by Dani Collins
She glanced up. Her smile faded. Last night’s enmity crept back like cold smoke, suffocating and dark. “I’ve got her,” she said, dropping her lashes to hide her eyes. “You can get some sleep or go in to the office like you planned.”
“No. I can’t.”
He ran a hand through his hair, becoming aware of a persistent headache and a general bruised feeling all over his body. His breath felt thick and insufficient. He spoke in a voice that very reluctantly delivered what he had to say.
“Sirena, you know I lost my father. What I never tell people...I found him. I came home from school and there he was, overdosed. Deliberately. He’d been having an affair with his secretary.” He paused. “I called an ambulance, tried to revive him, but I was only nine years old. And it was too late.”
Sirena’s eyes fixated on him, the green orbs wide with shock. “I had no idea.”
“I hate talking about it. My mother doesn’t speak of it either.”
“No, the few times she mentioned your father she sounded as if...”
“She loved him? She did. I only know about the affair because I found the note in the safe when we moved. It was full of assurances that he loved us both, but he still chose death because he couldn’t live without this woman. I can’t help blaming her.” He knew it wasn’t logical, but nothing about his father’s death made sense to him.
“The note was the only thing left in the safe,” he continued. “My stepfather had emptied it of everything else. My mother loved him, too, and he appeared to love her back. I thought she’d found some comfort with him after our loss, but my stepfather was using her. He gambled away every cent we had. I came home from university because he’d had a heart attack and that’s when I found the phones were about to be cut off and the electricity was overdue. We lost him and the house in the same month. My mother was a mess, grief stricken, but also feeling guilty for having trusted him and giving me no indication things were sliding downhill so fast.”
He pushed his hands into his pockets, seeing again his mother’s remorseful weeping and hearing her broken litany of, He said he would turn it around.
“You mentioned last night he was the reason you started over. I didn’t realize it was that grim. What did you do?” Her voice was all softness and compassion, her bared shoulder enhancing the picture of her as vulnerable and incapable of causing harm.
“I developed a deep animosity toward anyone who tries to rob me,” he admitted with quiet brutality.
She paled. Her gaze fell and her expression grew bleak.
“Maybe it doesn’t excuse my having you arrested without speaking to you first, but I felt justified when it happened. I was... Damn it, Sirena, it was a perfect storm of my worst nightmares, falling for my secretary the way my father had, then being betrayed by someone I had come to rely on. I lashed out hard and fast.”
She gave a little nod as she drew the sleepy infant off her breast and shrugged her robe into place. “I understand.”
How many times had he seen that look on her face, he wondered, taking in the lowered lashes and stoic expression. He was tough to work for, he knew that. He pushed himself hard and was so overcommitted he didn’t have time for mistakes. She’d always been the first to hear about any he found.
The phrase long-suffering came to mind as he saw past her impassive expression to the self-protective tension in her body language. For the first time he heard the stark despondency in her voice. It had the same underlying incomprehension he felt when he talked about his father’s suicide. She didn’t understand. She was merely accepting what she couldn’t change.
His heart lurched. He prided himself on supporting his family and living up to his responsibilities, but he had leaned heavily on Sirena when she worked for him. Where was her pillar of support, though? Her talk last night of being scared and ill and forsaken by her family had terrified and angered him anew. He wondered why she had needed the money. She had never said, but he was damned sure it wasn’t for gambling debts or high fashion or drugs.
“Why did you steal from me, Sirena?”
She flinched at the word steal, then a kind of defeat washed over her, shutting her eyes and making her shoulders slump. “My sister needed money to pay her tuition fees.”
The words left a bang of silence like a balloon popping into jagged pieces. He hadn’t expected it, but it seemed oddly predictable after the fact.
She rushed on. “She was so upset after working so hard to get accepted to her degree program. They have a huge waiting list. She couldn’t just wait a semester and apply again. And she’ll make an amazing teacher, because she understands what it’s like to struggle. I honestly thought it would only be for a few days until Dad got payment from his customer— Please don’t go after him for repayment,” she said with sudden stark alarm. “Things happened with his business. He doesn’t have it and he’s really struggling. It would kill him to know how much trouble I got myself into.”
Her misery was real, her regret so palpable he could taste it. There was no struggle over whether to believe her. The explanation fit perfectly with her revelations last night about her love for her sister. He’d always seen her as loyal. It was why he’d been so blindsided by and furious about her dishonesty. It was exactly like the woman he knew to step up and fix things as expediently as possible.
None of that excused her behavior, but at least he understood it.
“I think she’ll go down for a while now.” She rose, pale and not meeting his eyes.
He should have let her leave him to his thoughts, but put out his hand to stop her.Only posted on dpgroup
She halted, eyes downcast. Subtle waves of tension rolled off her. He could tell she wanted to be away from him, but she wasn’t willing to allow contact with his outstretched arm even to brush it aside so she could leave the room.
Her refusal to touch him spread an ache of dismay through him. They’d torn the curtains back and exposed their motives for treating each other the way they had, but it didn’t change the fact that she’d stolen and he’d wanted her jailed her for it. Those sorts of injuries took a long time to heal.
