“You are my intern!”
Her lips twisted into a sneer. “The day after we made love for the first time, you told your mother I was your intern. Not your girlfriend or even your special friend. Intern.”
She spat the word out as if he’d called her a cannibal or pedophile.
“Dara, I hadn’t had the chance to tell my mother about you yet. I needed to explain to her about you and me, and Sean—”
“You did explain,” she said on a humorless laugh. “I heard you loud and clear. You told her I was the beautiful woman you were enjoying.”
“Dara—”
A hand came up, silencing him.
“Maybe you do care for me, but not the way I thought you did. Not enough.”
The fear began then, shutting down all logical thought. Deep in the pit of his belly, a tiny spark of fear appeared, quickly burst into flame and left a blackened swath of desolation in its wake. All of his skills were failing him. He’d argued before judges, juries and courts of appeal, and more often than not he brought them around to his way of thinking.
But this time, in the conversation that was, he suddenly realized, the most important of his life, he wasn’t getting through.
Dread washed over him, saturating his body.
“What are you saying?”
She blinked, her mouth turning down at the edges. “I’m saying sex isn’t a casual thing to me, and I can’t ...I can’t handle sleeping with someone who’s just in it to have a little fun while it lasts.”
Mike went absolutely still, waiting for the ax to fall, incapable of speech.
Her chin quivered until she pressed her lips together. “I’m saying good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” he echoed softly.
She nodded miserably, watching him.
I need you, Dara. Don’t you ever leave me. You promise me?
I promise.
Good-bye.
Mike reeled, trying to make sense of the snake’s nest his life had become in the last two minutes.
Last night they’d made love, and he’d been part of her and said how much he needed her, and she’d cried in his arms and sworn she’d never leave him.
And today—less than twenty-four hours later—she was breaking her promise.
He faltered, trapped inside a red haze of alarm tinged with anger.
“You’re breaking up with me ...over a misunderstanding?” he managed to ask, his voice deathly quiet.
“There’s no misunderstanding.”
Suddenly, her calmness enraged him more than anything else. What kind of woman would break her promise and do this to him—rip his guts out and stomp them into the ground—without listening to reason? Without even giving him a chance to explain?
“There is a misunderstanding!” he shouted. “You think I don’t care about you, and I’m telling you I do!”
“Not enough.”
Tell her you love her.
He lunged forward, grabbing her upper arms. Leaning down until they were nose to nose, he tried to stare her down, but she lowered her eyes and turned her head away.
“Enough? What’s enough?”
She tried to shove him away. “Please let me go,” she said calmly, as if trying to talk a jumper down from a ledge. “You won’t change my mind.”
His mind veered to Dara and Sean hugging in the parking lot a few minutes ago. Ugly thoughts crowded his brain and he latched on to one without thinking.
“What’s this got to do with Sean?”
“Sean?” She gaped at him. “What’re you talking about?”
Of course she didn’t know he’d seen them in the parking lot. Would she lie about it?
“I saw you with Sean outside,” he yelled, tightening his grip. “I saw you all hugged up to him! Did you think I didn’t know?”
Tears shimmered in her eyes and her voice rose. “What are you talking about?”
“Maybe you’ve decided you want the other brother after all.” He turned her loose, unwilling to touch the body Sean had just touched. “Is that it? You thought maybe you’d compare us, see which one you like better? Is that it?”
“Get out! Don’t you dare talk to me like that! You get out of my apartment!”
Planting her hands on his chest, she shoved hard, but he didn’t budge.
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me the truth!”
Crying now, she swiped angrily at her tears. “This is about you not caring about—”
Something inside him came unglued. How dare she tell him he didn’t care for her! How dare she tell him how he felt! How dare she refuse to listen to reason! How dare she break her promise!
“Stop the bullshit, Dara!” He clenched and unclenched his hands and somehow resisted the urge to smash his fist through her wall. “I don’t know how many different ways I can prove that I do care about you! I waited to have sex with you! I spent every waking moment with you! For God’s sake, I gave you a key to my house—”
“Because it was convenient this morning,” she said, suddenly calm again.
“I gave you the key to my house!” he roared, thinking of Lisa and countless other women who would have killed for such access.
Wiping her eyes with her sleeve, she walked to the hall table, picked something up, and came back again. Then she held out her hand and there was his key, shining on her steady palm.
“I don’t want it.”
“I gave it to you—”
“I don’t want it.”
“I gave it to you!” He snatched the key and threw it as hard as he could across the room. It hit the wall to one side of the TV with a hard clink, then fell to the carpet along with a plum-sized chunk of paint and drywall. Before he could stop himself, he reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out the envelope with her Christmas present. It was an airline ticket, which he’d foolishly had his travel agent tie with a red satin ribbon.
“Here’s how much I don’t care about you!”
He threw it at her feet.
She flinched, sobbing into her hand.
