“Don’t say that.”
“It’s too late.”
“No. No, it’s not. I won’t let it be.”
“You can’t…do this, Tom. It’s not right. It’s not fair.”
“Just give me five minutes.”
She was weakening already. God. She was such a wimp. “No.”
And she whirled away from him. She raced up the steps, her flip-flops slapping hard against the old boards of the porch. Throwing back the storm door, she fled through the central hall, aware as she did it that running was silly, but somehow unable to stand there and let him see her tears.
Too bad he followed her. “Shelly. Damn it. Don’t…” She heard his footfalls behind her, heard the storm door slam a second time.
“Go away.” She threw the command back over her shoulder as she entered the kitchen.
Her mom was just setting the table. She looked up. “What the—?”
Max banged the back door wide as he came in from the rear porch. “Tom!” he cried. “You’re here….”
Shelly ran on, through the door that Max had left open, across the back porch, out through the back screen, which didn’t quite get a chance to slam before Tom was shoving it open again, pounding down the steps behind her.
The flip-flops hobbled her. So she kicked them away and took off across the grass, startling an old hen and her line of yellow chicks. The hen screeched and flapped her wings; the chicks cheeped wildly.
Shelly ran on, toward the birches that lined the creek. She reached them, ducking into their dappled shade and half sliding down the bank toward the clear, cool water.
At water’s edge, she stopped. Slowly, she turned.
Tom had stopped, too, just beneath the canopy of the trees. “Five minutes,” he said again.
Both of them were breathing hard.
And at least now she didn’t feel as though she was going to lose it and start bawling like an idiot. Running like hell had somehow banished her tears.
She dropped to the bank, gathered her knees up close to her body and rested her chin on them.
There was silence, for a moment, just the sound of the water gurgling in the creek and the blue jays squawking and the gentle croak of a frog. Then she heard him coming toward her, fallen leaves crunching under his feet as he started down the bank.
He sat beside her. But he didn’t try to touch her.
Which was good, she told herself. She didn’t want him touching her.
“All right,” she said, looking straight ahead at the opposite bank. “Since you refuse to go away, say whatever it is you came here to say. Just go ahead.”
He didn’t speak. Wasn’t that just like a man? A woman said he could speak. And he didn’t.
Unwillingly, she turned and looked at him.
Those blue eyes were waiting. He said, “I lost track of what matters. I’ve been battling Drake Thatcher for so many years, I started to think that winning the next skirmish with him was the goal. It wasn’t. The goal was…a chance. To have a real life. A partnership with the right woman. A…family.”
She gritted her teeth. “I hate this. You’re making me want to cry again.”
“Shelly. Please. I’m so damn sorry. You…you’re what matters. You and Max. What we might make, together, over time.”
“You…” She sniffed and gulped and willed the tears away. “You hurt me. What you did, in your office, when you handed me that check…that was cruel, Tom.”
Shame darkened his eyes. “I know. It was unforgivable.”
“And yet that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? To ask me to forgive you.”
“That’s right. I am—I realize I’ve got no right to expect your forgiveness. I don’t expect it. But I want it. More than anything, I want you to forgive me and maybe even try again with me.”
“Forgive you,” she repeated.
“Yes. Forgive me.”
She shook her head, and then confessed, “I…was wrong, too. I know it. I should have told you everything, the day that you hired me. Or at least in Kyoto, on the night we first made love. But I didn’t. I told myself that since I was never going to do anything to hurt you or TAKA-Hanson, there was no reason you had to know how I came to apply for the job as your assistant. I was…so afraid that the truth would cost me everything.”
“You were right to be afraid. Look what happened when you did tell me.”
She stared out at the creek again. “Yeah. It was all I’d feared, and worse.”
“I should have been…better,” he said. “A better man. I know it now. It’s an old instinct in me, a powerful instinct. To fight and fight hard whenever Drake pops up again. It’s not reasonable. It’s not…fair. It’s down and dirty and cruel. And I gave in to it, I turned it on you.”
She said nothing. She dragged in a ragged breath and felt the need within herself to forgive him as he’d asked her to. To try again as he said he wanted. She wondered, Is this love that I’m feeling? This pain that’s so close to joy? This hope, this…rising sensation inside me?
He said, “I met with Drake two nights ago in a bar not far from my apartment. I let him think he had won, all the while knowing that, the next morning, he’d be in for a big surprise. I expected to feel good, knowing I had bested him this time around. But all I thought of was how he’d won, after all. How I’d lost you, driven you away. And without you, my triumph was empty. Nothing. Less than that.” He said her name, “Shelly?” Like a plea. Like a prayer.
“There will be honesty,” she told him through the tears she fought to hold back. “Honesty between us. Always. I need to know that. I need to promise that. I need to hear you promise that to me.”
He reached out. He touched the side of her face. She allowed that. He said, “Always.”
“If it makes us nervous, if we’re afraid to say it—then that’s the very thing we have to tell each other. Do you promise me?”
“I promise. I do.”
She whispered, “I believe you.”
He took her shoulders. She allowed herself to sway toward him. Their lips met in a kiss that was awkward and searching and so very beautiful.
When he pulled away, his blue eyes shone. He said gruffly, “There’s something already, a secret I need to tell you.”
She realized she was holding her breath and made herself let it out in a rush. “Oh, God. What?”
“I love you,” he said.
She stared. And then she laughed—a wild, happy laugh. There were tears on her cheeks. She swiped them away. “That’s the secret? That you love me?”
“Shelly. It’s huge. I love you. I’ve loved you for weeks now. Maybe since the night we sat on that bench outside the Newberry and you told me how you were never going to end up in my bed. Remember?”
“Oh, Tom. How could I ever forget?” She gulped. Hard.
“What?” he asked gently.
And she told him. “Tom. I love you, too.”
And then he reached for her again. She went into his strong, cherishing arms. The kiss they shared then was better than any that had come before. It was tender and sweet and deep. It was a kiss to seal the most solemn of vows.
“Do you realize,” he said, a few minutes later, “that if it wasn’t for Drake Thatcher, we probably never would have met?”
She gazed at him with wonder. “It’s true. How amazing.”
“Come on.” He stood and helped her to her feet.
They turned for her mother’s house, together, hand in hand.
“What’s that saying?” he asked her as they climbed the bank. “That living well is the best revenge…”
“Mmm-hmm.” She turned a smile on him. “That’s what they say.”
“They’re wrong.” They emerged from the trees and started across the lawn.
“So, then what?” she asked and squeezed his hand.
“Not only living,” he said. “Loving. Loving well. It’s better than any revenge.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1915-5
IN BED WI
TH THE BOSS
Copyright © 2008 by Harlequin Books S.A.
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In Bed with the Boss Page 16