No More Masquerade

by Angel Payne

“Your confidence is appreciated, Andrea, as always.” Andrea. Not Mrs. Montgomery. I wanted to hug him. He knew the little ways to soothe me.

  I enjoyed the return to Zen for all of two seconds. Like nails on my personal chalkboard, Margaux crooned, “Hmmm. Well, that is why we log in the sleepless nights.”

  “Let’s check back in, say, four hours?” Killian spoke as if Margaux hadn’t. “I’d like to see a detailed preliminary strategy report at that time.”

  “Of course,” Andrea replied, tension trickling under her voice. Margaux’s brat act wasn’t making things easier on the woman. In other words, the pot and the kettle were having a grand time together. I allowed myself half a grin of vindication.

  “Good.” Killian returned to being cool, crisp, and utterly jumpable—especially because the bathrobe didn’t seem fond of properly containing his rippled body. “Prepare all the usuals,” he directed further. “You understand what I expect to see at this stage. You can email me directly, Andrea. I don’t need the whole team involved in that communication. Does anyone have any other concerns at this point in time?”

  Disjointed murmurings of “No, Mr. Stone” filtered over the line. I smiled a little wider, picking out Michael, Talia, and Chad’s voices. Even in their subdued states, I could tell they wavered between cringing and laughing at Margaux and Andrea. Their dilemma wasn’t helped when Margaux leaned in to insert her last chiming dig.

  “Mother’s right. You two run along and have fun while we work out this mess for you. You can count on us to handle everything…like we always do.”

  Andrea frantically took over again, chatting up Killian about the best places for gelato near the Coliseum, but we could still hear Margaux in the background. “Let’s go, little people. Some of us have to work around here. We aren’t all sleeping with the client.”

  “Mr. Stone.” Andrea sounded terser than I’d ever heard her. “Don’t you spend another thought on all this. The report will be in your mail in four hours, though I’m cautiously optimistic we can handle it faster than that. There’s a lot going on in the news cycle right now. We’ll just have to see who bites when the news hits. No matter what, we will do our best to minimize the damage. You can count on us.”

  “I’m quite sure I can,” Killian answered over steepled fingers.

  “I’ll be in touch soon.”

  I closed the conference call software on my screen and tore the headset from my ears. Before it skidded across the desk, I was on my feet.

  “Claire—”

  I whirled, fully aware I looked like a thirteen year-old just daggered in the back by her campus nemesis. “I hate her.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s not mature. It’s not nice. And I don’t care.”

  Lovely. Juuuust lovely. Tears burned my eyes and welled over. They were the worst kind too, big and heavy and angry, branding my cheeks as they rolled down. I was disgusted with myself for wasting them on someone who didn’t even deserve them.

  Even more so when they wouldn’t stop.

  I turned toward the window, looking out on the sunset’s glow over the centuries-old city, congratulating the dark red sky for matching my spirit so exactly. Before I knew it, big strong arms wrapped around me from behind. Kil followed the embrace with the warm press of his body—then simply remained like that. Standing there with his lips pressed into my hair, not saying anything dumb like “she didn’t mean what she said” or “don’t let her get to you.” Why? Because he was the best man on the planet…and he knew me. He simply knew that I needed to have my moment and move on.

  After a few minutes, I took a deep breath and turned into his chest for a proper hug. When I had the courage to look up into those bottomless black eyes of his, he smiled.

  “Better?”

  “Yes, but you know that.”

  His eyes narrowed, twinging with his secret, strange sadness. “I don’t have all the answers all the time.”

  “You did just now. And handled her perfectly.” I popped on tiptoe and kissed his strong-as-Zeus nose. “Thank you.”

  “Well, she is a righteous bitch. There is no denying it. It’ll be fucking refreshing when she moves on to a new conquest.”

  I cocked my head. “Maybe you could set her up with Trey?” We both laughed as I pulled away and headed into the dressing room. Suddenly I was starving. “I think we need pasta and sex, and maybe not in that order.”

