by Tessa Radley
How would her sister feel about that?
Certainty settled in fast. Jay was right. Adam Fordyce truly was made of ice. There was no humanity in the man who stood before her, his eyes so dead. Nothing. Jay might be maddening and infuriating. But at least he still had feelings. Emotions. This man had none.
Amoral asshat!
Poor Charis.
No wonder her sister had looked so miserable.
But Georgia knew how she felt about it. And that made her decision easy.
She handed the ring back to him.
Damn. Jay had been right. Again.
“I can’t marry you, Adam. I’m sorry.”
Why was she apologizing?
“Your father—”
Georgia shook her head. “No. Not even for my father.”
He stared icily down his long straight nose at her. “Sleep on it.”
Nausea rose in her throat at his phrasing.
“Keep the ring.” His confidence was staggering.
She shook her head and thrust it back at him.
“At least take the weekend to think it over. Once you’ve had a chance to think about it, you’ll realize there’s no point throwing away everything we’ll have together.” He smiled. But the thin smile didn’t reach his remote colorless eyes. “Call me on Monday morning—we’ll talk some more. This is going to work.”
Georgia knew she was going to be sick.
“Shall we go back in?”
Unable to speak, Georgia nodded. She hitched the chain of her clutch higher up on her shoulder. His hand rested lightly on her hip as he escorted her toward the gallery filled with chatter and laughter.
A sideways glance revealed that he was smiling, a hard savage smile.
“I need to go to the cloakroom.” And then she needed to find Jay. He was the one person she could rely on to help her.
Without a backward glance, she left Mr. Ice standing alone on the threshold of the crowded room.
* * *
Georgia slunk into the ladies’ room. Beyond tall urns overflowing with fragrant lilies and a velvet-covered chaise, she spotted a familiar exquisitely beaded gown.
Charis.
Her sister had seen her enter and was watching her in an ornately framed gilded mirror.
Despite her inner upheaval, Georgia flicked her a quick awkward smile. But Charis didn’t smile back.
“Your lipstick is smudged.” Her sister’s face was pale and tight.
“Oh.” Georgia flushed, and humiliation crawled through her. Damn Adam for putting her in this situation! She extracted Jay’s crumpled handkerchief from the clutch slung over her shoulder and rubbed frantically at her mouth.
“It’s fine now.” Charis’s voice was flat.
Nothing was fine. God, this was awkward. “We need to talk.”
Charis’s gaze shifted to her own reflection. She pursed her lips into a moue. “Come hell or high water, I’m going to finish the spring collection if it kills me.”
“Father doesn’t want you in the build—”
“He doesn’t need to know!”
Georgia started to argue, then thought better of it.
“Why didn’t you say you were dating Adam Fordyce when Kingston made his announcement?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Charis—” Georgia broke off, searching for an easy way to say this. “Listen, I’m not going to marry him—”
“Have you told that to our dear father?”
“No.” Georgia’s stomach seized up at the thought. “But I will.”
“Good luck with that.” Charis tossed the soiled towel in the disposal slot.
Then, for the first time since Georgia had entered the cloakroom, her sister swung around to face her.
“He won’t let you back out.”
She wasn’t sure whether her sister meant their father or Adam Fordyce.
Tonelessly, Charis added, “You’re welcome to Adam.”
Georgia said in a rush, “I don’t want him. Adam Fordyce makes me sick!”
“Then that makes two of us.” There was such savagery in Charis’s voice that Georgia recoiled.
Jay’s provocative question rang in her head. You’d marry a man you’ve never met, a man your father picked out for his ability to run Kingdom? Why?
It had seemed so clear-cut, so logical.
Until Adam had kissed her...and then, to her appalled shame, her body had taken over...and the reaction had not been good. She’d found herself thinking of Jay...
So she’d turned Adam down. For the first time in her life, she’d gone against her father’s wishes.
Once Kingston found out...
Georgia shuddered with dread.
But her father didn’t know what she’d done. Not yet.
She felt a flare of hope. There had to be a solution. A way to keep her father happy...and keep her position safe. An overwhelming desire to talk to Jay filled her. Jay always gave her perspective. He had the ability to ask questions that made the solutions to whatever was bothering her so obvious.
She glanced at Charis. Her sister was blotting her lips with a tissue. She looked composed...but ghostly pale.
“Are you okay?”
Charis’s eyes were dark and distant. “Why wouldn’t I be? I have a collection to finish. I’m going to make it the biggest success Kingdom has ever seen. Then I’m going to live my life—without all the never-ending drama that comes attached to Kingdom.”
Georgia wanted to argue—to convince Charis that Kingdom was what kept them together. Kept them family. She ached for what might’ve been. For all the years that had been lost. But Charis was clearly in no mood for a heart-to-heart.
She touched Charis’s arm. “I don’t suppose you know where Jay is?”
Charis shook her off. “He went home.”
“Home?” Georgia realized she didn’t even know where Jay lived. No matter. Bruno would know.
