by J. K. Coi
“You aren’t a pushover.”
She grimaced. “I’m not a ruthless shark, either.”
He curled his hand over her hip and squeezed. “Do you really want to be that kind of lawyer? That kind of person?”
“Why shouldn’t I want to be successful?”
“You don’t see it, do you?”
“See what?”
“You’re the most successful lawyer in the city.”
She laughed out loud, incredulous. “How do you figure?”
“What other lawyer has the respect of every single judge on the bench for actually understanding the intention behind the law instead of trying to find ways to get around it? What other lawyer can sit down with parties who are ready to claw each other’s eyes out and still get them all to leave the table satisfied with the outcome?”
She snorted. “There isn’t a soul in the legal profession who finds that remotely notable.”
He touched her cheek. She held her breath. “Not true. It’s a rare gift to be able to see what you see in other people, to be ruled by compassion instead of greed. You might be surprised just how valuable a gift it is, and at who finds it notable.”
He kissed her hard and left the bed, but only so that he could duck into the bathroom. The sound of the water running lulled her into a relaxed state of semiconsciousness, and she drifted a little bit. She felt the bed dip when he returned. He had a cloth in his hands and gently spread her legs to wash her. Her cheeks flushed, but she let him. Soon her sleepiness evaporated and turned to a sharp stab of need. The wet cloth soothed her, but it also warmed her until she was writhing and begging him for more. Again.
Bria awoke the next morning feeling emotionally and physically drained. She and Leo still had so much to discuss, but the pressing weight of loss that had become her constant reality was lessened, and she felt a sliver of hope worming its way through the cracks in the walls that had gone up between them. At the hospital with Julie, she’d felt as if Leo was really listening to what she had to say, and maybe he would have even opened up if they had been alone, but she’d also meant what she said about expecting too much from him. Maybe there was a way for them to meet in the middle and make their marriage work.
With a glance down at the sleeping man in her bed, she smiled and tiptoed into the bathroom to take a scalding hot shower. So hot that the room was thick with steam when she climbed out, dried off, and slipped on her robe.
She swiped the mirror with her towel and watched as it fogged up again, obscuring her reflection so that she was just a blurry image without distinction—kind of how she’d felt ever since taking her clothes off last night. But it was a good feeling, since she hadn’t liked herself much in the last few weeks.
She turned on the bathroom fan to clear the steam in the room, then opened the drawer and reached inside for a comb. Her fingers brushed hard plastic. It rattled and she froze as she realized what it was.
Her birth control pills.
The bathroom door opened just as the blood was draining from her face. Leo stepped up behind her and buried his face in the crook of her neck with a deep breath. “Why didn’t you wake me?” he murmured. “I would have loved nothing more than to get soapy and naked with you in a steamy shower.”
Her belly fluttered, but when she looked up into the mirror to meet the reflection of his hot gaze, the terror in her own eyes made her stop.
Leo’s sexy morning smile waned. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked, laying a hand on her shoulder.
The half-empty blister pack of pills fell from her hand to the countertop. Leo picked it up and looked back and forth between her and it. It didn’t take long for him to understand what the significance was. “You haven’t been taking these, have you?”
She swallowed hard and shook her head. They’d stopped using condoms the night Leo asked her to marry him. She’d been on the pill already, of course, and by that time in their relationship the condoms had seemed like an unnecessary hassle, so they’d put them in a drawer and left them there.
But after getting out of the hospital, she’d apparently left her pills in a drawer, too…
“Not since…” She cleared her throat. “It just never occurred to me to start taking them again because I had no intention of having sex.”
“Since you weren’t having sex with me, I’m glad the whole idea of it was completely off the table,” he teased.
She had really hoped their discussion yesterday was the start of him learning to be honest and share his true feelings, but apparently they were already back to jokes. “Leo, this isn’t…I—”
He turned serious and squeezed her arm. “It’ll be okay. I’m sorry it didn’t occur to me to use a condom last night, but until you’re comfortable going back on the pill, it will never slip my mind again,” he promised.
“It’s just as much my fault. I got lost in the moment…in more ways than one,” she admitted. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
“We won’t forget again,” he promised.
She shook her head. “No, I…I can’t. It shouldn’t have happened…at all. What if I’m already pregnant?”
He took her by the shoulders and spun her away from the mirror to face him. “Don’t backtrack on me, Bria. I won’t let fear rule us for a minute longer. We’ve lost too much to it already.”
“We’ve lost too much,” she agreed. “Maybe we’ve lost the thing that was meant to keep us together for a lifetime.”
“You don’t mean that.” Anger bled into his tone. It sliced through her like a knife.
“I thought that I could put all the pain and disappointment aside and focus on giving us a new beginning, but this isn’t really a beginning, because we aren’t the couple we were supposed to be.”
He frowned. “And just who were we supposed to be?”
“We were supposed to be the power couple who took life by the balls and made no compromises for anything,” she whispered. “We were supposed to have it all.”
He straightened. “We damn well can have it all.”