But they had to ignore the pain and make this work in spite of it.
“The simplest, most advantageous solution for Lucy would be for us to live together permanently,” he began.
Her shoulders sagged. “I know, Raoul. But it wouldn’t work. We don’t trust each other.”
She seemed genuinely distressed. He felt the same, but he couldn’t give up. It wasn’t in his nature.
“We can start over. We’ve cleared the air. Damn it, Sirena,” he rushed on when she shook her head. “I want to be with my daughter and you feel the same. You can’t tell me you’d rather put her in day care for most of the time you’d have her. And when she’s with me, I’m hiring a nanny to watch her so I can work? It makes no sense.”
“But—”
“We put this behind us,” he insisted, overriding her. “You just have to be honest from now on. Swear to me you’ll never steal from me again. I want that promise,” he stated firmly. More of an ultimatum, really.
Her eyes welled. He was coming at her from so many angles and she was still muddled from a rough sleep. She’d been deeply hurt last night. She’d tossed and turned, convinced that telling him anything about how badly he’d wounded her had been a mistake. What would he care? He would find a way to use it against her.
When she’d risen, she’d been determined to start the move back to her flat.
Then she’d found him looking like a pile of forgotten laundry, hair rumpled, sexy stubble on his cheeks and tortured shadows under his eyes. Her heart had been knocked out of place and was still sitting crooked in her chest. Everything he’d said had put her determination to leave him into disarray.
Falling for my secretary...
That barely there hint of regard shouldn’t make her blood race, but it did.
“We’ve managed until now and we were furious with each other,” he cajoled.
And it did nothing to dissipate the attraction she felt toward him. If anything, it was worse now. The thick walls she’d built against him were thinning and little fantasies of somehow finding a future with him, earning his trust and maybe his love, sparkled like fairy dust in the edges of her vision.
So dumb.
Given what he’d just told her, it was time to accept that he would never, ever love her. The best she could hope for was this, a truce and a fresh start.
Injustice sawed behind her breastbone like an abrasive file.
Lucy grew heavy in her arms. She started to change her position, then let Raoul take her, watching as the limp infant was tucked lovingly into her father’s chest.
Folding her empty arms, she tried telling herself she could manage alone, but she couldn’t ignore his point about day care.
“My mother wants to see her,” Raoul added in quiet insistence. “You know how hard travel is on her. Lucy obviously hates the bottle. We could force the issue—”
“No!” she blurted, hating thinking of Lucy being distressed about anything. If she preferred to breast-feed, well, this was a finite time in both their lives.
“You’ll come to New York with us, then.”
“Don’t start with your pushy tactics! I know how you work, getting a small concession and turning it into a major one,” she said with mild disgust. “I’ll think about New York. And if I go, it won’t be as your—”
Lover? Mistress? Girlfriend? The words all sounded so superficial and temporary, paring her self-worth down to nothing.
“Nanny?” he prompted, mouth quirking briefly, then he sobered. “I’d have to hire one if you don’t go. I’d prefer to pay you. You could quit the transcription.”
“Don’t make it sound easy. It’s not.”
One long masculine finger touched her jaw, turning her face to his. “What’s hard? Making the promise about not stealing? Or keeping it?”
His challenge pinned her so she felt like an insect squirming in place, unable to escape even though she wanted to scamper away. Dying by increments, she felt the spasm of hurt reflect in her face before she was able to mask it, but a pierce of pain stayed lodged in her heart like an iron spike.
Looking him straight in the eye, she defiantly said, “I will never take anything from you. Ever.”
He held her gaze for so long she almost couldn’t stand it. Tightness gripped her chest and her skin felt too small for her body.
He nodded once.
As he walked away, she hung back, trembling. Had she lost or won?
* * *
Raoul’s mother cried when she held Lucy for the first time.
“I never imagined he’d give me a grandchild. He’s such a workaholic.” Beatrisa was a tall, slender woman who dressed well and bound her silver hair into a figure eight behind her head. Her subtle makeup enhanced her aristocratic features and she wore elegant jewelry that Sirena suspected were gifts from her son.
Beatrisa had always seemed to lack a real spark of life and now Sirena understood why. She felt a tremendous need to be kind to the older woman, and was glad she’d conceded to the trip, even though everything about staying in this house was awkward.
“She thinks we’re a couple,” she hissed when they were given a room to share.
“What a crazy assumption, with the baby and all,” he drawled.
“You should explain to her.”
“How?” he countered with exasperation.
Oh, that attitude of his grated. Especially since she could see how it would go. Beatrisa was being incredibly polite, plainly trying not to pry as she accepted their “modern” relationship with a murmur about admiring independent women. Any attempt to clarify would crack open the marriage question and Raoul didn’t see any point in that.
Not that she wanted to marry him. No, they might have found a truce and a crooked understanding with their revelations about their past, but it wasn’t as though he’d magically fallen in love with her. For her part, she was too aware of how easily she could tip back into crazy infatuation with him, making her vulnerable to his dominant personality. He’d broken her heart once already. She couldn’t let him do it again.
