Free Second Chances by Delaney Diamond Page B

to another man so willingly?”
     “Unless you had marital relations
written into the contract, you’re out of luck. Even if you did, I wouldn’t let
you use me in that way.”
    “I see the look in your eyes.” He
smiled. “It’s your own fault, you know. You shouldn’t have tried to seduce me.”
    “That’s not what I was doing.” She had
been pleading with him for forgiveness, but he couldn’t see past her betrayal.
    “No? That’s how it appeared, and it now has
me thinking of how moving you back into the apartment could be mutually
satisfying. After all, we both know what kind of woman you are. I wouldn’t want
you to be tempted to stray again.”
    Pain rifled through her. He wanted to
treat her like the whore he thought she was. “I hate you for talking to me like
this.”
    His eyes narrowed, and he grabbed her
chin. She caught his wrist to force him to let go, but he didn’t release her.
The heat of his touch sent her hormones spiraling out of control. She didn’t
move, didn’t want to move, and hated how right he was about her need for him.
    After a prolonged stare, Renaldo rubbed
his thumb across her lips. They parted and trembled as she fought to keep from
sucking his finger into her mouth.
    “Hate is passion, minha esposa , ” he said. “And I welcome yours. Do you know why? Because you could never
hate me as much as I hate myself for still wanting you.”

 
    Chapter Eight
     
    “Bárbara, get in here, please.” Renaldo barely
managed to keep the annoyance out of his voice.
    He sat in his office staring down at the
quarterly reports that had been sent up from the finance department. His instructions
on allocations were not being followed. He didn’t like it when his instructions
weren’t followed.
    Bárbara, the assistant he’d shared with Sabrina
when she’d worked at SDG, hurried in with a notepad and pen. “Yes, sir?”
    “Whoever sent this garbage up here—” he dropped
the thick report on the desk, at the edge closest to her—“tell him, and I
assume it was Foster, that I want to see him in my office now.”
    Bárbara retrieved the document and stepped back
quickly. “Will there be anything else, sir?”
    “Yes,” Renaldo bit out, as he turned to his
computer. “This kind of thing is unacceptable. Tell Foster when he gets here he
better have a damn good explanation for why the work in his department has
deteriorated so much in the past month.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Bárbara scurried away, but she stopped at the
door. “Sir, if I may?”
    Bárbara was competent and efficient, but lately
her expression made her look like a frightened rabbit. Had he really turned
into such an ogre?
    “What is it?”
    She cleared her throat. “The work hasn’t
deteriorated. I think the problem is…well, shortly after she started working
here, your wife began reviewing all the financial reports before you received
them.”
    That was news to him. “She did?”
    Bárbara cleared her throat again. “Yes, sir.
She instructed Foster and his staff not to send the reports to you until she’d
had a chance to vet them. She said your time was better spent managing the
company and growing the business, not fixing careless errors.”
    Renaldo sat back in his chair and digested those
words. “How soon after she came did she start doing this?”
    “Almost immediately, sir.”
    Foster had been hired a few weeks after
Sabrina. If what Bárbara said was true, it explained why he hadn’t known about
Foster’s mistakes, because Sabrina had been reviewing his work before Renaldo
saw it. Why hadn’t she said anything to him?
    “If I may say, she was always very instrumental
in making sure your work flow was not interrupted.” Renaldo heard the
admiration in his secretary’s voice.
    Sabrina had been running interference, removing
the day-to-day trivialities from his plate so he’d have more time to focus on
big-picture items. Which made him wonder how many of his workaholic wife’s late
nights could