by Tara Pammi
Every nerve in her wanted to help Emily escape. Because, Alexander would never give his mother another chance. Instead, she forced herself to concentrate on how much she had regretted her own actions when it had been too late.
“I understand, I really do. But there’s a fundamental difference between you and me.” She struggled to speak through the lump in her throat. “Your brother might be an arrogant, controlling ass but he loves you. I’ve no doubt about that.
“If I had had someone who truly loved me like that, I like to think my life would have turned out differently.” Olivia smiled through the tears clogging up her vision, at the void opening up inside her. Her heart wept for the teenager she had been, for the girl who had never had the chance. “That I wouldn’t have made a mess out of it like I have. And you do. I’m not asking you to let Alexander walk all over you, but don’t do something that will ruin your life to get back at him.”
She moved to the seat next to Emily and huddled toward her. She had no idea if anything she had said made sense to the younger girl, but Liv was damned if she let Alexander browbeat her into not caring. Especially in the coming days, knowing what Alexander had planned for her, Emily was going to need a friend. “Tell you what. How about anytime you need to blow steam, or have an I-hate-Alexander-King session, you call me?”
A smile split Emily’s mouth, and Olivia swallowed. She looked beyond Emily to Alexander, the pregnant silence from him sending a shiver up her spine. Their gazes met and held, her chest hurting with each breath she pulled in.
“Believe it or not, I’m the founding member of that club,” she said, wondering when, if ever, her heart would learn.
* * *
Olivia thanked the receptionist on the ground floor of King Towers and walked toward the seating area, the tap-tap of her high-heeled boots an echo in her ears. She checked her reflection in the gleaming coffeepot as she poured herself a cup. A neat French plait held her unruly hair back. A white dress shirt added the touch of professionalism she needed to add to her unconventional long skirt and leather boots.
Her stomach a jumble of knots, she smoothed the nonexistent creases out of her black skirt. After everything that had happened with Alexander, she’d almost given up. She had done that before, had let her personal life, her impulses cloud her professional judgment.
For the first time in her life, she had come fully prepared, worked her backside off to be ready. And had worked ten times harder to convince Nate that she should be allowed to pitch.
She had used every bit of logic at her disposal to achieve it. LifeStyle Inc. and by extension, King Enterprises’ flawless reputation for fair business practices, which really had been the easy part seeing that Nate was obsessed with Alexander’s immaculate reputation and business acumen, and her own efforts in the past six months to forge herself a career, how hard she had worked on the presentation, how she was the one best equipped to make it a success, it had been little short of begging.
And the more she had tried to convince him, the more she had realized the truth in Alexander’s words. She had been too ready to give in, to walk away. Only the need to prove him wrong had fueled her willpower. He must have known how his disparaging words would motivate her.
She was ushered inside a vast conference room. She connected her laptop to the screen and checked her settings. A huge rectangular table stood at the other end. She opened a bottle of water from the side table, and took a drink. She switched on the remote and her presentation appeared on the screen.
One by one, a few executives, all dressed in identical black suits, entered the room. A bead of sweat ran between her shoulder blades as she scanned each face, her stomach twisting on itself. She had worked hard to get here and she wasn’t going to let anyone derail her.
The glass door clicked open, and she turned, steeling herself.
She clutched the edge of the dark oak table, her knuckles turning white at her grip. Her heartbeat notched up, sick fear lodging into her throat.
The man who walked in was not Vincent Gray. She mustered a smile as he introduced himself as Daniel Adams.
Her jaw slackened, a rush of gratitude and something else, something she didn’t even want to acknowledge rose up inside her. For a few interminable seconds, she just stood there, as he settled into the last chair in the center of the group.
“I thought we would be pitching to Mr. Gray.”
The newcomer spoke up. “Mr. Gray resigned recently. Do you want to begin, Ms. Stanton?”
Nodding absently, Olivia turned sideways and looked at her presentation. For a horrifying minute, the screen looked jumbled. She took a deep breath and focused on how much she had overcome to be here.
Shutting out everything else, she began highlighting their campaign. Within minutes, she found her stride, excitement a huge ball in her stomach. She was halfway through when she was interrupted.
“We’re launching a sportswear line, products to be used by men and women interested in outdoor activities, and your primary campaign tool is Twitter. Does anyone else see the problem here?”
Olivia could feel the color flushing into her face. “Yes, but—”
“We’re not just launching a new sportswear line,” Daniel said. “We want people to think of our clothes, our gear, as synonymous of a new lifestyle. So the campaign for it should spur people into action, into living their life instead of talking about it on their computers.”
Olivia smiled, excitement thrumming in her veins. It was exactly what her campaign was designed to do. “And to do that you have to use social media,” she piped in, clicking through to the next slide. “What our agency is proposing is a twenty-first century treasure hunt, sort of a Twitter driven Amazing Race. We’ll have the usual advertising through television and billboards, but you’ll lose a big chunk of your audience if you neglect social media. We start in a city like New York, feed clues online for a treasure hunt in a National park, for the prizes—the new gear you’re selling, hidden all over the city. Soon LifeStyle Inc. will be on the mouth of every teenager, every woman or man who has ever been on a social media site.”
