by Trish Wylie
‘Olivia Brannigan?’
‘Yes.’ She looked up at the fair-haired man, tucking away the phone she’d been checking for messages as a manila envelope appeared at eye-level.
‘I’d like to talk to you about Blake Clayton.’
‘And you are?’
‘Ed Parnell, freelance reporter.’
Pressing her lips together, Olivia lowered her chin and turned her attention to the remnants of a Waldorf salad. ‘I have nothing to say to you, Mr Parnell.’
‘You might when you look at the pictures.’
Glancing at the envelope while she wiped her hands with a paper napkin, Olivia reasoned it would be better to know what she was dealing with. It was part of her job as Blake’s lawyer, would be remiss of her not to—
Who was she kidding? Of course she was going to look.
Taking the envelope from him, she twisted the tab and slid out the contents, frowning as she flicked through photograph after photograph. Blake kissing her at the heliport on the way to The Hamptons, the two of them laughing at something as they walked along a sidewalk—there were even pictures of her leaving his apartment.
It felt as if something had been stolen from them.
‘Your boyfriend is newsworthy. Secret son of famous billionaire inherits entire family fortune?’ The young man smiled. ‘Rags to riches stories, people love them.’
‘I think we’re done here.’ Lifting the salad container and her empty coffee cup, she pushed to her feet and dropped them into a nearby trashcan. She walked past the fountain and along the dappled path that took her out of the park and into the crowd.
The reporter followed her. ‘I’m sure Warren Enterprises shareholders will be fascinated by his plans for the company now he’s the majority shareholder. Especially when we take into consideration he’s a carpenter. How many carpenters do you think there are running multinational companies, Ms Brannigan?’
‘No comment.’
Taking her sunglasses off her head to hide her eyes, she frowned as she headed for the crossing. How dare he suggest Blake wasn’t capable of running the company? That man was capable of anything if he set his mind to it. When he wanted something—well, she knew, didn’t she?
If he ever met a woman he could love, she wouldn’t have a single doubt how he felt. Nothing would stand in his way. The woman wouldn’t stand a chance. She might put up a fight—he could be annoying as hell—but if he let her, she would see what was standing right in front of her and when she did she would hold on tight and never want to let go.
They would find a way to make it work, together.
Olivia had never been as jealous as she was of the imaginary woman who might one day share his life. If he was capable of staying in one place and wanted her as much as she wanted him—
As if thinking about him could conjure him up out of nowhere… She blinked. At first he was just a figure moving towards her in the distance, among a great many others doing the same thing; the fact she’d even noticed was a miracle in itself considering the volume of people on the streets of Manhattan. A second later he was a man. Then a tall man with broad shoulders and unruly chocolate-brown hair who became a stand-out-of-the-crowd, unbearably sexy male with his dark, intense gaze fixed on her and an expression that said nothing and no one was getting in his way.
It was a cruel glimpse of something she hadn’t been ready to admit she needed more than her next breath.
As the world contracted, Olivia froze, the wall around her heart crumbling to dust and emotion gushing into her chest. How could she have been so blind? She’d thought it wouldn’t be easy to get over him if she fell in love with him? There was no if about it.
The shaking started in her midriff and radiated outwards over her body, forcing her to clamp her teeth together to stop them from chattering as she experienced the closest thing she’d ever had to a panic attack.
‘Will he be optioning shares? I’ve heard he’s been selling off properties. Care to comment on that?’
Blake’s gaze shifted sharply to the reporter as he pushed up the sleeves of his dark blue shirt.
‘Where has he been all these years? How come nobody has heard of him? Did Charles Warren hide the fact he had a child on purpose—because of the mother, maybe?’
Five strides away. Four, three… His large hands bunched into fists.
‘Then we get to you, Ms Brannigan. Nothing like a little romance to add to the story. When I realised your relationship was more than professional, I did a little research. You used to be with the NYPD. Is it true a homeless teenager died in your arms?’
Blake came to a halt in front of her and glared at the younger man, who took a step back in surprise.
‘Mr Clayton, I’m glad you’re here,’ he said warily as Olivia silently handed over the envelope.
‘I’d hold that thought if I were you,’ Blake replied ominously as he looked at the photographs.
Summoning every ounce of the control she’d learnt in the last six years, Olivia stepped between them, the professional warning the client, ‘Don’t say anything.’
She reached up a hand and placed her sunglasses back on her head. She sized up the younger man with a cursory glance. ‘Mr Parnell, I think I should warn you, continue stalking my client, I’ll slap a restraining order on you so fast you’ll be lucky not to be arrested in the next ten minutes for violating it. Print so much as one word that could be considered defamation of character, I will also sue for libel—and when I say “sue” I mean your great-great-grandchildren will still be paying off the debt.’
‘You can’t—’
‘Yes, I can.’ She smiled coldly, the chill washing over her body turning her blood to ice in her veins. ‘What’s more, I’ll enjoy it.’
He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times.
Olivia raised a brow. ‘You realise you’d be taking on one of the largest, most reputable law firms in Manhattan along with one of the richest men in the country?’
His eyes tightened. ‘I’m not done.’
‘Yes, you are,’ Blake said.
