She had given this man her heart, and the passion they had shared, not just in their most intimate moments but in the way they each grabbed at life, had altered her soul. When she learned that for him their time together had been nothing more than a time filler on the way to his real life, his important grown-up life, she had been beyond consoling so deep was her pain.
Over the years that pain had morphed many times to other emotions—anger, desolation, regret, despair—but here she came back as she always did to the one thing she couldn’t ever understand. How could he not have wanted to build on the deep emotional connection they had shared? How could he have turned his back on something that had been so perfect and special and devastatingly deep? That would always be the thought that brought her up short. How could he live without knowing that kind of perfection ever again? Because she knew he had felt it, too, even though he tried to deny it.
The rejection was still what hurt the most, and reconnecting with that brutal truth increased the torrent of superheated tears leaking from the depths of her very soul.
He boldly declared he’d been wrong and made a mistake by shutting her out. She tried to mull over everything he had said earlier about his family and the business he’d inherited, but the aftereffects of a long, trying day and a good dose of medication was not helping clear her mind. Hidden memories of unspeakable loss surfaced when she recalled that their intimacy had created a life, quickly followed by the horrible, heart-wrenching truth that his bitter, angry, hurtful handling of their final moments together had stripped her soul, leaving nothing on which to build a future.
She cried the entire night, silent tears that spoke of a broken heart and a damaged soul in need of healing. Hopefully, a calm and clearer mind would greet Shannon with the sunrise.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ow, oh Ow! Shannon came awake instantly when her restless movements collided with her injuries. Usually slow to wake, the jolt of discomfort invaded the leisurely and pleasant experience Shannon was accustomed to, and just like that, the events of yesterday came flooding back to her sluggish brain in vibrant Technicolor replay.
That she’d been banged up a bit in a clumsy accident was nothing compared to the dawning realization that Nicholas Barrett was on the other side of her closed bedroom door. Yeah, that thought had her sitting up in a hurry.
“Ow, and damn!” she muttered as the sudden movements brought more pain slamming into her half-awake brain, making Shannon mutter dark curses of frustration and discomfort. What was worse, she mused, a swollen, black-and-blue ankle or the presence in her home of the man who had arrogantly thrown her away?
Cautiously swinging her legs off the bed, Shannon winced when her mangled foot gently lowered to the floor. Shaking her head to clear away the fogginess leftover from the nighttime pain medication, she wanted nothing more than to hit the bathroom for a cold-water face splash and a chance to relieve herself before having to confront what awaited on the other side of the closed door.
Unfortunately, she realized, her foot was going to make that impossible without help, but right at this second the last thing she intended to do was ask the high-and-mighty rich guy to provide any needed assistance.
Releasing a deep, heavy sigh, Shannon perched on the end of her bed and let her thoughts gather. She’d had restless dreams for weeks. Hazy scenarios ripped from the darkest corners of her heart, the all-to-real dreams had rocked her tightly controlled world; vibrant memories and sensory tugs from long ago steeped in sensual awareness and, yes, longing for what had been and what was lost.
And then, of course, there was the suddenly strange behavior of her friend Jules, which now made perfect sense but at the time had her baffled and confused.
She thought about Dominic’s cowboy extravaganza and the role Belle Events had played in the event. Jules and Ned had been thrilled, and Dom, well, he was beyond chuffed at the transformation of his backyard into cowboy heaven. Belle Events had done a great job, and Shannon was proud of the result.
Then her mind hit on the moment when she’d all but plowed into an immoveable human object that turned out to be her biggest nightmare and wickedest dream in the flesh.
Nicholas Temple Barrett, fantastically rich, old family, power all rolled into one. When they met he’d been masquerading as one of the regular folk, and once she had learned of his real name and who his family was, she was still in the dark as to why a young man of his background and abilities had been hiding from the world working on third-world start-up projects in amenity-lacking stations along dusty African back roads.
She’d understood more about his other persona when she’d tracked him to New York and come face-to-face with the ruthless, high-powered tycoon he’d become. She’d been such a fool.
He hadn’t needed her comfort and all but spit on the love she offered up, telling her in no uncertain terms that she’d been a distraction during those long months of hard work in Africa. A way for him to let off steam. A second thought at best in the mind of a man whose future had been determined at birth. A rich man’s folly. In his world, she was nothing. His words that awful day were tattooed forever on her heart, lest she forget what a blind, stupid twit she’d been.
Everything that followed his takedown of her entire world had left scars. The sort of deep, painful emotional wounds that still today she couldn’t allow to see the light of day lest the heartache leave her shattered. Some things really did need to remain in the shadows.
And yet despite all that bitterness and regret, she had listened with half an open mind as he attempted to explain why he’d done all those hurtful things. She wanted it to be that simple. Wanted for it all to fade away and be replaced by something joyful instead of an endless, nagging tirade of past regrets and heartache.
Unfortunately, the reverie of the past colliding with the reality of the present was nothing compared to her physical needs. She had to use the bathroom. Conceding that she couldn’t stand, much less walk, Shannon clearly required assistance, and the only option available to her right this second was the man she couldn’t believe had suddenly reappeared and practically taken over her life after all this time.
