by Bella Andre
“I can’t forget it.”
She touched her lips to his, then started to pull away, but he wrapped his hand around her nape, taking her lips in a long, decadent sip. She opened to him again, so beautiful, so trusting despite everything. And he wanted them to stay here, just like this, forever.
But in the end, though it felt like the hardest thing he’d ever done, he let her go. Rolling to his feet, he put his clothes on. She was dressed too by the time he opened the door, and she went up on her toes, kissing him once more. His heart ached with the gentleness of it, but he didn’t beg her to let him stay.
Because he had to let her go. They needed time, just like she said. He’d hurt her all those years ago, and he could so easily hurt her again.
Because Paige loved him.
He hadn’t been worthy of her love nine years ago.
Was there any chance that he could be worthy of her now?
* * *
Paige closed her door and leaned against it. Nothing was certain with Evan, but she still felt dreamy and sexy and giddy—all the things that people in love felt. She could have gotten him to stay the night. She certainly could have lured him into making love to her again.
But where the lovemaking they’d just shared had been instinctive—utterly impossible to resist on both their parts—if she’d angled for the whole night, that would have been manipulation. And though her heart was on the line, she refused to be like her sister, manipulating Evan to her advantage, wheedling to get what she wanted.
He needed time to build his trust—anyone in his situation would. It might take months, maybe even until after the divorce was final. And after he’d worked out his feelings for his mother.
He hadn’t said he loved her. And she hadn’t expected it.
But she had hoped for it. For Evan to look at her and see everything he’d ever wanted. To tell her she was the woman who had been in his heart all along.
She was lost in her turbulent thoughts when her doorbell rang. She jumped away from the door, joy infusing every cell of her body at the thought that Evan had already done his thinking. That he was back to say he wanted to be with her. That he might even be here to say that he loved her.
She jerked the door open, breathless, excited, hopeful.
And found Whitney standing there instead.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Paige’s blood roared in her ears like the engines of Evan’s jet.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Whitney’s voice was nauseatingly sweet.
Paige couldn’t reply. Couldn’t get her lips or her voice to work. Not when all her joy in the weekend, in the perfect beach date today, in every beautiful moment she and Evan had shared together, was dying a nasty, brutal death beneath her sister’s gaze. But though her tongue couldn’t move, her legs did what they always had before—stepped back to let Whitney in.
Her sister wore an elegant black dress with gold trim. Her auburn hair caught the light, her brows were perfectly arched, and her lipstick was an exact match to her red-tipped nails. In her stiletto heels, she towered over Paige in her bare feet.
Whitney was glamorous, Paige wasn’t. Just like usual.
And yet an insistent voice inside her head cried out that it was her body, her skin, and her heart that still sang from Evan’s kisses, his caresses. From his total possession.
“You’ve been ignoring my calls since I returned from the south of France.”
“I’ve been busy.” She’d ignored Whitney’s calls since that first glorious, wonderful kiss with Evan in Chicago before the wedding.
The kiss from her sister’s husband who was an ex in every way but the legal one.
“Where have you been?” Whitney drawled, looking pointedly at the small suitcase on the floor. The one Evan had kicked on its side before he’d ripped Paige’s clothes off.
Her purse lay beside the case, and her jacket was still on the floor where Evan had thrown it. A bowl on the living room side table had fallen, rolling across the carpet. Her lips were swollen from his kisses. Paige could only hope Whitney was too busy drilling her about why she hadn’t taken her calls to notice.
She barely avoided putting a hand to her hair to straighten the locks Evan had run his fingers through. “I just returned from a trip to see Susan and Bob.”
“Weren’t you just there for the wedding?” Whitney widened her eyes beneath her perfect makeup.
Paige’s mind strove furiously for an explanation. The same way she always reacted to Whitney, defending, rationalizing. But that voice inside her was louder now.
You don’t have to do this anymore. You never did.
Paige stood taller, her shoulders straighter. “Why I went there isn’t your business.”
Instead of unleashing her wrath, Whitney smiled as if she’d just reeled in a fish who hadn’t put up much of a fight. “But it is my business why you were with my husband, isn’t it?” She batted her thick, false eyelashes.
Whitney paused. Waited for Paige to understand her true meaning.
Like an ice pick to the heart, the realization hit Paige that her sister must have seen their tumble through her door. And then, a good while later, she’d watched Evan leave, his clothes hastily donned, his hair a mess after their lovemaking.
Just as Paige’s was. Whitney had seen everything, from the suitcase tipped sideways, to the jacket, to the bowl in the middle of the living room floor.
No. God, no. It was the very last thing Paige and Evan needed, for Whitney to plunk herself down right in the middle of what was already such a complicated—and tentative—new relationship.
“You’re screwing him.” Whitney’s voice turned malicious, her face lined with rage. “Aren’t you, you dirty little slut?”
Paige’s fierce response was instinctive. “Don’t call me that.” Her legs might have stepped aside to let her sister in…but her heart refused to do the same.
Whitney wasn’t listening. She’d never listened to anyone.
