Irene rose from Danica’s desk. “Now that we’re on the same page, my father wants to meet you. After all, as Luke’s wife, you’ll be spending quite a lot of time with us once Ruby Hawk becomes a Stavros Group subsidiary.”
“You’re wrong about Luke.” Danica kept her chin raised. She wouldn’t let Irene see how well her words hit her target. Luke was indeed good at using his words, and his other skills, to get what he wanted. And now that the acquisition was almost done... The memory of how he’d walked away from her bed, without a backward glance, played behind her eyelids.
“I’m wrong?” Irene tsked. “You’re smarter than this.” She stalked to the door, her long legs making short work of the distance from the desk. “We have a deal to celebrate. Coming?”
Danica could either get her heart rate under control or speak. She couldn’t do both. She followed Irene in silence. At least now she had a chance to tell Luke about Nestor’s and Irene’s machinations, and he would find a way to get out of the deal. He wouldn’t sell to the Stavros Group after hearing how they’d manipulated them both.
Would he?
Her heart wouldn’t examine the answer too closely.
* * *
Luke looked up at the sound of the conference-room door opening, his pen still hovering above the signature page. Irene swept in, followed by... Danica? He sprung to his feet, a wide smile of welcome on his face. It disappeared as soon as he got a good look at her expression. It reminded him of the wide-eyed, stricken stare she gave him when they first met and she discovered Johanna had closed up shop without a word. “What’s wrong?”
“What could possibly be wrong?” Irene arranged herself in a chair next to her father. “Shall I open the champagne?”
“When the deal memo has his signature.” Nestor indicated the stack of paper.
Luke ignored them. He stepped to Danica’s side and took her right hand in both of his. It felt like holding an ice cube. “Is everything okay?”
“You haven’t signed?” Danica’s gaze searched his.
“I’m about to. Why?”
She threw a glance at the Stavros father and daughter. “Can we speak? Alone?”
Irene took the foil off the neck of the champagne bottle. “She’s about to tell you we know all about your fake marriage and we don’t care.”
Luke kept his gaze locked on Danica’s as he responded to Irene. “Your father made it clear the marriage clause in the contract was fake, as well.”
“The clause was a fake?” Danica’s eyes widened. “But of course it was. Just another move in the game.”
“It worked.” Irene shrugged. “Better than we ever could have anticipated. We alleviated our board’s concerns about Luke’s stability, we own Ruby Hawk, and, thanks to both of you, we have leverage for the future. Oh, that’s the other thing she wants to tell you, Luke. We have written proof of your marriage scam.” She popped the champagne cork. “Useful, that. Someday, I’m sure.”
Nestor looked at his diamond-encrusted Rolex. “Can we get back to business? I leave for Los Angeles in a half hour to meet with my bankers. If we don’t have an agreement today, it will be months before the board will approve another offer.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen your financials, my boy. You don’t have months left.”
Danica turned to Luke, her hand still locked in his. “You can’t sell. Not to them.” Her gaze pleaded with him.
“Come with me.” Luke ushered her out of the conference room to a small alcove nearby where they could speak somewhat privately. But anyone could walk by, and he was aware they were drawing curious glances from the engineers sitting in the open plan bullpen. He lowered his voice. “I’m signing the deal. I have to. It will ensure Ruby Hawk’s future.”
Danica’s already pale complexion turned ghostly white. “But you heard what they said. You’ll never be free of them. You’re selling yourself out.”
“It’s going to be okay.” He wanted to push an errant curl behind her ear. He settled for a tight smile. “This won’t change anything between us.”
She pulled her hand away from his, her head shaking. “You mean you’re okay. I’m not. They admit they have the game rigged but you’re still playing.” She hugged her arms close, her shoulders hunched. “And things will change. Our marriage ends when the acquisition is a done deal. Not that we had to get married in the first place, apparently.”
The mention of their agreement caused his gut to contract. “It doesn’t need to end. We’ll find a way to negate any leverage Irene thinks she has.”
Her gaze locked on his. “There you go, changing the strategy again. Don’t you understand? This isn’t about our agreement. It’s about you and the Stavroses. If you take the deal, the game continues. But you can stop it, now, by saying no to them. If you don’t—” she took a deep breath “—I will. I will walk away. I won’t be a threat held over your head.”
“I’ll handle it. You just need to trust me.”
Danica’s head jerked back. “Trust you? Tell me why, Luke. Why should I trust you?”
He was missing something. Something very important. But he didn’t have time to puzzle it out. “Because I have everything under control.”
“That’s what you tell business colleagues. Tell me why I should trust you.” Her gaze pleaded with him.
“I...” In the corner of his peripheral vision, Irene emerged from the conference room and tapped her watch in his direction. “We’ll straighten this out after Nestor leaves. We need to get back to the meeting.”
It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it even as the words left his mouth and hung in the air between them.
This should have been a day of triumph. He’d ensured the future growth of Ruby Hawk. His employees would be financially rewarded for all their hard work. But Danica’s stunned expression, her eyes wide and suspiciously bright, told him he’d just lost more than he could imagine.
