Her excuse had been a lie, of course, since it was long past visiting hours and her mother was not at home.
Now his pledge to keep her secret—their “deal”—had turned into a lie, because in the end, newfound loyalty to his famous father had trumped his pledge to her.
He’d let go of her hands, and they trembled. The pulsing strobe lights dazzled her eyes, and the unrelenting thud of the bass beat rattled her body until she felt she might break.
She took a step back, suddenly afraid of the tall man in front of her. What was his next move in this gruesome game? “You told me you’d keep my secret.”
“I never promised you anything.” His dark eyes showed no emotion, even as the glittering disco lights flashed over the hard planes of his face.
Bella frowned. The music hurt her brain. Did he really offer no promises? Had she been so foolish as to take his kisses as words of assurance?
Shame scorched her skin. As if she could truly mean anything to a man like Dominic. Like her kisses were precious diamonds he’d treasure.
She really was delusional.
She was halfway across the room before she realized she was running, pushing and shoving through the crowd. At each moment she kept expecting to feel a large, firm hand grab her arm, to hear a deep voice in her ear.
But it didn’t happen.
As she plunged toward the exit, her ears rang with the eerie wail of the Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive.”
She couldn’t yet comprehend the impact of everything that happened tonight. Protons and neutrons and nanoparticles whirred in the air and blurred her vision and her capacity to think as they shifted reality and swirled into the patterns of an unknown future.
The music thundered around her as she pushed through the packed crush of sweating bodies, into the foyer and out onto the street.
Cool night air stung her exposed skin.
Her job was gone. Her relationship with Dominic—if you could call it that—was over, and thus all the other balls she was juggling, her mother’s health, her father’s work, her cherished projects, were about to come crashing down to smash on the dirty sidewalk.
“Are you okay?”
She whipped around to see the doorman. She realized she must be quite a sight, with her skimpy gold dress and tear- streaked face. “I’m fine.” Her words came out a choked sob that belied her protest.
“I can get you a cab.” The big man, clad in black leather from head to toe, looked helpless in the face of her embarrassing distress.
“Really, it’s okay.” What was one more lie?
She swiped at her tears with a shaking hand and set out along the street. By the end of the first block her high heels hurt so much that she slipped them off, picked them up and began jogging, barefoot, up Sixth Avenue.
Her clingy metallic clothing drew every eye and more than one whistle, but after a while she didn’t even notice. She kept running and running and running.
Car exhaust and stray cigarette smoke hurt her lungs, but she ran on. Maybe if she just kept moving she’d outrun particulate matter and enter a realm of clean air and peaceful, ordered calm.
Like her beloved lab that she’d never see again.
Dominic leaned forward, keeping his mouth near the cab driver’s ear. He knew she lived uptown, but he didn’t know where. East Side or West? He’d tried information but she was unlisted.
“Take Sixth Avenue north.” If she was on foot he might spot her before she got too far. He cursed himself for taking the time to yell at Samantha. If he’d followed Bella out of the club, he wouldn’t be hunting her on the streets of midtown.
But Samantha’s pale, stricken face and ice-cold hands had stopped him. What the heck was that woman thinking, trying to help and making a mess of everything?
His words to Bella rattled in his brain, mocking him.
I never promised you anything.
Of course he’d promised her. Maybe not in so many words, but he’d promised her with his body, with his actions, when he held her and when he kissed her. When he teased her and taunted her and laughed with her.
He didn’t trust her. How could he when she’d admitted to being there under false pretenses?
But she’d trusted him—and he’d betrayed her trust.
Regret pricked in his chest, along with a painful longing to hold her in his arms. When she’d disappeared out of sight in the loud, crowded club he’d felt like someone stuck a knife in his back. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think straight.
Samantha had accosted him, Fiona hot on her heels.
She won’t dare come back. Fiona’s harsh words had rung with grim truth.
Dominic had warned Bella that if Tarrant found out, her career and likely her life as she knew it would be over. She had no grounds to sue, but Tarrant had plenty. Once she started running, she wouldn’t stop.
All because of his betrayal. A gesture of filial devotion to the father he’d always wanted and never known.
He shoved a hand through his hair as he scanned the thinly populated sidewalks. Bella was probably in a cab and long gone and he was chasing gasoline rainbows.
The thought of losing her for good punched him in the gut. He’d been so busy playing his little games, trying to get everyone lined up the way he wanted them, that he’d taken her for granted. He’d just figured she’d be there—for him to gather in his arms—after the dust settled.
Now he’d created a whirlwind that blew her right out of his life.
His nerves and muscles stung with the urge to move, to chase her. Ambling pedestrians blocked traffic at the crosswalk. He tapped his fingers impatiently on the window, drummed his feet on the floor, scanning the dark streets for any sign of...
A flash of gold metallic fabric caught his eye in the headlights of a moving car half a block farther north. ‘To the right!”
Yes. It was her. Running—literally—along the sidewalk. “Pull over.” He tossed a rumpled bill at the driver and jumped out of the still-moving cab.
“Bella!”
She turned her head in a panicked glance. Her haunted gaze struck him like a blow, before she turned and ran faster.