“I’ll use the bed in Lucy’s room,” she said.
His sigh rang with male frustration. “The doctor cleared you for more than travel, didn’t he?”
“So I’m supposed to fall into bed with you?” She swung around to glare at him across the foot of the enormous, inviting bed with its plump pillows and slippery satin cover. “I realize you think I slept with you to hide my crime, but sex isn’t that mindless for me. I need feelings on both sides.”
A chill washed over her as her words rang in her ears. Nausea threatened, the kind that came from deep mortification. She was an independent woman, all right, one whose only solace against her obsession with her boss was that he’d never known how deep it went, but she’d just snapped her way into humiliation. Her clothes might as well be on the floor around her ankles, she felt so naked and exposed.
He stood arrested, but the wheels were spinning fast behind his inscrutable stare.
Trying to stay ahead of any conclusions he might draw, she gathered her toothbrush and pajamas from her bag, aware she was shaking but unable to control it.
“Of course, I’m given to self-deception,” she stammered. “And thank God, or we wouldn’t have Lucy, would we? But we both know how we feel about each other now and I make enough fresh mistakes without having to repeat old ones, so...”
She practically ran from the room before locking herself into Lucy’s, where she threw herself facedown on the bed and quietly screamed into a pillow.
CHAPTER NINE
RAOUL HAD GROWN up in New York, but he didn’t care for it. Too many dark memories. The climate didn’t help, always socked in with rain or buried in snow or suffocatingly humid with summer heat. The place forced on him a heavy feeling of a weight inside him that he couldn’t shift.
He was already struggling with that when he paused on his way into a meeting and instructed the receptionist to interrupt him if Sirena called.
“Ms. Abbott? I thought she’d left the company! How is she?” The woman’s warmth and interest were sincere.
His blunt “Fine” was rude. And a lie. He’d left the house before he’d seen her this morning, but he knew from the way Sirena had blanched last night that she was not fine. He almost suspected she was injured in a way he hadn’t considered.
Brooding while he half listened to his engineers develop a workback schedule, he did some math. He hadn’t added everything together since their talk over drinks that night by the pool because he’d been distracted by other revelations, but if it was true she hadn’t dated after that boy in college, she’d had exactly one lover since her first, ill-fated relationship.
Him.
...sex isn’t that mindless for me. I need feelings on both sides.
The way she’d practically grabbed the voice bubble from the air and gobbled it back indicated pretty clearly that she’d never meant to admit that to him. Which made it disturbingly sincere.
Of course, I’m given to self-deception, she’d added to cover up, but that only made him grind his teeth, wondering if he was as well. Despite her motives for stealing unfolding into a picture of a woman who hadn’t believed he’d help if she asked, he’d never wavered from believing she’d slept with him to cover up what she’d done.
He needed to believe it. Anything else was too uncomfortable. He wasn’t a womanizer. He didn’t take advantage of the vulnerable. He didn’t lead women on.
She hadn’t expected one hookup to be a marriage proposal, she’d said, but had expected to be treated with respect.
At the time of their affair, he’d been w
ay past respect into genuine liking. Affection. Something deeper he’d never contemplated letting himself feel.
God, when he thought back to how those twenty-four hours had gone, it was like another lifetime. The sweetness of her, the relief of finally giving in to touching her, the powerful release that had shaken him to the core...
The doors opening inside him, a sensation like footsteps invading the well-guarded depths of his soul. Even as their damp, half-clothed bodies had been trembling in ecstasy, he’d crashed back to the reality of what they’d just done. Whom he’d done it with. How vulnerable he felt.
His inner panels had lit up with alarm signals. While Sirena’s plump lips had grazed his throat, he’d been withdrawing, deeply aware of a sense of jeopardy. His father hadn’t killed himself because he’d fallen for his secretary. He’d killed himself because he’d fallen. In love. Deep emotions drove men to desperate acts.
What he’d felt for Sirena in those loaded minutes of sensual closeness had scared the hell out of him.
He’d pulled away, said something about the rain having stopped. By the time he’d dropped her at her building and returned to his own, he’d been primed for a reason, any reason, to knock her so far away from him she’d never reach him again.
And he had.
...Even my stepmother didn’t go that far to hurt me.
Rather than killing himself, he’d destroyed what had been growing between them.
It was a sickening, horrid vision of himself. He lurched to his feet, needing to escape his own pathetic weakness, but only drew the attention of the room.
“Problem, sir?” The group stood back to look between him and the Smart Board where the schedule could have been written in Sanskrit for all the sense it made.
“I have to make a call,” he lied, and strode through the maze of cubicles clattering with keyboard strikes into his office. It contained two desks, one that was a bold, masculine statement and the other a stylish work space that, for a time, had been the first place he glanced. Now it stood as a monument to his colossal overreaction.
He rubbed his face, hating to feel this tortured, this guilty. The fact remained, she had stolen from him, he reminded himself.