by Nan Comargue
“Not a word,” Alexa said, pleased with how normal her voice sounded. She put the ice cream down on the coffee table. “Why do you ask?”
Val sighed again but this time the noise was bearable. “I’ve spoken to him, of course, and he seems…well, different. I wanted to see what you might have thought.”
“To compare notes?” Alexa laughed shortly. “Mine wouldn’t be very good anyway, even if he did contact me. You saw how it was in January. He froze me out.”
“Yes,” Val said, a note of curiosity creeping into her voice, “and I saw how you reacted to that treatment.”
“Val—”
“You cried, Alexa. I hadn’t seen you cry like that since you were a girl.”
Her stepmother was right. Alexa hadn’t cried like that in a long time, because she hadn’t felt like that in a long time—as if the world had ended, as if her heart was broken into pieces and would never feel again.
“You love him,” Val said gently. “That’s why you reacted like that.”
The resulting silence was as good as a confession. Val knew, but then Val was very perceptive at times. The fear was, did Nik know?
All that kept Alexa tenuously holding onto her pride was the fact that she’d put up a good front, not letting people know that inside she was the walking wounded, a body minus a heart. Her heart had gone bounding around the world with her errant stepbrother. Since January, her heart hadn’t called or texted or Skyped. Cruel heart.
“My son is a passionate man,” Val said, “just as his father was. He inherited his father’s stubbornness too. Sometimes, I have thought, were it not for his stubbornness, Nikolai’s father wouldn’t have been… Well, perhaps it would have been so anyway. One cannot outrun one’s destiny.”
Her destiny. Was that what Nik was? Alexa had fought it every way she knew how yet she’d still ended up falling in love with him. But what was destiny could also be disaster.
“Nikolai is also a good man,” his mother went on, the pride in her voice not detracting one bit from her sincerity. “I’ve told you that for a long time, but finally you know enough to believe me. It is because you kept your distance from him all these years that you were able to love him now. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing.”
It made sense. Alexa had fallen in love with Nik now because she’d never gotten used to thinking of him as her brother. Indeed, she’d done everything to keep them apart.
Val was right. He was a good man. More than his mother could know.
Nik was still too loud, too energetic, too much sometimes, but she loved him for it. Being with him caused his vibrancy to spill over onto her. His eagerness for life made her eager to share that life with him.
The only times she’d ever seen him pull back and check himself was when he was with her, because he thought that was what she needed from him. Patience. Kindness. Understanding.
Those were exactly the ways in which she had failed him.
She’d been so afraid to fully love him back, to make herself vulnerable to him, that she’d distrusted him, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
So when Val said, very softly, “He loves you too, you know. He is just angry right now,” Alexa really didn’t need to hear the words. She already knew the truth.
She couldn’t let her heart keep roaming away from her.
* * * *
He loves me. He loves me.
Alexa repeated the words to herself as she entered the building, like she was playing a rigged version of that demented flower petal game, plucking out the petals without the usual balancing phrase— He loves me not.
No, Nik loved her. She knew it.
He had to.
The elevator spat her out on the tenth floor, the top of the building. The building, like the rest of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, was legitimately working class in its bones but recently transformed with an upper-middle-class facelift. It was packed with tech companies, trendy artisanal enterprises—and LayPeople Law, the now-public corporation Nik had founded.
The throwback brass faceplate in front of the door said ‘Putting Law into Laypeople’s Hands’. Not exactly a catchy slogan, but it was accurate. That was exactly what LayPeople Law had been doing since it had been in business, starting by offering online legal kits on how to represent yourself before an eviction hearing or prove your grandmother’s will, and now partnering with some of the biggest law firms in the country to provide piecemeal menus of legal services that litigants could choose from without having to plunk down thousands of dollars to retain a lawyer.
Alexa looked nervously down at her outfit. Her tailored skirt and cashmere sweater, topped by a grey wool coat, were perfectly matched to the New York City weather, but she’d stood out in the knit-hatted and scarfed twentysomethings strolling the streets outside.
