“You know how important it is to get the optics right,” Ethan bit out at her.
Very much as if Maya was the one who had caused an optics problem in the first place.
She opened her mouth to remind him that the optics had not been awesome when he’d abandoned her on their wedding day with most of the people he was so worried about sitting out there in the chapel, but reminded herself that, really, she didn’t care.
Truly. Deeply. She didn’t care enough to fight with him. She didn’t care enough to try to make him feel bad when she knew he didn’t. She might never understand how she could have imagined herself in love enough to marry him one day and void of any feeling for him at all so soon after, but she didn’t have to.
What she knew was that she was free of him, whatever that meant, good and bad and everything in between.
Maya contented herself with rolling her eyes at Ethan and started toward the party. Then paused when she felt Lorraine’s hand on her arm.
“Maya. Please. You know... You know I don’t care about optics.”
Ethan bit off Lorraine’s name. Maya looked down at her best friend’s hand, then up to her face. And it was still so...familiar. She knew the back of Lorraine’s hand better than she knew her own.
Was this what she wanted? That tortured expression in Lorraine’s gaze? Finally, the kind of self-awareness she’d always been certain her friend could never—would never—possess? Or the grief that hung between them?
The way, Maya thought then, it always would. For who they’d been. And worse maybe, who they hadn’t been to and for each other.
“We can’t go back, Lorraine,” she said softly. “You must know that.”
“I know it,” Lorraine replied, her voice thick. “I do.” But she shook her head, in a show of restraint that Maya would have said she didn’t possess. “Of course I know it. I just... I’m sorry.”
She squeezed Maya’s arm a little when she said it, as if to underscore the apology. Then let go.
And Maya didn’t know what came over her then. She was the one who reached out and caught Lorraine’s hand before she could pull it back. Only for a second. Just enough to get her friend’s attention.
“There’s no way back, but that doesn’t mean that someday, some way, maybe we might find a way forward,” she heard herself say. And nothing in her rebelled at that notion, so she thought it was possible she meant it. “Maybe.”
Lorraine’s gaze met hers, bright with emotion and all their shared history. All those years. The particular language and vast world they’d created between the two of them, the geography of which only they would ever know.
Their whole, complicated life together, which Maya could either cast aside forever, here and now, or try.
At some point, try.
“Maybe,” Lorraine agreed, her voice shaky.
As if it was a promise.
And Maya felt lighter than she had since she’d left Italy as she walked into the big room, packed tight with colleagues and clients. There was entirely too much speculation in the gazes that landed on her, Lorraine and Ethan on Lorraine’s other side. Everyone got the optics, just as Ethan had wanted.
She put the smile she’d practiced on her face, she held her head high and she began to work the room.
After all, she was good at it.
But there was something missing as she moved from one gleaming knot of people to the next. She could still do her job. She could smile here, insert a witty comment there, act confident and at ease. As if nothing had happened.
And yet she felt as if she was wearing someone else’s skin. As if she was a puppet, going through the motions.
This is black-and-white and gray straight through, something whispered inside her when she laughed politely at a very wealthy client’s joke that wasn’t the least bit funny. When what you want to do is shine.
She snuck away after she’d done an exhausting round of platitudes, evasions and pointed commentary. She made her way down the abandoned, hushed hall, letting herself into one of the executive-level washrooms. It was single use, which meant she could lock the door and take a deep breath in peace before avoiding her own reflection in the mirror.
Maya didn’t have any business to take care of, so she simply stood there. Wishing she felt more like herself again. Or not herself—but the person she’d been the last time she’d stood on this floor, a year ago at this same party, absolutely certain that she knew every last facet of her beautiful future.
She let out a hollow laugh at that.
Then, when she thought she had no choice but to head back into the fray and resume smiling until her cheeks hurt, she marched over and threw open the door.
And then stopped, because she was apparently having a stroke.
Or maybe she’d fallen, there inside the washroom, and hit her head so hard that she was seeing things.
Because the man who stood there didn’t make sense.
He was dressed in another dark, bespoke suit that licked over that lean, hard physique of his and made him...more, somehow. More dangerous. More beautiful. More him. His dirty-blond hair was raked back from his face, his beard made him look like some kind of pirate and his blue eyes blazed with a dark, consuming fury she could feel like a punch to the gut.
Because she knew it was all for her.
“Charlie...” she whispered, unable to make sense of this. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, his body looking relaxed when she could tell that he was nothing close to relaxed. At all. Quite the opposite. “You can’t... How... You can’t be here.”
“Too bad for you, babe,” he drawled, too much Texas and far too much lethal retribution in his rough, low, gorgeous voice. “Because I am. And that means you’re pretty much fucked.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE LOOK OF shock on Maya’s face was about the only thing that Charlie had liked over the course of this past week.
Because otherwise he was pretty much out of his mind, he was so pissed off.