“There’s nothing I can say to stop you from this, is there?” She played with her hands. It took him a moment to realize what she was doing. By then, her wedding rings were off her finger and lying on her outstretched right palm. “Here. At least they won’t be able to use me against you.”
No. This wasn’t what he wanted. A bone-chilling freeze rooted him in place.
“Take them. Once the acquisition is done and our marriage is over, they’d be returned to you anyway,” she continued. When he didn’t move, couldn’t move, she picked up his right hand. Her touch burned as they placed the rings in his grasp and closed his nerveless fingers around them.
He got his lips to function. “Danica...don’t... I need...”
“No. You don’t need me. Turns out you never needed me.” She looked over his shoulder, and her gaze sharpened. “Irene is heading our way.”
He couldn’t get a grip on his panicked thoughts. They bounced and tangled around his skull, refusing to be sorted. “This isn’t—”
“Congratulations on the deal. I mean that. Goodbye, Luke.” She kissed his cheek, her lips hot against his chilled skin, and turned on her heels. She was through the nearest exit before he could get his feet to move.
Irene put her hand on his forearm, pulling him back when he would follow Danica. Irene’s touch reminded him he still stood in the middle of the engineering bullpen. It was more crowded than normal. He recognized people from sales, accounting and marketing, attempting to appear as if they were busy and not eavesdropping.
“Can we sign now?” Irene asked.
He didn’t answer, his gaze locked on the rings in his hand, his brain trying to process the image. Every atom in his being urged him to go after Danica. His employees’ sideways glances reminded him he was minutes away from securing their futures. A headache gathered behind his eyes. The pain dulled his senses while sharpening his regret.
Irene glanced down at the jewelry. “Too bad. I was honest when I said I
liked her.”
Her words cut through the aching fog shutting him down. “What else did you say to her?”
She scoffed. “Don’t blame your inability to maintain a relationship on me.”
“What did you say?” He enunciated each word.
Her gaze widened, and for a second something like hurt entered her gaze. Then she blinked, and her smooth mask of amused indifference was back in place. “Such emotion in your voice,” she said lightly. “One might think you have a heart after all.”
He didn’t react, his gaze continuing to pin her in place.
“We had a discussion about your ability to stay unaffected when it came to affairs of the bed,” she said, with an airy gesture of her hand. “Girl talk.”
“Danica agreed?” That sliced through the numbness, a full body slam of hurt.
Irene rolled her eyes. “She defended you. Which is why it’s for the best she left. If she stayed, she’d be devoured and spit out in less than a year.”
Luke stopped listening after the first three words. Danica defended him. She must care. But if she did, why did she leave? Why wouldn’t she trust—
When there’s no caring, there can’t be trust. Her words rang in his head.
He put a hand on the wall to steady himself. Of course. That was the piece he was missing, the clue he couldn’t see. She couldn’t trust him because he hadn’t shown her he could be trusted with her heart. She didn’t know how much—
“I love her.”
He wasn’t aware he did until he said the words out loud. Now he couldn’t fathom how he hadn’t known. How could he not? He knew how he reacted to her. How his heart rate sped up when he saw her name on his phone’s caller ID. How a brush of her fingers against his was enough to arouse him, deep and heavy. How his knees turned to water when she took her hair down and shook the curls free.
He wanted her voice to be the last thing he heard at night. Her face the first thing he saw in the morning. To laugh and argue and sit in companionable silence after stuffing themselves too full during Sunday brunch. The thought of a toddler with golden ringlets took his breath away.
In the past, he might have cataloged these as mere physiological reactions to mental stimuli and nothing more. Even an hour ago, before the meeting with Nestor, he might have argued with himself not to allow intangible feelings to distract him from solid goals.
Now there was only one goal that mattered. He glimpsed a life without Danica and it was a dark and dreary place indeed.
He wasn’t his parents. He wasn’t his family and their interminable feuds. He could forge his own path, one of love and laughter and growing old with the grandmother of the babies crawling at their feet.
One of trust and commitment.
He strode to the conference room, leaving Irene in his wake. He signed the deal memo below Nestor’s thick scrawl, and made sure his lawyers had their copies before Nestor left for his flight to Los Angeles. Then he called Anjuli into his office.
He knew what he had to do.
Eleven
Danica descended the stairs of her parents’ home and found her mother seated at the kitchen table. Amila Novak smiled a warm greeting at her, but her expression quickly turned puzzled. “I’m happy you put on a fresh shirt to visit Matt, but why do you need a suitcase?”
The handle of her carry-on bag in one hand, Danica held out her phone, the browser opened to the Silicon Valley Weekly website, with the other. “The Ruby Hawk board of directors approved the sale to the Stavros Group. But Luke is no longer the CEO. That wasn’t the plan. Something went wrong.”
Amila put down her coffee cup. “So you’re what...going to California? Now?”
“I have to explain. Get him reinstated somehow. Running Ruby Hawk is all he ever wanted.”
“I thought you left precisely because all he wanted was his company.” Her mom leaned forward, her chin cupped in her hand. “But I’m glad to see your eyes so alive again. When you showed up here out of the blue, it seemed nothing would get you out of your bed except visiting Matt.”
