by Dani Collins
He’d not only shown her that she couldn’t trust her own instincts and judgment, he’d provoked bitterness and pessimism in her. A depressing attitude lingered in her long after her encounter with him in his limo, an aimless feeling of “what’s the point?”
That wasn’t like her, but she couldn’t seem to shake the mood. Her only hope was that fulfilling her mother’s wish for her remains to float down the Seine would help her find closure and move on. Accomplishing that was the reason she had sold her soul and taken the job campaigning with Trenton Sadler.
And, since fate had a sense of humor, that seemed to demand she face Roman Killian again.
As coincidences went, winding up at a New York gala he was attending was a kick in the teeth from the karmic gods, but what had she done to make the planets align against her so maliciously?
Maybe it was just a fluke. She was traveling in higher circles these days, literally traveling, finally seeing New York if only from a hotel window. Her new employer was actively seeking corporate introductions, happy to be seen hobnobbing with lobbyists and special-interest groups.
He was exactly like her father, and she’d made her deal with Trenton Sadler like a blues guitarist shaking hands with Satan at the crossroads. He didn’t know she was a senator’s daughter. No, he thought she was simply a surprise talent he’d rescued from a temp agency, one who’d dabbled in catering and event planning. But Melodie was pulling out every maneuver she’d ever learned at Daddy’s knee. Trenton loved her for it.
She didn’t care for him at all, hated the work because it had everything to do with political-party advancement and nothing to do with the needs of the people, but she was good at it, and the compensation was more than a livable wage. And Trenton had promised her a bonus if he got the nomination he was after. It would be enough to square up her line of credit and fund her trip to Paris.
That was the only reason she was living out of a suitcase along with the rest of Trenton’s handlers, renting black strapless evening gowns and pressing palms while conjuring a vapid smile. Tonight she’d lost track of whether they were buying or selling, whether this was a fund-raiser or a charity auction or a grand opening. All she knew was that she was in another hotel ballroom. She felt as if she’d come full circle, accomplishing nothing with her life, when she glanced toward the entrance and saw him.
Her heart gave a lurch.
Roman Killian had the uncanny ability to make whatever he wore fall into the background so all she noticed was the magnificence of the man. His head was tilted down to a beautiful blonde by his side, but with a disconcerting suddenness he jerked his head up and scanned the room.
Melodie watched with morbid fascination, thinking she was imagining what she was seeing, but as she watched, Roman cataloged the crowd like a robotic laser shone from his eyes. The blonde continued speaking, but he didn’t seem to notice. His visage slowly rotated toward Melodie, as though he was computing every face in the room until—
He stopped when he spotted her.
She was almost knocked back a step. All of her froze except her pulse, which galloped like a spooked horse, kicking and squealing. His hair was extra rakish tonight, suggesting that the woman’s fingers had ruffled it. His jaw looked hard and polished. His expression was completely unreadable as he kept his gaze fixed on her.
“Who is that?” Trenton asked beside her, rattling her out of her stasis.
“Roman Killian.” Her throat was dry. Her entire being went numb as Roman flicked his gaze to Trenton and came back to her before he turned his attention to the blonde, his expression inscrutable.
“Tech-Sec Industries?” Trenton asked, forcing Melodie to bring her mind back from a limo and a kiss that had been every bit as profound and memorable as the ones in France and twice as much of a letdown afterward. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a connection like that?”
“I don’t,” she said huskily. “We’ve only met once. Twice.” Three times. “We’re not friends,” she assured him.
“Sure about that?” Trenton asked, giving her the kind of male once-over he’d started sending her way this trip. She had watched him flirt openly with more than one impressionable young supporter in his office, despite having a wife who kept the home fires burning. He hadn’t gone out of his way to hit on Melodie, though, preferring to bark orders for coffee and sandwiches in her direction. Being the only female traveling with the group seemed to have elevated her to a target, however.
“I’m sure,” she affirmed, recalling her last words to Roman, which had been most unfriendly. She tried to clear the catch from her throat as she added, “I should leave, or I might become a liability.”
“No,” he said with a thoughtful glance at the way Roman had joined a group near the bar, but had positioned himself so Melodie was in his line of sight. “Introduce us. Be as nice as you have to be to get him on my side. I want his support.”
We don’t always get what we want, Melodie wanted to say.
“He wasn’t on the list,” she reminded him. Mrs. Sadler had stayed home for this whirlwind junket. The rest of the team had stayed in their rooms and Melodie was standing in as Trenton’s date, something he seemed to think gave him the right to hands-on access. She’d been finding ways to sidestep, but she had her assignment when it came to ensuring the right connections were made. Roman Killian wasn’t one of the names in the room they had to touch base with, though.
In fact, if she’d known he’d be attending, she would have wormed her way out of this evening altogether. Mentally reviewing the guest list, she recalled a Swedish actress had been on it. Roman must be her plus one. Why his being involved with someone should cause a pinch near her heart, Melodie had no idea, but she didn’t want to get close enough to see how deep his involvement with the stacked blonde went.
