The high-rise had an unobstructed view of Central Park. It was magnificent—the long rectangular stretch of garden and life nestled between steel and concrete. Magnificent even now as a purple twilight settled over the city. I could imagine its glory in the daytime, with the trees clothed in yellow and orange and red. I had a feeling it was just as breathtaking covered in snow. Just as awe-inspiring blanketed in green.
I knew everyone loved the view, that it was the draw to places like this, but I felt especially pulled. Maybe it was just because I could never get enough of being this high. It felt so hard-earned to be here, on this side of the world. At the top. I’d never stop believing I should have been here years ago.
The couple before me was seated. I turned to the hostess to check in.
“I’m not sure what name—”
A firm hand rested against my back sending a jolt of electricity shooting up my spine.
“She’s with me,” Donovan told the woman at the podium.
I looked up at my date, and the world seemed to mute around me. He was wearing the same suit he’d had on earlier, but now he had his jacket on. It was a black three-piece, tailored so perfectly that there wasn’t any need to imagine how good he looked underneath his clothes. His scruff had been cleaned up since I’d seen him, and he’d applied aftershave.
He looked and smelled and felt like the kind of guy any girl would die to be with.
And he was here with me.
He glanced down at me, his sly smile making me weak in the knees.
“Good evening, Mr. Kincaid. We have your usual table waiting for you.”
And that was another reason why I had to remember this wasn’t a date. Because he was the kind of guy who had a “usual table”. Sure, Weston was that kind of guy too, but that wasn’t the point. Besides, it didn’t bother me so much to think about Weston with other girls. Donovan was different.
But why wasn’t something I could articulate, even just for myself, because Donovan kept his hand on my back as he directed me through the restaurant, and the feel of his fingers was hot and charged against my skin, even through the thin material of my sheath dress.
Maybe I’d chosen my outfit poorly after all.
It was a relief when he removed his hand to let me sit, but it was also annoying because now I felt cold. For distraction, I turned my head out the window next to us. The sun had finished setting, and now the view was dotted with twinkling of lights throughout bunches of dark trees below.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, deciding to open with a compliment. I didn’t remark on the view’s romantic attributes.
“Is it?” Donovan asked. “I forget to notice.”
Asshole. But he was focused on me instead of out the window, and so maybe I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I’d meant to dive right into my reasons for meeting with him, but the waiter arrived, and Donovan took it upon himself to order a bottle of wine. Then there was the menu to discuss—I was an adventurous enough eater, but almost everything was unrecognizable to me by name. Donovan had to explain each item, which he did in detail.
I chose the turbot, a Scandinavian flatfish covered in some unpronounceable French sauce.
Then the wine arrived, and Donovan insisted on toasting to my new position at Reach, and then our food came.
“That’s quite the service,” I said, unsure how the evening had gotten away from me thus far. I was also unsure how we’d managed to make it to the main course of our meal without Donovan having said or done anything extraordinarily Donovan.
“They know whom they’re serving,” he said, refilling my wineglass, and I noted that I’d already emptied half a glass. It was time to stick to water.
It was also time to get to the point. “Thank you for agreeing to have dinner with me, Donovan.”
“The pleasure is mine. Though I should tell you, I think you’re under the impression that this outfit you’re wearing makes you unattractive. It would take a lot more than a plain dress to hide yourself from me.”
I had to grit my teeth. Fuck him. Fuck him for knowing what I’d tried to do. Fuck him for saying something so shitty. Fuck him for the compliment he’d buried underneath.
Double fuck him for what his compliment implied. He couldn’t make me feel guilty for hiding. I wasn’t his to find.
With a gleam in his eye that said he knew he’d hit his mark, he said, “Anyway. What is it you wanted to talk about?”
I dabbed at my mouth with my napkin. “Well. A of all, I’d like to make it known that misogynistic and sexually inappropriate comments like that one are not appreciated.”
He paused with his forkful of madai in midair. “Even when it’s just the two of us?”
“Especially when it’s just the two of us. Which I’m sure means nothing to you. You’ll do as you like and there will be no repercussion because you own the business and that’s the world we live in.”
“How terribly dour of you.” He brought his food to his mouth, the translucent fish sliding between his lips.
His perfect, amazing, kissable lips…
No, not perfect. Not amazing. Definitely not kissable. “I’m a realist,” I said, staying on task. “In my experience, reality is dour.”
“I’m not going to argue with you there.” He lifted his wineglass as though to toast the sentiment.
One item down. One left to go. The major one.
“B of all.” I focused on my turbot, unable to meet his eyes. “You and I have a past that needs to be addressed.”
God, I was chickenshit. We’ve had sex. I couldn’t even say that. How ridiculous was that? It was just sex.
Except it hadn’t just been sex. I’d just had sex with Weston and there was no need for a dinner to discuss how things were different now.
But there weren’t words for what had happened between Donovan and me, so I had to rely on the vocabulary that I had.
And now that I’d mentioned it, acknowledged it, the weight of the air between us felt twice as heavy.