  “I like the way you’re thinking San Diego, but I need to make one more phone call before we head out.” He picked up his phone with stabbing purpose. “I’m pulling the trigger. Having Trey removed from SGC’s Board of Directors as soon as possible. I think I’ll have more than a bit of just cause, but I need to have Mason advise me of the bylaws and processes.”

  I paused in the archway separating the two parts of the suite. Blinked at him slowly. “Wow.”

  “It’s not a sudden decision, fairy.” He spoke it softly into the quiet pause I’d left—and I thoroughly believed him. Over the last few months, I’d sensed him struggling toward the justification for this move, perhaps going to battle with some of his board members over it. And there was his “secret logic” at work again. Kil had given Trey more second chances than every miscreant playboy in Hollywood and New York combined, though it seemed only God knew why.

  “I know,” I finally replied.

  He jerked out a nod. “But it also has to be done exactly right. Trey has spent his life taking advantage of loopholes, so he’ll find a way to worm back in if he can. It’s time to play some tough ball with the dickwad.”

  As he issued those decisive finishing words, I watched as he left a quick voice mail for Mason, explaining he was sending over an urgent email. Before he was done with the voice mail, he started tapping out the written version of his intent.

  During those minutes, a weird mix of awe and discomfort dug at me. He looked so passionate about every stab at the keyboard…while typing the words that would oust his own brother from the company their father had built. It made me squirm and wrap my arms around the twists in my belly. This ruthless side of Killian…the man I loved, who’d just held me in his arms and nurtured me…it was, to be equally brutal, disturbing. I knew all about “business is business” but it was such a contradiction to every other side of him, even the boardroom commander from the SGC offices, that I was temporarily stunned.

  When I found my voice again, I murmured, “I just think that maybe…this isn’t the time or place to go to extremes.”

  He didn’t break pace on the typing. “You think I want this to be the time or place? He’s forced my hand. End of story.”

  “I’m just having trouble understanding. You’ve had the patience of Job about all this but all of a sudden—”

  “Claire.” He stopped. Swung and impaled his gaze into mine. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. There are some things you should just stay out of and let me handle, okay?”

  Pain stabbed my stomach—exactly as it had during the conference call with the team. But there was a huge difference now. I don’t think Margaux had ever used the word “love” with my name in the same sentence. Ever.

  “Wow, baby. That’s a first. I could’ve closed my eyes and sworn Margaux had just morphed into a man. Thanks for the horrific trip into weird.”

  I turned on my heel and went back in the dressing room. This time, I closed the door and locked it. The hot, heavy, terrible tears rolled out again—only now, I endured them on the floor, in the middle of a ridiculously large closet, in a hotel room in Rome.

  Alone.

  Chapter Four

  Killian

  Search for the upside.

  It was one of Kim’s favorite things to bark at me when I turned, in her words, into “moody dickhead Jamie.” Usually, the term earned her nothing more than a glare and growl in response.

  This time, the label probably fit.

  Dammit.

  Which meant that finding the “upside” wasn’t an option. It was a nece
ssity. My gut torqued on the grim acceptance. I had to make things right with her again…somehow. Things in Rome had gone from cracked to crumbling inside an hour, a situation I could only partially blame on the disaster known as my brother. But Trey had been using his leverage on me for years as the diving board into his lake of licentiousness. Wasn’t I used to his fuckery by now? Why did it grate on me so deeply this time?

  The answer came as easily as a gaze across our suite at the Hôtel Fouquet—and the woman standing out on the terrace, watching twilight take over the avenues converging on the Eiffel Tower. She was dressed for our Seine dinner cruise in a wine-colored dress with a fitted bodice and sparkled belt over a layered skirt that had a graceful life of its own with every move she made. Though the skirt ended just below the knee, it might as well have been a mini for all the ideas it gave me. Or maybe those came from simply gazing at her from behind, my stare feasting on the swoop of her neck and the perfect angles of her face, now in profile to me. I literally clenched my fists, fighting the urge to join her out there—but if I did, we’d never make it out the door in time to board the boat. Within five minutes, her neck would be laid waste beneath my lips as her body undulated on the bed, spreading at my command. And she’d love every second. I’d make damn sure of that.