Trenton didn’t care about her needs, though. “Introduce us,” he repeated firmly.
Paris, she thought.
“If you like.” She gathered her courage and found a stiff smile.
It took time to work through the crowded ballroom. They had to stop midway to listen to a speech about the refurbishment of this iconic hotel, one of New York’s first skyscrapers. Applause happened, balloons fell, dancing started.
Melodie tried to pretend she wasn’t in an intricate waltz with Roman, one in which she took two steps forward and sidestepped one. She was aware of his every shift and turn as he and his date worked the room. When he took the actress to the dance floor, Melodie told herself she only noticed because he was Trenton’s quarry. They were gaining on him.
He came off the dance floor feet away from where she stood with Trenton, practically an invitation to approach. The tray of champagne appeared to have been their goal. Roman took two and turned his back on Melodie as he handed a flute to the blonde, but the opportunity was at hand.
Melodie felt his nearness like the heat off a blaze. Anticipation began to buzz in her. She neutralized her nerves by setting a light touch on Trenton’s arm to break into his current conversation.
“I believe our opening has arrived,” she told him, smiling a goodbye at the navy general and his wife as Trenton covered her hand, insisting she maintain the contact while they crossed the small distance to where Roman and his girlfriend were sipping their drinks.
Roman looked at her, and it was the same sweep of her feet out from under her as ever. All the air seemed to leave her body under the impact of his cool, green gaze and she had to gather her composure just to speak.
“Mr. Killian. What a surprise to bump into you here. I don’t think you know Trenton Sadler—”
“I’ve seen the ads,” Roman said, flicking a cynical twitch of his lips at Trenton as they shook hands. “This is Greta Sorensen.”
“I’ve seen some of your films. I love romantic comedies,” Melodie said, sincere for the first time all evening.
&n
bsp; “I’m filming one now. That’s why I’m here in New York,” Greta said in her prettily accented English.
“And she has to be at work very early tomorrow morning,” Roman said. “So we were just leaving. Good night.” It was quite a snub, one that made Greta’s eyes widen slightly before she turned it into a smoky look of anticipation aimed straight at Roman.
“I’ll assume that brush-off was meant for you, not me,” Trenton said tightly as Roman steered Greta toward the exit.
“I told you we weren’t friends.” Melodie reeled from the rebuff, her entire body stinging as though she’d been lashed front and back. Something in her ought to have been worried about how this would impact her job, but all she could think was that the encounter had made her incredibly sad. Especially if he was in a rush to make love to his date before she got her unnecessary beauty sleep. Lucky Greta.
“You didn’t exactly try to kiss and make up, did you?” Trenton charged.
Ah, the temperament of the politically hungry. Melodie ignored his tone, swallowed back a disturbing thickness in her throat and adopted her own implacable smile as she nudged Trenton toward a paunchy older gentleman. Work. Paris. She would not speculate on what Roman was doing with that Swedish sex kitten.
Nor would she wonder what her life would look like right now if she’d allowed Roman to take her back to his hotel room that day four months ago. Had she been tempted? On a physical level, absolutely. Even now, she regularly woke up damp with perspiration, deeply aroused, remnants of sexually explicit dreams lingering behind her clenched eyes.
Why did he have to torture her this way?
A man who could set aside revulsion toward a woman and bed her anyway was obviously incapable of the sort of love and respect she had always wanted. He’d battered her heart so thoroughly she doubted she’d ever recover.
Which made her furious with him all over again.
Firm hands descended on her waist from behind.
She gasped under a jolt of electricity, nerve endings flaring hotly, immediately aware who was touching her. She covered his hands, trying to remove them, but he only held on more possessively.
Trenton broke off midspiel and glanced at her, brows going up as he recognized who stood behind her. “I thought you were taking your date home?” he said.
“She’s staying on the eleventh floor. Dance with me, Melodie.”
No. She couldn’t breathe to speak.
“Good idea,” Trenton said, piercing her with a significant “be nice” look.
Numbly she let Roman guide her onto the dance floor. Actually, she wasn’t numb. She was so sensitive every touch and smell and sound overwhelmed her. She couldn’t pick out the beat in the music or tell whether his hands were hot or her skin was flushing in reaction to his hold on her. Her throat hurt where her pulse thrummed. Her limbs felt clumsy as she set one hand on his shoulder and the other hand in his.
“Why—?” she tried, but her voice didn’t want to work. She wasn’t sure what she was asking anyway. So many questions crowded up from the hollow space between her knotted stomach and her tight lungs she couldn’t make sense of a single one.
“Are you sleeping with him?” he asked with seeming disinterest. “He’s married, you know.”
She snorted, disdainful words choking past the locked gate of her collarbone. “I’m aware, and no. He’s my boss. What happened to Greta? Turn you down?”
“I don’t sleep with clients, but she wanted to make an appearance.” His touch on her changed, fingers closing more firmly over hers. His hand weighed more heavily at her waist. A hint of dry humor glinted in his eye. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way...”
