He shook his head. “I’ve been in this situation before. It’s all part of what I do.”
“I thought the shares were only a side-line? You had plans to look for business ideas to start something new. Something solid. What happened?”
“I didn’t find anything that called out to me.”
“This isn’t the answer. Not if it leaves you feeling this way.”
“You worry too much.” His hand stroked her cheek.
She placed her hand on top of his. “Because I care.”
A growl rumbled deep in his stomach. He’d made himself throw up—a trick that came in handy sometimes but he hadn’t eaten since and now he was starving.
She ran her hand through his hair and kissed his cheek. “Let me fix you some lunch.”
“I’ll help you.” He offered.
26
Andrea slipped off her pink dress and considered her earlier conversation with Leo. His words refused to give her any peace.
Had she made a mistake in not going to the reception? It was almost nine in the evening and she had a feeling that things would still be going on.
Her loyalty in staying by Riley’s side when he had been ill had seemed logical but she’d been perturbed when he then later told her that he was fine and had spent the rest of the afternoon glued to the laptop, working away.
He was obviously worried sick about the deal but since he refused to talk to her about it, there wasn’t a lot she could do. Anytime she tried to bring up the subject, the tightness in his face, the cold stare of his gaze, warned her off. She had considered the possibility of helping him. She could lend him some money to get him through this rough patch but when she tried to talk to him about the losses on his latest so called deal, he didn’t want to know.
As the day wore on, she grew more despondent and irritable. Disappointment soon turned to regret and before long anger started to simmer inside her. She’d wasted the day in returning to the apartment when she could have gone to Montagnano to be a part of Nico and Ava’s special day.
Maybe Leo had been right. She should have gone with him. After all, Riley had insisted she go and leave him at home to recover. Anything would have been better than sitting around doing nothing in her pink dress which she couldn’t bring herself to take off. She’d ended up wearing it in defiance for the rest of the day.
Later at night when it was time for bed she wondered if she would do things differently if she had another chance.
“What’s the matter?” Riley asked, coming up behind her as she struggled to unzip her dress. She felt his fingers slowly pull the zipper down, and then he slipped the dress down her sides and kissed her bottom as the dress lay bunched around her feet.
She knew where this was heading but she was so not in the mood.
“I’m tired, Riley,” she said through barely gritted teeth. “It’s been a long day.” It’s been a long and shitty day, she thought, bitterly.
“Let me make it up to you,” he whispered as his thumbs rubbed the soft flesh of her bottom. But she wasn’t interested, and clenched her thighs together. “Baby,” he said, and slipped his hands between her legs to move them gently apart. “Let me…” She knew the drill. Any moment now he would work his way around to her front and she would feel his tongue on her, his fingers inside her, and it would start something. It would avoid the need for questions and hence remove the need for him to provide answers.
“I’m not in the mood,” she said irritably.
“You will be,” he murmured, and slid the crotch of her panties to the side. But for the first time she didn’t want him to touch her; confusion and irritation dulled her thoughts. It had been easier caring for him when he’d been unwell. It brought out the best in her and made her think that relationships like this one were the norm: there were good times and bad times and couples who lasted the course did so because they weathered the ride. Being together was less about enjoying all the good times and more about surviving the bad.
But even so, her anger resurfaced along with Leo’s words. Riley’s swift turnaround in health and mood bothered her and his obvious idea that sex might ‘fix’ everything, provoked her further.
Still, her body began to quiver and bow down to his needs as a delicious swirl of pulsating desire heated her body. Any moment now he would stroke her and play her as perfectly as a violin, making her bend to his whim, sweeping her until she rose to a crescendo before falling apart against him.
No, she decided.
“Riley, stop.” She pushed his hand away and, stepping over him, she turned around, adjusting her panties so that she was fully covered again. She slipped on her nightclothes while he looked at her in disbelief from his position on the floor.
“What’s up?” He asked, getting up and walking towards her. She automatically took a step back.
“I’m tired, that’s all.” She pulled her t-shirt down over her body and folded her arms.
“I can make you relax. You know I can.” She knew that. Come to think of it, every time she’d asked him something, he was always so fast to make love to her.
Was it her imagination or was there a pattern?
“Why do you look so angry?” he asked, running his fingers through her hair.
“It’s nothing,” she said quickly.
“It’s hard to think it’s nothing unless it’s something you don’t want me to know about.”
She looked up at him sharply. “That’s ironic, coming from you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, surveying her coldly. Then before she’d even formed an appropriate response, “You seem different. Something about you ever since you came back from the grocery store.”
“That’s funny,” she said and walked away to hang her dress up, ready to take it to the dry cleaners tomorrow. “I was going to say the same thing about you.”
“What’s that?”
“You seemed so ill this morning, so sick and drained; barely able to do a thing. Barely able to make it to the wedding or the party. Yet in the afternoon you were back on your laptop working away. I’m thinking what is it that makes a sick man well so quickly so that he can work for hours without a problem?”
