by Tracy Wolff
“Yes.” She cleared her throat, awkwardly. “They’re very nice socks. I found them when I was straightening up. You must have forgotten them when you left this morning.”
Very nice socks? Was she suddenly twelve? she asked herself fiercely. Socks were socks, for God’s sake.
Judging by the strange look he shot her, Marc definitely seemed to think so, too. “Oh, um, thanks? I hadn’t really noticed.”
“How do you not notice that you’re not wearing socks with your dress shoes?” She glanced down at his bare ankles doubtfully, even as she told herself to forget about the damn socks. “I can’t believe your shoes are all that comfortable, even if they are Hugo Boss.”
Then she bit her lip because, really, could she sound more obsessed? She kept harping about his “nice socks” and she knew what kind of dress shoes the man wore. He was probably counting himself lucky for the narrow escape he’d made this morning.
But he didn’t seem to be inching away in alarm, any more than he seemed concerned by her intimate knowledge of his footwear. Instead he simply said, “I’ve had other, more important things on my mind today.”
For one heart-stopping moment, she thought he was talking about her. About them. Her stomach jumped with excitement, even as her brain quelled the reaction. Despite her rather asinine reactions since he’d come to the door, she didn’t want him, she reminded herself firmly. And he couldn’t possibly want her. Not after all the ugliness that had passed between them—both six years ago and again this morning.
With that thought front and foremost in her mind, she cleared the last of the weirdness away and demanded, “So what are you doing here, then? I don’t have much time to stand around and talk—I’ve got a date in a couple hours and I have to get ready.”
“You have a date.” He said the words in a flat, emotionless tone that she might have mistaken for disbelief, and lack of concern, if she hadn’t seen the spark of anger in the depths of his eyes.
“I do.” It was really more of an afternoon cocktail party to celebrate the opening of a prestigious jewelry collection by one of her former students at a local gallery, but she wasn’t going to tell Marc that. Not when that event was the only thing standing between her and the utter humiliation that came with reliving the morning, when Marc had walked away from her without a backward glance.
“I do.”
“With that professor from yesterday?” His voice was a growl now, his eyes a few shades darker than normal. And suddenly he was walking deeper into the house, each step causing her to retreat a little more until her back was, literally, against the wall and he was standing right there, his powerful body pressing into her as he looked down at her, his eyes hot and his mouth twisted in a displeased snarl.
There was a part of her that wanted to give in to his obvious dominance, but that part didn’t get to be in control. So she tilted her chin up and met him glare for glare. “How is who I go out with any of your business?”
“Oh, it’s my business,” he growled as his hand came up to bracket her throat, his fingers resting on her collarbone while his thumb rubbed gently against the love bite he’d sucked into her throat sometime last night. His hold wasn’t painful, wasn’t even threatening. Instead, it was possessive, arousing as hell, though she fought to keep from acknowledging that fact.
“It isn’t,” she assured him.
“It is.” His fingers massaged her collarbone before sliding slowly up her neck to her cheek. “I was the one inside you just a few hours ago. The one making you come. The one making you scream.”
She melted at his words, her lower body going hot and wet at the snarly, desire-filled sound of his voice. But still she held her ground, refusing to let him know how much he affected her. “Maybe. But you were also the one babbling about closure and hightailing it out the door this morning as fast as your feet could carry you.”
He wrapped his other hand around her waist. “I don’t babble.”
“And I don’t beg,” she told him firmly.
“You begged me last night.” He stepped even closer, dropping his head so that his lips were barely an inch from hers.
She felt her muscles go weak, felt herself sag against him for one precious second. Then two. Then three. His hand curved around the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair, and she almost gave in. Almost gave herself up to him again. It’s what her body wanted—more of the insidious pleasure he could bring her with just a touch of his fingers, his lips, his skin.
But then memories of what it had felt like when he’d kicked her out of his apartment all those years ago rose up inside her, mingled with the hurt from this morning that she’d tried so hard to deny all day.
She wasn’t giving in, wasn’t yielding to the sexual magnetism he wielded like a sorcerer.
Shoving at his chest, she squeezed out from between his body and the wall. “I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who begged,” she called over her shoulder as she walked down the hall to her kitchen, away from him.
She figured her comment would anger him—she had counted on it, as a matter of fact. But after a second of disgruntled silence, Marc tossed his head back and laughed. His reaction was a million times more disconcerting than what she’d expected. Partly because it was the first time she’d heard him laugh since he’d walked into her classroom the afternoon before and partly because it was a good laugh. A really good laugh, low and smoky and filled with a joy that told her it was genuine, despite the circumstances.
“Touché,” he said as she got herself a glass of ice water and then drained it in two long gulps.