“I don’t care,” she tried, but came up against her own dishonesty as quickly as his smirk flashed and disappeared.
“No. Of course not. You hate me. Why are you dancing with me, then?”
“I was told to be nice to you.” Offering a lethal mimic of Greta’s smoky look, she warned, “Do not get me fired, Roman. I will kill you.”
“He’s a sycophant.”
“So am I,” she retorted, squirming inwardly at being caught out as one of Trenton’s minions. “It pays the bills.”
Roman’s mouth tightened briefly before he allowed, “You’re good at working a room. I’ve been watching you.”
Melodie tingled with awareness at the idea of his watching her, covering her reaction with a blasé “Mom always needed a wing woman at these sorts of things. When it was her turn to host, I made all the arrangements. Ingrid’s wedding really would have come off beautifully under my hand, you know. How are the arrangements coming along?”
“I have no idea. She’s training her replacement and that’s enough comedy for my tastes.”
“Because weddings are a joke? Falling in love is for the weak and pathetic? I’m beginning to agree with you, Roman. Which makes me hate you all the more,” she added with a quiet burst of ferocity.
He spun her off the dance floor and behind a mirrored column.
“I tried to apologize to you that day,” he reminded hotly.
“You tried to pick me up,” she threw back, scraped raw all over again.
* * *
Four months had passed since their last meeting and Roman had managed to convince himself he’d forgotten her. The moment he had entered the room, however, a preternatural sense had sparked awake in him. He’d known she was here.
Then he’d spied her, toffee hair swept up to reveal her long neck and those deliciously modest pearls. Her shoulders were bared by her dress. The rest of her gown had hardly impacted upon him as he’d taken in the statue-still bust her head and shoulders made staring back at him.
She still hated him, he’d seen immediately, judging by her lack of a smile.
Then he’d seen her date touch her arm and something had snapped awake in him, an emotion that was blade sharp and ferocious. He suspected it was jealousy, because for a moment he’d been blind. All the hairs had lifted on his body and his blood had pumped in anticipation as he had prepared to shove through the crowd to get to her.
Sense had prevailed, albeit very weakly. He hadn’t been able to dump his date fast enough and get back to Melodie once she’d opened the borders and spoken to him. Now her scent filled his nostrils and his muscles twitched to clamp his arms around her. He was primed to throw her over his shoulder and steal her from the room while fighting off rivals.
He was damned close to doing so. The bitter look she gave him was filled with acid and ate away at what control he had.
“Do you think I wouldn’t control this if I could? That I don’t hate you for affecting me like this?” He threw the words at her.
Her head flung back as if he’d slapped her.
“No, it doesn’t feel very good, does it?” he gritted out, skin threatening to split under the pressure of containing himself. “It’s not me doing this to you, Melodie. It’s us. I’m this close to having you against this damned wall with the entire room watching. It’s that powerful.”
“Even though you hate me.” She turned her face to the side, eyes glistening.
“What do you want me to say? That I love you?” The word caught like a barbed hook on the way out, snagging in his chest and the back of his throat. It wasn’t a word he even understood beyond its bastardized use. I love this car. I love crème brulée.
“I wouldn’t believe you if you did, but I want the man I sleep with to say it,” she said with a break of anguish in her voice. “I want to feel it. It’s the only thing that’s kept me going all those years, believing I’d make better choices with men than my mother did. I’m so lonely I want to cry, but I can’t bring myself to believe any of you anymore.” Her lips trembled. “You broke me, Roman. That’s why I hate you.”
He sucked in a breath that felt like razor blades.
Because she was falling apart.
He thought he might. Hell.
Catching her arm, he used his height and confidence to muscle through the crowd to where a bellman was checking names at the door. “You have something for me. Roman Killian.”
“Of course. Right here, sir.” The bellman handed over a small folder with a number on the inside cover. It contained Roman’s room key and the credit card he’d handed to a member of staff on his way back into the ballroom after dropping off Greta with a handshake.
He hadn’t intended to book a room here until he’d seen Melodie.
Melodie gave a muted sniff and turned toward a sign pointing out the facilities, but he drew her across the atrium toward the elevators.
“I can’t leave,” she said, accepting Roman’s handkerchief as he hustled her along. Then she paused to lean into her smudged reflection in an etched panel. “Actually, I should go to my room to fix my makeup.”
The elevator doors opened and he pressed her into the car.
“Six,” she said.
He ignored that and pressed the P.
“Roman—” She started to poke 6.
He stopped her. “We’re going to talk, Melodie. Clear the air once and for all.”
“There’s no point,” she insisted, voice husky and fatalistic. “You’re right. We do goad each other and bring out the worst. That means we should stay as far away from each other as possible.”
Her words spiked into him, making him fearful to draw breath, knowing it would burn. “Do you really think that?”
A rush of emotion welled in her eyes and made her clamp her lips together. She dropped her gaze.
“I didn’t listen to you that first day. We might not have damaged each other so badly if I had. This time we get it all on the table. Neither of us can move forward until we do.”