by Maya Banks
He’d gone over his last conversation with Celia until it rolled like video footage through his head. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get it to turn off.
It was his own fault for pursuing Celia so relentlessly. She’d been hesitant from the start, and he’d ignored all the warning signs. He’d never become serious about a woman who didn’t put him first. And he damn sure wouldn’t be involved with a woman who put more importance on what the world around her thought about her than on her relationship with him.
He scowled when a knock sounded at his door. One of the secretaries poked her head in and held up an envelope like a shield.
“This just came for you, sir.”
“Bring it over,” he said, waving her in.
She hurried over and all but threw the envelope at him before beating a hasty retreat out of his office. He shook his head. He hadn’t been that bad since he’d returned two days ago.
Okay maybe he had.
With a sigh, he glanced at the envelope. It was an overnight package with the name of some corporation from San Francisco he’d never heard of before. It was marked extremely urgent.
He opened it and to his surprise it only held a folded newspaper. Nothing else. No letter, no explanation. He pulled it out and it fell open on his desk. It was turned to a specific page, and when he looked down, he saw Celia’s picture, only it wasn’t one he was familiar with. She looked different. Maybe younger? And she looked terrified in the picture. She had one hand up like she was trying to avoid the camera.
Frowning, he scanned the article. He was so pissed by the time he got to the end that he had to go back and read it more carefully.
The photo was indeed of a younger Celia when she lived and worked in New York. She’d landed a position with a prestigious advertising firm one year out of college. She’d done impressive work and then she’d been promoted to senior executive—above several other junior executives who’d been there longer.
A relationship with the CEO had been quickly revealed, and Celia had been named in the divorce proceedings between the CEO and his wife. Celia had fled New York in disgrace to return home to San Francisco, where she took a job with the smaller, on-the-rise Maddox Communications.
Only last week, intimate photographs of Celia Taylor with billionaire Evan Reese had appeared in another article the day after Reese had reportedly signed a multimillion-dollar advertising contract with Maddox.
Blah, blah, it went on and on, vilifying Celia and along with her, Maddox Communications. His stomach churned, and he felt the urge to go vomit.
His gaze caught the latest issue of Advertising Media. Fresh off the press and delivered just this morning. It was just as Celia had said. The announcement was there for the world to see, but it was tainted by those photos.
He picked up the paper and stared at it again. There was no way. No way in hell she’d done what they accused her of. He hadn’t known Celia for long, but he damn well knew she wouldn’t have done something like this. If she did have a relationship with this bastard, it wasn’t so she’d get a promotion.
He wanted to go kill someone. Preferably whoever had started this smear campaign. No one messed with the woman he loved and got away with it.
All the air left his lungs in a painful jolt.
Loved?
He liked Celia. Liked her a damn lot. She was beautiful, vibrant, sexy as hell. She was a great lover and partner. He had fun with her. He loved her company. But did he love her?
The knot in his stomach grew. How could he be so stupid about his own personal life? Surely it would have occurred to him before now if he was in love with someone.
He stopped and let his thoughts catch up with the breathless, panicky feeling in his chest.
How had he gone thirty-eight years with never having fallen in love? He’d never even contemplated the idea until now. He wasn’t at all sure he liked it, either.
Love was such a messy emotion. It was bound to be inconvenient. You sure couldn’t put it on a schedule and love never played by the rules. He liked rules. And schedules.
Ah, hell, he was absolutely in love with her.
It was why he was sitting here in such a terrible mood that his usually easygoing office staff wouldn’t come near him for fear of being decapitated.
He looked again at the article, and his chest utterly caved in. Celia. God, he’d been such an idiot. A complete and utter, madly-in-love moron.
He’d reacted just like a petulant child, furious that his favorite toy was being taken away. In this case, Celia had wanted to put their relationship on hold and all he could see was that she was pushing him away. He’d panicked. He’d been a total ass.
She needed him. Needed his support. And he’d told her to take a hike. Worse, he’d arrogantly told her not to bother changing her mind and come crawling back.
He winced. Holy hell in a bucket but he’d said some horrible things. If there was any crawling to do, it would be him doing it. In the mud. Over broken glass.
Her tear-stained face came painfully to mind. The hell she must have endured. Her coworkers had seen the photos. Everyone in her profession had likely seen them. They’d all probably come to some very inaccurate conclusions.
He’d been selfish and demanding from the start. He hadn’t given one moment’s consideration to how their relationship would reflect on her. It had all been about him. His wants and needs. He didn’t care if anyone knew about them, but she had. And with good reason.
He should have been standing with her. He should have supported her. Now it looked as if the world had turned on her, and where was he? Off licking his wounds while she faced the world alone.
To hell with that.
He had a woman to win back.
Nineteen
Celia sipped her hot chocolate and stared over her dad’s backyard to the ocean in the distance. She’d always loved the view here. His house was perched on a cliff, though it was situated a good distance from the drop-off.