The reporter looked at him, baulked at his expression and beat a hasty retreat. As he did, Olivia took a short breath. ‘He won’t be the last.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you ready for that?’
‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’
Considering the effect it had on his life the last time anyone attempted to make a story out of him, she suspected it was something he would never be comfortable with—she knew she wasn’t. But she wasn’t his mother. She would fight with every weapon in her arsenal and hunt down every slimy, headline-grabbing, muck-racking, gossip-mongering—
‘You can’t hit them,’ she said. ‘They’ll sue.’
‘Be worth every cent.’
‘They get more of a story out of it that way.’
He frowned. ‘You shouldn’t have got pulled into it.’
‘It’s hard to deny photographic evidence.’
‘Will it be a problem for you at work?’
‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ she hoped, but if her entire world crumbled around her ears again she would have no one to blame but herself.
Blake’s voice lowered to a rough rumble. ‘You didn’t tell me he died in your arms.’
Gaze fixed on a random point just past his left ear, Olivia fought to keep her vulnerable emotions out of sight. She couldn’t do what she had to do if there was so much as a hint of how she felt visible to him. The fact he’d always been able to see beyond the surface meant she had to draw on acting skills at an award-winning level. But he hadn’t asked her to fall in love with him. She would let him go before she had to listen to him tell her they were done.
‘You were covered in blood, weren’t you?’
‘Stomach wounds bleed like a bitch,’ she said flatly.
‘Don’t do that.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s true.’
‘Okay, that’s it. I’ve had enough.’ Grasping hold of her hand, he le
d her back to the park, turning to face her when he’d found a quiet corner. ‘What’s going on, Liv? And don’t tell me it has something to do with that reporter. We both know that’s not true. Whatever it is started when we left the house in The Hamptons—so what is it?’
Staring at his shirt while mentally preparing herself, her gaze lifted, button by button, over his open collar, the column of his neck, his tense jawline and the curve of his delicious lower lip until she was looking into the dark eyes she loved so much. She could do this, even if—for a moment—she was angry she had to and rallied against it.
‘We both knew this was coming.’ She slipped her hand free, curling her fingers into her palm to capture the warmth of their last touch.
‘Knew what was coming?’
‘The firm has a couple of important litigation cases coming up.’ She was lying through her teeth, but she managed to hold his gaze. ‘One of my associates familiar with Warren Enterprises subsidiaries will be taking over your case.’
Blake looked as angry as he’d been with the reporter. ‘I can choose my own damn lawyer.’
‘Naturally, we hope you stay with the firm…’
‘Seriously—’ he jerked his brows ‘—that’s how you’re handling this?’
‘You’re right; things haven’t been the same since we got back to the city.’ She could be honest about that. Turned out making the decision to end things and actually going through with it were two entirely different things. She hadn’t wanted to let go, had been greedy and hung on for a few more memories while ignoring the reason she felt that way.
‘I think it better we call it a day.’ She avoided his gaze when it got difficult to keep up the pretence as she tried to figure out how long she’d been in love with him. It might have been lust at first sight, but the moment she’d started smiling when he wasn’t there should have warned her of the potential danger. ‘There’s no point dragging it out till things get ugly.’
‘Absolutely, best not drag it out till that happens.’
Her gaze slid swiftly back to his. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘An explanation would be nice.’
‘We both knew what we were getting into.’
‘Did we?’
Had the fact she was using his reasoning escaped him? Olivia frowned, emotion churning frantically inside her chest. ‘You may be tied up in Warren Enterprises business right now but we both know when you’re done you’ll move on. It’s what you do. I knew that before I met you.’
She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. She remembered him talking about working with wood, how he did not know whether a piece would be worth keeping until he got below the surface. That wasn’t the case for them. When she got beneath the surface she didn’t get to choose whether to keep it or toss it away. She was being forced to toss it away. Spending each day waiting for the time to come when he would get restless and want to move on would cause her heart to shrivel up a little more with each passing hour, haemorrhaging emotion, bleeding her dry.
‘You better be damn certain this is what you want.’ His mouth twisted into a cruel impersonation of a smile. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not big on looking back.’
‘Don’t make me the bad guy in this,’ she warned. ‘No one’s to blame here. We have to be realistic. I know what I’m doing.’
‘Beating me to the punch?’
Olivia was hanging on to her control by a thin thread. ‘Can you tell me you won’t walk at some point?’
‘Liv…’ For a second he looked pained.
‘Tell me you won’t get restless a month from now, or two months or six.’ She wished he could. But she couldn’t change him. She didn’t want to, not really. If he wasn’t the man he was, she wouldn’t have fallen for him.
‘You think I wouldn’t try to stay—for you?’
‘That’s just it, Blake. You shouldn’t feel you have to do it for me.’ She almost choked on the words. ‘If this was anything more, you would stay for you—and for us; if you wanted there to be an “us”. The fact I even have to tell you that says it all. You’re not ready for this. Maybe you never will be. But I can’t wait around for you to decide or watch while you make a half-hearted attempt at staying in one place when your heart isn’t in it. What do you expect me to do? Give everything to someone I know one day will walk away? Why would anyone do that? Sometimes we have to be selfish to survive.’