Danica dropped her gaze. When she boarded the plane in San Francisco, she had no intention of ever seeing Luke again. But then Mai called to say that Luke returned all of Danica’s things, in person, ensuring everything went back exactly the way she had it. Then he bought Mai dinner as an apology for invading her home—and donated fifty thousand dollars to Mai’s pediatric unit at the hospital. He was still an ass though, she was quick to add in female solidarity.
Aisha texted her when she ran into Luke at a local grocery store over the weekend. That was a shock in itself as Luke usually had all his food delivered. Aisha reported he was wandering the aisles, almost as if he was there just to get out of his house.
He came up to me as soon as we locked eyes to ask about you. He still had that hungry look, and it wasn’t for anything on the shelves.
Luke did call Danica a few times. She let the calls go to voice mail but sent him a text with her parents’ address, so his lawyers would know where to send the divorce papers. A clean break was the best for all concerned, she lied to herself. But ghosting him added to her current remorse. What if he’d needed her to be present for the Ruby Hawk sale? She wouldn’t put it past Nestor or Irene to pull a last-minute clause out of their bag of dirty tricks. The guilt of costing him the deal would eat her alive.
She raised her gaze to meet her mother’s. “All I know is if I can set things right for him, then I need to do it.” She picked up her bag. “If I leave now, I might make the next flight.”
“Wait.” Amila sprung to her feet. “You can’t leave now. What about—” She coughed suddenly. “What about Matt? You’re going to leave without saying goodbye to Matt?”
“I need to do this. Matt knows I love him.” Danica moved toward the kitchen door. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Her mother grabbed the handle of the suitcase and wouldn’t let go. “If you want to leave after seeing your brother, fine. But you must come with us. Look, here’s your father now.” She nodded at the man coming down the stairs.
“Is everyone ready?” Mirko Novak grabbed the car keys off the table before taking his first look at Danica. “A clean shirt like we asked. Well done.”
“She thinks she’s going to the airport. To go to California,” Amila told her husband.
Mirko’s gaze widened. “She can’t go. She needs to see—” He stopped, and cleared his throat. “Matt,” he finished, sounding slightly...panicked? But why would he be panicked? She must be imagining things.
Amila nodded. “That’s what I said.”
Danica’s gaze ping-ponged between her parents. “What’s going on? Why is seeing Matt today so important?”
“Visiting your brother is not important?” Mirko raised his dark eyebrows. He took her by the elbow and steered her toward the garage and the car parked inside over her protests. “Tell me more about California while I drive.”
“Fine,” she grumbled and put on her seat belt. She would go to the airport that afternoon and find another flight. A few more hours wouldn’t hurt. Or so she crossed her fingers.
When they arrived at the center, Danica signed in and then turned left at the reception desk to go to her brother’s room. Her mother caught her arm. “Matt’s doctor wants to see us first, alone.”
Danica frowned. “Is everything okay?”
“He wants to go over a new treatment with us, as the parents.” Amila shrugged. “You know doctors.”
“Uh-huh.” Danica narrowed her gaze. First, they insisted she had to see Matt. Now they insisted she not see him? “I’ll wait here. For a little bit.”
Her mom squeezed her hand. “Thanks, draga.”
Her parents disappeared through the automatic glass double doors that led to the residential wing, leaving Danica with the security guard for company. Still, it wasn’t an unplea
sant place to wait. Sunshine streamed in through floor-to-ceiling windows, while comfortable-looking white chairs invited her to sit down. The clean, modern decor reminded her of the Ruby Hawk offices. Which reminded her of Luke. But then most things did. That man coming through the glass doors, for example, was a dead ringer for—
The world stopped spinning. Then it spun too fast. He wasn’t a ringer for Luke.
He was Luke.
She could only watch, her feet rooted to the ground, as he made his way to her. “Hi,” he said, stopping in front of her.
“Hi,” she squeaked. So many questions ran through her head, she didn’t know which ones to articulate. She settled for staring at him.
He looked good. So good. His dark hair was a smidge longer and as windswept as ever. His blue eyes sparkled like the Pacific Ocean on a calm summer’s day. The crisp white shirt he wore was unbuttoned at the top. She took a step closer, to see if he still smelled the same, but jumped back when she realized what she was doing. Then she frowned. His trousers had a shiny stripe running down their outer legs.
“Why are you wearing tuxedo pants?” It wasn’t the most brilliant question with which to start. But his face creased into a wide smile. He put both hands in his pockets and came up with two closed fists.
“Because I was wearing them when you gave me this.” He opened his left hand. On his palm was a five hundred-dollar poker chip.
The room wouldn’t stop revolving. “You flew across the country to return it?”
“No.” His fingers closed over the chip before she could pluck it from his grasp. “I came here to ask you to take another risk.”
Her heart, which had been beating a hopeful symphony, settled into a more sedate melody. She had been right. He needed her, but to get his company back. “I read about the board of directors removing you as CEO. If it’s because I left before the deal closed, I’m happy to speak to whomever—”
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