  Anything not to lose her.

  A fact Trey had clearly—and gleefully—figured out.

  Every new threat he made to expose me was as good as the bastard grabbing my head and submersing it in a freezing vat of that fear. He knew it, too—and used it to fly as close to the edge of the envelope as possible. I should have known the ass clown would abandon his new commitment to responsibility as soon as a better opportunity came up—like getting away with everything just short of murder and knowing I wouldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  To a point.

  I didn’t give a shit if Trey drowned in his own muck but he sure as hell wouldn’t take SGC into the mire with him. The Stone name, and all it meant to me in its newest sense, sealed the determination behind my vow. I had no doubt the board would vote behind me in the matter.

  So why the hell did I still feel so unsettled?

  “Pull yourself together, fucker.” I muttered it while securing my tie and slipping into my suit jacket. The dictate was well-founded. Life was better than it had ever been. I was in Paris, France with the woman of my dreams, who heard my rustling and glanced over her shoulder with the most gorgeous smile hinting at her lips. While the ugliness of Rome still marked both of us, even she couldn’t resist the allure of Paris as a damn great start of an eraser.

  She walking back inside on strappy silver heels that only encouraged the erotic fantasies the dress had started, “Well, don’t you clean up well?”

  “Complete illusion,” I returned. “Because there’s not a damn clean thing about what I want to do to you in that dress.”

  She slid a finger down the middle of my tie. “Mr. Stone…flattery will get you everywhere.”

  She tangled the fingers of her other hand around my nape, filtering them into my hair to pull me down for a kiss. It was the most time she’d allowed me to spend on her mouth since our fight in Rome and I wasn’t about to waste the opportunity. When she let my tongue between her lips, I groaned from the sweet taste of her, an ambrosia of strawberries and champagne.

  Was this possibly the beginning of her forgiveness? Fuck, I prayed so.

  When we dragged apart, I hovered my lips an inch over hers, returning her words with a husky whisper. “I sure hope so, Miss Montgomery. Absolutely… everywhere.”

  *

  A fine mist had fallen over the city during the course of the cruise. Claire gazed past the boat’s front window to where the spotlights on Notre Dame blended with the condensation, turning the night into a sparkling palette of amber and silver.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she murmured. Her sights didn’t depart from the soaring towers and flying buttresses of the city’s icon but I didn’t veer my gaze from her. In fascination—and disconcertment—I watched her lips linger on the rim of her wine glass. They remained somber even after she’d savored and swallowed, leading me to reach for her fingers when she lowered the glass. Gently, I curled my fingers under hers. She’d painted her nails lavender, a lighter shade than usual for her. It was a fascinating contrast to the slashes of dark bronze in her eyes.

  Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

  “Yes,” I responded. “The view’s breathtaking.”

  That coaxed up the edges of her lips. “You’re not even looking.”

  “Of course I am.” I wrapped my whole hand around hers. “At the only thing that matters.” When that didn’t pull her smile to her eyes, I persisted, “Though doing so isn’t answering a pressing question I have.”

  “What question would that be?”

  “Why are you so sad?”

  She flashed her gaze briefly at me before tilting her head toward the heights of the cathedral. “I was just imagining a Quasimodo lingering up there.”

  “The pissed off and murderous version or the distraught, about-to-jump-off-the-bell-tower version?”

  Even the bait of my sarcasm didn’t brighten her. Voice edged in wistfulness, she answered, “Maybe a bit of both.”

  Her sympathy for the fictional bell ringer moved me. But admitting it was strangely disturbing, especially when it funneled into my next words. “Which version do you like better?”

  I didn’t want to cop to my desperation at knowing her answer. Or was it the answer that mattered at all, when I’d challenged her to confront the idea of a man having duality like that in the first place?

