by Dani Collins
Her hands shifted, splaying wider to feel more of him while sliding to his waist and pressing. Encouraging him to come closer. Trying to pull herself into him.
“I do,” she said in a thready voice, knowing it was a mistake to offer herself. She half expected him to shove her away, triumphant.
Instead, an atavistic light filled his gaze. His hand shifted to catch behind her neck and he crushed her mouth with his own, hot and possessive.
His other arm went around her and her chest collided with his. Time folded. The past crunched into the present and exploded into golden light and shattered defenses. Panic should have been her reaction, but all she felt was relief. Oh, he was rain after a long drought. Her whole being filled up with rejuvenation, swelling and reaching and opening for him. This man was the only one who did this to her, mind spinning away so all that mattered was that she wear his spicy scent on every inch of her skin. That he gather her into his powerful physique and ravage her with a hunger only exceeded by her own.
She twined her arms around his neck and pulled him down, encouraging the pressure of his mouth to the point of pain, trying to erase the ache of longing that had held her in its grip these four long years.
He met her anguished yearning with a ravenous type of control, body so hot around hers, she stood in a conflagration while he blatantly dove his tongue into her mouth. She was his. His action seemed to drive it home to her.
She couldn’t deny it. She kissed him back without inhibition, greeting his tongue with her own, rubbing against him in open invitation. Take me. All of me.
It was exactly the way she had given herself over to him every time in the past. Even as she was cringing inside at her wantonness while celebrating the joy of being back in his arms, he was dragging his hands to her shoulders and pressing her away.
Her knees were too soft. She had to cling to his wrists to stay on her feet. It was mortifying.
His expression was avid and flushed. Aroused? Maybe. But sharp and accusatory, too. Angry but smug. He’d been teaching her a lesson.
Well, all she’d learned was that she couldn’t trust either of them.
“I actually hate you right now,” she told him in whatever was left of her voice. Then she carefully turned and closed herself into the changeroom so he wouldn’t see that her lashes were growing as damp as the rest of her.
CHAPTER FIVE
“WE’RE DONE FOR TODAY,” Travis said over his shoulder to the women standing across the room and pretending not to goggle at his spectacle with Imogen. “Package everything up.”
He took out his credit card, drained his champagne, and went back to reading work emails so he wouldn’t follow Imogen into the changeroom and finish what they’d started.
I actually hate you right now.
Given that he was lurking in the back of the boutique, waiting for a raging erection to subside, he was feeling quite a bit of animosity toward her, too.
He’d barely slept, trying to assimilate all that she’d told him last night with the way he’d viewed her all these years. Would things have been different if she’d told him? He was annoyed that he didn’t know and hadn’t been given a chance to find out.
Then she’d balked at going to Charleston and was pushing back on him with every purchase he was making, further shortening his temper.
Meanwhile, he’d been going out of his mind, watching her try on tight jeans that cupped her pert behind. He’d tried not to notice her bare knee between the hem of her skirt and the top of her boot when she sat beside him in the car or the way the neckline of her new dress framed the upper swells of her breasts. It reminded him too much of the way her soft body had felt slithering close to his oh-so-briefly last night.
When she had walked out in a gown that turned her skin to rich cream, one that made her hair catch lights and shadows and transformed her eyes into mysterious pools while it lovingly showcased the delicacy of her figure, he’d been almost beside himself with latent arousal.
And she wanted him to be nice to her? Nothing about this was nice. It was base and frustrating and colored with dark emotions he couldn’t seem to identify.
“I’m ready.” She appeared in the green dress, her waist so impossibly narrow, the gold belt sat like a small Hula-Hoop atop her hips. He kept forgetting how sick she’d been, but her face was pale enough to remind him.
He looked for the fire of defiance beneath her mask of obedience, the one that kept lighting his own temper, keeping him fighting. He waited for a sneer of sarcasm, but all he saw was tension and a hint of redness lingering on her lips from their rapacious kiss. She didn’t meet his eyes, only offered a wan smile to the shop owner. “Thank you for all your help. I’ll wait in the car.”
Travis walked her out, leaving his driver to deal with the packages.
“What game are we playing now?” he asked as she turned her face away from him the moment he slid in beside her and closed the door. “Silent treatment?”
“Of course not. What would you like to talk about?” She folded her hands in her lap and brought her face to the front, but this woman had never been so polite.
“You’re angry that I kissed you,” he surmised.
“Of course not,” she said in that same ultrareasonable tone that was ultraprovoking in a passive-aggressive way. “You’ve demonstrated that you are allowed to do whatever you please with me.”
Behind them, the driver closed the trunk. It shook the car, but the real impact was that precise little shot she’d taken with her loaded words.
When the driver opened his door, Travis barked, “Give us a minute.”
“Of course, sir.” He closed the door and moved to the curb in front of the car, shooing away the handful of photographers who’d been tracking them today.
“You didn’t enjoy that kiss? It was something I took? Is that what you’re saying?” The clench in his belly tightened.
