by Lucy Monroe
It was all there…her affair with Baron, further speculation on her being the other woman when he courted his oil heiress. There was even some nonsense about how he’d been keeping her under surveillance since the breakup and innuendo that she might be at fault for the rumored possibility of imminent divorce.
Tara’s stomach somersaulted and it took a full minute of shallow breathing before she was sure she wouldn’t lose what little she’d eaten that day. She’d skipped lunch, trying to get ahead at work so she could take a half day off on Friday and keep her weekend free. Angelo was due in early the following afternoon.
Had he seen the article? She had no way of knowing. Surprisingly he had not called her all week. She had expected him to at least attempt to sway her decision with frequent phone calls, but he hadn’t. She only knew when he was due back because he’d told her before leaving when to expect him.
Her gaze re-focused on the article. How many people had seen it?
The weekly didn’t have the highest circulation in the country, but it was a national publication.
She couldn’t believe this was happening all over again and it made her furious. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she was being painted as a scheming tramp who used her body to get ahead instead of relying on her brains. That made Tara angriest of all. She’d graduated at the top of her class and was darn good at her job. She didn’t need the company owner’s patronage to get a promotion.
She was perfectly capable of securing one on her own merits, thank you very much.
The whole situation would be ludicrous if it didn’t hurt like a knife to the gut. Twisting that knife was the knowledge that whoever had sold the picture and information to the tabloid had been at Danette’s party. And one of her co-workers had been willing to be quoted, if anonymously, saying something extremely nasty. Betrayal burned through her.
She didn’t know who she worked with that felt that way, but only one person had gone around taking picture after picture at the party. Ray…the budding journalist.
He’d told her he was a serious journalist and that photography was only his hobby. The weekly was hardly an impressive example of journalistic solemnity and those photos had been paid for, which made the little hobby a job.
An ugly, despicable job…but one that could not be denied. Her stomach cramped again as an even less palatable thought assailed her. Had Danette known about it?
Two years ago, a couple of models that Tara had thought were friends had betrayed her to the press. One going so far as to tell out and out lies about her, exacerbating the piranha like media frenzy feeding off of her misfortune. That had hurt almost as much as Baron’s rejection.
So, maybe Tara was being hopelessly naïve now, but she simply could not accept that Danette had been in on Ray’s scheme. Danette was too forthright and she had too many stars in her eyes when she talked about Ray.
Which meant she was probably hurting as much as Tara was right now…if she’d seen the article.
It wasn’t fair. The rat. The absolute rat! She’d like to see him right now and she’d cut off his tail.
“Miss, it’s your turn!”
She looked up, realizing from the expression on the faces around her that was not the first time the checker had told her to move forward. Apparently the big chili controversy had been settled.
She tossed the weekly down in front of the checker. “I’ll take this, too.”
He nodded, his expression bored and then finished ringing her up. She paid and left, anger and hurt sizzling through her in alternating waves.
Those waves took on monumental proportions when she got to work the next day to discover she was being fired. She was told the order came from Angelo’s office in New York, but she refused to believe it. First of all, the man was too smart to fire a woman he’d slept with over getting caught out by the media.
Such an action put both him and his company too much at risk for retaliation and a sexual harassment lawsuit, if the woman in question was in the least bit dishonest.
The human resources manager assigned to the task of letting her go had finally admitted that Angelo was currently in Puerto Rico dealing with a natural disaster emergency that had affected one of his supply plants. Apparently even phone communication was iffy.
Which explained why he hadn’t called all week.
When he didn’t arrive that afternoon, or call, she tried his office. His secretary confirmed that he was calling in only sporadically for messages. Tara left one, bothered by his absence and her inability to get ahold of him. And she had to admit that an emergency like the one he faced in Puerto Rico wasn’t something he could dismiss or delegate.
She’d made a decision not to be hampered by her past in every judgment she made. That meant continuing to believe in the tycoon she missed more than she wanted to.
At least until he proved himself unworthy of her trust.
Wanting to get one issue of trustworthiness resolved, she tried to call Danette, but got her friend’s home voice mail instead and was forced to leave a message.
The phone rang the next morning and woke her out of a fitful sleep. She’d spent too many dark hours thinking about her best friend and the man who wanted to marry her.
Hoping it was Danette, she grabbed it. “Hello?”
“Tara?”
The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.
“Yes?” Her voice came out scratchy and she cleared her throat.
“I need to see you, darling.”
“Who is this?” she demanded, her sleep fuddled mind sure of one thing.
The voice at the other end of the line was not one of the two men in her life with a right to call her by endearments: Angelo and her stepfather, Darren.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the sound of my voice. I haven’t forgotten anything about you, Tara. I never could. Not the sweet way you smell, or the taste of your lips—”
“I am not in any mood for obscene phone calls,” she inserted with speed, recognition finally enlightening her rapidly wakening mind.