As a child, after reading about mudslides, she’d been convinced that they’d fall into the ocean. Her brothers had told her it was far more likely they’d fall off in an earthquake. She shook her head at the memory of how they liked to torment her.
It was peaceful here, and not for the first time, she wondered why she’d been so anxious to move away. True, her family could be overbearing at times, but they loved her. They were loyal and they’d do anything in the world for her. That wasn’t something to run away from. It was something to hold on to and never let go.
No, she wouldn’t leave again. She was through discovering the world. Her world was here. Home. Where her family lived.
The sliding-glass doors opened and Noah stepped out. She turned all the way around in her chair to greet him, but stopped when she saw the expression on his face.
“I was about to say good morning,” she said as he came over and plopped down beside her.
He sighed and held out another newspaper. “I thought about not showing you this, but I knew if something was being said about me, I’d want to know about it so I wouldn’t be blindsided.”
Dread began low in her stomach. She stared fearfully at the extended paper. Then her disgust overcame her apprehension and she plucked it from his hand.
There in black and white for the entire Bay area to see was a detailed account of all that had happened in New York. Oh, it was a blatant smear campaign. It was written in the guise of an article announcing the deal brokered between Reese Enterprises and Maddox Communications.
It detailed her job history, colorful as it was, to the present and hinted broadly about there being a relationship between her and Evan.
Nothing was left to the imagination. Everything she’d worked so hard to overcome had been splashed in excruciating detail.
She should be angry. Furious even. But what she felt was. resignation.
She looked up into the worried eyes of her brother as the realization hit her.
It would always be somethin
g. Evan was right to be angry that she’d placed more importance on what others thought of her than she did what he thought of her.
As long as the people she loved knew the truth, it shouldn’t matter what some stranger thought. Brock believed in her and her abilities. She had the backing of her agency. Her family loved her unconditionally. Evan evidently didn’t care who knew they were involved, so why should she?
For the first time in a long while, she looked at her life with a sense of deep gratitude. For so long she’d been shaped by external forces. Her desire to shed the protective grasp of her family. Her need to escape from the scandal in New York and prove herself to everyone around her.
The only person she’d been proving anything to was herself. Everyone else had known all along what kind of person she was.
“Oh, Noah, I’ve been so stupid,” she whispered.
He cocked his head in confusion. She responded by throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him fiercely. Then she drew away and kissed him on the cheek.
“Thank you.”
He still looked supremely puzzled. “For what?”
“For opening my eyes. I’ve been so very blind to what was in front of me all along.”
He grinned crookedly. “Well, okay. Do me a favor and the next time Adam and Dalton start riding my ass, you remind them that I opened your eyes. Whatever that means.”
She smiled back. “What it means is that I’m through trying to please others. I’m through caring what they think about me. The only people in this world who matter to me already believe the best of me. What more do I need?”
“Don’t let these bastards get you down, Cece. You’re right. We love you to pieces and nothing anyone ever insinuates is going to change that. Furthermore, I know good and damn well that the girl I helped raise isn’t a manipulative, calculating bitch who doesn’t care who she hurts on her way up the corporate ladder.”
She hugged him again. “Thank you, Noah. You have no idea what that means to me.”
He leaned away, still holding her arms. “So what about Evan?”
She pressed her lips together. “He told me not to bother crawling back if I changed my mind. Well, too bad. I made a mistake. It’s not the end of the world. We all make them. I’m sure he’s made his share. He was angry and I’m sure he didn’t mean half of what he said. I’m going to make him listen to me. Then I’m going to take the leap and tell him I love him and hope like hell that doesn’t make him run for cover.”
Noah touched her cheek in a tender gesture. “If he does, he’s a fool who doesn’t deserve you. Remember that, okay?”
She glanced down at her rumpled appearance. She shuddered to think what her hair looked like. She’s spent the last three days moping.
“I need to go jump in the shower and then I have some apologizing to do in person.”
Noah got up, leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Good luck.”
He held his hand out to help her up. She hurried inside, determined not to waste another minute without telling Evan she was sorry and that she loved him.
She took a while in the shower mainly because she was working out just what she wanted to say to Evan. Simple vanity also made her want to look her absolute best. I mean, who went and groveled when they looked like a hag with a hangover?
She pulled on a robe and twisted a towel around her hair. Then she walked through her bedroom and into the hall on her way to the kitchen. She needed something to eat, and she needed to tell her dad she’d be leaving in the next hour.
When she rounded the corner into the living room, she looked up and nearly fell over in shock. There, sitting on her father’s couch, was Evan. Noah and her father were nowhere to be found.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “No, no, no.” This wasn’t supposed to be the way she confronted him.
She turned, intending to make a mad dash for her bedroom and shut the door until she could make herself presentable. He caught her before she’d gone three steps.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her into his arms. “No, Celia, don’t go. Please.”
