by Tara Pammi
How dared she place the blame for their failed marriage at his feet?
And yet he could swear he had seen sadness lurking in her eyes as she had called herself a trophy wife, felt her shiver as if her words were leaching out the warmth.
He was about to walk out of the hall, away from the crowd, when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around, his control razor-thin.
Beautiful brown eyes—open, smiling, similar to Kim’s and yet so different—greeted him. Olivia King.
She wore a red knee-length dress. A ruby pendant hung at her neck. Where Kim’s hair was cut into a sophisticated blunt style, Olivia’s hair was long and curly and wild. There was nothing drastically different from the way Kim was dressed, especially tonight in a dress uncharacteristic of her. And there was the same sensuous vitality to Olivia that was muted but so much more appealing in Kim.
“Hello, Diego,” she said, with very little hesitation in her expression.
He raised a brow at her familiarity. She waved a hand at him and moved closer. The gesture, her very movement, lacked the grace and the innate poise he expected from that face. It stunned him into a moment’s silence.
“Sorry to be crowding you on the dance floor like this, but I have to take my chance now. You’re the father of my niece or nephew—” a smile split her mouth “—and I only have a few moments before Alexander chews my head off for butting in.”
His anger thawing, Diego took the hand she offered boldly.
Where Kim wore her sophistication, her brilliance, like an armor that no one could pierce, Olivia’s irreverence, her open smile, was the pull. Her emotions were right there in her smiling gaze.
A man wouldn’t look into those eyes and wonder if she was his salvation or his purgatory. He wouldn’t have to spend a lifetime wondering if he was banging his head against a rock.
They looked exactly the same and yet were so different. He found it highly disconcerting and illuminating. Because he didn’t feel the least bit of attraction toward her.
He frowned. “A chance at what, Mrs. King?”
Her gaze twinkled. “Call me Liv. My chance to talk to you. Everyone’s talking about your statement to the press, and Kim hasn’t been very...forthcoming about you.”
“No?” Just like that his ire rose again. “Let’s just say I’m your perfect sister’s dirty little secret.”
His gaze sought the woman in question and found her immediately. Kim was standing at a table, talking to Alexander.
They were peas in a pod, those two. So similar in everything. And yet Alexander King had walked away from Kim, entrenched himself in scandal for Olivia.
“Which you’ve made sure is not a secret or dirty anymore,” Olivia said, with the initial warmth fleeing from her words.
He flicked his gaze back to her. “Waiting for your sister to do the right thing was a futile exercise.”
A little frown appeared in her brow. “My sister...” She hesitated, as though choosing her words carefully. “She’s always kept her feelings and her fears to herself.”
“You mean she has any under that brilliance?”
Her brow furrowing, Olivia continued, “Kim always had to be the strong one—for my mother and for me. It was the only way to survive—the only way she could protect me.”
“From whom?” he said, before he could stop himself. He rubbed his nape, feeling tension curl into his muscles. Damn his wife and his ever-spiraling curiosity about her. “You know what? All I care about is that she does the right thing by my child.”
He couldn’t keep his resentment out of his words.
Olivia nodded. “Look, all I wanted to say was that I’m glad you and Kim are working things out.”
“Do you know, if looks could kill, I would have died a few times from your husband’s wrath in the past few minutes?”
She glanced to where they stood—her husband and his wife. “Please ignore Alexander.” She bent toward him, and though she stood at a perfectly respectable distance to someone standing on the other side of the room, it looked as though she was too close to Diego. “He’s a bit possessive when it comes to me.”
She had sidled closer to him just to get a rise out of her husband. On cue, the frown on the other man’s brow deepened across the banquet hall. Diego smiled despite everything. “He doesn’t like me very much.”
She smiled. “My husband has a very rigid sense of right and wrong.”
“Really? And yet he carried on with you while pretending to be married to her? Traded her for you without a moment’s—?”
Her gaze flashed with anger. “Alexander and Kim—what they shared was not a real relationship. Even before she knew about us, after her time with you on the island, she broke it off with him. I mean, they never even—”
Kim had broken it off with Alexander? When? He felt as though he’d had his breath knocked out of him. “Never even what, Olivia?”
Olivia’s look was more calculated now, gauging if he was trustworthy. “Did you mean what you said to the press? About a new beginning with Kim?”
“Yes.”
“Alexander and Kim never had a physical relationship.”
Diego felt as if a curtain was falling away from his eyes. Primal satisfaction filled his veins even as he wondered why his perfect wife would hide something like that from him. Especially when he had accused her of being unemotional and unaffected by how easily she had gone back to Alexander.
But of course Kim offered nothing of herself. Truth or anything else. Frustration erupted through him.
True, he had given her the perfect reason to believe him the enemy. And that had to change if their marriage had a chance of being anything but a battleground.
He looked up at Olivia just as she stiffened next to him. Within seconds the color fled from her animated face and her gaze was stricken with fear. Diego turned to see where her gaze was trained.
Their father, Jeremiah Stanton, was shaking hands with someone.