“I don’t care about you so much, I bought a plane ticket for you today so we could go to Miami together after Christmas! I don’t care about you so much, I couldn’t stand the thought of you going home to Chicago and me not seeing you until after New Year’s!”
“I ...I’m sorry,” she said, dropping her hand and recovering a little as she picked up the envelope. “I can write you a check—”
He stared at her, stupefied. “I don’t want the money! I want you to tell me what I have to do to convince you—”
“Nothing.” She straightened, dropping the envelope on the table.
Mike studied her face with utter disbelief. Once again, that calm, flat mask had descended over her features, and once again, her voice sounded wooden, as if they were discussing whether to have Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes for breakfast.
He wasn’t going to lose her, he thought.
Not now.
Not like this.
Some modicum of control returned to him. What the hell was he doing? Dara—the most important person in his life—was trying to dump him, and here he was, throwing things at her! What was the matter with him?
“Dara, please.”
He caught both of her hands—they felt stiff and icy—and held tightly, refusing to let her go. Very quickly, he pressed first one, then the other, to his lips. She gasped, her fingers closing around his.
“Please, angel.”
Her teary eyes softened, and when he eased his grip a little, her hands went to the sides of his face, cupping his cheeks. Overwhelming relief swamped him. She did care! She would never leave him! Dizzy with gratitude, he turned his head into her palm and kissed it.
“We’re building something here, angel. Don’t throw it away. Please.”
Covering her hands with his, he stepped closer and, when she didn’t protest, lowered his mouth to hers.
Moaning, she kissed him hungrily, her trembling mouth salty with tears. Thrille
d by her eager response, he put his hands on her hips, pulling them against his own.
That broke the spell.
“I can’t do this,” she told him, backing away, out of arm’s reach. “I can’t make love to you and wait around for you to feel something you don’t feel.”
He watched, disbelieving, as she walked to the door, opened it and waited, tears streaming down her face.
They were over, he realized. Just like that. Over.
Nothing he could say would make Dara change her mind, ever. With clinical detachment and surgical precision, she had just sliced him from her life. He, Mike Baldwin, had just begged a woman not to dump him, and she’d dumped his ass anyway.
So much for her never leaving him.
Hatred twisted in his gut.
Taking all the time in the world, he walked out, pausing to glare at her as he passed, reveling in the anguish he saw in her wet eyes.
She swung the door shut behind him.
There was a slight thump along with a sliding sound—he had the image of her slumping against the door, then sinking to the floor—before he heard tortured sobs, muffled only slightly by the wall between them.
As he turned and walked away in a daze, he experienced a vindictive satisfaction that she felt some small fraction of the misery she’d just inflicted upon him.
Dara got to the still-dark office in the morning, at about seven-thirty, having slept for a scant three hours. She’d cried and cried, more tears than she’d shed in her entire life, until exhaustion made her numb. She’d passed two nights with little sleep, and she had more long, sleepless nights—weeks—ahead of her, what with trial prep immediately followed by finals. She hoped she’d make it.
Some of the lights were on and she could smell coffee, which meant that Mike was already there. Steeling herself to face him, she’d just slipped off her jacket when she heard a key in the door. Turning, she saw Jamal come in.
“Hey, Dara.”
“Good morning.”
She moved toward the steps, but something in her voice made Jamal swing around, catch her arm and take a good look at her face.
“What the—? What’s happened to you?”
Bristling, she raised her chin. She looked a little tired, sure, and her eyes were a little puffy, her nose a little red. But Jamal stared at her like she was death warmed over, which she definitely was not. She pulled free.
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit,” he said, catching her arm again. “What’s going—”
They heard footsteps and turned to see Mike, in his shirtsleeves, emerge from the kitchen, coffee mug in hand. Dara tensed. He came to within five feet of them and stopped, staring at Dara with glinting amber eyes ringed by dark circles. His slashing cheekbones and jaw line stood out more starkly than usual, pulsing, and she realized he must be clenching his back teeth together. His sensual lips were set in a tight, cruel line and his posture and shoulders were rigid.
Their gazes locked and she flinched helplessly before his open show of hostility. From a great distance, she was aware of Jamal looking back and forth between them.
After a long, volatile moment, Mike started walking again, edging by them and taking all the air in the room with him.
“Jamal, I need you in my office,” he said, not bothering to look over his shoulder.
Jamal and Dara stared after him, then at each other. At the look of horrified pity on Jamal’s face, Dara quickly turned away, embarrassed.
“Dara,” Jamal began, reaching for her.
She quickly put her arms up, holding him at bay. The last thing she needed now was pity. If he gave her a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, they’d be standing there all day.
“I’m okay,” she lied, running up the stairs to her office, where she planned to hide until the client arrived for more trial prep.
After their two-hour trial preparation session with Aidan Sullivan was over, Dara went to Mike’s office. They’d somehow both been professionals during the meeting, but her stomach had been in knots all morning, and by the looks of things, he wasn’t doing much better.