She didn’t give them a break. She continued talking through the campaign, gaining more and more confidence with the intelligent questions thrown her way. By the end of the allotted two hours, she felt as though she had run a marathon herself. She handed the folders that detailed the campaign to all the members. A couple of the men congratulated her on their way out on the innovativeness of the campaign. Her mouth dry, she shook Daniel’s hand and answered some more questions.
“You’re the last agency on our shortlist, Ms. Stanton. I’m confident enough in my board to say your campaign provides exactly the kind of exposure we want. Congratulations. We will contact your agency with our final decision in a few days.”
Olivia held her tears back through sheer will until the room emptied. She had done it. She had found something she was good at, achieved something through her own talent.
She tugged her laptop bag onto her shoulder, dying to get back to the office and give Nate all the details. She was going to celebrate her achievement tonight, she wasn’t going to let one man ruin it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ALEX BROUGHT HIS BMW to a smooth halt and killed the engine. The neighborhood had started giving into grunge a few blocks back. A slow burn of anger rose through him with each graffitied house and run-down apartment complex he passed.
He’d known Olivia was broke, he’d read Carlos’s report that she lived in a run-down neighborhood along the outer fringes of Manhattan. But it hadn’t prepared him for the sight of it. Her little studio was on the fourth floor of an apartment building whose best feature was that it looked clean.
It felt as if a hammer was pounding incessantly behind his eyes. He had just flown back from Abu Dhabi after a week of nonstop meetings.
His eyes fe
lt like sand was coated into them, he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in he didn’t know how long. If he thought about this using his head, as he was known to do, he shouldn’t be here. The increased frequency of Isabella’s phone calls, Emily’s incessant questions and his decision to get Emily’s custody sorted soon rather than later—his personal life was in the worst shape for the first time in twelve years. Yet, all he could think of, all he could see in his mind’s eye was Olivia’s pale face, the hurt shimmering in her huge eyes.
How could he let her go on believing the worst about herself?
His nape prickling, he watched in absolute shock as he recognized the man stepping out of her building. What was Carlos doing here? He was out of the car before he could blink and crossed the road. His heart beat an incessant tattoo, his mind running through so many different scenarios.
He came to a halt in front of Carlos. “Carlos, is she—”
“She’s fine. She had a little incident with the press and fell.”
Of course she did. Thinking you had everything in control when Olivia Stanton featured in your life was a very big mistake. Alexander circled his nape and pressed with his fingers, feeling an invisible knot tighten there. “Where the hell were you?”
Carlos and he’d known each other for fifteen years. Alex trusted him more than anyone else, which was why he’d asked him to keep an eye on Olivia.
His head of security eyed him with the same remote look he leveled at everyone. “I was bringing the car around to pick her up and asked her to wait,” he muttered, running a hand through his overlong hair. “Even though they see her as ‘Olivia’, working for you is drawing enough attention. I was gone for two minutes. By the time I was back, she walked into the mob and one of them shuffled her until she fell.”
Alexander kicked a pebble with all the force he could muster and let loose a string of expletives that felt very true to the neighborhood. He stepped toward the entrance, only to have Carlos’s muscular frame block him. He rubbed his temple with his fingers, feeling his nerves tautly stretched, every muscle in him itching for a fight. “Spit it out, Carlos.”
“This isn’t you, Alex.” Carlos looked as if he was struggling for the right words, which surprised Alex even more. “You have more integrity, more discipline than any man I’ve ever known. Don’t play with that girl knowing that you’ll only break her in the end.”
Alex stood there for a few minutes as Carlos left without a backward glance, the thick silence of the night cloaking him. In all the years he had worked for him, Carlos had never commented on his personal life. Yet a few days with Olivia, and he was already her champion.
* * *
Olivia pulled her T-shirt down, its length hitting her midthigh, and squeezed the water out of her hair. Her head throbbed. She looked on the counter for the painkillers she had been given and sighed. She had left them in Carlos’s car. She could go to the drugstore around the corner but she had no energy tonight to chat with either seventy-year-old Mrs. Robbins or the twenty-year-old self-proclaimed stud Pinto.
She ran a tentative hand over her forehead, and winced as her fingers grazed the gauze dressing. Just her luck that she had to fall on a scrap of metal wire that meant she had needed stitches. She took a sip from the bottle of wine that Nate had given her and scrunched her nose in distaste. Just great. Now her palette was too spoiled for cheap wine. But it didn’t mean it wouldn’t get her sloshed pretty good.
She had had a hell of a week and a half. She had worked fourteen-hour days, going over the contract details and budgeting with Daniel and Nate. It had been the hardest working week of her life. It was exactly the way she wanted it.
Stupidly, she had hoped that she might see Alexander again on her many trips to King Towers. Every time a tall man with broad shoulders had passed by her stomach had dived. Until she’d realized what small potatoes LifeStyle Inc. was in Alexander’s business empire. Of course there had been no sight of him. She finally had stopped looking when she’d heard someone mention that he was out of the country.