His gut clenched as he noticed that her feet were bare on the dirty sidewalk. Her gold sandals dangled from one hand as she sprinted along the block, dark hair flying behind her.
He wanted to call out again but he focused his energy on running. He dodged a homeless man and a couple walking arm-in-arm. Bella was fast.
But he was faster. He caught up with her at the end of the block, where a speeding cab forced her to hover for a minute on the curb. He lunged at her and caught her around the waist as she leaped off the sidewalk.
She let out a cry as his strong arm knocked the wind from her lungs. “Let go of me!”
“No.” He spun her around. “I won’t let you go.”
The words emerged husky and loaded with every possible meaning those words might imply. He tightened his grip around her waist, and relief soaked through him as he felt her warm skin through the metallic fabric of her dress.
“You didn’t promise me anything,” she struggled to catch her breath. “I have been holding my job under false pretenses. I did take the position to sue your father. And now I know I was wrong, because my father deliberately sold his work to Tarrant to pay off my school loans. You’re right to despise me. Trust me, you won’t ever see me again.” Her eyes flashed and she struggled against him. “Let me go!”
Her full breasts brushed against his sweaty chest, sparking a totally inappropriate surge of raw primal lust. Words caught in his throat and he wanted to kiss her. Showing her how he felt was so much easier and more natural than spilling a bunch of words out into the air.
“I can’t.” His pain and confusion rang in the air. “I don’t want to.”
“Why? It’s not enough that you’ve taken your father’s side against me, now you want to punish me too?”
“No. I don’t want to punish you. I shouldn’t have told my father about you. I should have
kept my promise to you— wordless or otherwise. I’m sorry.”
His apology hung between them for a moment. Her lips parted, then snapped shut.
“Sorry isn’t going to save my job. Which is fine, as I don’t deserve to have one. And don’t worry, you don’t owe me or my mom anything. I’m grateful for all you’ve done for her, but we’ll be fine together from now on.”
Her gray eyes shone with cool strength as she tried to pull away, but he held her tight. He couldn’t stand the thought of her leaving his arms. His heart ached to gather her to his chest.
“Listen to me, Bella. I’ve been so damn confused by everything and everyone. The dad I always dreamed of and never had comes after me suddenly and I’ve got thirty years of hurt and anger and unspent love unfolding inside me, and then I run into the most beautiful, brilliant, crazy, sexy woman I’ve ever met....”
Bella’s lips parted. Dominic fought a violent urge to kiss them. “I’m a straight-down-the-line kind of guy. I have a simple code of honor, I take care of my family, I take care of my friends, I take care of my employees. Nothing complicated about it.”
He frowned. “Suddenly I don’t know what’s right and wrong anymore, and I’m starting to figure out that sometimes there aren’t any easy answers. I’m beginning to see that my dad can be right and you can be right, even though you’re on separate sides of the same issue. And that—”
He took a deep breath and rubbed a hand over his face. “And that I care a lot about both of you.”
Chapter Nineteen
Bella was no longer struggling. She stared at him, eyes wide. He tried not to notice that her dress had become twisted in the altercation and now revealed a good deal of ravishing cleavage.
“Sounds like one of those stories without a happy ending.” Her voice sounded flat.
“But it doesn’t have to be. We can find a compromise solution that will work for everyone. I take over Hardcastle, like Tarrant wants, and you stay and guide your dad’s projects where you want to take them.”
She blinked rapidly and he heard her breath quicken. “This sounds too good to be true. The way my life has been the past two years, frankly that scares me.”
She was shivering, and he pulled her closer, until her lush body rested against him. “Do you still really want to sue Tarrant?”
“No. I don’t want to sue anyone. I just want life to get back to some kind of normal.” Her voice sounded like she was about to cry.
“Then let it go back to normal. Drop the suit idea, Tarrant will cool off, everything will level out and we’ll all get on with our lives.”
“You don’t think he’ll want to sue me for breach of contract? In the park, you said he would.” Her gaze searched his face.
“He won’t if I ask him not to.”
“Because he’s so desperate for you to be his heir?”
“Yes.”
Bella couldn’t stop shaking, even in Dominic’s strong arms. The world still seemed to be closing in on her, atoms and energy flying at her from all directions.
Dominic intended to use himself as the bargaining tool to keep her job? She shuddered again and dragged in a breath. What if Tarrant said no, and Dominic risked losing everything over her?
Of course he wouldn’t be foolish enough to give up the multibillion-dollar Hardcastle Empire over a geeky scientist. Even one who dropped her panties whenever he snapped his fingers.
But the fact that he’d offered—that he’d come after her— that he wanted to salvage an unsalvageable situation?
“Do you mean it? That you’ll speak to him and at least talk him into letting me go quietly?”
“I’m not letting you go quietly.” Dominic tightened his grip around her.
He lifted his thumb and brushed it over her lip. The same possessive gesture that drove her crazy in the cab. Her lips parted as a rush of purely sexual heat fell through her body, all the way to her bare toes.
Not again!
