Read The Billionaire's Terms: Prison Or Passion for Free Online

leaving Alicia to stare at the empty chair, her whole body starting to shake with nerves and shame.
    Alicia put down her pen and slowly stood up, smoothing her neat, professional navy skirt as she walked. In the elevator, she pressed the button for the fiftieth floor and looked down at her outfit, wondering if she looked too dowdy. Her hair was pulled back into a tight chignon at the nape of her neck and her slim navy skirt ended just above her knees. She pulled the matching navy jacket down more smoothly over her stomach and gently touched the faux pearl necklace at her throat. She suspected that she looked like a school marm but that couldn’t be helped, she supposed.
The elevator doors opened and she stepped out into the eerie quiet of the executive offices.
    Jim Peterson, head of security, had watched Adam’s reaction as he’d laid the folder open twenty minutes ago. The evidence was irrefutable against the woman. There had been other transgressions in the past against Global Corp but he’d never seen Adam react the same way. It was as if he were taking this latest investigation as a personal slap in the face. That wasn’t the usual cool, calm and merciless man he’d worked with for the past ten years.
    When he’d brought up the issue two weeks ago about suspected embezzlement, Jim hadn’t had any idea who was doing the work. It had taken long hours of tracing information back to the source, often off in the wrong direction only to backtrack to his starting point again before he finally narrowed the data to the female mentioned in the file. He also had a picture of her, taken when she posed for her security badge. She was definitely a looker, he thought. And she looked innocent enough from the picture. But in his experience, looks rarely played a factor in guilt or innocence.
“I could be wrong,” Jim mentioned but the man staring out the window didn’t move.
     
“Do you really doubt your findings?” Adam asked briskly without turning around.
    Jim thought about the small, niggling details he hadn’t been able to close but shook his head. He’d eventually resolve them as well but the case was pretty concrete as it was now. “Not really. There’s always some doubt,” he explained. “But the facts in this case lend themselves to a pretty solid case.”
    A moment later, a petite and stunningly beautiful woman in a conservative but fashionable navy blue suit stepped into the doorway. “I was told to come up to your office,” Alicia said hesitantly. “I’m sorry but your secretary isn’t at her desk or I would have waited.”
    Jim was curious about the blush that stole into her cheeks and the look in her eyes. It was not what he was expecting. In fact, she was so attuned to Adam, she didn’t even realize that Jim was also in the room.
Adam turned and looked the woman up and down, his eyes hard and his features completely blank. “So we meet again,” he said softly.
    Alicia wished she could just ease back down to the safety of her office but she tried to put on a brave, sophisticated front. “So it would seem,” she said and smiled briefly, her eyes glancing down to the carpet.
    Adam watched her perfectly porcelain skin turn a becoming shade of pink and gritted his teeth. What an actress, he thought. But no more! He’d spent too many hours trying to find this woman and to have her presented in this way, as a criminal, made him doubt all of his recollections of their one night together.
    Pushing those thoughts aside, he crossed his arms over his chest and surveyed her petite form for a long moment. “Please come in and have a seat,” Adam snapped. “Let me introduce you to Jim Peterson. He’s the head of security for Global Industries.”
Alicia walked into the room and smiled graciously at the man, shaking his hand before she took the seat opposite Adam’s desk.
    Adam continued to stand, an intimidating, forceful persona that seemed to emanate anger and hostility. “Now that the pleasantries