Baron’s laugh was seductive and low, like he thought she was flirting with him. “How about a visit? Would you prefer I say these things in person?”
“No! Are you in Portland?” she asked, worried that might be the case and wondering how he’d gotten her number.
“Not yet, but I can be. We need to talk.”
“We finished talking two years ago.”
“Tara, I’m divorcing my wife.”
“How fortunate for her,” she quipped, unable to help herself. Did he really think she cared?
“I understand your bitterness, darling. I made a terrible mistake two years ago. I want to make it right.”
“You don’t know the meaning of making things right. You did me one favor two years ago, Baron. You walked away. I’m not about to let you undo possibly the only good deed of your life. You’re a user. You suck other people dry and smile while you’re doing it.”
She had no idea how she’d ever loved this man, but after one week in Angelo’s company, the difference between the two types of tycoons was crystal clear to her.
“I don’t want you in my life. I don’t want you calling me and I swear that if you show up in Portland stalking me, I’ll go to the authorities for a restraining order.”
“Tara, you’re angry, but you don’t understand—”
“You’re wrong,” she interrupted again, not wanting to hear a single line of his con story. He’d deceived her before with that tone and his too believable excuses, but never again.
“I’m not angry. I’m disgusted you could think for one second I would want to hear from you again after the way you used me and then threw me to the wolves in the press with a steak tied around my ankle.”
“I can explain that.”
“No. You cannot.” She exhaled a frustrated breath. “Leave me alone, Baron, or this time I’ll be the one giving sympathy producing interviews to the press.”
He made
a harsh sound. “Tara, you can’t trust Angelo Gordon.”
So, he’d read the tabloid stories? That was one more thing Ray-the-rat had to answer for. “My private life is none of your business.”
“I used to be your private life.”
What colossal nerve. “That was a long time ago and it is certainly not true any longer. Goodbye, Baron.”
She hung up.
The phone rang five minutes later and when the number only came up as out of area on her caller ID, she ignored it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHECKING her voice mail after her shower, Tara ground her teeth in vexation when she realized the second call had been from Angelo. But his message gave her her first smile in over thirty-six hours.
He was headed back to Portland and would arrive later that evening. He said nothing about the gossip stories, but he did apologize for not calling when he’d been unable to fly out the day before.
She listened to the message three times just to hear his voice and then erased it with a jab of a button, irritated with her lame, sappy behavior.
The phone rang again, this time a local newspaper name showed up on the caller ID and she let it go to voice mail again. The rest of the day, the phone rang off the hook and the two times she made the mistake of answering it, a reporter was on the other end of the line.
She was in the middle of preparing a tray of snacks for Angelo’s arrival and muttering to herself about Ray-the-rat and Baron when something struck her.
What made her angriest about Baron’s phone call earlier had nothing to do with the past. No pain from his betrayal lingered to catch at her heart. No longing for what might have been tugged at her thoughts, but she was furious he had implied Angelo was untrustworthy.
And she was feeling downright feral that her attempt to avoid another phone call from Baron had made her miss one from Angelo.
Baron couldn’t begin to understand, because he didn’t have a protective bone in his body, but she was sure Angelo wouldn’t hurt her. Nor would he allow her to be hurt by others. He was going to be enraged when he found out she’d been fired and she had no doubt Ray-the-rat was going to heartily regret making her and Angelo the crux of his career advancement…such as it was.
Another sudden, not so welcome thought scorched through her consciousness.
She trusted him.
She really trusted a tycoon.
That’s why she’d given him the benefit of the doubt about her employment termination. That was why she was waiting for him to show up with a heart full of hope instead of a loaded shotgun. Against all odds, something deep inside of her had bonded with him and told her she could believe in him.
That was scarier than having Baron trying to come back into her life. Her ex-lover posed no threat to her emotional health, but Angelo was something else altogether. She wasn’t at all sure how much damage to her current happiness letting him go would do, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be negligible.
She did not want to fall in love again. She did not ever want to be that vulnerable.
Before she started hyperventilating, she reminded herself that trust was not love. They weren’t mutually exclusive emotions of course, but neither were they absolutely mutually inclusive.
Were they?
How could she have let herself come to this pass? She’d only spent a few days with him. She knew powerful men like him weren’t innately trustworthy. She hadn’t needed Baron to tell her that, but when he’d said it, she’d been offended. Was still offended.
Her heart insisted that Angelo was different. Unlike with Baron, she didn’t have to convince herself…she had to fight belief. Maybe it was the things Angelo had told her about his past. He hadn’t condemned his mom, but he was determined to make the man responsible for her pain pay.