  “Neither,” she finally replied. “Because neither was truly him. Quasimodo’s anger and loneliness were how the world saw him—and subsequently, how he saw himself. Esmérelda’s kindness, her ability to look beyond his face, opened up his vision of himself. With her, he was no longer a deformed ogre. He became a prince.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  I didn’t need to say more. In her parted lips and softened gaze, I saw her understanding—at least to the level she could. The woman would never completely know what she’d done, how fully she’d pulled me from my lonely bell tower and into the light of her love, but I yearned to spend forever trying to tell her. To show her my gratitude each and every day of our lives…

  And this was the moment to begin that journey.

  I reached for the ring box in my pocket.

  But was stopped when she reached and gripped me tight. Her face tensed in exactly the same way.

  Hell. No.

  “Killian—”

  I exhaled hard. “What?”

  She squeezed harder. “Come on. I love you. This isn’t the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “No.” I drawled it with the cheer of a caretaker. “It’s the new and improved French version.”

  Tension radiated through both sides of her jaw. “Don’t you see that—”

  “This is completely unnecessary?”

  Did I spit it as a smokescreen? Every syllable. But the woman’s tenacity, one of the things most alluring about her from the moment we met, seemed to be turning against me more and more lately.

  Or maybe you’ve just turned into a paranoid ass who snaps at her for the simplest questions. Yeah, maybe that’s it.

  The fucking rub? I couldn’t seem turn the shit off. Yes, me. Killian Stone. “The Enigma of Magnificent Mile”, famous for my ability to focus on a goal with no emotions except those that brought the business to the table and the opposition to their knees. Fate surely laughed now, stabbing its middle finger at me for actually thinking I could enjoy my life for once.

  “Really?” she flung at my bark. “So you think it’s ‘unnecessary’ to be real and open and honest with each other, even if that means going to the top of the bell tower and sharing the ugly stuff?” She still didn’t relent on her grip. “Killian, why won’t you just let me—”

  “What?” It snarled out of me and I was actually glad—becaus
e I was desperate. Better that she see the rage instead of the terror. “Let you do what, Claire? Be my Esmérelda now? Save my ass from the dark ogre inside?” Nothing like a shit-ton of truth to lend some backbone to a derisive chew-out—or the lurch to one’s feet after it. “Haven’t you gotten it yet? Things don’t work that way. Not with me.”

  Her gaze, wet and glowing as the wine in her glass, threatened to unravel me with its intensity. “Of course,” she rasped. “How could I have forgotten?” A mirthless laugh spilled from her wobbling lips. “It’s much easier up in the tower, isn’t it? When you sit there, all the presents get to come from you. All the surprises get to be yours to give, all the goodies get to rain down from you. ‘Wow look’, everyone in the kingdom says. ‘What a beautiful, benevolent king. We adore him.’ And it’s all fine and good—until somebody tries to come share the place with you. God forbid anyone tries to crack those ramparts…when it’s the one thing you need the most.”

  I took another step back. “I think, by this point in my life, I’m fully aware of my ‘needs,’ Miss Montgomery.”

  She reacted like I’d speared her with daggers of ice. Not a surprise, since I’d wielded them as such—and abhorred myself for it. But in the end, my purpose was accomplished. From the way Claire folded her napkin, laid it across her half-eaten lobster tail, and averted her gaze back out the window, I knew our conversation had been sped to its bitter end.

  *

  Beyond surface courtesies, we didn’t say anything else to each other during the rest of the cruise. The limousine ride back to the hotel was an equal balancing act between cordial and miserable, ended when we pulled in front of the hotel. Claire exited the car, slammed the door then walked inside without looking back.

  Congratulations, asshole. You’re probably the first man in history to murder the romance of a Seine dinner cruise.

  I wore the honor like a disgruntled teenager, stomping into the suite in her wake and silently peeling off my jacket. Claire unhooked her shoes then walked barefoot out onto the terrace—again without looking at me.