The situation was intolerable—unhealthy even—and the best thing for both of them, she’d decided, would be for her to leave the firm now rather than after Thanksgiving.
She stood in the doorway, watching him. His dark head was bent low over a stack of letters on his desk, and he didn’t acknowledge her, although he had to know she was there.
“Can I help you?” he asked finally. Coolly. Without bothering to look at her, he signed the top letter, his pen scratching across the paper. Then he efficiently slid that letter aside and signed the next one.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked, slowly approaching the desk.
“Not really.”
Well, she hadn’t expected a warm reception, and she certainly wasn’t getting one. Still, the depth of his hard feelings surprised her, given what he’d told his mother about the casual nature of their relationship. Maybe he was so pissed because she’d pricked his ego a little. This was not a man accustomed to being dumped by women.
Shifting nervously, she fidgeted with her shirt cuffs, then ran her hand through her hair. When she realized what she was doing, she clutched her hands together in the front.
“I thought maybe it would be best if I finished my internship now.”
He froze; the pen, still poised over the page, stopped scratching.
“Finals are coming up, and lots of my classmates have already finished their internships,” she continued quickly. “I just thought—”
“No.”
“But—”
Dropping his pen, he finally looked up at her, glinting eyes framed by those heavy brows, his mouth set in uncompromising lines.
“I realize you’re not big on honoring the commitments you make to people, Dara,” he said quietly, “but you might remember that your internship is for the full first semester of school. The first semester—last time I checked—is not over yet.”
“Mike—”
“You might also remember that I have a big trial coming up very soon, and a ton of work that needs to be done.”
She dropped her head and studied her shoes.
“So, no, we will not be ending your internship yet.”
He stared at her, waiting.
She brushed a tear from her eye and looked up at him again, forcing a smile.
“Well,” she said in the most professional voice she could muster. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
Turning, she walked out as quickly as she could without breaking into an actual run, grabbed her coat and purse from her own office, then fled down the steps and out the front door, brushing past Jamal as she went.
Mike watched her go and got up to pace, feeling dangerously unhinged, like he was one broken shoelace away from committing some heinous act of destruction.
One thought ran endlessly through his tortured brain.
Why would she do this?
With one fell swoop, his sweet angel had ruined his life; he didn’t delude himself into thinking anything could ever be the same again after this. If he’d been in purgatory before they’d started dating, he was in the molten center of hell now. He couldn’t imagine how much worse he’d feel when her internship actually ended and he didn’t see her anymore, but he wasn’t about to speed up the arrival of that inevitable day.
He leaned into the window, resting his elbow on the glass above his head. He could understand her pain, of course. She’d overheard him minimize their relationship— although for the life of him, he didn’t think he’d come right out and said he didn’t love her—and she was deeply hurt. But surely she didn’t really think he didn’t care for her! Hadn’t she been there these last few weeks? Couldn’t she see how into her he was? Surely he didn’t deserve to be frozen out of her life like this!
Was it true that this all had nothing to do with Sean? Could it be a coincidence that he’d seen them hugging just moments before she’d broken up with him?
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For some odd reason, his girlfriend from college, Debbie—the one who’d slept with his roommate— was also on his mind, not that Dara was anything like her. But they’d both betrayed him, hadn’t they? Neither one had lived up to her side of the relationship.
And somehow he’d really thought—hoped—Dara would.
He should have known better.
There was a movement in the doorway. Jamal.
“Don’t kill me, Pops,” he said when Mike saw him.
Mike frowned. “What is it?”
“What did you do to Dara?”
“Why do you assume I did anything to her?” Mike wondered, irritated by the suggestion. “Did she say something to you?”
“No. She was too busy trying not to cry to say anything.”
“I can’t get into it,” he told Jamal.
Jamal, clearly exasperated, opened his mouth to argue, but the receptionist’s voice came over the speakerphone on Mike’s desk, interrupting them.
“Mike?”
“Yeah?”
“Randall Jackson is on line two.”
Great. All he needed right now to make his day even worse was to deal with the idiot lawyer for the trucking company responsible for Aidan Sullivan’s accident. Now that the trial was days away, they’d started making noises about wanting to settle.
“Fine. I’ll take it.” He glanced up at Jamal. “You can get back to work now, junior,” he said, relieved that he had an excuse to end their conversation about Dara.
Jamal squared his shoulders and sank into a chair. “I wasn’t finished. I’ll wait.”
“Wonderful.” Mike snatched up the phone. “What’s up, Randy? I don’t have much time.”
“Mike, I told you my client wants you to send over a settlement demand. Where is it?”
“We want four million, same as before.”
Jackson let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re not going to get four million.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what we want.” Mike eyed the drafts of two motions he needed to edit and get back to his secretary within the hour. “So if there’s nothing else—”
“Look, Mike,” Jackson said quickly. “My client’s willing to go up to half a million.”
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