“The medication you bought me.”
“You didn’t take any.” She knew, she’d watched him
He narrowed his eyes again and she instinctively folded her arms.
“I was starting to feel better by the time you got back. What is it you’re saying, Andrea?”
“You recovered quickly.”
“I told you, it’s a condition I have and the spasms come and go. I didn’t need to take the medication later because the spasms had stopped.”
That’s not what he had said earlier.
She remained silent while Leo’s words hovered around her head like treacherous goblins. “It’s common, many people have it. Leo said his—” She froze, backed into a corner, knowing she hadn’t mentioned anything about meeting Leo earlier.
“Leo?” Riley’s face flushed as he lowered his chin. “You spoke to Leo about this?” It was the quietness in his voice, the levelness of it, which sent a chill through her.
“Why, is that a problem?” She asked in a voice that sounded braver than she felt.
“When did you speak to him?”
She could see him scrambling for information, asking questions and not waiting for her to reply. Trying to figure out the pieces of the puzzle by himself. Any moment now he would come to realize the truth of it. She should have owned up to it when she’d first come home. Telling him this late made it obvious she’d wanted to hide her rendezvous with Leo from him. He would wrongly suspect there had been another reason for it and knowing his reservations about Leo, she knew he would draw the wrong conclusion.
“He wanted to know why we weren’t at the wedding,” she said.
“He was invited?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“What do you think I said?” she asked, getting
some of her courage back. She straightened up, even though he towered over her and stood directly between her and her escape. “I told him you were ill and that you had some bowel condition. He wished you a speedy recovery,” she lied. “One of his ex-girlfriends suffered from it, he said.”
Riley’s face relaxed. “He’s probably not a bad guy. I don’t know why I feel so edgy around him.”
He clasped his hands behind the back of his head. “I’m sorry, Andrea. I guess I’m jealous. I feel as though he and I are competing for you.”
She let out a low sigh. That was it? No more questions?
“He’s a business partner. I don’t understand why he rubs you the wrong way.”
“I didn’t mean to get so angry just because he called you.”
He thought Leo had called her?
Even better.
“It’s been a weird day,” she said, grateful for him to think that all she and Leo had shared was a phone call. “You should get some rest. You’ve been working hard and you look tired.” She walked towards him and ran her fingers across his chest, wanting him to forget all talk about Leo. It would be safer that way. But then she withdrew her hand quickly in case he got the wrong idea again.
“I’m taking a shower,” he said, and pulled his shirt over his head.
“Okay.” She settled into bed with a book and watched as he wriggled out of his sweatsuit bottoms, naked now except for his boxers. She watched as he walked away.
Who could blame her for wanting to be with him?
27
“I feel worse than awful that I missed your big day and I’m so annoyed with myself.” I should have at least shown my face.
Andrea paused and wondered whether that would be sufficient. She sat perched on the edge of Leo’s desk with her back to the door and scrunched up a piece of paper into a small ball in her hand.
“Everything is fine at my end. Riley—” She stopped, unsure what to call him. Was he her boyfriend? Her partner? The man she lived with? “Riley, the guy I wanted you to meet, had a sudden illness and we couldn’t make it on time. I’m sorry. I wish I could have been there. Have a wonderful time on your honeymoon and I’ll see you both when you get back.”
It was one of the longest messages she’d left and yet, telling her side of it didn’t seem to be enough. She still considered this the easy way out. Leaving a message was painless and she’d been relieved when her call had gone straight to voicemail.
She wondered what Ava was doing. Where were they honeymooning? Andrea had no idea at all; she’d have known more of their plans if she’d been at the wedding.
She didn’t even know when they would be back but Rona would. She’d find out from her and then she would take Ava and Nico out to dinner and apologize to them face- to-face.
Something still didn’t sit right with her. Something that had kept her awake for hours, long after she heard Riley snoring beside her.
What was it that made Riley not want to go to the wedding at any cost? She realized that in thinking this she was merely succumbing to Leo’s point of view. At the back of her mind she’d begun to think of Leo as being overly protective of her. It annoyed her that he might have been looking out for Dominic, his friend. But the more she thought about it the more she saw things clearly, especially regarding Riley and his miraculous recovery from his stomach cramps. He’d been at his laptop for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening and had been back to normal. If she hadn’t seen him in pain rolling around on the bathroom floor earlier, she would never have known that he was ill. His recovery had been fast. Too fast and doubts had started to nip at her. Because in all the time she’d known Riley, he had never been sick, never been ill, never suffered from anything.
He didn’t even get a hangover after a heavy night.
Why had he fallen ill at that particular moment just as they were leaving for the wedding? Was he trying to avoid something? And if so, what?
What, or who?
He’d encouraged her to go but it seemed that he was the one who had no intention of going.
