by Dani Wade
The truth hit really hard, and Vivian’s face flushed a mottled red. “I will not let you ruin me.”
“If I wanted to, you couldn’t stop me.”
Sloan turned and walked away, calling Ziara to follow him. But the memory of Vivian’s face remained with him for the rest of the afternoon.
Outrage? Yes. Anger? Yes. But something else, something underneath that hinted at desperation. What would Vivian do if she felt that Sloan had backed her into a corner? If he succeeded, would Vivian rejoice in Eternity Designs’s success or ruin it for the chance to keep her position as its CEO?
And did his lover have any idea what might be coming their way?
Fifteen
A few days later, Ziara stalked down the hall after a frustrating hour mediating between the two-ton egos on the design floor downstairs. As if her emotions weren’t shaky enough! She could barely restrain herself from yelling, Behave like the adults you are or I’ll send you to time-out like you deserve.
But she’d managed to keep her prized cool. Just barely.
Since their confrontation with Vivian, the cracks in her professional facade started by Sloan’s lovemaking had widened. Vivian’s rejection hurt, more than the taunts of her childhood, but she’d pushed through to do whatever she could to make this show a success. She owed Eternity Designs and Vivian that much, even if Vivian didn’t want it.
Deep inside she’d convinced herself that Vivian would change her mind once Eternity Designs regained stable footing. She’d understand Ziara’s decisions, instead of condemning her—and somehow Ziara would be able to remain a part of this home away from home.
Somehow.
Finally reaching her desk, she sank into the seat and swiveled to face the desktop. Exhaustion lowered over her like a heavy mantle. The long days of tension and emotional turmoil—good and bad—were taking their toll. As she dropped her head into her hands, her elbow connected with something on her desk. Glancing down, she found a long, rectangular present wrapped in iridescent paper. Her mind remained blank for long moments, but slowly trickles of excitement filtered in.
Gifts were few and far between in her life. The small Christmas presents exchanged in the office and with a couple of neighbors were the extent of her experience. She almost couldn’t believe someone had gotten her something special, something just for her.
Lifting the box, she found a piece of Sloan’s personal stationary underneath: “Enjoy, Sloan.” With delicate care, she peeled back the paper, revealing a flat, black jeweler’s box with feminine gold lettering: Par Excellence, Las Vegas.
Old fears made her drop the box like she’d discovered a big, hairy tarantula was living inside it. The simple package filled her with dread despite her commonsense knowledge that it was just a box, a small gift of appreciation. Giving herself a firm talking-to, she reached out to pick it up with a fairly steady hand.
Her heart started freezing before she even had the lid open. By the time the teardrop diamond pendant, hung on a delicate gold chain, came into view, she’d gone completely numb.
“Is that from your trip to Vegas?”
The unexpected sound of Vivian’s voice made Ziara jump. She almost never came to Sloan’s office, preferring to send Abigail when she needed something. What sin had Ziara committed to condemn her to Vivian’s presence at just this moment? The layer of distaste underlying Vivian’s tone compounded her own churning emotions.
“I suppose so,” Ziara said, too shaken to play defense. With a deep breath, she looked up at her former mentor.
Vivian watched her for a moment, her gaze then moving to the sparkling necklace. “You are a dedicated employee with the tact and control to excel as an executive assistant, Ziara. I’ve been extremely concerned by your behavior since you took this position.”
“I don’t understand,” Ziara said, her words more forceful than she would normally have used with her employer. She shook her head. “I thought you trusted my judgment? You are the one who put me here.”
Vivian nodded. “That’s because I thought you had the ability to fulfill the position where others had failed. Without becoming personally involved. Now I know I was wrong.”
“I thought you wanted me to insure Eternity’s success—that’s what I’m trying to do.”
“By worming your way into Sloan’s bed?”
The words stole Ziara’s breath, cutting through the cold, but Vivian wasn’t through with her.
“Oh, I know how this works. I was even accused of it myself. No one understood what my husband and I had, how we felt about each other.” She raked her eyes over Ziara’s trembling body, encased in a perfect pink suit, with harsh judgment. “But I never stooped to using my body to get what I wanted.”
If she could have doubled over in pain, Ziara would have. Instead, she felt locked in a swirling fog that mixed old accusations with new ones. Vivian turned toward the door but paused before leaving. “Ziara,” she said without turning around. “Rest assured, if Sloan doesn’t get rid of you when he’s done, then I will. There’s no place at Eternity Designs for smut like you.”
Her exit was as quiet as her arrival.
With an unnatural calm, Ziara put the lid back on the box. The memories called up by the piece of jewelry had more power to hurt her than even the threat of losing her position here. Under normal circumstances, she could have buried them quickly and gone about her day, but these weren’t normal circumstances.
Rising to her feet, she walked into Sloan’s office without her usual knock. He looked up in surprise from the papers he’d been perusing on the desktop. “Was that Vivian I heard out there?” he asked.
