Wrong Brother, Right Man. Kat Cantrell

up his hands in mock surrender to distract from the sharp little number this whole exchange was doing on his lower half. Didn’t work. But, then, he was starting to think nothing would, except the obvious.

      “We have a professional relationship. If we can’t stick to that, then you can find another executive coach.”

      Her expression had none of the heat from yesterday. He was failing with her today, for some unknown reason.

      With that warning ringing in his ears, Val sobered. Those contacts with the Botswana government still lay prominently in the center of his desk and, as reminders went of how he’d go down in flames without her, that was a stark one. “I take this very seriously. Please forgive me. Let’s go over your plan.”

      She rolled her eyes. “And stop being so conciliatory. Men in the corporate world take no prisoners. Don’t ask for forgiveness, and do not look at me with those puppy-dog eyes.”

      He had to laugh. “Is that what I was doing?”

      “We’re going to have a problem if you don’t take accountability for the changes you need to make. That’s why you hired me, right?”

      No, he’d hired her because she liked to win. And because he had a score to settle with his father but, in lieu of being able to do that, he’d settle for taking a few chunks out of Xavier’s hide. Sabrina was his ticket to that. “I hired you because I need my inheritance. You have a proven track record working with executives to better their ability to lead. Nowhere did I agree to change.”

      Sabrina blinked. “Then you’ve already decided that we’ve lost.”

      No. That was not happening. If nothing else, he needed that money to undo all the damage Xavier would likely do to LBC without Val there to fix it.

      “Sit,” he told her with a head jerk at one of the chairs as his temper started simmering again. Or maybe it hadn’t fully cooled from Xavier’s drive-by earlier.

      To her credit, she didn’t argue and just did as he said, which wasn’t going to work either. He wanted a partner, not a lackey. “I’m a team player. Always. I don’t boss people around for the sake of getting my way. If your four-week plan includes strategies to turn me into a corporate shark, you can trash it. I need you on my side. To work with me to use my strengths and gloss over what you perceive to be my weaknesses. Can you do that?”

      Sabrina let her spine relax against the back of the chair and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

      “You promised me yesterday that we’d do this together. You moved me with that speech. Figure out a way,” he said. “And that’s as tyrannical as I’m going to get.”

      There was no way in hell he’d let this job-switch mandate turn him into his father. Or, worse, into Xavier. But he was going to use his stint at LeBlanc to show everyone that, while his brother might have been their father’s favorite, Val could and would pass whatever test the old man posthumously threw down in his path—as long as he had Sabrina to help him avoid becoming the soulless corporate type his father had likely hoped this task would shape him into.