I looked up from my plate and found his eyes trained on me.
“A past,” he repeated now that he had my gaze. “Yes. I was essentially your teacher.”
In more ways than one.
He knew that too, knew that I’d been a virgin. His statement was filled with the innuendo.
I took a hurried sip of my wine, hoping that I could use that as the excuse for the blush in my cheeks.
With the wine in my hand, I felt bolder. The door was only open a crack, but I meant to go all the way inside. There were things I never understood about what he’d said and done to me, and I wanted answers.
“You gave me a bad grade,” I said, giving him a place to start.
“And then we fixed it.” His grin was as wicked as it was distracting.
I scowled. “You were cruel to me.”
“Was I?” That twinkle in his eye was another distraction.
“Why?”
“Probably the same reason I’m cruel to you now.”
His answer made my insides feel sloshy, but I wasn’t backing down. “Which is?”
“If you haven’t figured it out then hell if I can explain it to you.”
I held his stare as I sat back, my arms resting on the sides of the chair. “Was it because of Amanda?”
I was going out on a limb with this one. Everything I’d heard about Amanda had come from Weston when I’d still been at Harvard. She’d been engaged to Donovan and had died in a car accident before I’d arrived at the school. Rumor was that Donovan had taken it pretty hard.
Was that the reason he’d been a dick to me? Because he’d still been mourning his first love? I liked that reason. It was easier than believing some of the alternatives.
“I don’t talk about her,” Donovan said, in a way that made it clear the subject was closed.
Admittedly, it was probably shitty to bring her up. But so much of what Donovan had done to me had been shitty. Wasn’t it fair game?
“Then I’ll assume it is because of her,” I said. Things would be resolved tonight whether or not he participated in achieving that resolution.
“You know what they say when you assume.” He’d lost the playfulness he had earlier, and something about that made me feel like I’d won, but the victory was hollow.
“You’re already an ass, so what are you worried about?” I didn’t let him answer. “You must have really loved her.”
“You didn’t ask me to dinner to make assumptions about my dead fiancée.”
He was right. I didn’t.
I looked out the window, unsure of what I really wanted from him. To say he’d loved the woman he’d been engaged to? Of course he had. Hearing him say that he had wasn’t going to shed light on anything else.
Besides, this wasn’t really about what I needed to hear from Donovan. It was what he needed to hear from me.
I turned back to him. “There was more about what happened between us back then, and I think there might be an impression of me that has lingered that is not accurate.”
“Oh, really?” He cocked his head. “I’m intrigued.”
“It didn’t help that I stayed on the phone with you the other night. I should have hung up, but I’d been drinking.”
He rolled his eyes dramatically. “You should have hung up on a friend?”
“One who was making sexual comments, trying to get a rise out of me? Yes.” I pointed a finger at him. “And don’t say that sexual harassment used to be our thing, because that’s what I’m talking about. That impression of me, that that’s what I want—it’s wrong.”
“That’s not what you want?” The way he looked at me—looked into me with those brown-green eyes and that intense gaze—it was hard not to second-guess myself.
But I barreled on, committed to what I knew was true about myself. “It’s not. Back then, when I was at Harvard, I developed somewhat of a fixation with you after you rescued me from being raped by Theodore Sheridan.”
He dropped his fork on his plate with a clang that made me jump. “A fixation. That’s what you’re calling it.”
He sounded pissed, and even though I couldn’t figure out why he’d be angry about my issues, it made me even more defensive. “It sounds silly, but it happens. It’s even got a name—it’s a form of transference. It basically happens when a person falls for someone in an effort to erase or change a past trauma.”
“Did you see a therapist to figure out this bullshit?”
“No.” I shifted in my chair, uneasy with the conversation. “I’ve read books and done a lot of online research. Anyway, it was a phase, and it’s over. I was complicit in the inappropriate activity that occurred between us, but I’m not that girl anymore.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Sabrina,” he said sharply.
His condescension stung, but more, he’d missed the point. “I’m telling you.”
Leaning forward, he practically growled. “Why?”
“Why am I telling you?”
“Yes. Why?”
“So that you’ll know.”
“You mean so that I’ll stop. So that I’ll stop saying things and doing things, things that maybe make you feel uncomfortable, but also make you feel alive for probably the first time in years. But you know what the problem with that is? The problem is that the thing you really want to stop isn’t me, it’s how you react. And that’s not going to go away with research or alcohol or stern conversations. And no matter how many times you tell this story to me, or yourself, it’s still never going to change that it’s exactly that—a story.”
My eyes felt wet. Not wet enough to cry but wet enough to sting. Yes, I wanted to stop reacting to him. Yes. He knew. He fucking knew even if I couldn’t say it clearly. But the thing he didn’t realize was that if he stopped then my reactions would stop.
Because he was the one who brought this out in me. No one else.
I finished my wine and set the empty glass on the table.
“We don’t have to agree on this.” My throat felt dry despite having just drunk.
“No, we don’t,” he said bitterly as he picked up his fork. “I just have to leave you alone.”