He glanced from her face to the box in her hand. “I saw that in Vegas. I hope you like it.”
Leaning forward, she placed the box squarely on his desk in a parody of the way she’d found it. He looked up in confusion, allowing her to meet his gaze straight on.
“Just so you know,” she said, her voice calm but hollow, “I don’t require payment for services rendered.”
Then she turned on her heel and stalked out.
* * *
As dusk deepened to full dark several hours later, Ziara heard Sloan’s Mercedes purr into her driveway. She’d been half expecting it, half dreading it. The stubbornness of his personality wouldn’t let him leave her alone after their earlier scene.
And she wasn’t anywhere near ready for him to be here.
Her eyes were probably still puffy from crying on the way home. She hadn’t cried in a long time, but twice in a month was unheard-of. The emotional release after everything that had happened proved inescapable.
The loss of control bothered her because it wasn’t her. She was the cool one, stable, clearheaded. But today she’d turned into a crying, hurting mess, desperate to close the door on a past that had reared its ugly head despite her attempts to get as far away as possible.
And it was All. His. Fault.
Not waiting for him to knock, she jerked the door open as he marched up the stone walkway. Pressure built inside as her anger swelled. Anger at him. At Vivian and her accusations. At the gift. At her lack of control. At her need for him, even after everything.
Catching sight of her in the doorway, he stopped short in surprise. “What do you want?” Because if he thought he was getting sex, he was sadly mistaken. No matter that her body clamored at the sight of him. The latent desire added another layer of dirt to her already soiled soul.
“Can I come in?”
Those commonplace, even words destroyed the last of her manners. Turning away, she left the door open for him to enter if he wanted to—she had no doubt that he would, even though she made it clear he wasn’t welcome.
She stopped moving in the middle of the living room. Turning to face him, her arms instinctively crossed over her stomach to protect hersel
f from any ugliness to come. She thought she’d escaped all the drama when she’d finally moved from her mother’s house. But like her shadow, it had a way of catching up with her.
Sloan carefully—too carefully—closed the door, then approached her with cautious steps.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” He paused, and when she didn’t answer, he continued. “Or am I going to have to drag it out of you?”
The anger that crept through her like lava spurred her to speak. It strengthened her backbone and lifted her chin. “I thought I made myself clear at the office.”
“You think I’m paying you for sex?” His incredulous tone jarred her.
“I’m your employee. We...slept together. Then you gave me expensive jewelry. What am I supposed to think?”
That full mouth twisted. “Oh, maybe that it’s a gift?”
“Vivian certainly didn’t think that.”
His eyes widened when he heard his stepmother’s name. Ziara squeezed her arms tighter, hoping to hold in the tide of hurt and anger. She should have known going for a guy outside the safe zone would leave her feeling like a slut. So her self-image was a little skewed—years of bullying at home and school would do that. But Vivian’s words had convinced her that she was repeating history.
Everything she’d felt for Sloan up until now—the dizzying rush of desire, need and freedom—wasn’t pure at all. Just shameful. No one really needed another person that strongly. It had to be a mirage, a fantasy.
“What does Vivian have to do with this?” He stepped closer, one measured movement at a time. Ziara retreated until the back of her knees hit the side of the chaise.
“She came in while I was opening the box.”
“Convenient, seeing as how she rarely comes to my office.”
She glanced away. The logistics didn’t matter now. Just the broken pieces left behind.
He reached out to tilt her face up, giving her no choice but to look at him. “She accused you of sleeping with me.” His mouth tightened, compressing his lips and whitening the edges. “I don’t care what Vivian said. She has no proof,” he continued when she neither confirmed nor denied it. “Her view is a little skewed, black-and-white in a world of gray. She sees me as some kind of playboy, when the opposite is actually true.”
Ziara couldn’t stop her eyebrows from lifting.
Sloan chuckled. “Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but I’ve actually had to let three assistants go because they pursued me, not the other way around. This—” he gestured between the two of them “—is new to me, believe it or not.”
He slid onto the chaise, pulling her back until her shoulders met his solid chest. “This isn’t about me taking advantage of you because you are an employee, you’re convenient or even because you’re so damn hot. I thought...”
She leaned into his warmth, her spine too weak to keep her upright. Even though she knew it was wrong, her chest ached with her need to believe him. “So what is it about?”
“I don’t know,” he said, reaching around to cup her cheek in the warmth of his hand. “But I sure want to find out.”
His kiss was gentle with a touch of erotic edge. She melted into him, afraid to believe, yet afraid not to. Old fears were hard to kill off. Like horror movie villains, they seemed to rise constantly from the dead.
Finally he pulled back. Standing, he picked her up, then resettled them both onto the chaise with her firmly planted on his lap. “I saw the necklace in Las Vegas,” he said, his hands already burrowing into her hair to excavate the pins confining it. “I don’t know why I bought it. I just knew it would look stunning nestled right here.” He brushed his knuckle across the hollow at the base of her throat. “Bright against your skin.”