That made him protective, even if it was of a memory.
She should never have researched him. All that stuff about what a ruthless but really fair guy he was had turned her head, or her heart. He’d told her he didn’t give up, that he made things work and she had no option but to believe him.
And seriously, a man who spent ten years preparing for revenge didn’t change his mind on a whim. If he wanted to marry her, he planned to make it stick.
Was she trying to convince herself to accept his proposal? Or facing the inevitable?
She trusted him, she wanted him and in a way she did not understand, but could not deny, she needed him.
The decision she’d been wrestling with all week was really no decision at all. In a way, Baron’s call had put it into perspective. Angelo was nothing like the older man and Tara was sure that if she refused his offer, she would regret his leaving much more than she’d ever regretted her failed relationship with Baron.
The buzzer sounded, scattering her thoughts and letting her know she had a visitor. She rushed into the entry hall to press the black button which would unlock the front door. Sure it was Angelo, she opened her door and waited just inside so she could see down the hall.
Within seconds his tall, muscular body came into view. His eyes looked tired and his skin was pale, but he strode toward her, his body vibrating with purpose.
She didn’t smile, didn’t speak. She just waited.
He reached her and without a word, yanked her into his arms and kissed her with claim staking intensity. She locked her fingers behind his neck and kissed him back.
When they finally came up for air, she was in his arms and he was leaning on the inside of the closed door to her apartment. She wasn’t going to waste time wondering how they’d gotten there. He made things happen.
This was just one of those things.
Nuzzling her neck, he squeezed her. “I missed you, stellina.”
“I missed you, too, Angelo.”
He lifted his head, his gimlet stare enough to make her heart contract in her chest. “Don’t ever buzz your apartment open without using the intercom to see who it is again.”
She laughed, relieved that was all it was. “All right.”
He kissed her again. Hard and fast. “I mean it.”
“I know.”
He carried her into the living room and sat down on the sofa with her in his lap. His thighs weren’t the only hard things under her bottom. Heat flashed through her, sensitizing nerve endings already on edge.
“You really did miss me,” she teased.
He didn’t smile in response. “I have severely reprimanded my second in command.”
“He’s the one who ordered I be fired?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know about the articles as well.”
“I saw something at the newsstand in the airport.”
She cringed at the reminder how widespread was her humiliation. “Did you flip?”
“That’s one word for it, but my reaction to the initial article was nothing compared to my fury when I was told you’d been fired as a crisis containment measure. If you were a different woman, that kind of crisis containment could have blown up in our collective faces.”
She knew he’d been too smart to take such a step.
“My managers will not act so impetuously on my behalf again.”
She shivered at the chill in his voice.
“Why did they?”
His brows rose. “What do you mean?”
“It just seems to me that they had to have some reason for believing you would approve their decision.”
“Ignorance.”
“Well, yes, but…”
“They were ignorant because they’ve never been in this situation before.”
She waited in silence for him to continue explaining and was surprised when he did after only a brief pause.
“They know only that I hate personal publicity of any kind. I’ve never dated a woman employed by one of my companies and I don’t usually make it on the front pages of the weekly tabloids. My last magazine cover was Newsweek.”
“I read it. That article had a lot more truth to it.”
> “No doubt. I’m going to kill Ray.” From the way Angelo growled the words, she could almost feel badly for the rat.
“So you think it’s him, too?”
“Who else could it be?”
“I can’t think of anyone, but I’m sure Danette didn’t know about it.” Fairly sure anyway.
Once again she was operating on the principle of giving her friend the benefit of the doubt. It had worked with Angelo.
Looking unconvinced by her assurance, he asked, “Have you spoken to her?”
“No. She wasn’t at her desk when security walked me out and she hasn’t returned my call.”
“My second in command will be attending the remedial management training course on human resource development.”
She felt a twinge of sympathy for the general manager. “That will be quite the come-down.”
“Particularly if you teach it.”
She laughed. “I no longer work for Primo Tech.”
“This is true.” He buried his hand in her hair and brushed his fingers through it to the ends. “That’s so damn silky. I’m hoping you’ll take a position closer to me.”
“What?” First he was talking about her hair and then a job offer? “Are you offering me a position in your main office?”
“In my life.”
“You mean you don’t want me working for you?”
“Of course I want you working for me. Do you think I want a brain like yours going to a competitor?”
She warmed at the compliment, but still wasn’t sure what he was driving at. “Um…I’m getting confused here.”
“I’m hoping you’ll take your next job…working for me…as Tara Gordon rather than Tara Peters.”
She swallowed and then plunged. “Yes.”
He looked like he’d been turned to stone. “You will marry me?”
“As soon as you like.”
“You are serious.”
“Very.”