His gaze instantly zeroing on his wife, Alexander cut his way across the crowd toward them, his stride purposeful.
Even Diego felt a flash of anxiety at the fear that filled Olivia’s eyes. “Olivia? Are you all right?”
She glanced up at him, her gaze glittering with pain. “Sorry. Old habits die hard.” She bent toward him, the very picture of anxiety. “You have to find Kim immediately— okay?”
“What are you talking about?”
“My father,” she said, glancing at him and turning away quickly. “I know his wrath when he’s displeased better than anyone. He won’t like what the media’s been saying about her.”
“I don’t either.”
“You don’t understand. He will rip into her for this. Whatever issues you have with her, tonight just...just take care of her.”
* * *
Her muscles quivering, Kim paced the quiet corner of the banquet hall.
Every inch of her wanted to confront Diego, challenge every arrogant word he had uttered about six years ago. She could take anything he tossed at her—his tactics to control her company, his manipulations. But she couldn’t stand his latest accusations. His background had never bothered her—not then, not now. As if she had ever assumed that she was better than him, as if she hadn’t given it everything she had in her—until he had turned her into his prize trophy.
She turned toward the banquet hall, determined to have it out with him right there. And then she saw her father at the edge of the crowd, walking toward her, wearing the fiercest scowl she had ever seen.
With her father being out of country for the past month she had almost forgotten about him. They hadn’t had their twice-weekly lunch, and of course he had only flown in today. Which meant this was the first he’d be hearing about everything.
She smiled as he neared her, a feeling of failure threading through her. She ran a hand over her stomach, unable to stop herself. Anger fell off him in dark waves. Which wasn’t unusual—except before it had always been targeted at Liv.<
br />
She bent her cheek toward him as she always did, but he didn’t kiss it. Straightening up, she met his gaze. The fury pulsing in it curled into dread in her stomach.
“Have you lost your goddamned mind, Kimberly?” His words were low and yet his wrath was a tangible thing around them. “I’m gone for a month and not only have you screwed up your life, but your company too?”
She drew a sharp breath in. “Dad, I understand how awful this must sound to you, but I’m trying my best to control the damage. I’m so sorry you had to hear about it like this.”
“Are you? Wherever I turn I’m smacked in the face with news that both my daughters are indiscriminate...” His gaze flicked to her. “Are you really no better than Olivia?”
She shook her head, hating the disappointment in his words. “For the last time—Liv did nothing wrong. And, yes, I know that I’ve messed up, but the truth is that I—”
“Unless you can tell me that everything I’ve heard so far is false there’s nothing you can say.”
His gaze flayed her, eroding her already thin composure.
“You run away from your wedding, you get yourself pregnant by God-knows-who... After everything I taught you you’ve proved that you’re no better than the trash your mother was. These are not the actions of the daughter I raised—the daughter I’ve always been proud of.”
Her heart sinking to her feet, Kim clutched at his hands. She was not like her mother. She was not weak. “He’s not just someone I picked up, Dad,” she said, for the first time acknowledging that very fact to herself, too. She had walked away from the hurt Diego had caused her six years ago, given up on a foolish dream, but it didn’t mean she was impervious to his sudden reappearance in her life.
“Is it true, then?”
“What?”
“You married him six years ago? He’s the father of your...child?”
She nodded. “Diego is the baby’s father. And, yes, our marriage is valid.”
“Then you’d better work it out with him and clean up this mess. The last thing I want is a bastard grandchild.”
She flinched at his cutting words. “I will, Dad. I promise. Will I see you—?”
He shook his head, his denial absolute. “Don’t call me until you’ve kept yourself out of the news for a while. And if you can’t clean it up you’re just as dead to me as your sister is.”
Nodding, Kim sagged against the wall as he walked away without a backward glance. She exhaled a long breath, tears prickling behind her eyes. It had to be the damned hormones again. Because her father’s reaction should not be a surprise. She had seen it enough times with Liv.
She had let so many people down recently—Liv, Alex, her father and herself. Apparently Diego was the only one who didn’t care about the consequences. She turned her head and saw him standing there, watching her father go, rage mirrored in his golden gaze.
Diego couldn’t believe his own eyes. His ears rang with those softly delivered yet harsh words. It was nothing a father should ever say to his child, and Diego himself had had more than his share of nasty words from his own father.
His temper frayed to the edge. Every inch of him wanted to turn around, find Jeremiah Stanton and pound his fists into the older man.
In another lifetime he wouldn’t have given it another thought. He would have worked through his fury the only way he knew how. But he was not that man anymore. He had promised his mother that he would remove the violence that had been part of his life for so long as a member of a street gang.
Even though keeping his promise was the hardest thing at moments like this.
Kim looked frazzled. Her dress had more color than her face. He wrapped a hand around her shoulders and the shocking thing was that she let him. He felt her shiver and a curse fell from his lips. “Are you okay?”
Her brown eyes drank him in silently. The very absence of hurt in them jarred through him. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“You were apologizing to him while he uttered the foulest words and yet you flay me for lesser sins?”
