by Ally Blake
‘Ladies and gentleman,’ he boomed, dragging their attention from the papers and back to him. ‘You may have gathered by now that I have before you a proposal to take the Bainbridge Foundation into its next and, I believe, best incarnation.’
Mutters and denials and much kerfuffling erupted, until Dax stilled them with open palms, and a full explanation of why he was stepping down, and how he believed the time had come to let his grandfather’s legacy be the only hold the Bainbridge family had over the foundation.
He caught Lauren’s eye mid-speech. He expected to see her grinning, like the co-conspirator she was, but instead she was biting her lips, desperately trying to hold back tears. Happy tears, for sure.
She’d moved on admirably from the mess their parents had inflicted upon them. Now it was his turn.
By the end of the meeting, terms had been agreed upon in principle, with minor legalities to be worked out before anything was put in stone. When the board realised the possibilities the untying of the Bainbridge family knots afforded them, they were less shocked, and more excited. For the foundation, yes, but most unexpectedly for him.
Each and every one came up and shook his hand and thanked him for making it the powerhouse it was today.
‘Your grandfather would be so proud,’ said one of the elder statesmen who’d been on the board in his grandfather’s time.
‘He wouldn’t be turning in his grave?’ Dax asked with the closest thing to a smile he’d felt in days.
‘Hell, no! If he’d managed to go another five years before the hours he bled into this place finally killed him, he would have done the same thing! You’ve got my vote on one condition.’
‘Which is?’
‘You’ll consider donating in future.’
‘Deal.’
Dax shook the man’s hand and exited the boardroom, leaving Lauren to do the chit-chatting. The fact that he’d never be forced to schmooze in honour of the Bainbridge name was liberating.
Walking to the lift, as habit dictated he checked his mobile and found he’d had several missed calls. Clearly word was out already. He recognised some numbers as press, the competition, family, a couple of friends.
The lift opened at his arrival, like some kind of nod to it being the last time he left the building as its leader, and as the doors closed a name popped onto the screen that made his heart beat so hard against his chest he held a fist over the spot and took a long careful breath.
Caitlyn. She’d called only ten minutes earlier.
Blood pumping in his ears, he lifted the phone to his ear to listen to his messages, only to discover he had no service. He’d have to wait ’til the lift stopped. It took its sweet time to descend. So he waited, with his right leg twitching, all the way to the car park.
The second the door opened he exploded from the lift and the phone was at his ear as he stalked towards his car in the CEO’s reserved spot.
It rang once, twice.
A gentle exhalation of breath slid softly through the phone, sliding through him like an elixir, warming his blood and ending up a coil of heat in his solar plexus. Then an all too familiar voice said, ‘Dax.’
Okay, so he hadn’t listened to the plethora of no doubt congratulatory messages first. They could wait. He told himself that calling her was like eating your vegetables before your dessert. Maybe she wanted her scarf back. Maybe she’d misdialled. Whatever she wanted, he was just getting it over with so he could enjoy the rest of his banner day.
‘Caitlyn,’ he said.
‘Dax,’ she said again as he slid behind the wheel of his car, shoving the phone into its hands-free slot. ‘I’d like to see you if I could. There are...things I’d like to say.’
His hands gripped the leather steering wheel and his eyes closed tight. It had been more than a week since he’d last seen her, standing there in his kitchen, her hair gloriously dishevelled, her legs bare all the way to her thighs, her curves barely hidden beneath his old red T-shirt as it slipped slightly off one shoulder.
Yeah. Maybe it would be good to see her again in a less evocative light. Maybe that was what he needed to get real closure.
He’d never had closure with his parents and it had eaten away at him for years. Giving this thing a clean ending would mean he could truly get on with his life.
He picked the time, later that evening. Enough for him to come down from the high of what he’d just given up so that he couldn’t mistake one feeling for the other.
She chose the place. His eyes flew open in surprise.
