by Trish Wylie
He looked into her eyes. ‘You won’t change my mind.’
‘What makes you think I want to?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Depends how dumb I think your reasoning is…’
‘I made it clear from the start how I felt about all this.’ He shook his head again. ‘Not everyone wants to live the billionaire CEO lifestyle.’
‘I think you’ll find the majority of people would be willing to try the billionaire part.’ She took a short breath. ‘Even if you sell everything at knock-down, everything-must-go prices, you’re still going to end up with buckets of money. What are you going to do then—let it sit and gain interest? ’Cos it will, you know. Money makes money. It’s like bacteria in a Petri dish.’
‘Maybe I’m considering giving it away,’ he said with a completely straight face.
Olivia’s eyes widened in disbelief. ‘You’re just going to hand it out on street corners? Do you have any idea how long that would take?’
‘I could hire you to do it.’
She laughed. ‘Sorry to disappoint, but I wasn’t planning on making a lifetime commitment to you.’
The comment earned another frown. ‘I don’t expect you to understand.’
It was getting tough to keep the note of exasperation from her voice. ‘Have you considered the difference it could make to your life? You could do what you want when you want.’
‘I already do.’
‘You could make a difference with this money.’
‘Giving it to people who need it wouldn’t do that?’
It wasn’t that he didn’t have the right to do whatever he wanted with his legacy. Of course he did. It was just Olivia didn’t get it and since it was wrapped up in her need to understand how his mind worked…
‘Thousands of people work for Warren Enterprises.’
He folded his arms. ‘I remember the guilt card from the first time you played it.’
‘There might be more jobs if you ran the place.’
‘Still might. Doesn’t mean I have to be there. Didn’t you say there are people at the company who know what they’re doing?’
Oh, he was good. She’d argued with trial attorneys who weren’t half as quick-minded as he was.
‘There’s nothing you want to keep from all this?’
Suspicion narrowed his eyes. ‘Like?’
Her gaze slanted briefly to the side. ‘Nothing you want to hang on to…’
‘I might need a bigger hint.’
‘No properties that interest you?’
‘It’s just a house, Liv.’
‘Don’t listen, baby,’ she crooned to the house before aiming a glare at him. ‘You can fall for a crappy, rundown warehouse but can’t envisage wanting to spend time in this beautiful place? Have you had your eyes tested recently?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my eyes.’
Actually, she would have to agree with that. She loved his eyes. She just wished she could read what was going on behind them a bit better.
‘The warehouse is different,’ he said.
‘Different how—apart from the obvious falling apart versus still standing aspect of it all…?’
‘I can see the potential in it.’ Unfolding his arms, he reached for his mug. ‘Maybe he knew that.’
It was said as if he found it difficult to believe even his father knew him that well. Tilting her head, Olivia studied him while she tried to slot the information into place. There was a danger it would take them out of safe topic for conversation territory, but if he thought she was giving up on the house she loved so much…
‘You can’t see potential in this place?’ She tried a tentative, ‘Because it has memories?’
‘It does.’ He nodded.
Not good, she assumed. ‘You could make new ones.’
‘What makes you think we haven’t done that already?’
The need to smile was immediate, the flow of emotion escaping into her chest increasing. But when the intensity of his gaze made it feel as if he could see inside her, she leaned back, frowned and pushed to her feet. Walking around the table, she circled his wrist with her fingers, took the coffee mug, set it down and reached for his hands. ‘Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’
Releasing one hand, she led him down the hall by the other. ‘You’ll see.’
In the middle of the library, he lifted his brows in question. ‘What am I looking at?’
‘It’s called a library. The books should be a clue for you.’ She stepped to his side, tilting her head as she looked up at him. ‘What would you change?’
‘No point changing anything if I’m not keeping it.’
‘What about the bookshelves?’ She looked at the room. ‘Would you change them?’
‘If they’re holding up books, I’d say they’re doing their job.’
Leaning closer, she adopted a tone of mild outrage. ‘But they painted over all that lovely wood.’
‘Not all wood is lovely. They probably painted over it for a reason.’
‘When money isn’t a problem?’
He shook his head. ‘You want to strip the paint off that many shelves, it would be quicker ripping them out and starting again.’
Olivia frowned at the idea, suddenly protective of the room. ‘Is that what you’d do?’
‘I’d leave them the way they are.’ He leaned down and lowered his voice. ‘Less work.’
‘So there’s nothing in here you’d change.’
‘Since you’ve obviously put some thought into it, why don’t you tell me what you’d change?’
‘It’s not mine to change,’ she replied in an echo of the conversation they’d had at the plaza.
‘If it was…’
‘W-ell…’ she scrunched her nose a little as she fought the impulse for all of two seconds before enthusiasm slipped free ‘…okay, then.’ Releasing his hand, she stepped forward with a spring in her step. ‘Nice deep cushions in the window seats—there’s too much white in here, so I’d change the drapes. You know—add a little warmth to the colour scheme…’
‘That’s cosmetic. You’re not changing the room.’
