He gave her the documents and stood there looking at her, his expression impossible to read. Ella looked down at the papers in her hand, skimming them frantically. Her stomach sank to her toes and the words blurred slightly.

“Would you mind translating? I’m not fluent in legalese,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as echoey and distant to him as it did to her.

“Bottom line? I am now the lien holder on your business loan. A sizable amount.”

She felt her face get hot, the way it always did when she thought of the screaming amount of debt she’d gotten in to get her business off of the ground.

“I’m aware of that. How did this…happen?” If it had been anyone else, she simply wouldn’t have believed them. But she knew this man, even if it was only by reputation. And it wasn’t a good thing that he was here with bank documents that possessed both the name of her business and the stark truth of just how little actually belonged to her.

“The bank that originally held your loan has been bought out by a larger financial institution. They auctioned off most of the small business loans, including yours. I bought your loan in a bundle with several others that are of much greater interest to me.”

“So you own my business…and I’m uninteresting?” Ella pushed her blond hair off her face and sat down in one of the chairs reserved for her boutique customers.

“That’s the summation.”

It didn’t get worse. It couldn’t. And at that moment she just wanted to fall to her knees and scream at the sky. Because hadn’t she been through enough? How much was she expected to overcome in her lifetime?

Blaise Chevalier had a reputation as a man who was self-indulgent, reckless and ruthless enough to betray his own brother in the coldest way imaginable. He crushed companies, large or small, if they passed into his sphere of power and he deemed them to be unprofitable.

And he was now the owner of her boutique, her workshop, her apartment…everything down to her sewing machines. Everything in her life that meant anything.

“And what’s your conclusion?” she asked, standing again. She wasn’t going to crumble. Not now. Not when the stakes were so high. Her career, her line, it was her life. It was everything she’d worked so hard to achieve, a dream she wasn’t about to let go of now, not while she still had some hope.

“I’m in the business of making money, Ms. Stanton. And your boutique and clothing line are not making enough to cover the expense of running them and earn you a decent living.”

“They will. I need a couple of years. By then, with some extra advertising I’ll have built a larger client base and I can start doing the bigger runway shows, getting broader exposure.”

He raised one dark brow. “And then?”

“And then…” She took a deep breath. She knew this. She had everything planned down to what color her dress would be at Fashion Week. “Then Paris Fashion Week, New York, Milan. More boutiques picking up my collection. I hope to have a retail line. I have it all in a portfolio if you’d like to see it. It’s my five-year plan.”

He had the gall to look bored, disinterested. “I don’t have five years to wait for a venture to pay out. And as a result you don’t have five years, either.”

A hot shot of anger infused her with much-needed adrenaline. “What do you want me to do, march up and down the boulevard with a sandwich board strapped to my chest to drum up enough business to satisfy you? These things take time. Fashion is a very competitive industry.”

“I was thinking something a bit more high-end, something with more…class.” The slight curl of his lips suggested he didn’t think she possessed any class at all.

She scrunched her curls, curls she knew were a little bit disheveled. That was the idea. She didn’t do anything by accident, not even things that looked accidental. Everything, down to her spiky heeled, open-toed boots, was about her image and her business. Was about cultivating interest in her brand.

“Well, you weren’t talking class, you were talking urgency.”

“I thought you might be after a slightly more upscale clientele as opposed to tourists and backpackers,” he said, his rich, slightly accented voice sending a shiver through her. Stupid. She talked to a lot of French men who were looking for clothing for their wives or girl-friends…or themselves, she should be used to the smooth charm of the accent by now.

For some reason it sounded different coming from him, a harder edge to complement the rounded vowels. His English was tinged with French, but also with another flavor she couldn’t place, something that made his speech all the more exotic and fascinating.

It didn’t change the fact that he had walked into her boutique like he owned the place and then proceeded to tell her that, in effect, he did.

“What’s the point of advertising at all if you’re just going to demand that I pay you back with money I haven’t got?” she asked.