He saw his reflection in the tinted windows. His hair not so neat as it usually was. Dark smudges beneath his eyes. His lips a thin slash across a weary face.
‘Caitlyn,’ he said as he revved the engine.
‘Yes, Dax.’
‘Bring the ring.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE Sand Bar felt different so early in the evening. Quiet. Genteel even with the low conversation of the small after work crowd and smooth seventies R & B. Though Caitlyn’s mood couldn’t have been more dissimilar.
While earlier in the day she’d felt as if she were floating an inch off the ground—that was what getting rid of five years’ worth of baggage in the form of extraneous bling would do for a girl—now she felt so uptight she could barely stand still.
She tugged at her snug little belted sweater dress, twisting it straight. She smoothed down her hair. Fiddled with her grandmother’s earrings. She paced, her footsteps echoing on the recently polished floor, her watermelon-coloured toenails winking up at her hopefully.
She’d changed her outfit ten times before heading out again, needing a little extra oomph. Especially with the last words Dax had said to her jangling about inside her head.
Bring the ring.
Her fingers closed tightly around her enamel clutch purse with the ring reposing daintily inside as if she were waiting for a cat burglar to spring up from behind the bar and nab it from her. Not on her watch!
Her knees grew wobbly at the thought of giving it back. Not only because she thought it the most beautiful ring ever, but because, as she’d learned earlier that day, it would mark the real end of her relationship with Dax more than words flung in anger and disappointment ever could.
Bring the ring.
She shook Dax’s voice from her head. This wasn’t his party. It was hers. Her turn to say what she wanted to say, not what she thought she ought to out of the fear of losing all she loved. Thinking like that only destined her to be alone.
‘Screw that!’ she said to the chandelier over her head.
‘Caitlyn?’
Dax. His name came to her on an inner sigh. She closed her eyes, mostly to hold back the tears that gathered there at the sound of his deep velvety voice. The voice of the man she loved.
She turned. He stood mere metres away. Grey suit, neat white shirt, pale striped tie. God, he was beautiful.
Beautiful, and in pain. She saw hurt in his eyes. He was wary of her. The mere scraps of confidence she was holding onto for dear life frayed away to dust.
He was a formidable man. Yet he was watching her as if he were preparing for a frontal attack. And for the first time that day she was truly fearful that she’d made such a mess of things that there was no repairing their relationship in any form. That after this meeting he would be gone from her life for ever.
But if she was her father’s daughter at all, she wasn’t going to take failure lying down. She’d had a false start, and a big one. But now she had a goal well and truly in mind, if there was any chance to mend what they had, no matter how slim that she might be, she was going to give it a red-hot go.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she said, plastering a smile on her face. A ridiculous, incongruous smile. But it was either that or throw herself at him.
‘You’re welcome.’
The fact that they were being so polite considering the first time they’d met they’d traded verbal spars like pros almost brought Caitlyn down, but she marshalled her r
eserves and motioned to a pair of barstools. ‘Would you care to sit down?’
The spot was public, open, making it less likely she would give into the growing desire to brush the stray lock of dark hair from his forehead.
Dax watched her for a mere moment more, his eyes unreadable, his back stiff, making her almost sob in relief when he slid off his suit jacket and threw it onto the bar, then loosened his tie and lowered himself to the stool.
He motioned to the bartender, gesturing to the nearest tap.
‘Beer?’ Caitlyn asked, nodding to the bartender that she’d have the same. She settled on the stool beside his, careful not to touch knees.
‘Beer,’ he said with a decisive nod, his long fingers playing with a cardboard coaster. The dark lock of hair curling down onto his forehead was so tempting she had to curl her fingernails into her palm. ‘One of a long line of changes I’m making in my life.’
Caitlyn swallowed down the desperate need to know if she might have a chance at being one of them, or if she’d missed the boat for good.
Dax reached into his wallet to throw a note onto the bar that covered both drinks. Her heart twisted at the simple elegance of the move. ‘I resigned my post at the foundation this afternoon.’