Pissed off, in fact, didn’t really do it justice.
He took a breath and kept himself on lockdown—but it was a close call with Maya standing there in a dress that sparkled, her hair a pretty cloud of curls like a halo he wanted his hands in and that mouth of hers slightly ajar in disbelief.
God, she was beautiful. Even when he wanted to take her apart—preferably while they were both naked, so he could enjoy it—there was no getting away from the kick of her. She was too potent. Too perfect.
He had watched her work this obnoxiously slick party like a sharp blade through butter and realized he hadn’t fully appreciated that she was good at more than rocking his entire world. But he could tell she was from the way the people in the room looked at her while she did it. The way they looked at the weak, skinny dumbass who had to be her ex, then back to her. Maya was the powerhouse, no doubt.
And she was his.
Something the two of them needed to get clear on. Fast.
“You snuck out in the middle of the night,” he growled at her, making no particular attempt to rein in the menace. “You didn’t just run off down the street or take a really long walk to clear your head. You left the fucking country.”
He already couldn’t handle how beautiful she looked tonight and she only made it worse when she lifted up that delicate chin of hers, like she thought she was tough. “I had to go. You don’t understand.”
“You’re right, Maya. I don’t understand.”
He moved, deeply gratified when she reacted as if he’d electrified her. She moved back, and he followed her into the very high-class bathroom. And then it was the easiest thing in the world to lock them both in all that marble and wood, far away from any prying eyes.
She might not know it yet, but his woman was in a world of trouble.
“Lucky for you,” he drawled, not lifting his
glare from her for even a second, “I flew all the way here so you could explain it to me.”
“You can’t be here.” She still looked and sounded panicked, but the words were coming easier for her. He wasn’t sure that was a good thing. “This is a party filled with lawyers. You can’t crash it. We tend to take a very dim view of that kind of thing.”
“Let’s be real clear that if I wanted to con my way into some stuffy corporate party, I could. Easily. But I didn’t have to.” He let his grin get edgy. “I was invited.”
She had backed all the way across the small room, the ridiculously high heels she was wearing muffled by the thick carpeting. He watched as she put her back against the wall, like that might save her.
“I don’t understand.”
But he could see she did.
“I made myself a new client,” he told her, enjoying himself. “Or did you forget that I’m not just a dirtbag fling? This dirtbag comes with a hefty bank account. In the St. George name, which doesn’t mean shit to me, but got your boss all kinds of excited.”
“Charlie...”
“So this is what I don’t get,” he said, ignoring her attempts to steer the conversation in some other direction. If that was what she was doing when she said his name like that. “You wanted raw. You demanded real. So I gave it to you. And your response to that was to take off.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
And that was almost enough for him, because he wanted his hands on her more than he wanted to talk about it. But then he remembered what it had been like to wake up that morning to find her gone. To have to hunt her down, only to find she’d already left Naples. And soon after that, Italy.
“I can’t say it’s a surprise, because I feel like we already discussed what a runner you are,” Charlie continued, his voice rough. “But the fact I should have known you were going to do it didn’t make it any better.”
“I’m not a runner,” she snapped at him. “You can’t arbitrarily decide I’m a thing because I did it one time, under very specific circumstances.”
“Oh, okay.” He even smiled at her as he said that and was gratified when she shivered in response. “You’re not a runner. You just...run away. Whenever things get intense. I’m sure it’s all a real big coincidence.”
“Things had run their course.” And even though her dark eyes were glittering and much too bright, she aimed that smile at him that he’d seen her use out there in the party. Remote. Regal. “I’m sorry if you had other expectations.”
“Are you letting me down easy?” He laughed. “Is that what this is?”
That smile of hers deepened into straight-up pity. “I like you, Charlie. I do. But Italy isn’t real life. It’s not my real life, anyway.”
“And this is?” He pushed himself off the door and stalked toward her. And he wasn’t evolved enough not to enjoy the way her eyes widened as he came for her. She was so beautiful. And so full of shit. And he wanted to get his mouth on her and his cock inside her, more than he wanted to breathe. “Rich people standing around in a fancy room talking about all the money they’re going to make?”
She scowled at him. “A holiday isn’t real life. That’s why they call it a holiday. Real life is different. There are certain expectations—”
“You talk a lot about expectations.” He crowded her against the wall when he got there, putting a forearm up to brace himself over her head. That let him get his mouth nice and close to hers. “But whose expectations are they?”
“Mine,” she threw at him, but her voice was so soft she was almost whispering.
This close, he could see her pulse go wild in the sleek, brown line of her throat. He could smell the scent of her, a hint of something delicate with notes of citrus.
He wanted to feast on her.
“You don’t sound sure, babe.”
She lifted her hands to his chest, as if to push him away. But she didn’t.