“He’s flying out on vacation.” Her sister opened the cloakroom door.
“No he’s not!”
Georgia grabbed her clutch. Jay wasn’t going anywhere. Not until he’d helped her sort this mess out.
Eight
It was already after midnight.
Jay had just finished packing the last white professionally pressed T-shirt into his bag and was about to zip it shut in readiness for his early morning flight when the doorbell chimed. Before he had a chance to react, it sounded again.
“Hold your horses!” He strode through the apartment and yanked open the front door.
Georgia stood in front of him.
To catch his breath, Jay leaned against the doorjamb and folded his arms across his chest. Even as he examined her, he prayed she wouldn’t detect the sudden drumroll in his chest.
Jay didn’t bother to ask how she’d gotten past the doorman; Georgia on a mission could achieve anything she set her mind to.
Under her evening coat, she was still wearing the midnight blue couture slip dress she’d worn to the benefit auction—and she clung to the silver-sequined Kingdom clutch that Jay had recognized from last fall’s collection. Her silver-blond hair was still drawn off her face in a stylish knot although several tendrils had escaped, adding to her air of fragility. The stark simplicity of the look was broken only by the stunning pair of art deco diamond drop earrings he knew were her sole legacy from her mother...and a stain of red on her lips.
His gaze narrowed. Her lipstick was slightly smudged around the edges, showing signs of hasty repair. Her lips were full, ripe. Kissed.
Jay suppressed the surge of raw emotion that shook him. He might not know where she’d been, but he had a damned good idea who she’d been with...
“What do you want, Georgia?”
“May I come in?”
“You promised to share a bottle of champagne with me if I bid on you—so here I am.”
Too late for champagne now, too late for the intimate tête-à-tête he’d planned to soften her outrage. He thought of all the great intentions he’d had to tell Georgia the truth.
But now it was too late to confess that he’d lied from the outset. That he’d never been recruited to fill the position Ridley—her errant fiancé—had left vacant at Kingdom. While she’d been recovering from a car crash that had sheared away a portion of her memory, he’d taken advantage of being in the right place at the right time so that he could have second chance to get to know her better.
He risked another glance at her tempting strawberry-red lips as the dreams that had sustained him for two years turned to dust.
He should’ve told her the truth, instead of being such a damned coward.
But he hadn’t—and now it was too goddamned late.
There was no point in discussing the night they’d first met—a night she’d long since forgotten. Why open an old wound that held so much trauma for her? There was no point in convincing her to give him a chance to start over. Georgia was lost to him.
She’d followed her father’s orders.
Yet, still, Jay found himself unable to resist the inexorable force that caused him to step back, allowing her space to pass and enter his apartment, even though the tightness in his lower gut warned him this was a dumb idea. Despite an urge to slam it, he shut the door with a dull click.
She shrugged off her coat, and he hung it up on one of the coat hooks that lined the hall alcove.
He flat-handed a control panel on the wall as he passed by, and the apartment exploded into bright light. Now was not the time for dim mood lighting. He waved her into the living space ahead of him. At the island of Carrara marble that functioned as a dining table and divided the streamlined butler-style kitchen from the lounge, he stopped, keeping the slab between them.
He didn’t want her anywhere near him—not now, looking so well-kissed by another man.
A man she intended marry...for Kingdom’s sake.
“You want a drink?” He sure needed one. “Tequila?”
Her shoulders hunched. “Not tequila!”
Stop being an ass, Black!
“What about a glass of that champagne you offered earlier?” Her brightness sounded forced.
He was in no mood to celebrate. Instead, he said, “How about coffee?”
“Much as I’d love a cup, the caffeine will keep me awake.”
Jay clawed a bottle of whiskey out of the liquor cabinet and poured two stiff fingers of amber liquid into a tumbler. The time had come for him to cut his losses. To leave Kingdom, the cold corporation that had chained Georgia’s soul. To find some distant place to lick his wounds in peace—preferably across a wide stretch of ocean.
London. Paris. Sydney.
Whatever. He certainly had no intention of dancing at Georgia’s high society New York wedding.
For the first time, he was grateful that he’d be out of town for the next couple of weeks.
The tumbler thudded against the marble. He reached for a second glass, poured in a shot and pushed it across the slab to her. “Why did you come here?”
She set her glitzy clutch down and faced him across the sleek black-veined slab, her eyes unexpectedly shadowed. “I need...advice.”
“Has something happened?” Giving a silent snort of derision, he picked up his glass and swirled the whiskey around the glass when she didn’t answer.
Dammit, he could see what had happened. It didn’t take a genius to work it out.
Genius? He was an ass!
He contemplated her over the lip of his glass. “It’s Fordyce, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “He asked—or, should I say, expected—me to marry him.”
No surprise there.
“Congratulations.” Jay took a slug of whiskey, set the half-empty glass down and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth to stop himself from swearing violently.
His pain would go away. Someday. On his deathbed.
Georgia leaned toward him and spread her hands out on the marble countertop. “Do you see a ring?”