‘You never!’ she said, giving him a punch on the upper arm before she could stop herself.
She drew her fist back, shoving the offending appendage under her opposite arm. But it was done. His eyes slid to his arm, his forehead creasing before his mouth kicked up at one corner as he slid his wallet back into his jacket. ‘I did.’
He hadn’t looked at her, hadn’t said a word about the contact, but she felt the warmth of him, and of that tiny flicker of a smile as if the ceiling had opened up and the midday sun was shining down atop her head.
She prayed to everything that was good and holy to give her a chance. To give them a chance. To help her find the right words to make him look at her again the way he’d just looked at his arm.
While Dax nodded his thanks at the bartender as he slid over the tall schooners of amber bubbles their way, Caitlyn said, ‘You have been a busy boy.’
‘I’ve had time to fill.’ With that he tipped back the frothy glass, drawing her eyes to the workings of his throat.
‘Yeah, me too.’
‘Doing?’ He glanced at her briefly, the familiar dark heat of his eyes making her stomach feel as if it were in free fall.
She looked down at her feet to hide her suddenly burning cheeks. ‘I, ah, I got my toenails painted.’
Dax shifted his knees apart so that hers rested in the nook between, not touching, but trapped, and together they looked at her toes. She heard him breathe deep through his nostrils before they both looked up, gazes colliding.
You can not lose this man again.
With that thought bolstering her confidence just enough, she said, ‘And now to our regularly scheduled programming. I know I don’t hold much sway right now, but if I can just ask for you to hear me out, there are things I’d like to clarify. If I may.’
Dax put down his beer and breathed deep through his nose, his inscrutable gaze not once leaving hers. His voice was extra deep as he said, ‘I have nowhere else to be.’
Caitlyn clasped tight to her clutch, and she plunged in.
‘That night when we first met I was going through some things. Dealing, badly, with mistakes I’d made. Relationship-type mistakes where I’d mistaken affection for love. Again and again and again.’
She paused to check his temperature, but apart from a gentle rise and fall of his chest he didn’t move. She went on.
‘And just as I’d decided I needed to change things up, there you were. Pure heaven in a dark grey suit. The very idea that a man like you could ever, ever, think himself in...in love with me—’ she swallowed, the very word creating inconvenient fireworks inside her ‘—seemed as likely as discovering I’m half Martian.’
‘Your mother’s side,’ Dax said without a pause.
Laughter shot from Caitlyn’s mouth. Relief, hope, and fear flashed through her like disco lights—on off, mixing and fading, making her feel light-headed. Especially when he went back to frowning into his beer.
‘Martian or not, I am my mother’s daughter, and knowing how cold and bitter she became, and remained, after Dad died...’ Her toes curled into her sandals. ‘I always thought I gravitated to men who gave me the affection I’d been missing in my teens. But now I wonder if I chose guys I knew would never leave me as deeply heartbroken as Mum still is once they’d gone. Either. Both. Who knows?’
He rolled his shoulder before lifting his head, but Caitlyn glanced away at the last second, her pluck not extending quite far enough to bear looking Dax in the eye as she said, ‘What I do know is that all that ended the day I met you.’
Her heart beat so hard she felt it bumping against her ribs and she could hear nothing of the sounds of the bar over the heavy whump whump whump of blood in her ears.
She closed her eyes, the words echoing as she said, ‘I’m not proud of what I must have made you think the day we parted, Dax, but I want you to know that you were no accident. I sought you out. I wanted you because from the moment I touched you I knew you were different from any man I’d ever met.’
Her eyes flung open as his knees bumped hers. He’d flinched at her choice of words. Only she had no clue if she’d hit a sore spot, or good.
She breathed deep, and lifted her head to find herself captured by a pair of hot hazel eyes. Eyes that no longer looked quite so haunted. Eyes that held a glimmer of a smile.