We finished the meal in silence. As each terrible, awkward second passed, I reminded myself that this was what I’d wanted. He wouldn’t bother me after this. He seemed to hate me now, for some reason I couldn’t quite figure out. Honestly, I wasn’t trying very hard. I was too busy hating myself.
Was transference just an excuse? A prettier label than the real one underneath?
But if I hadn’t been into sick dirty things because Donovan had saved me, then it meant I’d really liked it. All of it. Including the part where he’d been cruel and horrible. Including the parts where he was still cruel and horrible.
I was still in my head by the time we climbed into the elevator together. The tension was wrapped densely around us, and it seemed to thicken in the small confined space. It was solid. Like a wall between us.
We’d only traveled down a couple of floors when the car suddenly jolted to a stop. I glanced toward Donovan—his hand was on the emergency stop button.
My heart began hammering in my chest.
In an instant, he had me caged against the wall.
“Sabrina…” He searched my face, looking for an answer I wasn’t sure I could give.
“I’m not frightened of you.” I pressed tighter against the wall, but my stomach felt like butterflies had taken over, and shit, he was right. I did feel alive.
“No. That was never your problem. The problem was that you liked that you are.” He pushed in closer, so close that I could feel him against the length of me even though he wasn’t touching me anywhere. “I still remember every crease on your face when you came.”
I looked away, though his nose was inches from mine. “That was ten years ago.” But it was as vivid as yesterday in my mind, too.
“The sounds that you made. The way you said my name.” There was an ache in his voice, and it pulled my eyes to his.
I could remember the way he smelled. The way the bookcase scratched against my back. The way it felt when he pushed inside me—like I was being torn apart and split open, the way it felt like I was only being held together because of him.
And if that were all I remembered then I would beg for him to kiss me, because there was nothing I wanted more in that moment than his hands on me, everywhere on me. Making me feel all those things he’d made me feel back then. All the things he still made me feel when I dared to let him.
But there was more, and I hadn’t forgotten it.
“I remember how you dismissed me like a used toy. Sent me to your friend.”
Donovan’s eyes closed briefly, and he exhaled.
“To Weston.” He stepped away, releasing me from my trap. “That’s right. That was wise of me.”
He backed up until he was on the opposite side of the elevator. “Weston would be good for you. You’d be good for him. After his whole marriage is over, that is.”
I let out a harsh laugh. “So I should pursue Weston.” Really? He was pushing this again?
“Why not? That’s what you came here thinking you’d do, wasn’t it? I think it would be an excellent choice for both of you.”
I was almost too stunned for words. Thirty seconds ago he’d been ready to tear off my clothes, and now he was advocating a relationship with his business partner and friend.
Whatever his game was, it hadn’t changed since college. But mine had. Back then I’d let this hurt me. Now, I’d play along. “Fine. I’ll do that.”
He seemed slightly taken aback. “You will?”
“Sure. As soon as his marriage is over. Thanks for the suggestion.”
“Glad I could help.” He released the emergency button and the elevator started again.
The Jag was waiting on the street, but my worries about sharing a ride turned out to be unnecessary. After holding it open for me so I could get in the back seat, Donovan shut the door a
nd knocked on the hood of the car.
The driver pulled out into traffic, and when I swiveled to look behind us, Donovan was already gone from sight.
Chapter 15
I pulled my hair nervously as Nate Sinclair studied the bulletin boards in the strategy room. Pinned to them were ideas and inspiration for a campaign we were getting ready to introduce for Phoenix Technology—a multinational tech company that was one of the foremost designers and developers of computer software and hardware. My staff had gathered the pertinent materials into a PowerPoint presentation for the meeting the following day, but the brainstorming boards were still up in case we needed to make any last minute changes. It was much easier to work on a team project in a tactile format, I’d found, so I’d kept this style when I’d joined the firm.
Still, it felt awkward having a superior looking at my work like this. Like it was naked and raw. Like I was naked and raw. I was grateful the main lights were off and only the spotlights were on. Maybe the darkness could hide my edginess.
“We’ll adjust any of this to fit what Creative comes up with,” I said, in case Nate thought the strategy was lacking. Not that he’d said anything to suggest that he did.
He moved from a magazine article to a graph about the best uses of social media. “I’m not worried about it. This is Weston’s department.”
Right. Nate didn’t care. He was only in here killing time while his own department came up with an ad campaign. They’d come up with several ad ideas, and he’d shot down every one so far.
Weston, on the other hand, had left for the night. He wasn’t the type to stay late in general, I’d learned. Especially recently, when he had so much to do to prepare for his upcoming wedding, which was now only six weeks away.
My anxiety was all about me and no one else. I’d been at Reach for a month, and due to the fast pace that the company kept, I’d already seen several of my team’s marketing plans put into place. But Phoenix was the first big campaign presentation I’d been a part of. It was important to the entire firm, and nerves were high-strung throughout the staff. I’d just left a handful of my own employees in another work room, quibbling over which color of background looked better in the PowerPoint slides like it was a matter of life or death.
Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2) Page 13