“Whether I enjoyed it doesn’t matter, does it? That was the point you were making. Whatever you do to me is a reaction—punishment—for what I did and continue to do to you.” Her voice shook and her knuckles were white until she very deliberately relaxed her hands, drawing a breath that she let out in a slow measured exhalation. Like she was enduring something intensely painful.
“It wasn’t a punishment, Imogen.” Unless—I actually hate you right now. “Did you enjoy it?” His heart lurched, wondering if he had actually gone insane because he’d been sure they were both reacting with exactly as much passion as the other.
“Yes.” Her voice belied that clipped answer. “You could have had me right there in the middle of the floor in a shop. Is that what you need to hear? Does that make you happy? How much is enough, Travis? How completely do you have to humiliate me before I’m sorry enough for ever having entered your life?”
She finally looked at him, but her eyes shone with angry tears. Shame raked at his conscience with sharp claws.
“I wasn’t trying to humiliate you.”
“Right,” she said scathingly, hand turning into a fist again. “Just tell me the rules and I’ll stop breaking them. The penance isn’t worth it.”
“It wasn’t...” Agitation had him turning in his seat toward her.
She tensed. Braced herself. Winded him with the very idea that—
“I’m not going to hit you!”
“I didn’t think you were,” she claimed, but she held herself in wary stiffness, her sharp gaze on his.
He ran his hand down his face, trying to get a grip while his brain went ballistic.
He still wasn’t sure what to make of the things she had said about her father last night. She hadn’t said anything about violence, and he didn’t believe she would have tried so hard to win over a man who had raised his fists against her. It had sounded more like her father was withdrawn and bitter, perhaps from grief, capable of lashing out, but Imogen
was a dramatic person. He had wondered if she had exaggerated, trying to earn sympathy and forgiveness. She had flat out warned him against believing her.
But this reaction of hers was pure instinct and dread inducing in the extreme. He didn’t even want to ask, let alone hear the answer, but he made himself do it.
“Did he hit you? Your father?” He would dig him up and kill him again.
“No.”
“Imogen.”
“Stop saying my name like that.”
“It’s your name.”
“And you say it like I’m stupid and wrong and you can’t stand me. You don’t have to use your fists to hurt people, Travis.” Her elbows were tight to her ribs, her body so tense she looked like she would snap.
The runt is the one who is supposed to drown.
He didn’t want to believe her father had been that cruel because he would have to face that he had let her go back to Wallace. Had driven her there. His nostrils stung and a bonfire of culpability burned under his heart.
“Just tell me the rules and I’ll follow them,” she said again, voice strained. “Don’t contradict you in public. Wear what you buy me. What else?”
“Imo—”
She flinched.
He closed his eyes. Gentled his tone, even though she was so infuriating he could barely control himself. “This isn’t a test. It’s not tennis. I wasn’t trying to score a point with that kiss.” Not entirely a lie. He had just wanted to know whether her reaction in the past had been real or manufactured.
“You’re going to find fault in me no matter what I do. At least give me a fighting chance because I can’t live with being smacked down all the time. You want me to act like we’re in love when we’re in public? Is that what I’m supposed to do?”
He scratched his brow. Sighed.
She flinched and looked away.
Really? She was so sensitive that a noise of frustration was a lash of a whip?
“Imogen.” He managed to say it softly. His hand twitched to reach out, but he was afraid to touch her now, uncertain how she would take it, how she would feel it, wound as tightly as she was. He had never in all this time imagined he had the power to hurt her. Not that deeply.
“Do you expect me to have sex with you?” Her unsteady voice held a throb that sent a spear of aching tension through him.
“I don’t expect it, no.” Want? Yes. How the hell had things disintegrated into this?
“Because I don’t know how to make it ‘interesting’?” Her face was turned away, but her hand came up to swipe her cheek. “I was busy trying to help Dad. Taking care of him was a full-time job around my real one. That’s why I didn’t sleep with anyone else. I mean, I went out a few times, but just the odd dinner. So, yes, it has been a long time and that’s why I reacted today, okay?”
She said it with enough vehemence he knew she was just trying to save face with him, but it still landed and stung. He had damned near devoured her and he hadn’t been going without.
“I’m not built for casual sex. I don’t know why. It’s always bothered me.”
Every single word this woman said baffled the hell out of him. “Why would you aspire to be good at casual sex?”
“Because it would be nice to connect with someone without getting hurt.”
“If you’re saying I was too rough, I’m—”
“Shut up, Travis. You don’t expect to have sex with me. Fine. Do you expect me to pay you back for these clothes? That’s why I kept asking how much—”
“No,” he cut in, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You need clothes. Stop asking what I expect. I expect you to let me help you back onto your feet and not get yourself into another situation like this again. I expect you to take care of yourself and eat when you’re hungry and get enough sleep and take your medication. If I sound overbearing and frustrated it’s because I cannot believe you let things get to this level and that you’re fighting me on fixing them.”
Her mouth was pouted, her brow cringing at his harsh tone while her jaw worked, searching for a defense. “I don’t want you to resent me more than you do.”