Well, it was too late to change—but not too late to back out of this entire trip.
She’d traveled to New York at her stepmother’s urging and her best friend’s cautious encouragement. But neither of them knew how it would turn out. Neither of them were putting their hearts on the line.
“Hey, can I help you?”
The friendly voice caused Alexa to turn sharply and almost collide with its owner.
“Careful,” the young man said mildly as he jostled a tray full of paper cups. He reached around her to open the door and gestured Alexa inside with a thrust of his chin. “Go ahead.”
She had no choice but to enter the LayPeople Law office.
The young man followed, dumped his tray on a handy table, then pulled off his slouchy knitted hat to reveal a mop of red-gold hair.
He regarded Alexa with interest. “Are you here for an interview? We’re pretty casual, you know.”
Alexa stuck her hands in her coat pockets and hugged the material closer to her body.
This was a mistake. She didn’t even know if Nik was working today…
“What are you doing here?”
She turned. It was Nik, dressed quite formally and looking cross.
The young man was the first to react. “Oh, hey, boss. I think we’ve found that new research lawyer we needed.” He lifted his cupped hand to his mouth and dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “Now you’ve got to hire her.”
“See?” the young man said to Alexa in his former tone. “I’m watching out for you. You seem normal.”
His words were bland but his gaze was frankly admiring, openly enough for Alexa to feel her cheeks grow warm.
Nik smiled briefly, though his eyes remained arctic blue. “Since when do we hire normal people?” He inclined his head slightly. “What are you doing here, Alexa?”
As a greeting, it wasn’t exactly warm and comforting.
Alexa curled and uncurled her fingers in her pockets. “I came to see you.”
“Did my mother send you?”
She shook her head before remembering the damage lies had already caused between them. “Well, Val suggested it. That was all she did, though.”
Nik curled his lip. “Right.” He noticed the other man goggling. “Why don’t you come into my office?”
“Here!” The red-haired man pushed a cup into her hand. “You look like you could use a warm up. The boss seems to be intent on freezing you out. Though why he would do that, I have no idea.”
“That’s enough, Tim.” Nik’s tone was as sharp as his stare. “This way, Alexa.”
It was still ‘Alexa’, not Lexy. She never thought she could be so unhappy to hear her own name.
Nik’s office was spacious and bright. The walls and surfaces were crowded with artifacts from his travels and on his desk—
“When did you take that photo?”
A number of framed photographs stood on his desk but there was no doubt that the woman in the silver frame was her. Smiling, face averted, looking away from the camera, unaware perhaps that she was being photographed. She put the coffee cup down to touch it.
“Two years ago at the wedding.”
The weddin
g where he’d kissed her.
“Oh.”
He curved his mouth in the first hint of humor. “I took it before you slapped me.” The smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. “Why are you here?”
He loves me.
Alexa lifted her chin to face him. It was warm in the office and his dress shirt clung to the naked skin beneath. He was so sexy…but the time apart had pushed her lust into the background. The pain of being separated and her suffering over it had winnowed out the purely extraneous, leaving the true core of her feelings. It didn’t matter how sexy he was or how great he was in bed, that had only brought them together in the first instance. Only love could give her the bravery to stand here in front of him and let herself be vulnerable.
“I didn’t mean it,” she blurted out. “What I said before, I mean.”
Nik shoved his hands into his pockets. “When you said what? That you loved me or that you hated me?”
He wasn’t going to make it easy for her, not that she expected anything different. He was still wary of her. But the anger, at least, was gone.
“Neither. When I said that you just wanted sex.”
She’d backed into the desk. Even in the large space, his height and breadth of shoulder commandingly occupied the room. His energy and earnestness had always made her uneasy. How was she to recognize that so much of it was directed toward her? He’d been trying all his life to show her how important she was to him. Meanwhile, she’d been running away from him for the same amount of time, almost as if she knew he would be her greatest vulnerability one day, that all their uneasy interactions would bring them to this fraught moment.
Nik made no move to close the distance between them.
“Didn’t I?”
