My Boyfriend and Other Enemies

by Nikki Logan

  ‘You’re talking about my father, Tash.’

  ‘I know. And I’m sorry. It affects my family, too, but it doesn’t change the truth. They were in love. They just could never be together.’

  ‘Together enough to get caught.’

  She had to remember this news was just minutes old for Aiden. She’d had much longer to come to terms with the whole sorry mess. ‘They weren’t caught. Your father confessed.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The one time they acted on it. He regretted betraying his promise to your mother. So he told her what he’d done, and never saw my mother again.’

  Though, in truth, he’d been betraying Laura Moore his whole life by loving someone else secretly. And betraying himself by not acting on it.

  Poor Nathaniel. Poor Laura. Her poor mother. Not one happy person in the whole sorry mess.

  ‘Did she tell your father?’

  Tash dropped her eyes. ‘No. He found out through mutual friends.’ Not how she would have done it herself, but then she’d never been trapped in violence the way her mother had with an angry, gutless man.

  ‘Lack of character must run in the family.’

  She shoved his chest, hard; loyalty blazing hot and live in her heart. ‘You can take all the shots you want at me, but don’t you dare impugn a woman who can no longer defend herself or her actions.’

  He didn’t respond, but his eyes darkened two shades and blazed down into hers. Her shove hadn’t even budged his feet from the tips of hers. ‘She must have been something, your mother,’ he breathed down on her. ‘To inspire such passion in her child. To inspire such treachery in my father.’

  ‘She was an amazing woman. And it takes two to tango. Especially horizontally.’

  His hand moved up to finger a stray lock of hair back to the safety of its fellows and her mind filled with images of her and Aiden getting horizontal. Her chest tightened instantly.

  ‘You really believe that.’

  ‘I really do,’ she breathed. ‘I’m sorry that it has caused pain for your family but I’m not sorry my mother got a single weekend of heaven in what was otherwise a pretty miserable existence.’

  ‘She loved him that much?’

  ‘She lived for him.’ Until the day she just couldn’t live any longer, even for him.

  Aiden dropped his forehead and let his eyes squeeze shut. Tash tried to remember that his world—his family—had just imploded.

  ‘Do you want to drop the commission?’ she asked after an age.

  ‘No.’ Those blue-grey eyes snapped open. It was almost as if the word had fallen off his lips without his consent. ‘We have a contract. Besides, the next step is up to my father. This is his mess. If he asks you to go, will you?’

  It hurt having her mother’s memory summed up as a mess. ‘If he asks me. Yes.’

  But he wouldn’t. Her mother’s memory was too strong. Although, if staying led to Nathaniel getting hurt she’d definitely go regardless of what he wanted.

  ‘You are such a paradox,’ Aiden murmured, leaning his weight back onto the old counter. His expensive suit cuffs pulled up as he crossed his arms across his chest. ‘Jardine called you insidious.’

  ‘Kyle’s a mean drunk.’

  ‘But he’s not wrong.’

  Her heart sank. Really? Him too? Somehow, she’d hoped for better from the son of the man her mother had loved. Which was probably stupid.

  ‘There’s something about you....’ Aiden went on. ‘It’s hard to put my finger on.’ But he did, tracing it along the top edge of her bodice.

  Her throat tightened up immediately and the thing between them surged and swelled as a ball of heat low in her chest. There it was again...the connection. So ready to combust. ‘Two minutes ago you were angry.’

  ‘I’m still angry. Just not at you, specifically.’

  ‘And two minutes ago you thought I was sleeping with your father.’

  He shuffled closer. ‘But you’re not. And my relief about that is quite...disturbing.’

  ‘Why relieved?’ She didn’t dare ask why disturbed....

  ‘Because it means I can do this.’

  The warmth of the cumulative coats hanging at her back was nothing to the furnace pumping off Aiden as he swooped down to capture her lips with his. They took hers with a certainty that stole her breath. As if he knew exactly how well they’d fit together and how welcome he would be. And how little resistance she’d give him. He pressed hard against her and held her firm with strong arms banded around behind her.

  Every sultry look, every snark, every narrow-eyed glare he’d given her had been leading to this moment. Tash wondered if he knew it as well as she did. She’d felt it back in that café, the first time he’d passed her table.

  She wanted to respond to him—his size, his intensity and the sheer overwhelming maleness of him—but something told her if she gave an inch, she’d be lost. Aiden Moore was a man who knew what he wanted and how he wanted it.

  And right now, the answers were her and here in the coatroom of MooreCo’s party.

  As if he sensed her slight withdrawal, his fingers stole up and tangled in her cropped hair, making gentle fists in the shaggy locks and then pulling on it, strong and steady until her throat was bared to the ravages of his lips. The touch of dominance sent her blood racing even faster and made her squirm against his hard body. His mouth feasted on her throat, one big hand sliding down to bunch a fistful of skirt up under her bottom.

  Every part of her responded to his magnetic pull. It would be so easy just to slip her arms up around his neck and hold on as he kissed her half to death. It would be just as easy to let him lift her up onto the original timber counter in this old building and wrap her legs around him, too.