When the water was done—when she felt as if she had herself under control, at last—Isa turned back to him and demanded, “Why are you here, Marc? I’m pretty sure we said everything we needed to say to each other this morning before you left.”
He winced slightly. “I know I was a little harsh—”
“Don’t pull that smarmy rich boy routine on me!” she snapped. “You weren’t harsh. You were definite. Sleeping with me was closure and once you’d done it you were finished, ready to move on.” She tore her eyes away from his too-beautiful face to glance at the clock on the wall behind his head. “So try again. What do you really want?”
He stared at her for long seconds, until the heat between them grew intolerable. “You,” he finally said. “I want you.”
“Try again,” she replied with a snort that in no way betrayed the riot of emotions exploding inside. “You’ve had me, twice. And both times it’s ended with you kicking me to the curb.”
“I didn’t kick you to the curb this morning—”
“Maybe not literally, since this is my house,” she told him with a shrug she hoped looked negligent. “But you definitely did it metaphorically. Which is fine, I get it. Closure, revenge, whatever. But that still doesn’t explain why you’re here now. What do you want from me?”
He paused, seeming to weigh his words as carefully as she’d been weighing hers.
Finally, just when she’d given up hope on him telling her anything, he ground out, “I need your help.”
Nine
“My help?” She stared at him incredulously.
“Yes.” He pulled back, putting some distance between them for the first time since he’d walked back into her house. Damn it. There was no way she would help him, not after what he’d just pulled.
He hadn’t meant to go all possessive on her, hadn’t meant to give in to the sensual need that throbbed between them with each breath they took. He was there because he needed her help professionally, not because he wanted to get her into bed again. Or at least, that was the lie he was telling himself.
Now that he’d given her some breathing room, she spun around. Pulled another glass out of the cabinet behind her. She filled it with ice and water before handing it to him and demanding,
“Explain.”
So he did, telling her about the article, about the damage it could do to Bijoux if it ran. About how they needed a conflict diamond expert to sign off on the fact that their stock was completely conflict free.
When he was done, she looked at him over the rim of her cup. “There are other experts out there. You could have gone to any of a dozen people and asked them to work for you.”
“I could have, yes.”
“But you came to me instead. Because you figured you could use our past to sway my results?”
Fury shot through him. “I don’t need to sway your results. When you investigate Bijoux, you’ll find that we use only responsibly sourced diamonds. I can assure you, there is not one blood diamond among our stock.”
“That’s a pretty big assurance,” she told him. “How can you be sure?”
“Because I look at each and every diamond that comes through our place. I make sure that, geologically, they come from where we say they do.”
“Every diamond?” she asked, skeptical. “You must clear ten thousand of them a month.”
“More. And yes,” he said before she could ask again, “I look at every single one.”
“How do you have that kind of time? Don’t you have a company to run?”
“I make time. I know that makes me a control freak, but I don’t give a damn. My business almost died once because I took my eye off the ball. I can guarantee you that won’t happen again.”
She winced. Because of what he’d said or the angry way he’d said it, he didn’t know. He should stop throwing that in her face, considering he needed her help, but she’d asked why he was the way he was about his business. What happened six years ago was a huge part of that.
She didn’t say anything, didn’t fire back like she normally would. That didn’t reassure him, though. Not when she was looking at him with something akin to regret in her eyes. He wanted to believe it was for the past they shared, but his gut told him it was about his request.
Sure enough, after a long silence, she told him, “I can’t do it.”
“You mean you won’t do it.”
“No, I mean I can’t. I’ve got a full load of classes this semester as well as a side project of my own going on—”
“This won’t take long,” he said. “A day and a half, two at the most for travel to Canada, then a couple days at my headquarters, comparing the mineral composition of my diamonds with those from the Canadian mines. Even if you wanted to trace a random sampling of serial numbers, shipments and documentation, it shouldn’t take much longer than that.”
“That’s best-case scenario, if I don’t find any irregularities.”
“You won’t,” he assured her with total confidence. He knew his business inside out. There was no way conflict stones were going through Bijoux. No way. Not when he and Nic worked too damn hard to ensure that they always sourced responsibly.
“You can’t guarantee that,” she reiterated.
“I damn well can. My business is clean. My stones come from Canada and Australia and each and every one of them can be traced from the mine to me. There are no irregularities.”
“You don’t source from Africa at all? Or Russia?”
“No.”
“There are a number of mines in both places that certify their diamonds as conflict free by Kimberley Process standards—”
“But I can’t guarantee that no child labor went into mining them. I can’t know for sure where the profits are going. Most of the mines I use in Canada and Australia have shareholders that they answer to, and those that don’t have very rigorous—and open—bookkeeping. My diamonds are as clean as I can possibly make them, Isa. Trust me on that.”
She snorted a little, muttered something under her breath that sounded an awful lot like “Yeah, right.”
