Isla left the office immediately, of course, not bothering to look back at Sylvia as she rushed to the elevator and waited for the thing to take her downstairs.

Then she got the hell out of there, hopped on a bus and went home. She was still fuming, more so now that she had some time to process it. She wasn’t shocked anymore; she was pissed.

“How dare he? How fucking dare he?”

Isla stormed around in a circle, unable to hold still while her roommate and best friend, Jane, sat on the leather sofa and ate the ice cream that she should have been eating.

She was an ice cream eater when she was upset. It was maple walnut with real walnuts inside, but apparently she wasn't just upset, she was beyond pissed. So pissed in fact that she was letting Jane eat all of her pick-me-up ice cream while she vented and raged.

"You should go back there and strangle him or something."

"I should. I really should," Isla said. Her fingers clenched and cramped just imagining herself with her hands wrapped around his thick, strong, muscular-looking, tanned throat and choking the life out of him.

She probably didn't have the strength in her fingers to choke even a small apology out of him, and that thought just pissed her off even more.

"You know I'm kidding, right?" Jane asked.

"And I also know you're not being nearly as sympathetic as you should be." She shot her friend a nasty glare.

She wasn't meaning to be a bitch to Jane. Jane just happened to be the only person she could direct her furiously red rage at.

Seriously, she might actually be seeing red.

Her glare, and the anger that came with it, glided right off Jane like water off a duck's ass. She wasn't affected. The girl was too smart and too strangely open and honest about anything and everything to be offended by Isla's snapping.

Of all the friends she had ever had, Jane was the only one who didn't pull any passive-aggressive gamey bullshit to get what she wanted, and she expected the same.

"Are you sure he's going to do what he said? You should probably get this in writing."

She stopped pacing and stared down at Jane. She was pretty sure that, had she been looking into a mirror, her eyes would have been bulging. Her mouth was definitely dropped open.

"You know you can catch flies like that?"

"I'm not going to do what he says!" Isla snapped.

Jane blinked. "Oh, really?"

"No!" Now she was mostly being loud and dramatic because she couldn't believe Jane would assume she would do it. "Why would you think that?"

Jane, for the first time in a long time, looked stumped. She shrugged her shoulders, a look of uncertainty appearing on her face now. "I guess I thought you would do it because you literally told me you were going to do anything you had to do to get the company back."

"I'm not going to whore myself out," Isla muttered.

"You're not a virgin," Jane said, "and there's got to be a better word for it if the thing you're getting in exchange would be millions of dollars back."

"Not helping. So not helping." She groaned the words as though they pained her to speak them. They almost did.

"And I wouldn't be getting a check or anything, just Granddaddy's business back."

He hadn't been doing so well since Arturo's father—sneaking, asshole, bastard that he was—had swooped in and pressured him into making a deal to sell.

Isla knew her grandfather. She knew how proud he was of the business. The man was a self-made millionaire, the kind of man who had insisted that his children work at McDonalds when they were teenagers and save up their own damned money if they wanted cars at sixteen. The sort of man who had refused to fully pay for college and universities, and had once again insisted that his children work part-time to get through their schooling without incurring any debt.

Her mother had told her that her grandfather had even threatened to charge his children rent if they wanted to stay beyond the age of eighteen for more than a month.

Isla had been brought up pretty much the same way.

It had been a contrast between her parents. Her mother had come from money, and yet still understood the value of a dollar and hard work, while Isla's father had also come from money and wanted to shower his little princess with everything.

Looking back, she had very nearly turned into a bratty shithead as a child over it. One of her biggest regrets was listening to her parents fight over money. Even though they were financially well-off, they still fought, and to this day, she felt guilty about that.

Logically she knew that, as a little girl, she could not have been responsible for all the fighting and late night yelling, but the memories still bothered her.

She had been something of a princess growing up, but at the same time, her mother made sure she always went out to get a summer job.

One summer working at a fast food restaurant, dealing with grease burns and bitchy mothers and their squad of screaming kids demanding food, was enough for her to know she never wanted to work there again.

So, in the years that followed, she'd worked in one of her grandfather's boutiques.

Every year in the summer, she would work and put away half of her check for school, and after school, she did the same thing just to help out, having gotten a better idea of just how damned impressive it was that her grandfather had started such a lucrative business and thrived.

Also, Isla had to admit, she loved working in an upscale store that sold lacy lingerie, body creams, perfumes, and even some jewelry. The perks were always great.

Then she met Arturo.

She clenched her jaw just thinking about it. She hadn't known who he was, but she'd suspected he was a man there on behalf of Vincenzio Calendri, scouting out the location to determine if the place was profitable.

She had been so angry, so offended by his even being there, pretending to be just some guy who was shopping for his girlfriend or something.

She'd been placing the new panties in their proper positions, from the largest sizes to a small that was so small she would never be able to fit her ass inside of them, as she watched him.

She'd been keeping her eyes on him, sure, but only because she'd been trying to explode his head with her mind or something. She hadn't been constantly checking him out.

Though he had looked pretty good in that suit. His tied-back hair had given him an almost exotic appeal. When he’d spoken to her, she’d been shocked to discover he didn’t have an Italian accent.

Fuck! Why couldn't she have known who he was? She would have still turned down his offer to go out and to have sex, but she would have been nicer about it.

She definitely wouldn't have told him to go and fuck himself. That was a solid mistake.

"You still with me? You're spacing out again," Jane said.

"I'm still here." She tried to put herself back into her present problem and how she could possibly get out of it.

"You're biting your nails, too."

Isla immediately dropped her hand away from her mouth. Shit. She couldn't afford to get her nails done at the salon anymore, and it was such a pain in the ass doing them herself.

She stared down at the chipped color, then looked to Jane.

"Janey," she whined.

"Don't cry to me. You're the one who did it," Jane said, smiling and taking another bite of Isla's ice cream.

"But you do it so much better than me."

Jane had a small case that was filled with polishes. She wasn't a collector—and Isla had met enough of those to know they did exist—but she was good with nails. The woman loved to do nail art and gave herself manicures all the time, like it was no big deal.

On her real nails, too. She didn't do fakes.

Isla's real nails were too brittle and broke too damned easily. She needed to have her nails done; otherwise, they would be so short and sad looking.

"I think you need to focus on what you're going to do about your little problem before you worry about your nails," Jane said.

"I can't eat ice cream and hide in my room?"

"Not with the time limit he gave you. Sorry, sweetie, but you're going to have to decide what to do about this."

Jane only ever called her “sweetie” when she was serious about something.

"I already said I wasn't doing it," Isla said.

Jane just gave her one of her trademark long, hard stares. The woman's bullshit detector was going off. "Then why do I get the sense that you're still thinking about it?"

Isla blew out a hard breath. "Your perceptiveness gets to be really damned irritating sometimes, you know that, right?"

"I do," Jane said, before taking another bite of Isla's ice cream.