, are you?”
I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth.
“Get out.” The words were said with barely leashed fury.
“Okay, okay,” I hurried to defuse that land mine. “That was a shitty thing to say. I’m really sorry. But you’re presuming to know who I am because of who my father is, and that’s shitty too.”
There was no response.
Cautiously I took a step toward the brooding businessman. “Look, you didn’t just get me fired. My boss lost Mogul and two other clients because of your ire. That means my boss blacklisted me. I won’t get another job in the industry again unless you fix this. Just … let Benito do the shoot. Please.”
A weighted silence fell between us as we stared at each other. I was pretty sure (or at least I hoped) Caine was silent because he was considering my request. The silence, however, just afforded me even more of a chance to soak in his rugged, dark handsomeness. Was it possible he was getting better-looking?
That was a problem for me.
My mom had always been so bowled over by my dad’s looks that she felt inferior to him, like maybe she was the lucky one to be with him and not the other way around. I’d hated that and I didn’t need a therapist to tell me it was the reason that I tended to date guys who were attractive but not so attractive they were intimidating. More important, my ex-boyfriends (and it wasn’t like there were lots of those) all made it clear that they thought they were punching above their weight by dating me. I didn’t look for that because I needed to feel more attractive than my partner. It was because I didn’t want to feel inferior.
Not like Mom had.
Which was why my reaction to Caine was an anomaly. I could admit when a guy was a hot guy. But I was never attracted to hot guys, because I’d hard-wired my brain not to shoot off all the chemicals that would make me attracted to hot guys.
With Caine, though … well, my thoughts had wandered into the indecent since the moment we met (if I was honest, maybe even before then) and I could feel my skin prickling with awareness under his fierce regard.
“No.”
No? “What do you mean no?”
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “It’s one of the most commonly used words in the English language, Miss Holland. Shocking that someone who doesn’t understand its meaning would find herself unemployable.”
I ignored his sarcasm and flipped my hair over my shoulder with what I hoped was an air of defiance. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
Caine’s already dark eyes shadowed with irritation as he said with a threatening calmness, “You’ll take it and you’ll get out before I personally remove you from my office.”
I shivered again at the thought of him putting those big hands of his anywhere near me. I quickly threw that thought aside and replied, “Please be fair.”
The air around him thickened with anger. “Fair?” he said, his voice hoarse. “What part of you being here is fair? I’m going to ask you to leave one more time, and if you don’t I will physically remove you.”
I closed my eyes, unable to see the pain in his without wanting to hurt my own father. Because my father was a weak and irresponsible man, Caine Carraway had lost everything, and despite all the “everything” he had around him now, I wasn’t convinced from what I’d seen so far that he actually had anything. “I’ll go,” I whispered. When I opened my eyes he was staring stonily at me. My stomach sank at the realization that this was it. His opinion of me hadn’t changed, and I was still jobless. “I really am sorry. I just … I’m just stuck.” And I meant that in so many ways. I grabbed the handle on his office door and had started to pull on it when his irritated sigh stopped me.