“How could you betray me like this? Your own sister.” Moisture glittered in Whitney’s eyes. On anyone else, Paige might have thought the tears were real, but she knew her sister too well. The tears were designed to make Paige feel guilty, to drive home the guilt as Whitney injected a pathetic wobble into her voice. “I’ve needed you so badly since he left me.” She pointed her finger in Paige’s face, all pretense of tears vanishing. “But you. Weren’t. There.” She punctuated every word with fury. “Instead, you were off screwing my husband.” Venom smeared every syllable. “What would Mom think of that after you promised her you’d take care of Daddy and me?” Then she hit Paige with her worst. “But you let Daddy die. And now you’ve stolen Evan from me.”
Paige knew exactly what Whitney was doing. Her sister was a master at making a person squirm, at pushing just the right button to make her opponent cry or scream or give in. Paige knew.
Yet the accusations still cut her to ribbons. Her heart felt raw and bleeding, flayed open as if Whitney had the skill of Jack the Ripper.
Paige had failed her mother. She’d failed her father. She’d even failed Evan, because she’d never told him what Whitney was like beneath all the glitter and elegance and lies.
But her parents were dead. Evan wasn’t. He deserved another chance at happiness.
And—goddammit!—Paige deserved to be happy too.
Nine years had been way too long to wait for Evan. But thirty years had been an absolute eternity of being Whitney’s emotional slave. That story she’d told Evan about the rope swing had been one tiny glimmer of decency in years of bondage. And Paige wouldn’t let one more second pass playing the role of protector that her mother had given her. Just as Evan had to deal with the bad choices his mother had made, so did Paige with her own mother.
Guilt and duty had been her constant companions all these years. This moment brought righteous anger. Hopefully, the future would bring forgiveness.
But it was anger that gave her the strength to hold her own and
say, “What would Mom think of what you did, Whitney?”
Whitney sniffed haughtily. “You mean be the best wife I could to Evan and still keep my sanity?”
“No.” Paige’s voice was sharp enough to cut through Whitney’s smugness, her eyebrows rising in surprise. “What you did to Evan was horrible. Unthinkable. Unforgivable. You lied, not just once, but three times.” She held up a finger when Whitney opened her mouth. “Oh wait, four times, when we count the tubal ligation you never told him about.”
“It’s my body. I can do what I want with it.”
“Except lie about it to your husband.” She advanced a step and Whitney actually backed up. Paige had never challenged her sister before. Never gone head to head like this. It was so hard. But so incredibly satisfying. To finally speak up with a voice that she’d held in for far too long. “Mom would have been really upset by what you did.”
“She would have supported me because she loved me.”
“You’re right. She would have pretended you made a mistake and told herself that what you did wasn’t deliberate. But I know it was.” Paige steeled everything deep inside and said the things she should have said years ago. “I don’t support you. I don’t support what you did. And I’m not giving you any sympathy. Unless you can admit how wrong you were and ask Evan’s forgiveness, I’m not taking your calls, and I don’t want to see you.”
Whitney stared as if Paige were ready for the asylum, all wrapped up in a straitjacket. “You don’t mean that.” Shock threaded her words.
“I do.” Paige crossed her arms. “Every word.”
The storm built on Whitney’s features, her cheekbones reddening, her eyes narrowing, and her lips pursing into a thin, ugly line.
“You bitch.” A tiny fleck of spittle flew out of her mouth. She crowded Paige, backing her into the living room. “He might enjoy screwing you. He might have fun being worshipped by poor little Paige who always wanted him but couldn’t have him. But do you actually think he could ever love you? Because he’ll never stop loving me.” Whitney stabbed a finger into her breastbone with an audible thud. “You’re a fool if you let yourself forget that the moment he saw me that first day, he forgot all about you. It was so damn easy to take him away from you. But you still hung around all these years, begging for scraps, always underfoot, always hoping he’d notice you. It would actually be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. My friends and I used to laugh about it all the time.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Poor Paige, the pathetic little puppy dog drooling after my husband. Did you really think you could steal him away from me? I can have him back with a simple snap of my fingers. I just haven’t tried. But now you’ve given me a reason to do it.”
Whitney’s gaze was rabid, her features a mottled blue-red with her rage.
But Paige’s rage was just as potent. “You knew how I felt about Evan back then?”
Whitney rolled her eyes. “I know everything about you. How you think. What you’ll do. You’re so pitifully transparent.”
Whitney had used Paige to prop up her own ego, to make herself feel superior. She’d taken Evan simply because she could. Because Paige wanted him, and Whitney couldn’t stand to let her sister win. “You never really loved him, did you?”
Whitney waved that away, as if the whole question of love was preposterous. “You didn’t deserve him. You were too weak. He needed me to push him. To help him become the billionaire he was supposed to be. Lord knows if he’d ended up with you, he’d probably be tossing a baseball to a snotty-nosed kid in a little yard somewhere.” She looked disgusted by the image. “He was meant for bigger things than just being a father.”
Paige had always known about Whitney’s ugly traits, that she could trample people like they were ants in her path. But this was diabolical.
Purely malicious.