He couldn’t help stiffening at her response. She had no reason not to trust him—he’d never lied to her. He’d never betrayed her. He was the first to admit he’d acted like an ass when he’d had her removed from his building, but he hadn’t schemed behind her back, hadn’t lied over and over again because of misplaced loyalty. No, that had been her modus operandi.
He wanted to call her on it—any other time he would have called her on it—but right now, he needed her more than she needed him. The knowledge grated like hell. He’d sworn a long time ago never to give a woman power over him again and yet here he was, giving that power to not just any woman but to the one who had nearly destroyed him.
So instead of picking a fight he couldn’t afford to lose, he swallowed back his bitterness and growled, “It’s a short-term assignment but that doesn’t mean it can’t be very profitable for you. I know it’s short notice, but I’m more than willing to double—or triple—your regular fee.”
She reeled back as if he’d slapped her. “Are you trying to bribe me to certify your diamonds as conflict free?”
“Bribe you?” He went from annoyed to furious in two seconds flat. “I already explained that I have no reason to worry. The last thing I need to do is bribe someone to lie about my business.”
“Then why the extra money? My regular fee is steep enough to make most companies wince.”
“Jesus, you’re suspicious.”
“You have to admit, I have reason to be.”
No, damn it, she didn’t. He had never been anything but straight with her. “Bijoux isn’t most companies. And I don’t have the luxury of time. This ridiculous exposé is supposed to run on Friday and if I don’t kill it, it’s going to destroy my business. Why the hell wouldn’t I pay double your regular fee if it meant you’d take the job?” This time he didn’t bother to keep the bite out of his voice. Her lack of trust was getting to him, big-time, and he had no problem letting her know it.
Except Isa didn’t seem to care. She narrowed her eyes at his tone, watching him for several long seconds. “You know this isn’t going to work, right?” she finally said.
“It will. I’ve worked too hard to lose my company now.”
“I don’t mean the certification. I mean us working together. You need to find someone else.”
“There is no one else, not with this short notice.”
“Have you called around, tried to check it out?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know that no one else is available? Stephen Vardeaux operates out of New York now and Byron M—”
“I don’t want someone else,” he snapped. “I want you.”
“Why?” she asked suspiciously, her voice louder than usual with the same frustration that was rushing through him. “Because you think you can use our past to influence—”
“Goddamn it!” He roared as he finally lost his grip on his temper. “What have I ever done to make you think I would use you like that? What have I ever done to give you these kind of qualms about me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Made me fall in love with you and then tossed me out like I was garbage?”
He froze as her words registered, and so did she. “That’s not what happened.”
“I know.” The look on her face said otherwise, though.
“You never loved me.”
“You don’t get to tell me how I felt.”
“You never loved me,” he insisted again, a little shocked at how shaky his voice was. How shaky he felt inside. “You betrayed me.”
“I didn’t betray you. I was caught between two untenable positions—”
“Being with me was an untenable position?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth!”
“I’m not. Maybe you should think before you speak.”
“God!” She made a sound of total exasperation as she headed out of the kitchen and back toward the front door. “I told you this wouldn’t work. You need to leave.”
He grabbed her arm, spun her around to face him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Well, you’re not staying here.”
He raised a brow at her. “Wanna bet?”
“You need to go!”
“I’ll go when you come with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Not now, not ever again!” She was breathing fast, skin flushed and chest heaving. Tendrils of hair had escaped from the wild updo she’d pulled it into and burned like flames around her face.
They were in the middle of a fight and never had she looked so beautiful, so enticing, so delectable. A part of him wanted to shake her but a much bigger part wanted to take her. To shove her against the nearest wall and plunge himself inside her until she forgot every objection she had about him and he forgot every problem he had with her.
Until the past didn’t matter anymore.
Until nothing mattered but the fire burning so brightly between them.
He reached for her before he could stop himself, pulled her body flush against his. She cried out, her hands going to his shoulders—to cling, to push him away? He couldn’t tell. And by the way she arched against him, he didn’t think she could, either.
Her breathing was harsh, her nipples peaked against his chest, and all he wanted to do was slip a hand between her thighs and find out if she was as turned on as he was. If she was as wet and hot for him as she’d been last night.
Overwhelmed with desire—with lust for her that just wouldn’t go away—he lowered his head to take her mouth with his. And she almost let him...right up until she shoved at his shoulders hard and ripped her body away from his.
She stumbled back a few steps, staring at him with wide, bruised eyes.
He didn’t follow, no matter how much he wanted to. Didn’t grab hold of her and pull her back into his arms where a part of him was convinced she belonged. No, when it came to sex—to intimacy—between them, there was no way he would take that choice away from her. No matter how much he wanted her. No matter how certain he was that she wanted him, too.