“A wedding that didn’t happen isn’t a good enough reason to give up everything I’ve spent my life working for. It would be absurd to throw it all away based on a few days and some very bad behavior in Italy.”
Charlie had been furious for days. It had settled in him like granite, heavy and harsh. It had taken a solid forty-eight hours to track her. Then another day or so to plan his course of action. To figure out she would be at this party and how best to get himself through the door. And he had done all of that with the same drumbeat of temper inside him, spurring him on.
Now—finally—she was right there in front of him, and that fury...shifted.
Into something a hell of a lot more like determination.
He was pretty scary when he was mad. But when he was determined? He was relentless.
Charlie almost felt sorry for her.
He pushed back so he could hold her gaze, and he liked the way she trembled. Her lips parted when he dragged his thumb over them, lazy and a little dirty. And he loved the way her body melted beneath his touch. He could see the heat in her dark, wide eyes.
He didn’t say anything.
He kept himself braced against the wall and used his free hand to trace his way down her neck, applying just enough pressure to make her breath catch. Then he went lower, skirting her breasts so he could make it down to her hip.
She was already panting as if he was buried deep inside her, thrusting deep.
Soon, baby, he promised her.
He took his time reaching down, pulling up the hem of her long dress until he had it drawn up around her waist.
“Charlie...”
But she didn’t tell him to stop.
He reached between her legs, cupping her pussy and applying pressure there, too. Over and over again, until he made his own rhythm through the pointless barrier of her panties. And better yet, she was lifting her hips to meet him.
Like she couldn’t help herself.
“Now,” he said, with a great satisfaction he made no attempt to hide. “Let’s have a little discussion about truth.”
“I told you the truth.” But her voice was different now, rich with all that need and longing, and she bumped herself against his hand as she spoke.
“Here’s what you need to know about me, Maya. I’m an all-in kind of a guy. If my stepfather hadn’t died, I would have pledged myself to his bullshit forever, because that’s how I roll. He raised me and I respected that. And I don’t do anything by half. You asked me for real, I gave it to you, and you couldn’t handle it.”
“That’s not true.”
He made a sound like he was disappointed in her, but while he did it, he found his way beneath the soaked cotton of her panties.
And found her slippery and hot, and all this no matter what she said.
“You spent a lot of time telling me what a liar I was, and here you are. Lying to my face.”
“It’s not about what I can handle, Charlie,” she panted at him. “It’s about reality.”
He dropped his mouth to her ear, circling that haughty little clit of hers while she bucked against his hand and proved herself a liar.
“This is reality, Maya. You’re wet. I’m hard. And whether you know it or not, you’re mine.”
“You can’t—”
“I told you I was possessive. Did you think I was kidding?”
She rocked her head back. There was moisture in the corners of her eyes as she met his gaze, her own wide and tortured and still filled with all that heat.
He traced her melting-hot folds as she fought to catch her breath. Again and again, until her hands turned into fists pressed hard against his pectoral muscles.
“I don’t know how to do this.” She didn’t sound like herself, which was a good thing, because Charlie had left the version of himself he recognized behind a long time ago. “It’s too raw. It’s too much. I’m no good at it. I like things that are
cut up into little pieces. Palatable. Small and so insignificant that if you lose one, you can go right on as if it didn’t matter.”
“Don’t talk to me about other men when I’m the one making you wet, Maya.”
“I’m not—”
“I’m not bite-size, babe. Too big. Too noisy. Too much, definitely. You’re not afraid of any of that. You’re afraid that you like it.”
“I’m not afraid. I’m realistic.”
“You’re scared out of your mind.” He leaned closer, scraping her throat with his teeth. And when she shuddered, he twisted his wrist and sent two fingers deep into her greedy little pussy. “You think I don’t know why? You’re not in control when you’re with me, and you hate how much you love that.”
“You don’t... You’re not...”
But she couldn’t seem to finish the sentence, too busy was she lifting those lush hips of hers to meet each thrust of his fingers.
And he wasn’t done talking.
“You’re not going to control me. I’m not a handyman you can get fired if he pisses you off. With me, Maya, you’re just a woman. A beautiful, horny woman who can’t get enough of the way I take you apart.”
He felt her tighten around his fingers, but she didn’t hurtle over that edge. He didn’t let her.
“Please, Charlie...”
“I make you beg, and you don’t like that. I make you feel things, and you really don’t like that.” He kept up his pace, deeper and more deliberate with each stroke. “The reason you were so mad that I didn’t tell you who I was isn’t because you’re upset at the idea that I might own that hotel. I think we both know that you thought that if I really was some no-account janitor, you got to be in control.”
He laughed at that, there against her neck so it made her shudder. And then he stopped thrusting, keeping his palm heavy against her pussy but no longer giving her the friction she needed to come.
Leaving her there, strung out on that edge.
“Tough luck, babe. You don’t get to control this.”
“But you do?” she managed to pant at him.
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