‘I like the room,’ she said as she turned towards him and shrugged a shoulder. ‘It just feels like there’s something missing.’
‘Coving,’ he said without missing a beat.
‘What?’
‘Some genius took out the coving.’ She tilted her head back and studied the high ceiling. ‘Would it be hard to put it back in?’
‘No. But finding it might take time. You want to replace like-with-like where you can in a place like this.’
Lowering her chin, she studied his face, trying to figure out if he was talking the way he would if he was consulting instead of making decisions about a place he could call his own. ‘So that’s what you’d do? You’d hunt around salvage yards or antique stores until you found it?’
Not that she had any idea where people got stuff like that, but she assumed it was one or the other.
‘I know a guy. I tell him what I need, he tracks it down.’ He shrugged. ‘What I can’t find, I make. It’s because I can reproduce traditional carving people hire me for renovations of old buildings.’
‘So you’d do the work yourself.’ Olivia smiled.
‘Why would I hire someone to do something I can do?’
‘And enjoy doing.’
‘Fine.’ Blake shook his head in resignation. ‘I’d replace the fronts of the shelves.’
Her smile grew. ‘With something carved?’
‘Rope, maybe shells, something nautical to reflect the fact the ocean is outside.’
Clasping one large hand in two of hers, she backed away. ‘Next room.’
‘You’ve made your point,’ he said as he allowed her to lead him across the hall.
‘I’m just getting started.’
Stopping inside the doorway, she lifted her brows.
‘Billiard room,’ he supplied with a hint of amusemen
t in his eyes. ‘The big green table gave it away.’
‘Do you play billiards?’
‘No.’
‘You play pool.’
‘I’d take the billiard table out and replace it with a pool table.’ He shook his head again, the amusement more obvious. ‘That’s what you want me to say, right?’
‘Would leave a lot more space…’
‘A whole two feet of it…’
‘Wouldn’t have to be smack bang in the middle, the way this one is, though. It’s a big room.’
‘Be a pain in the ass to get out of here.’ When he looked at her again and she batted her eyelashes in reply, she was rewarded with a smile. ‘And you had time to think about all this when, exactly?’
‘That was a pretty long walk you took yesterday.’
‘It wasn’t that long.’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘Missed me, did you?’
‘You want to know what I think could go in here?’
‘Go on.’
She pointed to a corner. ‘Big-screen TV over there for watching the games. Big leather sofa in front of it. Maybe a bar over here—you could carve something beautiful like the bed you were working on that day…’
‘Was that a compliment?’ He chuckled when she rolled her eyes. ‘If we’re putting in a bar, we need a jukebox.’
‘Not one of those new ones.’ She frowned.
‘Rock ’n’ roll era—we could put a pinball machine beside it.’
‘See?’ She beamed. ‘Now you’re getting it.’
‘We’re not doing this for every room,’ he said firmly.
‘Well, duh, we can’t have a pool table in every room. Where would our friends sit when they come to visit?’ When she realised she’d stepped into fantasy land, she blinked and tugged on his hand. ‘Just a couple more rooms.’
It went pretty well in the den, Blake playing along with less reluctance as they decided the furniture could be moved and it was the perfect room to sit around an open fire in winter. It was the announcement of ‘one more room, I swear’—the step too far she just had to take—that messed it up.
Having only seen it from the hall, she wasn’t overly surprised when he lingered in the doorway, allowing her hand to slip from his as she walked further into the room.
‘I know,’ she said as she sat down at a huge leather-topped desk and swivelled the chair around to face him. ‘Kind of oppressive, isn’t it?’
Blake’s gaze roved over the wood panelled walls as he leaned against the door frame and pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘I used to think so.’
The hollow tone sounded a death knell on her plan to let him see the potential for a home in the house she loved so much. Olivia grimaced. ‘This is his office.’
‘Was.’ He looked around again. ‘Probably inherited—panelling looks original.’
‘It’s dark,’ she commented cautiously.
‘Dark wood to begin with but wood does that over time. Strip the varnish, it would probably look better.’
When his gaze found hers, Olivia’s chest deflated. One step forward, three steps back. She didn’t know to quit when she was ahead.
‘I didn’t think. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s just another room, Liv.’
If it was just another room then the hollow tone of his voice wouldn’t make it feel as if everything should be taken out and burned so there was nothing left of Charles Warren. What kind of father didn’t try to have a relationship with his son? How could that man have walked around in the guise of a well respected businessman and philanthropist while behind closed doors he didn’t have so much as one photograph—?
Laying her hands flat on the desk to push the chair back, her gaze fell on one of numerous picture frames on the surface. Frowning, she lifted one as she stood up.
‘This is you.’ Her gaze slid over the others. ‘They’re all of you.’
It was his childhood in a patchwork quilt of different sizes and styles of frames. To Olivia, it felt as if she’d discovered El Dorado. He just would have been an adorable baby, wouldn’t he? How could anyone have resisted that smile? She bit the corner of her lip when she spotted a later picture.