The weekend had been fairly quiet and they hadn’t gone out for dinner or gone for a walk, or gone to the theater. The nightclub had never come up as an option for a night out again. She’d wanted to stay at home and prepare for the upcoming trip to Milan this week.
But the entire weekend the same question had remained in her thoughts: What did Riley have to hide that he needed to avoid something, or someone so badly?
“Come back,” she felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped. She turned around to find Leo standing in front of her with a cardboard tray holding two cups of coffee and her favorite Danish pastry.
She slid off his desk and felt a little cheered up. The triple combination of her morning caffeine shot, her favorite pastry and Leo cheered her up considerably and she accepted the coffee cup with heartfelt gratitude. They took turns to buy coffee in the mornings, but he didn’t usually buy a pastry. She noticed he’d not bought one for himself.
“Take it,” he insisted, holding the pastry out to her.
“Thank you,” she said. “What’s the occasion?”
“Peace offering.”
“Peace offering?” She sat down and pulled out the cinnamon and raisin swirl—her favorite—from the paper bag. “Take half,” she said, offering.
“I hate raisins with a vengeance.” He opened the lid to his coffee cup. “I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of Riley’s illness yesterday.”
“You were looking out for me, Leo. It’s alright.” She was starting to have doubts of her own, but decided it was better to keep them to herself for now. “I get it. You still think of me as Dominic’s little sister and you have to keep an eye on me. But you really don’t Leo.”
He gave her a curious look.
She bit into the sticky pastry, the flakes melted in her mouth and the sweet raisins and cinnamon almost took her to heaven. She took another bite and moaned. “Too good,” she said, closing her eyes and letting out a breath. It was only when she took a sip of coffee that she saw him examining her face silently.
He looked away quickly when she caught him staring and turned on his computer. “I knew you’d like it.” He said, trying to sound casual, but his voice wavered.
“So?” she asked, when he said nothing.
“So?” he seemed miles away.
“How was the party?”
He made a face, then banged away on his keyboard and appeared to focus on his monitor. “I don’t know. I went home.”
“You did what?” she exclaimed.
“I went home.”
“But you said you were going back to the reception?”
“I had planned to but when I thought about it, I’d seen the wedding. I didn’t know many people there anyway and my ex was with her fiancé. I felt like a chaperone. I didn’t relish the idea of spending the whole evening talking to my father-in-law.”
She felt disappointment for him, as though she’d also let him down by not going, by refusing to consider his invitation. It would have made for a wonderful evening, she imagined. Far better than the one she’d had with Riley on his computer and her sitting on the couch in her fancy dress with her laptop. Pissed off and moody.
That was another thing. She usually worked at the table, but ever since he had claimed the space for himself, she found it too distracting sitting with him. So she had moved to the couch where she did her last minute bits of work in the evenings or on weekends.
“I’m sorry you missed it.”
“I’m sure you’ll hear all about it when they get back.”
“I wish I’d gone with you now.”
Leo looked at her without saying a word.
She continued, “I feel bad that you didn’t go on account of me.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
She wanted to talk to him more but the phone rang and she answered it. Leo leaned forward and started typing.
And it was business as usual.
28
“Bitch!” he yelled and thumped his fist on the table. “Call me a fucking gambler.” Riley seethed with hatred for the faceless whore at the other end of the phone.
The bank refused to extend his loan, probably because his credit rating hadn’t been too great lately. Earning thousands one day and losing it all the next had made him poor with his cash flow. And he’d eaten into all of his savings.
It was how he lived.
It was why staying with Andrea had become so appealing. He didn’t have to worry too much about accommodation and bills and food money.
She took pretty good care of him. In the beginning he’d been more generous with offering to buy dinner and groceries, but damn it, the woman had expensive taste. She didn’t like to eat at McDonald’s. If Claydon’s deal had paid off he’d be laughing now. He’d be laughing to the tune of sixty thousand dollars for one insider tip. It would have been easy money. Welcome money. As it was, he was out of pocket by a fuckload of cash and this had been his last hope.
He was trapped and he hated feeling this way even though he’d been in hairier positions before. He considered his options carefully. Should he come clean with Andrea, as much as he could, and ask her to lend him money? She obviously knew that something was wrong and that he had money worries. She’d been eager to help; it was his fault for refusing to talk about it.
He could ask her to lend him the money. Or he could just take it and leave.
There’d be no way she would be able to figure out where he’d gone. He could transfer some money from her account to his—without her knowing. He wasn’t sure what the limit was on her business account.
But the thought had occurred to him to take the entire $30K.
He would take only what he needed even though he knew she had more. Taking more might raise suspicion at the bank, as it was he didn’t know if he still might trip some flag by the size of the transfer. As callous as he was, he couldn’t take any more from Andrea. It didn’t feel right.
Hearts on Fire: Romance Multi-Author Box Set Anthology Page 88