God, but she loved him. Had loved him for weeks. Months. For ever. How could she not have known it sooner? None of that mattered. What mattered was she knew it now. And she wanted him to know it too.
When Dax’s hand landed on her thigh her eyes zeroed in on it, not daring to hope. Then as his thumb passed soft circles over her knee the heat of his touch settled with a delicious deep thud at her very centre.
Inevitably, like a pendulum that had held far too long at the top of its arc, her eyes swung back to his.
‘And then what happened?’ Dax asked, sliding his hand another inch, the tips of his fingers finding their way beneath the hem of her skirt.
She breathed in and out. Not as if it helped. No man had ever managed to take her breath away quite as he did. ‘I freaked out, of course! And then,’ she said, ‘I discovered to my constant chagrin that you weren’t just some gorgeous guy in a suit and I freaked out just a little more.’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘Fine,’ she said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, ‘you are totally some gorgeous guy in a suit.’
He waved a hand over his face, as if she was embarrassing him. Laughter ruffled her insides, fresh and bracing, like breeze through a bird’s feathers.
But she was not done yet.
‘I’m basically a happy person, but you also know the bruises I hide below. The rough bits I assumed would only make it harder for someone to love me. You knew me and still you stayed. Then my freaking out took on gargantuan proportions.’
She held his gaze. He was smiling now. That slow, hot smile that meant he was thinking bad thoughts. Good bad thoughts, the kind that always boded so well for her.
She licked her lips, and said, ‘All I can say is you’re lucky you’re so unfairly sexy. I mean, your fingers were built for sin. And that thing you do with your mouth...’
She shivered deliciously.
His fingers tightened on her thigh.
The tension arcing between them in that moment was vibrating so hard, if she’d wanted him back in her bed, she probably could have stopped there. But for the first time in her life she wanted more than a dazzling rush. She wanted everything.
She lay her hand over his, tucking her cool fingers around his warm ones, and waited until she had his full attention. Only then did she say, ‘In the past, the idea of happily ever afters gave me palpitations, so when I found your ring... To me it represented the beg
inning of the end. And the thought of never seeing you again, of never feeling like this—’
She slid his hand an inch higher, feeling it tense as sensation shuddered through her at his touch. His eyes clouded over, dark and full of such desire her stomach curled in on itself in pure pleasure.
Her last words tumbled out of her in a mad rush. ‘I’ve missed you, Dax. Like crazy. Missed you with the kind of bone-deep ache I’ve spent my whole life avoiding. And then I realised there was only one sure way to avoid feeling that way. All I had to do was let go and let myself love you. So that’s what I did.’
She stopped to take a breath. A deep one. One that shook through her middle and made her feel ever so slightly faint. But when Dax’s fingers curled sure and tight around hers she knew the wait, the mistakes, every false start that had led to this point had been worth it.
She finished with a shrug because that was that. She had no idea what Dax was thinking as his eyes had left hers to rove over her face. All she could do was sit there, not faint, and hope that he loved what he saw.
Though, no. That wasn’t all she could do. In fact...
She slid from the stool as elegantly as she could in her short skirt, then extricated herself from the circle of Dax’s body, which was an achievement in itself considering how her body was urging her to do anything but.
Then she got down onto one knee and from her purse pulled the small velvet box, holding it out to him on one shaking hand.
‘I’m sorry I went so crazy when I found this ring, and I’m sorry in advance that I can’t promise I won’t go crazy again at some point in the future. But that’s what you get when you get me. I’m not easy and I’m not without occasional drama. But I hope that’s half the reason why you want me. And I want you to want me. More than words can say. Because I’m head over heels, for ever and ever, in love with you, Dax Bainbridge.’
Dax looked down at her as if she were nuts, until realisation spread across his face. His eyes grew wide, his mouth slack. If she wasn’t half wondering what slimy thing was that she had just knelt on, it might even have been funny.