“Can we? Can we have children?” she snapped, her voice breaking on a high note of burgeoning hysteria.
“You don’t know that we can’t. Just because this baby wasn’t meant to be, doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen for us, when we’re ready.”
She clenched her fist in the folds of her robe. “It won’t happen for us, Leo. I promise you that right now.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I can’t let it!” she cried. “I’m not going to risk getting pregnant ever again.”
He looked stunned. “Bria, don’t say never. Who knows what the future will—”
“No, I won’t do it, Leo. I can’t lie there bleeding in any more hospital beds while even one more baby dies. I won’t do it…even for you.”
“What do you mean…for me?”
“You’ve always wanted a big family, don’t deny it.”
“I thought that’s what we both wanted,” he said through clenched teeth.
She crossed her arms and stared at a shadow on the wall over his shoulder. “It was. But that was before.”
He shut his eyes, and when he opened them again, his face was a shuttered mask, keeping everything he was feeling about her revelations deep where she couldn’t reach. She shook her head and backed away from him. “Oh God, this isn’t going to work. I thought maybe, but…neither one of us is ever going to be able to give the other what they really need. It really is too late for us.”
When the door shut behind her and he was left standing there alone, it took every ounce of his splintering restraint to keep from smashing his fist into the mirror and demolishing the steely, controlled expression on the face looking back at him.
Chapter Twelve
Leo leaned way back in the black leather chair behind his desk. It was near the tipping point, but he held his balance easily. He clutched the basketball between both of his splayed hands and tossed it straight up. It was nothing special, not li
ke the glass-encased 1975 Red Sox autographed team ball that his partner Jim Baker kept displayed on the bookshelf in his office. No, it was just a ball, so that when he left the office to meet up with Dave from the commercial real estate company downstairs for some one-on-one, they had something to play with.
Right now, the chair didn’t matter. The ball didn’t matter. The unfinished affidavit he’d been drafting didn’t matter. Tossing the ball was just to keep his body busy, a match for the turmoil in his brain.
He was seeing Bria standing in front of the bathroom counter dressed only in her robe, absolute terror leaching every last drop of color from her face. It wasn’t what he’d expected to find the morning after such a passionate reunion with his wife, and the woman in the mirror had seemed like a complete stranger.
He hadn’t said anything in response to her declaration that she was closing the door on having kids…ever. He’d needed time to think it through.
Last night, it had seemed like his determination to fight for him and his wife had finally paid off, but he’d been so wrong. Their reunion had been an illusion.
Leo hadn’t finally overcome her objections with his dogged determination and unfailing support. She still wanted to see into his bleeding soul. Last night, he might have tapped into her physical desire, but not her heart.
Someone knocked on the door and then opened it without waiting for a response, which could only mean that it was his assistant. “I’m busy, Janet.” He didn’t look away from the ball in the air.
“Yeah, I can see that,” she said teasingly. “Well, you’ve got a client.”
He caught the ball again and paused. “There’s nothing in my book until four o’clock.”
Janet crossed her arms and glanced over her shoulder. “And yet, she is still here.”
“She who?”
“Mrs. Cordeiro.”
Shit. That was surprising. When she’d called him last week and said her husband convinced her to give their marriage another chance, he’d known without being told the details that Bria somehow had something to do with it. Leo had wished Josephine all the best and told Janet to waive his fees to date in the interest of supporting the couple’s reconciliation.
But if she was here now, that could only mean that the reconciliation had failed. Leo sighed. “Put her in the small boardroom. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
He tossed the basketball and watched it arc in the air and come down perfectly into the wastepaper bin he kept across the room for just that purpose, then he rummaged through his desk for a notepad and pen before going to meet his client with a heavy heart.
“Josephine, I’m surprised to see you,” he said, walking into the boardroom with a gentle smile. She hadn’t brought her brother this time, for which he was supremely grateful. That guy had volatility issues—Leo’s boxing training had taught him how to spot the type even outside of the ring—and his triggers seemed to revolve around Josephine’s husband. “I had high hopes that you and André would make things work between you.”
She looked pale and angry, and there was no dissembling in her expression this time around. This was a woman who felt wronged, and he could just imagine what had happened.
She twisted her hands together in front of her and swallowed hard. “Mr. Markham, I want to sue my husband for everything he’s got. Can you do that for me?”
He stepped forward with a frown. “Are you really sure you want to take such drastic measures?”
She spun away and stomped to the window with clenched fists. “He tried to tell me that he never screwed around on me, and stupid me, I wanted to believe him. For a while, I did believe him. His explanation for those photos seemed plausible, so I talked myself into giving him the benefit of the doubt.” Her voice broke. “But it was all just more lies.”
He stopped just behind her. “How do you know that?”
She turned back to him with a sneer of disgust. “I found women’s panties in my bed…and they weren’t mine.”
Leo swore.
“Can you do it?” she said through clenched teeth. “Can you make him pay?”