‘Nice hairstyle.’ Setting down one frame, she reached for another. ‘I take it back.’
‘Take what back?’
‘What I thought last night.’ She pointed the frame in her hand in the general direction of the living room. ‘There are a bunch of family photos in the other room.’
‘And?’
‘There weren’t any of you.’ she shrugged a shoulder as she set the frame down. ‘I thought there should be—blamed him because there weren’t—but now I know he had these…’
Reaching for a picture taken at the railing by the pool, she frowned at the awkwardness between father and son. There was a visible gap between them, Blake’s body language suggesting he was less than happy about having his picture taken. Not unusual for a teenager, but she sensed there was more to it than that.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t get it. Why aren’t there any out there? Did he spend that much time in here?’
Gaze lifting sharply when she realised she’d asked the questions out loud, she searched Blake’s face for a sign she’d overstepped. He frowned, his gaze on the backs of the pictures not visible from the doorway as a muscle worked in his jaw.
‘He couldn’t put them with the others.’
Her brows lifted. ‘In case someone saw them?’
When he nodded, any feelings of forgiveness she’d had disappeared with the snap of invisible fingers. ‘Why?’
It explained why no one had heard of him. Why he was such a mystery when his name appeared in the will and why it had taken so long to find him. But at the same time it made her ache. She could see his face as he’d said he wouldn’t hide, not again. To purposely hide a child from the world, denying his existence until he was forced into the open as an adult and pushed into a life he hadn’t wanted to live, it was so…manipulative… What was worse, she’d been part of it. She’d thought he was insane to turn it down, had been determined he should accept the responsibility of such a ‘great’ legacy.
Olivia felt nauseous.
‘He wasn’t allowed.’
‘What do you mean, he wasn’t allowed?’ A hint of barely suppressed anger threaded her voice. She wasn’t buying it. There was virtually nothing a man with Charles Warren’s wealth and power couldn’t do if he wanted to.
‘He made a deal,’ he replied in the same hollow tone.
‘What kind of deal?’
‘She didn’t give him a choice.’
Meaning his mother? While frantically attempting to make sense of it all, she tried to work out what it was she could see behind dull, emotionless eyes. Resignation, acceptance—what was it? When it occurred to her what it might be, it hit her with the equivalent force of being run over by a speeding truck. It wasn’t something she could see; it was something she thought she could sense because she knew how it felt.
Standing in the doorway, so tall, still and in control, one of the strongest-willed men she’d ever met suddenly seemed vulnerable. And. It. Killed. Her.
Blake’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, his jaw tight as he spoke through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t do that.’
Oh, yeah, now he was angry. But not at his parents, not at the past—he was angry at her.
When he pushed off the doorway and disappeared into the hall, something inside her snapped. She wanted to know him. Not be made to feel as if she were being locked out of his thoughts and how he felt because she didn’t matter. Why make the effort to demonstrate so definitively she wasn’t just any woman in his bed if how she felt didn’t matter? She’d tried not to get emotionally involved but she couldn’t change who she was—not that much. It had been there all along. The churning emotion she’d held so tightly in check constantly bubbled below the surface, waiting for a crack in the shell around her heart to grow wide enough for some of it to escape.
<
br /> Wavering, she made a vain last-ditch attempt to force it back inside and give the moment of madness an opportunity to pass. But it was too late. She cared about him and in six years’ time she didn’t want to be haunted by what had happened between them.
‘She couldn’t walk away with dozens of unanswered questions and ‘what ifs’…
Not again.
CHAPTER TEN
‘YOU can’t just drop something like that on me and walk away,’ Liv’s voice said behind him.
Gaze fixed on the door at the end of the hall, Blake sensed the freedom beyond, drawn to it with the same compulsion that made a man kick to get to the surface of deep water so he could haul in air. It was an urge he recognised, the restlessness inside him as ingrained as the screaming instincts he’d ignored when he told her things she didn’t need to know.
‘Damn it, Blake.’ Frustration threaded her voice. ‘Would you just stand still for a minute?’
Yeah, he was famous for standing still, wasn’t he? Thing was, for a moment, while they’d been talking about changes that could be made to the house, he’d thought—
‘Talk to me.’
So she could land another dose of pity on him? He didn’t think so. Close to the door, he changed direction, reasoning if he was going anywhere, he needed his stuff.
‘Of course, how stupid of me,’ her voice said when he was halfway up the stairs. ‘This is what you do. It’s why you’ve had so many addresses. You run away.’
Hands clenched into fists at his sides, he froze and fought the wave of anger washing over him. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘Why do you think I’m trying to get to know you?’
Breathing deep, he took another upward step.
‘Going to pack, are we?’
It was none of her damn business what he did or where he went. There was a difference between running away and leaving somewhere he just plain didn’t want to be.
‘That’s your life, is it? Every time someone tries to get to know you, you cut and run.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘So much for not hiding.’
Anything you say can and will be used against you.
Squaring his shoulders, he turned around. ‘When did pushing me start to seem like a good idea to you?’