She shifted, swallowing hard. “Then why give it to me today? We agreed to keep this out of the office.”
He laughed softly, a kind of exasperated sound that rumbled against her chest. “I honestly didn’t think about it. I thought it might be a nice gesture after all the hard work you’ve done, and, well, Vivian hasn’t been easy on you. I wanted to do something nice for you.”
He felt so good, so solid beneath her hands. Looking up, she let her eyes meet his, the bright blue mesmerizing in the near darkness. Would it hurt anyone but her if she believed him, just for a little while? She’d lost everything else during this debacle. Why should she have to give him up this soon? Surrendering with a sigh, she melted into the crook of his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “What made you think I intended it as a payoff?”
She knew she shouldn’t say it. But the words snuck out of their own volition—without her consent.
“There was an...incident when I was younger.”
“What happened?”
She shouldn’t tell, she couldn’t. No one in the intervening ten years had ever known.
As if he were listening to her thoughts, he pressed a soft kiss to her temple and murmured, “I’ll trade you. Tell me something about you, and I’ll swap it for something about me.”
The temptation, coupled with the darkening shadows in the room, coaxed the rest of the story from her.
“When I was a teenager, one of my mother’s many...boyfriends...showed up at the house one day while she wasn’t home. He said he was there to see me, to give me a present.”
She snuggled closer, seeking Sloan’s protection. “He gave me a beautiful ruby necklace. It was gorgeous, but even at that age I knew something wasn’t right about him giving it to me.” Her stomach clenched in remembered dread.
“Just then my mother came home. When she saw the necklace in my hand, she had a fit.”
The accusations had been the worst—much worse than getting slapped and having the “gift” snatched from her hand. Her mother had accused her of trying to steal her client, not listening to a word Ziara said in her own defense. “Finally, he convinced her it didn’t mean anything, but I stayed out of his way from then on. The way he watched me...”
Sloan’s body absorbed her shudder. It felt so good not to be by herself anymore. She’d been alone, entirely alone, since that day so long ago.
Despite his promises to her mother, that man had tried to come into her bedroom one night. But she’d managed to slip out the window before he’d finished picking the simple lock.
Under cover of night, she’d watched him walk around her bedroom, touching her things. The next day she’d made a trip to a local hardware store, where a nice old man had sold her everything she’d needed to install a dead bolt. Ziara relied on herself alone after that. Until the day of her seventeenth birthday, when she’d left home without a forwarding address.
Ziara looked up at Sloan. Those memories from long ago influenced her current decisions more than she’d like to admit. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”
“Just remember, not everyone thinks like Vivian does. Just look at Patrick. He’s always telling me how great you are.” He smiled, though his eyes didn’t warm in color, and carried her to bed. “It’s been a long week. Let’s get some rest.”
Gently, he stripped them both. Leaning over, he settled them against the pillows in a move that seemed natural to him. Ziara remained stiff for long moments before gradually relaxing into his hold. Never had she lain in another person’s embrace, not even the loving hold of a parent. Until Sloan. Here with him, like this, felt like home. Warm, secure, safe... The final bit of awkwardness melted away.
“Tell me something now,” she said, eager to shift the focus. “Tell me about your father.”
She’d never had one, couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to have a man in the house. Her mother’s men had just been visitors who had brought nothing but indifference at best, anger and pain at worst.
Sloan’s hands rubbed up and down her arms, lulling her into a drowsy state.
“My father was always laughing, always happy, until my mother died. They were very much in love through it all.” His hand started to squeeze, massaging up and around her shoulder. “I’ll never forget, one time when she was really bad off with the cancer, he took me with him on a business trip.”
“Where did you go?”
“I don’t even remember, but I know we went to some kind of trade show. I remember following him through walls of people, listening to his voice as he talked to other men, having him introduce me like I was one of the adults, soaking it all in as he explained stuff to me.”
His heartbeat thudded evenly under her cheek. “Did you learn a lot?”
“I was thirteen years old. I still remember every word.”
As she drifted to sleep, the happy wistfulness in his voice brought on dreams of a family she’d never had.
Sixteen
The fast-approaching deadline for the fall show escalated the rush to complete the two lines, so the days got busy and the nights even busier.
She ran messages back and forth between Sloan and the design team and mediated a few squabbles, though the three designers had formed an uneasy truce among them. Vivian lay low as the time for the fall show approached. Ziara occasionally wondered how she felt, but no longer had an in to inquire how Vivian was doing.
She and Sloan spent most nights together, always at her place, with Sloan never staying all night. She didn’t protest. What was the point of trying to force him into something he didn’t want?
Only one night did they deviate from the pattern.
Sloan and Patrick had been holed up in a conference until about forty minutes past normal shutdown time. Ziara knew she could leave, but her greedy feminine nature urged her to wait. She could ask Sloan if he wanted her to cook dinner. If he’d like to unwind with a drink, a hot shower, a... She groaned, allowing her head to fall forward into her hands. Shameless. She was utterly shameless.