He felt her smile against his arm. Holding her like this was pure torture but he couldn’t let go.
“That’s just the way my father is.”
He reared back, frowning. “He laid into you in the middle of a crowd. For what? Because you slept with me? Because you’re pregnant? Because you let your control slip for one night? You’re twenty-five, you’re the CEO of your own company.” He frowned as another thought came bursting in. “Are you saying he’s always been like this?”
“Yes, but it was usually aimed at my mother and then Liv.”
His breath left him in a sharp hiss. “But not you? Ever?”
“I never gave him the chance—never let him find fault with me. I did everything he asked me to and I excelled at it.”
“So you’re not upset?” he said, disbelief ringing through him.
“I’m upset that I gave him any reason. But you already know that I regret my actions four weeks ago.”
“You’re defending him?”
“My father is responsible for all the success I have achieved. If he hadn’t continually pushed me, I would have—I would be—nothing. This is his way of warning me to not let it all go down the drain.”
“You make one mistake—if it can be called that—and he tears you apart? Don’t you see—?”
“You’re reading too much into this, Diego.”
Her mouth was a study in resignation that mocked his anger.
“I’ve always known that his approval comes with conditions.”
“I saw fear in Olivia’s eyes. Are you saying he didn’t put it there?”
She glanced past him, her gaze riddled with anxiety. “Yes, he did,” she said. “Do you know where she is?”
Fisting his hands, Diego reined in another curse. She wasn’t upset for herself but for her twin. “Alexander’s with her.”
“I always tried my best to protect Liv,” she said, with a hint of pleading in her tone, as if she needed to explain herself. “The only way to do that was to play peacekeeper by not giving him any more reason to lose it.”
Why was it her job to protect Olivia? He kept those words to himself through sheer will. “So of course you had to become everything perfect?”
“Why do you say that like it’s a—” she glared at him “—curse? How is he any different from you?”
“Your father is a bully of the worst sort,” he said through gritted teeth. “I fought in street-gangs, yes, but I used my fists for survival. If that’s what you think about me—”
“No. I didn’t mean that you’re a bully.” She looked at him, her expression pleading. “I meant he’s no different from anyone else in his expectations of me. He’s just upfront about it. My accomplishments, my capabilities, are the things that draw people to me. Nothing else...” She swallowed, as if she found it hard to speak the words. “It’s why you married me six years ago, it’s why Alex picked me for his wife and it’s what my father’s approval of me is based on.”
There it was again—that accusation. As though he hadn’t...
She swayed and he caught her, questions tumbling through his head.
His throat felt raw at her matter-of-fact admission. But buried beneath it there had been...hurt. Her attachment to her company, her isolated lifestyle... Suddenly his perspective shifted, as though he had been looking at her until now through a dirtied window.
“I think I’ve had enough excitement for the night,” she said softly, puncturing his thoughts. Her fingers clasped his arm. “Can we leave?”
He nodded and guided her toward the exit, his palm staying on her back. He couldn’t tear his gaze from her, however.
She looked breathtakingly beautiful, every curve and dip of her sexy body outlined in that damned dress, every step she took grace embodied.
Whether it was her disconcerting statement, or the weary look in her eyes, he didn’t see the aggravatingly prickly woman she had become.
Instea
d she reminded him of the night he had met her, on the cruise ship six years ago. The memory stole through him like an insidious drug, catching him unawares.
She had been standing alone on the deck, away from the rest of the crowd. Wind had been whipping her hair; her green knee-length dress had been molded against her slender figure.
None of the usual festivities that attracted a nineteen-year-old—dancing or drinking—had grabbed her interest. She had looked utterly alone, heart-wrenchingly alluring, driving every dormant instinct of his to the surface. He had observed her for over an hour before he had approached her.
They had done no more than exchange their names that night, but he had spent over two hours teasing a smile from her. And when she had smiled he had found the most thrilling, satisfying joy in it. He had felt on top of the world.
That was how she looked now.
Infinitely fragile and unraveled, as if the tiniest pressure might splinter her perfection apart. She was hurt by her father’s outbursts, though for the wrong reasons.
That flash of vulnerability shredded the anger and scorn with which he had covered up his desire. He had only deceived himself that it was all gone. Need and something more sinuous glided through his veins.
He wanted to grab her by those dainty shoulders and shake her until she realized she didn’t need her father’s approval, conditional or otherwise. He wanted to kiss her just as much as he wanted to provoke her, until her beautiful eyes sparkled with that infuriating combination of logic and desire. But he couldn’t—not if he wanted to keep his sanity intact.
He couldn’t fight the feeling that he knew very little about the woman he had married six years ago. Her statement that what she’d represented to him was the reason why he had wanted her pricked like a thorn in his side.
What if there was more to why she had left him? Was he culpable too? And, if he was, why didn’t the aggravating woman call him on it?
CHAPTER SIX
KIM SLID FROM the luxurious bed in Diego’s spare bedroom— or one of the six spare bedrooms. She cast a glance toward the digital alarm clock on the nightstand. It was only five minutes past seven.