Which was for the best. It was easier to hate him, be angry with him at a distance, to assure herself that he had no power over her, that the time she had spent with him in Paris had left no mark on her.
Self-delusion—1, bitter reality—0.
The doorknob rattled from the outside. “Go away, Pinto,” she yelled. The fiddling didn’t stop. Her heart in her mouth, she turned around when the door was pushed through and Alexander walked in.
She sank onto her bed, her knees trembling. “You broke the lock!”
A look of pure rage crossed his features, tight lines fanning around his mouth. “You call that a lock?” He pushed the door shut behind him with a grunt, the thud shaking everything in sight. “I didn’t even have to put my weight on it. Do you know that there’s a weirdo outside in the corridor peeking at your door without blinking? And you’re walking around dressed in that,” he muttered through gritted teeth, “flimsy little thing.”
Liv stared at him with her mouth hanging open. “Pinto’s absolutely harmless.”
“No one’s harmless in New York. He could...do anything to you and no one would know.”
While he ranted and raged around her, she took the opportunity to simply look at him, starved for the sight of him. There was a hint of stubble to his jaw, a sunken, haggard look to his eyes. Yet nothing punctured the potency of his presence. She tucked her hands at her sides, every muscle in her quivering to touch him, to feel his solid strength with her hands.
She raised her gaze and met his, the scorching naked hunger in it robbing the breath from her. Her skin prickled with awareness, jolts of desire, hot as lava, sparking off every inch of her. For long, taut moments, they stood like that, staring at each other.
“Get dressed, we’re leaving.”
She jerked her head, wondering if she heard him right. “Not only did you break the lock on my door, you’re ordering me around now? The landlord will raise my rent again.” Was the man going to ruin everything for her? She shivered as a breeze flew in through the window. “You’re not the boss of me, at least not directly,” she added, as a gleam entered his eyes, “so get out.”
He didn’t say anything. Just maneuvered his tall, lean frame to the narrow counter and stove, which was technically her kitchen. He opened the cupboards above the counter, and the refrigerator, his movements rough and frustrated with each passing second.
He was standing there like he’d every right to, looking down upon her home, ordering her around, chipping away the wall of hurt and anger she had built up.
She did need the word stupid tattooed on her forehead.
She turned around and folded her hands, striving for a calm she wasn’t feeling. Dark color slashed his sharp-angled cheekbones, and her nipples instantly puckered, rasping against the thin material of her tee. “What?” She spat out the word, nothing more coherent coming to her aid.
He loomed over her, a giant, mobile wall of anger. “You have no food, a creep outside that door, you might have a concussion and you’re getting—” she winced as he cursed “—drunk. You’re a hazard to yourself.”
“Not that I’ve to explain myself to you, but I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”
She swallowed as his gaze swept over her breasts. When had he moved so close that she could see the dark shadow of his skin under the white shirt, that she could smell the hint of spice in his cologne enough to buckle her knees?
He raised his hand and ran his long fingers over the graze on her cheek. “And look how well that worked out for you.”
Her breath hitched in her throat.
His mouth was a tight line as he studied the gauze, as if he’d waited on purpose before he acknowledged that she was hurt. “Why didn’t you wait for Carlos, Olivia?” His fingers trembled over her skin. “You know what rabid dogs they ca
n be.”
She did. But she had been so angry and she still couldn’t get over how vicious they had been. She shouldn’t have drawn their interest at all. She had spent the past six months doing everything she could to maintain a low profile, except for the small incident with Vincent. Yet they had come after her just because of her connection to Alexander. His obsession over his privacy made so much sense now. “They just swarmed me as I was leaving King Towers. I’m not even... Anyway, I wanted to hit one idiot. You should see this one. He’ll put the whole horde that hounds you to shame. I can proudly say I’ve provided this particular scumbag with a livelihood so far. But of course, he couldn’t just let me be, he has to put a spin on everything that happens in my life.”
His gaze flickered to hers. “What did he say?”
She tried to even out the hurt from her tone. “He asked me how I was enjoying the success that was bestowed upon me by my brother-in-law.”
“You couldn’t ignore it and walk away?” He sounded ragged, at the end of his rope. “Why do you act on every impulse that runs through your head?”
“Why do you care?” She pushed the words through a throat raw with hurt and longing. She was slowly losing the strength to fight him, to fight this. Every argument with him eroded her decision to keep her distance, every little flash of concern beneath his cutting indifference knocked off a little more of her resistance. “Why are you here, Alexander?”
A huge sigh rattled his body, and he sank to her tiny bed. He tugged her down and she scooted over to keep a little distance between them. His long legs stuck out in front of him as he planted them on an old armchair. He pushed his hair back with his fingers, and held his head in them. “There’s something I need to tell you. And I—” she turned her head, giving into the urge to just look at him; his jaw was locked tight “—wanted to see you.”