As a psychologist, Paige should have seen it. That was part of the reason she’d chosen her career, to figure it all out. But she never had, not truly. She hadn’t been able to see the truth right in front of her. Hadn’t wanted to see, because the truth was too close. It was too difficult to admit that the monster was real, that her sister was a sociopath who had never loved anyone but herself.
Until Whitney shined a spotlight and forced her to see.
“You’ve lost him,” Paige told the woman who was no longer her family. Blood had bound them together…until poison destroyed that bond. “Not because of me, but because he finally sees what you really are.” She looked at Whitney in her designer dress and towering high heels. Really looked for the first time. “He won’t ever be back.”
Whitney laughed, a hollow, grating sound. Like the wicked witch. Then she snapped her fingers. “That’s how easy it’ll be to get him back.” She shrugged, a rude and careless shift of her shoulders. “Or maybe I’ll just take every penny he has after I prove he was screwing my very own sister behind my back.”
“Then all your friends will call you the drooling idiot, won’t they, Whitney? You wouldn’t want them to know your pathetic, puppy-dog sister stole him away from you, would you?”
Whitney growled, tossed her hair over her shoulder, opened the front door, and slammed it on the way out, shaking the whole building.
Paige looked at the door, feeling like an earthquake had just rumbled through her. Or a tornado had snapped her up and spun her hard and fast.
And yet, she was lighter too.
For her whole life she’d kowtowed to her sister. But she never would again.
Paige’s career was helping people achieve freedom after years of emotional oppression. Finally, she’d done it for herself.
She wanted to call Evan to tell him her news, her epiphany, her breakthrough. And she needed him to know that Whitney was going to mess with the divorce in any way she could.
Determination—and that growing lightness within her—made her hand surprisingly steady as she fished her phone out of her purse and dialed his cell phone.
“Paige.” She loved the sound of her name on his lips, soft and low and full of need. “I was just thinking about you. It seems like I can’t stop.”
She wanted to tell him the same, to talk as lovers did. But she needed him to know, “Whitney was just here.”
He cursed, four letters that crudely, and accurately, summed up the situation.
“She saw us kiss at the door and disappear inside.” Her heart raced as she remembered the beauty, the passion of their connection. “She was still watching when you come back out. After.” Heat infused Paige head to toes with the pleasure, the joy, and the love still tingling deep inside her. “After we made love.”
Again, he swore, fury—and frustration—underlying the short word.
“She’s going to use it against you in the settlement. Use me against you. She wants to destroy you.”
“She won’t.” His tone was hard. All the warmth with which he’d said her name was gone now. “I won’t let her, damn it.”
Paige was suddenly holding a phone full of dead air. And wondering if, like an emotional vampire, Whitney had just sucked away everything that was good.
No. That was the past talking. No matter what Whitney said with that snap of her fingers, Evan wouldn’t go back to her. How could he possibly do that?
Shoving her insecurities away—the insecurities her sister had built up simply so she could toy with Paige—she rolled her suitcase back to her bedroom and started unpacking. A simple, routine act that would help ground her back into reality.
But Evan’s imprint was on each piece of clothing. The hungry look in his eyes as he’d stripped her sweater away. The reverence as he’d traced the line of lace along the top edge of her panties. The deep emotion in his voice as he’d said, I’m yours.
The doorbell rang for the second time that evening. She closed her eyes and took a bracing breath. Whitney was back for more. Maybe she’d thought of some new threat. Clearly, she hadn’t accepted that Paige was done taking her crap.
When she reached the front door,
she threw it open, ready to do battle.
But this time, Evan filled her doorway.
And her heart.
“I was already on my way back to you when you called.” His gaze was fierce and passionate and protective. “I shouldn’t have left. But I swear to you, I won’t make that mistake again. And I won’t let her hurt you,” he vowed.
Then he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. The purest vow of all.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Paige stole his breath right out of his chest. Just the way she’d stolen his heart. Both now and all those years ago, talking and laughing and connecting on a deeper level than he ever had with anyone else.
Evan made himself set her down, though he never wanted to let her go. “The thought of Whitney threatening you makes me crazy.”
He’d already been on his way back, trying the whole way to convince himself that desire was what drove his urge to be with her again. But when Paige had called and told him about Whitney’s surprise blitz attack? He’d finally realized, finally accepted, just how much he felt for Paige. How much he cared. How much he wanted her in his arms, in his bed, in his life.
And not just for one stolen weekend.
“You were the one she was threatening, Evan.”
“She’ll use you to get at me.”
“She can try,” Paige said, lifting her chin. “But it won’t work.”
He stroked her cheek. She was so brave. So strong. So honest. If only he’d realized nine years ago that brave, strong, and honest were traits worth fighting for. Even if you had to fight your own demons. Especially then.
“Tell me what she said.”
She was silent for a moment that was heavy enough for him to what had happened between them. “She wanted my sympathy. She wanted to know where I was this weekend.” Pausing, it was obvious she had to weigh whether to continue. Her chin lifted with her decision to tell him. “She wanted to know how I could possibly think you would have feelings for me when you could have her instead.”
“I will crush her before I let her hurt you.” He would give away all his money, all his worldly possessions if that was what it took to protect Paige. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to protect you from her.”