Releasing another in a long series of heavy sighs, Shannon screwed up her courage and resolved herself to calling out for a bit of help. Help, she mused, as in heaven help her. Another sigh, a brief shrug, and then no more stalling.
In a barely audible voice she called out, “Um, Nick? I could use some assistance.”
Less than a second later, she remembered that she was wearing next to nothing—a childish baby-doll nightie that gaped in all the wrong places and showed way more of her voluptuous figure than she thought prudent in this scenario. A pithy swear, something decidedly unladylike, slipped from her pursed lips in dismay at the exact same moment her bedroom door swung open.
* * *
It was another brilliantly sunny day in Southern California, but Nick couldn’t have cared less. He’d been awake for hours, his mind shifting between crushed hopes and dreams, past regrets and the unbelievable opportunity to repair all that had suddenly presented itself.
Working on another cup of strong coffee he’d conjured up in Shannon’s delightfully modern brew system, Nick’s mind was overflowing with thoughts and emotions he was unused to. Such things didn’t have space in his highly scheduled and relentlessly busy life. The business world he operated in dominated his existence. Knowing others considered him hard and sometimes ruthless never gave him pause. Not until now anyway.
Suddenly he didn’t like the idea that Shannon might see him through those eyes, but then again, why the hell wouldn’t she? That had been exactly the intent he had in mind when he had ended their relationship. Gazing with vacant eyes at the view from the window where he stood, Nick fell easily into a rewind of that time before the world had caved in on him and he’d learned to shut off from his emotions.
The year he’d spent in Africa working with the Peace Village Initiative was something he had locked away in the deepest
recesses of his mind, away from the brutal glare of his own conscience, safe from meddling, and entirely under his control.
Unbidden and yet unavoidable, Nick let his mind wander back in time to another brilliant sunny day that had begun wrapped in the simplicity of that stolen year only to crash and burn before the sun had set.
He’d been busy, as he’d always been that year. His unique ability to marshal resources and people held him in high regard on a project with commendable goals and aspirations that lacked funding and political power.
A water-pump station had gone off-line overnight, so he’d been gathering supplies and information before making the grueling bumpy drive in a patched-together truck to troubleshoot the problem in the water-challenged region where the initiative was based.
He remembered it had been hot. Every day on the African continent had seemed hot, but this day especially so. Dressed in his usual jeans and a simple T-shirt, Nick looked like all the other Western volunteers working the project, yet another reason why that period had been so meaningful. Being just one face among many without the burden of his name and family connections had been what Nick had hoped for. It was a moment out of time for him when he’d gone by his middle name and lived as plain Nick Temple.
That last day, his mind full of facts and figures, he’d been walking distractedly to the sad-looking truck when his vision collided with his worst nightmare—a young man in a brilliant white dress shirt and tailored black trousers who stood out like a sore thumb in a world of khakis, jeans, and T-shirts. In the stifling heat, the young man had lost the ubiquitous suit jacket, which had undoubtedly completed the ensemble yet still looked as inappropriate in the dusty hot African sun as an Eskimo would have.
Every alarm bell in Nick’s sharp mind had gone on full alert. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good. A feeling of dread had moved through him. He had felt the icy-cold drip, drip, drip of tension that let his system know there was most definitely a disturbance in the force.
Dr. Stephen Ames, a harried professor type from Oxford Uni who was top man on the village initiative, had stalked alongside the out-of-place suit, and judging from the pained expression on his weary face, Nick had known in an instant that his hideaway sojourn, where he was just another guy, was about to come to a screeching halt.
The business suit had turned out to be just as empty and vacuous as could be—some twenty-two-year-old sycophant who desperately wanted to join the ranks of the rich and powerful, sent on an unenviable errand to the back roads of a third-world country to drag the unwilling heir apparent to a billion-dollar conglomerate back to reality.
Nick’s grandfather, the awesome and feared Randolph Barrett who had reigned over the huge business empire with an iron fist and an evil, twisted spirit for more than six decades, had been felled by a massive stroke. Although clinging to life, the old bastard wasn’t expected to last much longer, hence the personal valet turning up to escort Nick back to the canyons and towers of power and money that awaited him in the real world.
He hadn’t given a good goddamn that the old man was on life support. He’d hated the old buzzard for more years than he could count. After his father’s tragic accidental death when Nick was but fifteen, Randolph Barrett had exercised a heavy hand in every aspect of his life and the lives of his adored younger sister, Jules, and his sweet, Southern belle mother, Alanna.
Randolph made sure he and Jules attended all the best schools, showed up at all the right social functions, volunteered in politically correct projects, and only befriended those individuals whose families could stand up under a withering investigation into their suitability to be associated with the Barrett family.