  ‘Won’t this be tough to explain to your mother?’ she gasped between kisses. If she was thinking more clearly, she might also have spared a brain cell or two as to how his father might take the news.

  ‘I don’t generally get her to sign off on who I’m sleeping with.’ He pressed the words against her ear.

  ‘You assume I’ll be sleeping with you,’ she breathed.

  ‘Oh, you will,’ he bit against her lips. ‘Besides, it’s not like you’ll ever be coming to a family dinner or anything.’

  He meant because of their family situation. She knew that. But the stark reality was enough to pull her completely out of the sensual fog robbing her of strength. She’d promised herself she’d never be treated like that again.

  He lifted his lids to reveal glazed eyes. ‘What?’

  She brought both hands around and pressed them into his chest with as much certainty as he’d kissed her. It opened up precious air between them. Not much, but enough. ‘We can’t do this.’

  ‘You mean not here?’

  ‘I mean not at all.’

  ‘But you’re not sleeping with my father....’

  As if his issues were the only ones standing between them. ‘I work for you, now.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it’s inappropriate.’ That concept clearly had never occurred to him. ‘And it’s too messy, politically.’

  He stepped in closer. Smiled in that Cheshire cat way. ‘I was counting on it being messy.’

  ‘Aiden, stop.’ She pushed him harder and he staggered back all of an inch.

  But he did stop. Exactly when it mattered. ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Of course I’m serious. Did you think I was just playing hard to get?’

  His brows folded in. ‘Well...yeah. Is it because it’s too public?’

  Actually, the risk of someone knocking on that door made the whole thing even more breathless than it might otherwise have been. It wasn’t why she was stopping.

  ‘It’s because it’s too...close.’ She
took a deep breath. ‘You and I getting together never would have worked. Plus I barely know you.’

  ‘You know my family. You know where I work. You know what I like for lunch and how I take my bourbon. And you know what happens when our pheromones start mixing. What more is there?’

  And that was probably exactly how it worked in his world. The world where relationships were days long. ‘Other things. Normal things.’ Lord, what she wouldn’t give to be treated like something to be treasured instead of conquered or leveraged. Just for once. ‘But it’s a moot point. This—’ she gestured back and forth between them ‘—isn’t going to happen.’

  ‘All those reasons you just gave me for why not can be addressed by the same thing.’ The fact he was helping her straighten her skirt was the only reason she wasn’t shoving him away harder. ‘We keep it quiet. Only meet privately. Then no problem.’

  She stared at him. God, the male mind was a complex, beautiful and totally naive thing. ‘It’s still a problem. It’s just hidden.’

  And dishonest. And cheap. And she was through with feeling cheap.

  His hiss reflected his expression exactly.

  She sat back and regarded him. ‘You don’t hear “no” very often, do you?’

  His laugh mocked. ‘I’m not going to cry, if that’s what you’re thinking. Or beg.’

  ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what that would look like.’

  He stared at her in silence. Refixed his tie.

  ‘You strike me as the sort who only wants me because you can’t have me,’ she said, wrestling her breath under control.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  His eyes narrowed and he glared at her, failing abysmally at intimidating her. Strangely, she realised, she held all the power here.

  Lord, how he must hate that.

  She finally broke the silence. ‘So now what?’

  ‘Now you walk out of here well ahead of me.’

  She laughed. ‘Suddenly you’re concerned for my reputation?’

  He smiled and opened the door wide for her. Wide enough to exit but narrow enough that she had to press against him. She did so with the greatest care. But as she squeezed her body past his, his lips brushed her ear for half a heartbeat, and his warm breath caused a riot in her nerve endings.

  ‘Not yours, Tash...’

  * * *

  Aiden watched Tash stride confidently out of that little room and knew she was faking it. She was as shaken as he was by what had just happened.

  He could see it in her eyes.

  But was she shaken by what he’d done, or by what she’d done? That was the question.

  The part of his mind that should have been dealing with what he’d discovered about his family tonight was in lockdown, but, as it always had, a good physical distraction helped him to suppress the thoughts until a more appropriate time. A time when he wasn’t surrounded by their colleagues. A time when he wasn’t going to have to face his father, smile and be the picture-perfect son.

  Or, if he got lucky, he’d suppress it enough that he wouldn’t have to face it at all. Done was done, dissecting it wasn’t going to change a thing.

  Lord knew that was how it was done in the Moore family. If you worked hard enough at ignoring something then it just...ceased to be. The status quo eventually returned without anyone having to strip themselves raw emotionally.

  You just had to wait it out.

  He’d only ever seen his mother as she was tonight once before. Though that time he’d not seen her, only heard her through the ventilation system as she wailed her heart out down in the wine cellar while he crouched next to his child’s bed with its Batman linen, his arms circling his knees, ear pressed to the air vent in his room. That was twenty-odd years ago. So he didn’t know what to do tonight when the mother that he adored fell apart right in front of him, other than get her the hell out of there and then get really, really angry.

  And hunt for an outlet.

  And Tash’s infallible logic had robbed him of the outlet he’d planned to have, so he changed tack and redirected it.