She moaned in frustration. “Dammit, Evan. You’ve ruined everything. I was going to look nice when I came to apologize. Now I’m in my bathrobe and my hair is all wet and in a towel. I don’t even have any makeup on.”
Then it hit her. What was he doing here? At her dad’s? How had he even known where to find her and, moreover, why would he care?
He chuckled and pulled her even closer. “I don’t give a damn what you look like. I need to talk to you. Personally I don’t think you’ve ever looked better to me.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you doing here, Evan? How did you know where to find me? I was about to leave to go find you.”
“Then it’s good we found each other,” he said softly.
He tugged her back into the living room. “Come sit with me, Celia. Please. There’s so much I need to say to you.”
“Ditto,” she murmured.
She let him pull her down beside him on the couch, even if she was still horrified by the fact she was wearing a robe, with nothing on underneath, and she was wearing a wet towel on her head, for God’s sake.
But when she looked at him, she promptly forgot all that. All she knew was that she loved this man, and she’d do anything to make things right between them.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a low, shaky voice.
He pressed a finger to her lips. “Shh. I don’t want to hear that word cross your lips. It’s me who is sorry. I was an ass. I said despicable things to you.”
Her eyes widened, and she felt the ridiculous urge to cry again, as if she hadn’t done enough of that in the last few days.
“First, I want to talk about this,” he said as he drew out the dreaded newspaper clipping from his pocket.
She froze, her stomach seizing with dread.
“Don’t look like that. I don’t believe a word of it. But it’s obviously an important part of your past. It hurt you and it’s affected a good portion of our relationship. I want you to tell me what really happened.”
Her lips trembled and she twisted her hands nervously in her lap. “I got out of college, intending to rule the world. I moved to New York. I loved it there. Such a big, busy city, and I was away from home, away from my family. At the time that was important to me. I was stupid.”
“I think we all go through the desperate need to get away from our family,” Evan said.
She shrugged. “So there I was, out to take on the world. I landed a job with a prestigious agency and I worked my butt off to advance as rapidly as possible. I was good and I knew it. So when I got promoted, it wasn’t a surprise to me. There were people who’d been there longer who were pissed, but I knew I deserved it. I felt like I deserved it.
“And then one day my boss called me in his office to congratulate me, and he let me know at the same time what he expected in return for the favor he’d granted me.”
“Son of a bitch,” Evan growled.
“I was horrified. And a bit naive because I honestly hadn’t seen it coming. I didn’t even know what to do at first, other than turn him down flat. I was stupid enough to think that would be the end of it.”
Evan scowled and reached over to take her hand.
“I buried myself in work, convinced that if I worked harder, landed more accounts, that he’d just go away. One night I was working late and he dropped in to see how I was doing.”
She made a derisive sound deep in her throat. The memory strangled her. She hated that helpless feeling.
“He came onto me hard and didn’t intend to take no for an answer. He probably would have raped me if his wife hadn’t burst in. I think she knew what was going on, but she didn’t care. She had her way out of the marriage and a way to make him pay for everything he’d ever done wrong to her in their marriage.
“I was named the other woman. Everyone knew what happened. I had no defense. Suddenly I was a woman who’d slept her way to the top a
nd then destroyed my boss’s marriage. Believe me when I say no one was lining up to do business with me. So I quit and came home. Brock gave me a shot with his agency and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Evan closed his eyes and let out a sound of disgust. “I was so unfair to you, Celia. You tried to tell me so many times how our relationship might affect you and your career, but I wouldn’t listen. I was selfish and egotistical. I was determined that I should be enough for you. What a jerk I was. I wasn’t even here when all hell broke loose. I should have been beside you, shouting to the world that you were my woman and I was damned proud of it. Instead I slunk off like a sulking two-year-old when I didn’t get my way, and I can only imagine how it looked.”
He gathered both her hands in his and brought one to his lips. He kissed each finger. “I’m so sorry. I hope you’ll let me make it up to you. I wish you would have told me all this sooner. Maybe I would have understood you better. But I also know I gave you no reason to trust me. That’s going to change. I want you in my life. I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
She stared at him in utter bewilderment. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I love you. That I’m sorry. That I want another chance and that it’s me who’s crawling back on hands and knees, begging for your forgiveness. You’ll never lack for my support again, Celia. You’ll always have me to lean on. And I’ll personally throttle anyone who so much as whispers an ill word about you.”
Her throat closed in. Her mouth went dry. The world tilted a little crazily around her.
“But I was going to you to apologize,” she whispered. “I was wrong, Evan. I did put too much importance on what others thought. As long as I have the support of those who love and respect me, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks. I should have to crawl back. I was horrible to you.”
“No, no, my love,” he said as he hugged her tighter to him. “Never crawl. Never. Forget I said it, please. You weren’t horrible. You were upset. Your world had been upended, and I should have been the one person you could come to and who would support you and understand. I didn’t even try to understand. I got angry and stormed away. I love you. Please forgive me.”