Damn it. This wasn’t going to help his situation with Bria. Why do you still care? She’d made her decisions, and not one of them had taken his feelings into consideration. Maybe that’s because she doesn’t know what your fucking feelings are.
He shoved that aside and nodded. “If that’s what you want, then I can do it,” he promised.
…
Bria returned home late that night feeling defeated. Leo’s office—not even Leo himself—had called to put her on notice that Mrs. Cordeiro would be proceeding with claims against Bria’s client, and she should check the fax machine in the morning for an itemization of their demands.
Classic Leo Markham—to push the opposition off-balance and make her sweat it out waiting for his next move. But Bria wasn’t worried about him; she was still reeling from her discussion with André just before receiving that call. When he’d said he and his wife weren’t going to make things work, she’d taken it personally. André had been livid. He’d denied being with any other women and accused Josephine of using his attempt at a reunion to frame him as a cheater in order to invalidate the prenup.
The house was dark and quiet as Bria moved through the foyer. Leo wasn’t home, which was a source of both relief and pain for which she could find no reconciliation.
She changed clothes and unpacked her papers from her briefcase, but when she looked down at her bed, the idea of sitting there to work, where she and Leo had made love all last night, made the blood drain from her face.
Instead, she took her stuff and went downstairs to the study. They used to share it. She would sit at the desk while Leo paced, or he would sprawl out on the sofa with his feet over the edge of the armrest. Then he’d come over, pick her up and take her place in the chair, and plop her down onto his lap. Work would be put on the back burner for a while, and when they’d return to it later, he would take the desk, and she would sit on the sofa.
In the unspoken division of space since their occupied separation, this room had become his, and the master bedroom had become hers. But those boundaries had been crossed last night, so she sat down behind the desk. It was clear of paperwork and files. Leo wasn’t careless enough to leave anything lying around, especially with respect to the Cordeiro case.
She settled in to review her file. With the new accusations Josephine had made against André, Bria would have to find a way to either prove the wife wrong, or prove she’d been just as unfaithful in her marriage. Otherwise, the prenup would fail, and André would pay through the nose.
She knew what Leo would have suggested had they been on the same side of this. He would want to go on the offensive and prove that Mrs. Cordeiro was just as degenerate as she claimed André to be. Nadia would probably have taken the same approach. But the idea put a bad taste in Bria’s mouth. Partly because she didn’t like to work that way, but also because she actually believed that this couple had wanted to make it work, and something had gotten in the way. André had sworn to her he didn’t cheat on his wife and didn’t know how she could have found another woman’s undergarments in their bed.
He was angry now because Josephine didn’t trust him, and because she seemed to be looking for reasons to derail their reunion, but Bria thought he still loved his wife. He was going to regret it eventually if he instructed Bria to play dirty and make Josephine look bad.
Bria rubbed her eyes. This case was too close to home for her. Could Josephine be sabotaging her own marriage? And if so, was she doing it for money, or for some other reason?
Maybe out of fear?
Her whole family still lived in Ireland, but her husband had wanted them to pick up everything and come to America for his career. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to leave it all behind. Maybe she had dreams of her own that didn’t involve trailing after André Cordeiro like another one of his groupies.
But if she’d simply refused to leave her home and as
ked for a divorce, she would have gotten nothing in the separation. The prenup would have seen to that. So maybe she’d taken matters into her own hands.
Bria shook her head. It just didn’t feel right. If that had been the case, why agree to give the marriage another chance at all?
Unless…
An idea formed, and Bria picked up her cell phone and scrolled to find the number of her investigator, a guy she’d used before—usually when trying to prove that someone had been cheating. Now she was going to ask him to prove that someone hadn’t cheated.
“I’m sorry for calling so late,” she said when Corey answered.
He laughed. “I do almost all my work when the sun goes down, so don’t worry about it.”
Bria explained the situation, and asked if there was any way he could find the information she was looking for.
“Yeah, sure. Send me what you’ve got, and I’ll do some digging.”
“That would be great, thanks,” she said, relieved.
After the conversation, she hung up the phone and then closed her file. She didn’t want to do any more work on this until she had confirmation or denial of her suspicions. The small lamp on the desk cast barely enough light to read by. The room closed in and swallowed her up, just like Leo threatened to swallow her up. It even smelled like him.
She sighed and leaned back into the leather cushions of the chair. She closed her eyes, but that immediately brought thoughts of him to the fore, especially how she’d hurt him this morning. She’d been able to shut it out of her mind for most of the day, although sharp reminders would poke through her shell here and there at unexpected times. Like when she had spoken with André, or every time her cell phone buzzed, or…okay, pretty much every minute.
Her heart hurt, and it had been impossible to ignore. It was only getting worse.
Damn it. Why had she opened the floodgate and let all the crippling emotion and wanting back in? Now there was no way to put the lid on again. She should have felt relieved when Leo walked away from her this morning, but she was the opposite. She’d started to think that everything she’d been trying to do since coming home from the hospital had been a mistake. A desperate, horrible, cowardly mistake.