It was more than she’d intended to say but she took consolation from the fact it was as close as she could get to the truth without telling him how she felt. Just to be on the safe side, she stepped back, rolling her lips together to stop anything else from slipping out.
‘You done?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I’m done.’
When it looked as if he was going to reach for her, she took another step back. If he kissed her she wouldn’t stand a chance. She shook her head. ‘That won’t solve anything. It’s not like we ever had a problem there. But if you care about me—even the tiniest little bit—you’ll respect—’
‘You think I don’t care?’ The question was thrown at her with enough force to rock her back on her heels. ‘You think I asked for this? What gave you the impression I need additional complications in my life right now? I didn’t ask for any of this.’
‘You’re not angry at me.’
‘The hell I’m not.’
‘Say it, just once.’
‘Say what?’
‘Who you’re angry at.’ Her voice cracked, the need to reach out, soothe and find the right thing to say to help him the way he’d helped her so intense it almost tore her apart. ‘It’s not me because who ended this doesn’t matter. It was always going to end. So say it—don’t stop to think about it—who are you angry at?’
‘You want me to say my parents, don’t you?’ His lips slipped over his teeth in a movement closer to a sneer than a smile. ‘You think you’ve got me all figured out. You want to know who I’m angry at, I’ll tell you.’ Taking a step closer, he allowed her to see the torment in the depths of his eyes. ‘Me. I’m. Angry. At. Myself. Happy now?’
How she felt couldn’t have been further from happy but somehow, from somewhere, she found enough strength to continue looking into his eyes. ‘Then maybe you should ask yourself why and find a way of fixing it, because even if you could stay in one place for long enough to work on a relationship, I couldn’t fix that for you, not alone.’
Taking a step back, he turned his head and looked down the path they’d taken, a muscle clenching in his jaw before he swallowed hard and nodded, his voice hollow. ‘I know.’
‘But for the record—’ she smiled tremulously when he glanced at her ‘—if you’d let me, I’d have tried.’
‘I know.’
Prolonging the inevitable, she watched the blink of his thick lashes as he continued staring into the distance. But the longer she stood there and felt the invisible draw to him, the harder it would be to leave. Stepping closer, she placed a soft, lingering kiss on his cheek, taking a last breath of clean, masculine scent before saying the two most difficult words she’d ever had to say.
‘Goodbye, Blake.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘YOU’RE not ready for this.’
Thunder rolled ominously through heavy clouds pushing their way over the skyscrapers but Blake walked slowly, even when the heatwave broke; people ran for cover or rushed past him beneath plastic hooded tourist capes and assorted umbrellas.
‘If this was anything more, you would stay for you—and for us; if you wanted there to be an “us”.’
It was the light bulb moment it had taken for him to see things more clearly. As she’d said it he’d realised he wanted there to be an ‘us’. He wanted it so bad the thought of living without her felt as if he were being pulled apart on some kind of medieval torture rack. He wanted their lives so tangled up nothing could unravel the threads that bound them together. He wanted to hear her laughter and watch her sleep and be a
mused by the fact she never let a cup of coffee sit still long enough to cool on its own. He wanted to argue with her so they could make up. Have her push him to talk so he could understand things more clearly with a different point of view.
She had little patience, talked too much at times for his liking, hogged the hell out of the covers on their bed—which would have bugged him if they’d met in the winter—but she was smart and bright and funny and tenacious and braver than she realised. And it had taken her to leave for him to know he didn’t want to let her go.
But he hadn’t stopped her or gone after her because she was right—she couldn’t fix him, not alone. Even if she could, he wouldn’t let her. It was up to him to make sense of his life so he could offer her more than half a man. He just had to pray she wouldn’t find a guy less messed up than him before he worked his way through it and could tell her the things he wanted to say.
The thought and accompanying surge of jealousy lent a sense of urgency to the situation. Stopping dead in his tracks, he ignored the rain falling heavily on his head and bouncing off the concrete around his feet while he gritted his teeth and attacked the emptiness head-on. He dug deep and searched for a place to begin. He refused to believe he couldn’t heal himself and build a new life—one he could share with her.
He wasn’t aware how long he stood there but it was not that difficult to find a starting point—not when the stakes were so high.
Reaching a hand to his pocket to check the envelope was there, he hailed a cab. Forty minutes later, it had stopped raining and he was walking purposefully along winding paths edged with majestic trees and immaculately tended lawns. It had been fourteen years since he’d been there, but he remembered the way. Beyond modest, moss-green lakes full of ducks and geese, past black squirrels scurrying from pines to lindens; he rounded the corner and pinpointed the weeping beech, its branches skirting the ground above the stones, one more weathered than the other.
Footsteps slowing, he looked around and decided it wasn’t too bad a place to end up—peaceful, pretty and private. He was thankful for the latter considering what he was about to do. Reading the names on the stones, he felt the emptiness throb like an old injury he’d convinced himself he never had until he started to stretch the muscle again. He hadn’t known Charlie had forgone the family mausoleum. It was nice. Good to know his mom wasn’t alone any more. Just a pity they’d waited so long to get together.