She stiffened in his arms, which unfortunately only crashed her hypersensitive breasts more firmly against his rock-hard chest “How do you do this to me? I’m a scientist. I’m not supposed to have feelings. I study things, I don’t experience them.”
Dominic’s dimples darkened against his skin. “That’s where you’re wrong. You feel a lot of things, and from what I’ve observed, you feel them very strongly.” His thumb grazed her cheek and left the skin warm and tingling. “Though apparently not through the soles of your feet. What are you doing running around barefoot?”
She bit her lips. “It’s better than running around in these.” She lifted her strappy gold sandals.
“I have a better idea.” Dominic slid one big arm under her butt and lifted her off the ground. Before she realized what was happening she was in his arms, resting against his chest, her cheek next to his.
“Don’t be silly, you can’t carry me!”
“I don’t know why not. We’re changing direction. My place is downtown.” The throaty rumble of his voice echoed through her. He turned and started to walk down Sixth Avenue.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
He walked onwards. She could sense his smile and knew she should be irritated and protesting. But she couldn’t. Being held in his powerful arms felt utterly fabulous.
“Aren’t I heavy?”
“You think I’m dumb enough to answer a question like that with anything other than ‘no’?”
She chuckled. “You’re going to carry me all the way downtown? It’s more than forty blocks.”
“The longer the better. This is really working for me.” He squeezed his big hand gently around her thigh, which set off a tremor of desire in her belly.
Her arm stretched around his broad back, which didn’t seem the slightest bit strained by carrying her not-very-sylphlike form. Every step jostled her against his warm chest, which was very comfortable for something so hard.
People stared. She couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t every day you saw a tall, handsome man carrying a girl in a gold dress down Sixth Avenue. Near Forty-Second Street a bus stopped right in front of them and she goaded him onto it. He carried her onboard, protesting that the floor was dirty. He paid the fare with her in his arms, then lowered her into the seat as if she was made of glass and might break.
“You okay?” He slid his arm around her shoulders as he settled in next to her.
“I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “I don’t seem to know anything anymore.”
“I hear you. That’s why sometimes you just have to go with your gut.”
“I’m not so sure. There are a lot of butterflies in mine.”
He rested his big hand right on her belly. “I can’t feel anything.” Then he looked up. “Then again. I’m experiencing a lot of other sensations right now.” His simmering black eyes locked onto hers. Before she knew what was happening their lips had joined in an act of atomic fusion and their bodies locked together in the cramped space of the bus seat.
His hand rubbed the gold fabric of her dress, creating friction that sent sparks of stray energy crackling through her. She writhed against him, unable to control the sheer longing that made her fall into his arms without hesitation, every time.
“Fourteenth Street.” The announcement boomed through the bus.
“I think we need to get off here,” she breathed.
They staggered toward the door, blinking in the light. Dominic insisted on carrying her the few blocks to his house. Inside he climbed the flight of stairs without breaking a sweat.
“You can put me down now,” she protested as they crossed the threshold.
“No way.” His deep voice crept into her ear. “I don’t trust you. You might run off. There’s only one place I’m putting you down.” The bed in the stark white bedroom was round. Not particularly surprising, given the rest of the house. Dominic laid her gingerly in its soft center, then just stood there, staring. “What?”
“I love the way that dress falls off you.”<
br />
Bella glanced down. Her breasts were making a break for freedom. “My friend Risa made me wear it. She said that if it was a Studio 54 party, I had to wear a Halston dress. I don’t even know who Halston is.”
“Me neither, but I’m eternally in Risa’s debt.”
“I think it was cut for someone less...well endowed.” She tugged at the strained gold fabric.
“I think the fit is perfect on you.”
Her skin heated under his smoldering black gaze. “You do seem to have an appreciation for dresses.”
“I think my appreciation is for what’s inside the dress.” He sat on the edge of the bed and ran his thumb along her calf. “You do realize you have the most gorgeous body in the history of humankind?”
“Strangely enough, no one’s mentioned that to me before.”
“You’ve led a sheltered life.”
“I would have agreed with you two years ago, but I’ve pretty much been blasted out of my cozy shelter since my dad died.”
“I’m sorry for the bad things that happened, but I can’t say I’m sorry about you being blasted right into my arms.” He rested his hand gently on her thigh.
His black T-shirt gave her a glimpse of thick, tanned bicep. His broad forearm was lightly dusted with black hair. A sturdy platinum watch with a black face revealed that it was way, way, way past her bedtime.
His long fingers slid up her thigh, gathering her gold dress under his fingertips. Heat, and something stronger and deeper, rose inside her.
She wasn’t sorry she’d been blasted into his arms either.
Though she probably should be.
And maybe would be when Tarrant hit the roof tomorrow about Dominic leaving his precious party to chase her.
“May I kiss you?”
She couldn’t help smiling. And this time she had a different answer to his gracious question. “You may.”
His kiss was measured, deliberate. A taste.
He pulled back, leaving her lips parted and pulsing for more.
“May I disrobe you?”
She glanced down at her borrowed dress. “I think this vintage gown would be grateful to see the last of me.”
Volatile Chemistry (Billionaires' Secrets Book 1) Page 14