He stared at her fourth finger.
It was bare.
The breath left his lungs, and his gaze skittered across the marble before rising to her face. “You turned him down?”
“Stone cold.”
Stepping around the cold sleek slab, all he could see was the fullness of her bottom lip. “But you kissed him.”
“He kissed me.”
Under the stain of strawberry-red lipstick, her mouth was trembling. The tip of her tongue slid along the inside of her lip, and he wrenched his eyes away.
“I couldn’t go through with it.”
She was pale, her eyes stricken. What the hell had caused her to look so wounded? Instead of a surge of triumph, Jay quelled an overpowering desire to go and hunt Adam Fordyce down. To pummel the tycoon to a pulp with his bare fists. Leashing his rage, he asked levelly, “What happened?”
Georgia wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed her palms over her bare shoulders. “You say he’s made of ice. You’re wrong—he’s colder than ice.”
Jay clenched his hands into fists at his sides. There wasn’t a trace of ice within him. Only a raging molten heat.
“What did he do?”
“Nothing. He didn’t hurt me—at least not physically.” She shivered and goose bumps rose on her arms. “Sticks and stones—it’s not true.”
What the hell?
“Tell me!” Jay insisted.
She shook her head and winced. Uncrossing her arms, she smoothed her hands over her face, over her hair, coming to a stop as she encountered the topknot. “My head hurts too much.”
Restraining his impatience to know what Fordyce had said to rattle her so deeply, Jay murmured, “Your hair is tied too tight. Take out those pins.”
He moved so close that he could see the flecks of silver in her bewildered eyes. His fingers were already unclenching to help her. Her hair came down in a swath of soft silk. Jay’s fingers tangled in the silver mass, threading through it, combing it until it fell around her face.
“Better?” he asked as gently as he could.
She nodded. “Jay, I’m so glad you were home.”
Unexpectedly, she leaned forward to rest her forehead against his chest.
Jay went rigid with shock. He forced his hands down to his sides. She nestled against him, tucked against the white fabric of his dress shirt, while his heart rattled an erratic tattoo beneath. It was hard to remember that Georgia never liked being touched, that she held herself separate, distant. But not now. Not tonight.
If he bent his head, his lips would touch the fine silver hair—
Fool!
One. Breathe in.
Two. Out.
All Georgia wanted was a confidant. A little comfort. She’d had one hell of a week. He needed to keep reminding himself of that simple fact, until his moronic body got the message.
She lifted her face. “Can I ask you something?”
His hands wrapped into fists to stop himself from touching her.
“You can ask,” he said warily.
“Is...is—” she stammered. “This is harder than I thought it would be.”
Uh-huh. “What?”
“Um—”
“Spit it out!”
She bit her lip, and a pink flush warmed her cheeks. “Do you have a dream woman?”
He felt himself flush in turn. Saw her eyes register his discomfort.
“Oh,” she said.
He felt awkward and exposed. “What nonsense is this?”
“Chari
s is your dream woman?” she asked.
“Charis?” It was the last thing he’d expected her to say.
“My sister.”
“I know who Charis is,” he growled.
Jay held back a curse. The woman he wanted was far from a dream. She was real. Flesh and blood. And she was cuddled up against him. Yet he didn’t trust himself to touch her.
“Jay?”
There was a strange expression in Georgia’s eyes. Was that yearning he read there? Or was he indulging in another futile fantasy?
“No,” he finally said, “Charis is not my dream woman.”
“I’m so glad to hear that.”
His heart thumped in his chest, and he silently cursed the leap of hope. “What’s this about?”
“So there’s no chance that you might want to marry Charis?”
“I’ve answered that before.” He knew he sounded terse. “Why all these questions?”
“Adam and Charis are lovers.” She dropped her head down, and her voice was muffled by his shirtfront again. “I didn’t want you to get hurt...if you felt something for Charis.”
Jay almost laughed. Jesus...what a royal screwup Kingston had made.
“Did Fordyce tell you that?”
“It was obvious—and he didn’t deny it when I blurted it out. It gets worse.” She sucked in a deep shuddering breath. “I thought he was telling me their affair was over. He’d just proposed to me—if one could call it that. Whatever it was, he’d given me a ring. Stupid me.” Her whole frame shook against him. “God, I was wrong. So wrong.” Another shiver went through her, and she buried her face deeper against him. “Adam told me he would continue to sleep with my sister...that it wouldn’t interfere with our marriage.”
Damn Fordyce!
“I didn’t even know Charis was seeing him.”
Georgia’s hurt and bewilderment hung between them, and Jay couldn’t think of a single platitude that might ease her pain. Finally, he allowed his fists to uncurl and let his arms steal up around her. Bowing his head over hers, Jay couldn’t escape the soft feminine scent of her. To his horror, blood rushed to his groin.
“How did you respond?” His voice was husky.
Georgia’s head came up so quickly that his lips brushed across her forehead. She pulled back a little, putting space between them, and his arms fell away.