“Well, you’re going to love my next demand, because I expect you to tell me how much you owe so I can take care of it.”
“No.” Her knuckles stood out sharp and white on her tight fists.
“Your debt collectors are calling my office. I have to address it.”
“You’re not responsible for what I owe! Definitely not for what my father racked up.”
“They don’t care who pays, as long as they get their money.” Keeping his father’s business going when it had teetered on the brink had taught him exactly how financial vultures worked, compounding late fees faster than you could write a check. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Imogen. The easy way is for you to give me a list and we zero it off, quick and neat. The interest is the killer, so the longer you put it off, the worse it gets.”
She scowled and hung her head. “I don’t—” she began.
“It’s like the debt clock,” he cut in dryly. “While you waffle, it keeps rolling higher.”
“Okay, fine! I’ll need to go online when we get back to your apartment, but can we go somewhere first? I want to give you something. At least I can get that much off my conscience.”
“What?”
“Your rings.”
* * *
By the time they had driven to the converted brownstone in Brooklyn, where a handful of windows were framed with strings of colored lights, he had stopped speaking to her at all.
“I didn’t feel desperate enough to sell them” had been the words that had flipped his switch into incensed silence. She had heard what he was thinking, though. Had known he was picturing that horrible little room in the sauerkraut-smelling building. If that wasn’t desperation, what was?
Imogen bit her lip as they climbed from the car in front of Joli’s building. If Joli wasn’t home, Travis was really going to lose his bananas, but he’d been so busy taking her to task for “starving on the street,” she hadn’t wanted to get into the fact that, without her old cell phone and its helpful contact list, she didn’t have Joli’s number.
She buzzed the apartment with Joli’s name on the plate and thankfully Joli answered.
“It’s Imogen.”
“I wondered if you would turn up. Come in.”
“Who is she?” Travis asked as they climbed the stairs of the modest but well-kept building. This one smelled like nutmeg and cinnamon, thanks to neighbors preparing for the holidays.
“One of Dad’s editors. She was a freelance journalist for years and went back to it after our flagship folded. She sent condolences when Dad died, but we haven’t been in touch much since she went out on her own again.”
As they arrived on the third floor, a door opened. Joli was heavyset and wore her gray hair in a no-nonsense, flat, boyish cut combed straight down on her forehead. Glasses that needed cleaning and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth were pretty much her signature look.
“How are you, kid?” She nodded at Imogen. Not the affectionate type, far too analytical and objective as a lifelong newsperson, but a trusted ally for years.
“The architect,” Joli said when Imogen introduced Travis. “When I saw your names in the headlines this morning, I dug up your article on him and reread it.”
“What? Why?” Maybe the bigger question was how?
Joli’s studio apartment bordered on something from those shows about hoarders. Filing cabinets were covered in stacks of thick folders and surrounded by bulging cardboard boxes. Her kitchen table was a layered workspace of cuttings and notepads. Papers with brown mug rings sat on the coffee table while her desk in the corner was a computer poking above a mountain of spiral notebooks, colored index cards and full ashtrays. The whole place reeked of stale cigarette smoke.
“Oh, no—”
“Thank you.” Travis took the papers and folded them in half.
“Travis,” Imogen protested, trying to take the pages.
He ignored her, folded them again and tucked them inside his suit jacket.
She tightened her mouth and turned back to Joli. “I came for my rings. Do you mind?”
“In the fire safe.” Joli crossed to the safe beneath her desk. She bent to dial it open. “Who are you working for these days?”
“I’m not writing. I had to sell my computer.”
Travis sent her a frown.
Imogen shrugged. “It would have been stolen otherwise. At least the cash fit in my bra.”
His next question should have been “What bra?” but the cash was long gone, too.
He asked instead, “Is that why the rings are here? You were afraid they’d be stolen?”
“I used to leave them with Joli when I went into the office, so Dad wouldn’t see them. He would have told me to sell them.”
Joli picked through old tapes and USBs, then came across a sealed envelope that had Property of Imogen Gantry written in bold print across it.
Imogen tore the envelope open and waited for Travis to offer his hand, which he did very slowly, radiating skepticism. She poured the rings into his palm, where the two bands sat like a platinum figure eight. An infinity sign weighted on one side with baguette diamonds, a pillow-cut stone with matched baguettes on the other.
She loved those rings. Loved them.
Which was why she hadn’t been able to bring herself to sell them, no matter how dire her circumstances. It was heartbreaking enough to return them to the man who’d given them to her. She had to do it without touching them, without even looking at them for very long, or she might cry.
It wasn’t even because they were so beautiful. They were stunning, but it was what they had meant when he gave them to her. What she had believed they meant. As fairy tales went, they had symbolized a happily-ever-after commitment that was pure and bright and magical. Sometimes she’d wondered if her biggest mistake had been in taking them off every day, hiding them from everyone and only wearing them in the privacy of Travis’s apartment. Maybe if she had worn them around the clock, the spell would have stuck.