His grandfather’s right-hand man was an unctuous troll named Adam Sproul who’d been at the old man’s side long enough to not only know where the skeletons were buried but also to have buried a few of them himself. Sproul the Troll, as he and his sister had named him, made sure everyone stood at attention for his grandfather’s wishes and didn’t so much as move a toe outside the carefully constructed lines of Randolph Barrett’s control. The man had interfered nonstop in his life, Jules’s life, and even worse, his mother’s. As if losing her loving husband at the age of thirty-six hadn’t been enough, she’d been forced into lockstep with whatever her father-in-law demanded in order to do what was best for her children who were the sole heirs to Barrett’s wealth and riches.
Sproul and his cadre of minions were hangers-on and wanna-be’s of the lowest order. Sometimes being near to power is enough. Sproul used his connections and authority to make their lives a living hell. Randolph not only allowed this, he encouraged it, for nothing seemed to bring the old buzzard more delight than setting people in his control against each other. He took sick enjoyment in the unsettling of others.
After graduate school, instead of sticking to the plan his grandfathered had laid out once he’d had total control of his deceased son’s family, Nick had managed to get himself to Africa and deeply involved in the objectives of the PVI before anyone but Jules and his mother knew what had happened.
He’d hated the lot of them, the business heads and empty suits who managed too much money and ruthlessly wielded more power than anyone had a right to. Randolph had been furious at Nick’s defection but had begrudgingly accepted his involvement with the initiative after he’d allowed the argument that it would look good from a PR standpoint.
The out-of-place suit sent to fetch him from his anonymous sojourn was undoubtedly one of Sproul’s fuglies—a pithy and irreverent combination of words that so aptly described the army of gutter rats who were at the man’s malevolent beck and call.
Upon hearing the news that he’d been called back to the states post haste to take control of business, per Randolph’s wishes and the intent of the board, Nick had gone numb. He’d been handed a life sentence for a crime that he hadn’t committed.
It wasn’t until he’d been alone, in the quiet of his tiny Quonset hut, packing his belongings, when thoughts of Shannon had crowded his mind and calmed his rapidly crumbling sense of control over his own life.
His beautiful, amazing Shannon. All around him in the confines of the sparse room, Nick had seen and felt reminders of her. As soon as those thoughts surfaced had come the crushing realization that his Shannon could be no more.
What messed-up twist of fate had found the two, inseparable for months as lovers and friends, apart at this critical moment? Shannon had been away on a three-day pick-up mission to another of the initiative’s village projects. Leaving without seeing her, explaining why he must go, and maybe even desperately clinging to some fashion of hope that they could escape his fate, had ripped him apart inside.
He’d been hiding from his life and in doing so had not been exactly forthcoming. That he loved her without reservation was read, but even so, his withholding of the truth was going to complicate matters. Some part of him gloried in the fact that this fascinating blonde-haired whirling-dervish of a female saw nothing but a shining hero when she looked at him. Looked at him, not his money, not his family connections, not the future he could give her.
She thought him just another struggling grad student dedicated to doing good works in a forgotten corner of the world. Had she known that he was cut from a different cloth, one that included private jets, fancy homes, and unlimited wealth, he doubted she would have allowed him to get close to her. Shannon was one of those bright-eyed innocents who had no time for the labels and categories the modern world ascribed to those without influence or money.
Hindsight being 20/20, Nick could see how the collision of the two realities had left him at loose ends. The ridiculous handwritten note he’d left for her had been a coward’s way out. You’re very special; I’ll always remember the time we spent together. Ugh.
Recalling the empty, vapid words he’d numbly scribbled on a scrap piece of paper made him cringe. He hadn’t even explained why he never told her his real name or why he’d been running away the whole time she’d known him.
He knew the gossip train would pull out of the station as soon as his departure became common knowledge and knew, too, that Shannon was going to be stunned by what would be said. Allowing the situation to unfold the way it did had been just the first of many mistakes he would make. Telling himself he was distraught when everything came crashing down, and giving Shannon a gilded opportunity to hate his guts, seemed to him at the time like the best thing he could do for her. A clean break. She would have her hatred of him and how he’d more or less conned everybody into thinking he was some white knight to wipe away any lingering happy thoughts of their relationship.
He hadn’t expected, however, that she would surface six weeks later with a phone call, and even now he couldn’t face the cruel way he had turned his back on her that day. He’d just discovered the wretched terms of Randolph’s monstrous last will and testament and was reeling from the full and incontrovertible ramifications of being thrust by destiny into his hereditary role as head of Barrett Holdings.
He’d been pathetically happy to hear her voice on the phone, but the walls had been closing in on him, literally, and he had behaved like an ass. He’d thought of it at the time rather like pulling off a bandage. Just do it quick and efficiently—it was going to hurt no matter what—and then move on. So he did just that with ruthless precision and then regretted it every second of every minute of every hour of every day since then. Talk about a train wreck, his life had been that in spades.
The painful decisions he would make in the weeks that followed were casualties of that collision. It would be years before the dust settled enough for him to grasp that perhaps there might have been another path he could have taken. But here, now, or at least until he’d been stunned by a cowboy-hatted virago slamming into him on a hay-bale stacked path, those options had only been fanciful wishes cloaked in regret for something that could have been but which was no more. It’s funny how all that had changed in the blink of an eye.
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