  Kissing her was a much better idea all round. Firing her blood and bending her to his will was both intensely satisfying and fantastic selective anaesthesia. It simply wasn’t possible for him to feel anguish and desire at the same time. It numbed all the parts that he didn’t want to think about and stimulated all the parts he liked to think about most.

  And it caused the deep chocolate of Tash’s eyes to first spit with resistance and then melt with passion. As always, he’d loved the power implicit in the moment that happened. And he loved her capitulation even more for being such an intriguing mix of resignation and anticipation.

  Until she’d turned the tables on him, of course.

  ‘Son...’

  He tacked away from his father and headed for the bar. ‘Later, Dad.’

  ‘We need to talk.’

  No. They really didn’t. What they needed was to be far apart for as long as it took for the wounds to start scabbing over. Then they’d see. ‘Later,’ he cut back over his shoulder.

  His father slowed to a stop and Aiden could feel his eyes boring into his back as he ordered the largest bourbon the barman would serve him. That was pretty good selective anaesthesia, too.

  He took a healthy swig and turned to face his father, but he’d disappeared into the partying crowd.

  His eyes scanned the room, searching for someone else. For a slash of Nordic blonde hair. When he found her, Tash was doing a bang-up job of ignoring him, but he sensed that she knew exactly where he was. She laughed and smiled as she spoke with some of MooreCo’s less controversial clients but—even from across the room—he could see the smile was a thin veneer.

  And it pleased him—bastard that he was—to know that he was responsible for its fragility. Just to know he had any kind of impact on her at all.

  That was a satisfactory revenge for the fact that, while he might have set out to distract Tash from his father with faux interest, somewhere along the line the interest had grown very, very real.

  FIVE

  Tash dragged her eyes back from the crowded football stadium beyond the triple-glazed windows and focused back on Nathaniel, who was just settling back into his seat after leaping to his feet at the hard-won goal down on the field.

  ‘So you never told him?’

  Nathaniel tugged at the bottom of his jacket, and his eyes drifted across the crowded corporate box to Aiden chatting to two men over by the table laden with a luscious seafood spread. ‘How could I? He’s my son.’

  Tash lowered her voice despite knowing Aiden would never hear them in the noisy room on the other side of the glass. ‘But he found out anyway?’

  ‘He was such a quiet child, people tended to say more than they should in front of him.’

  Quiet? Aiden? That wasn’t an image she could easily conjure. ‘What else was he like?’

  Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed just slightly at the direction of her question, but then softened at the corners and refocused thirty years over her shoulder. ‘He was a spectacular boy. Thoughtful and considerate. Keen to learn. Focused. His quiet nature meant he thought about things deeply, even then.’

  Thoughtful and considerate? ‘What happened?’

  It was only as the words tumbled off her lips that Tash realised how insensitive they were.

  ‘Don’t misjudge him, Tash. Aiden feels things passionately and he has such a refined sense of right and wrong. Sometimes those things come into conflict.’

  ‘Does that include his father now?’ Nathaniel’s eyes dropped. ‘I know you’re staying in a hotel. Are you also avoiding the office?’ Or is he? They were only at this football game together because they had guests who expected to see both of them. The happy fron
t.

  He shook his head with determination. ‘He’s grown up with all the murmurs and none of the facts.’

  See, now...this was what a father was supposed to do. Defend his child against everything. Even the hint of criticism. This was how it should be. Something she’d never had from Eric Sinclair. It was hard not to covet it just a little bit.

  ‘Did you ever think about telling him once he was an adult?’ she asked once the roar of the crowd for a goal well kicked settled.

  ‘His good opinion means too much to me.’

  ‘You had to know he’d find out.... Your wife too.’ If not last week then...some time.

  He nodded. ‘I knew. Maybe I thought I could delay it, control it.’ He stared some place over her shoulder. ‘Bring things to a head at long last.’

  Insight flooded into her. ‘You wanted this.’

  His groan drowned under the cheers of another brilliant on-field play. Tash saw it in the slump of his shoulders more than heard it. ‘I wanted it revealed. Exposed.’ His eyes lifted. ‘Denying your mother broke something in me. She’s beyond harm now. I can finally acknowledge us. I can finally acknowledge her.’

  After thirty years of holding it in.

  Sorrow-drenched eyes lifted to hers. ‘I’ve used you, Tash. But I didn’t mean for it to hurt you. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You haven’t caused me any harm.’ Unlike his son. ‘But I am sorry for what it means for your marriage.’

  He sighed heavily. ‘That’s for Laura and me to sort out. My marriage has been flawed for a very long time. Twice I failed to have the strength to do what I should have. Maybe I’ve finally grown up.’

  She almost missed it, so casually was it uttered. Yet her mother’s diaries attested to them never seeing each other again after that one time two decades ago.

  ‘Twice?’ she risked.

  He smiled and patted her hand. ‘No, I kept my word to Laura. I haven’t seen your mother since you were young. I meant before. At university.’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  He matched her confusion. ‘Your mother and I were an item before I was with Laura.’