It took all of her courage to shake her head and deny what he was implying.
“No, I don’t think you did,” she said. “It was infinitely more complicated for you to sleep with me than it would have been to stay away.” He had to agree. He loved her.
“Was it?” Nik freed his hands from his pockets only to cross his arms over his chest. “Maybe I just wanted to see if you would slap my face again. Imagine my surprise when you let me fuck you the same night you found out we weren’t related.”
He loves me not. Humiliation stung her cheeks as if she’d been slapped.
“Nikky, I’m so sorry. I—” She broke off, not knowing what she was saying, not even knowing what she was apologizing for.
He was breaking her heart.
“You what?” Nik prompted, sounding as if he was reluctant to ask the question.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” she said, her eyes pleading with him for that small mercy. “I want us to be friends.”
He laughed shortly. “Friends,” he repeated. “Why would I want to be friends with a neurotic basket case who’s pushing forty and still hasn’t got her life on track?”
The sound that left her lips was half shocked surprise and half sob. She was going to lose it and break down, right here in his office, begging him to love her. That would truly make her humiliation complete.
“I should go,” she whispered, blinking rapidly.
He was in her way. She pushed past him to get to the door and she stumbled. He steadied her but when she tried to break free of his grasp, he didn’t let go.
“Why did you come here today?” Nik demanded. “It wasn’t just to tell me that you believed me now, was it?”
He sounded so harsh, so unapproachable, even with his hands on her, reminding her of the strength he possessed beneath his casual exterior.
Her bravery was gone. All that was left was the old instinct to protect herself. She couldn’t let him see how much he’d hurt her.
“I came for sex. What else?” Alexa prayed he believed her, even when she couldn’t quite meet his gaze.
Nik’s grip slackened. “All the way from Chicago? Are you that hard up or was I that good?”
He believed her! Could it be that he was just as uncertain about her motives as she was about his?
“The latter,” Alexa replied, sneaking a peek up at him from beneath her eyelashes.
His hard mouth quirked into a smile. A real smile this time.
“Good answer.” Pushing apart her coat, he shifted his hands to her waist, drawing her closer. “It’s not exactly convenient, though, is it?”
Beneath the thud of her quickening heartbeat, Alexa recognized her own words being thrown back at her. He wasn’t making this easier.
But if all she could get was another intimate hour with him, she was foolish enough and greedy enough to take it. Afterward, she would have to figure out a way to make the memory last a lifetime.
She kept her eyes focused on his chest and the triangle of skin that showed at the top of his shirt where the top buttons gaped open. She wanted to put her lips to that golden skin and taste him properly.
“No, it’s not convenient,” she murmured, “but it is that good.”
“Lexy!” Her name burst from his lips like a curse. He ran his hand through his already tousled hair. “What are you trying to do to me?”
Love you. “Seduce you.”
He laughed. “Mrs. Robinson you’re not. And you don’t need to try too hard—or haven’t you noticed?”
He pulled her hips closer in a movement that made her explicitly aware of his erection.
Alexa licked her lips. “Here?” she whispered.
“No, you wanton.” He tempered his words with a sliding caress over her bottom. “We have an open-door policy, and I’m not sure my staff want to be that familiar with me yet.”
“Nik—” He probably couldn’t help but hear the need in her voice. She wasn’t trying to hide it.
His grip tightened around her waist. “I have a conference call in half an hour. We could meet after that. Where are you staying?”
She told him.
“Noon,” he told her. “At your hotel room.”
For a moment he looked down into her face searchingly then sighed. Then he bent his head to kiss her hard on the lips, so quickly that she had no time to kiss him back.
When he pulled back, his face was contorted with frustration.
Alexa’s heart gave a little bounce. She may be a basket case, but he still wanted her. His need was driven into every line of his body. It throbbed in the air between them.
She said his name again quietly and this time closed the distance between them herself. Their lips met in a hot tangle.
He loved her. He must want this as much as she did. He had to know how much it meant.
She wanted to tell him the truth, that she loved him so very much, but the words were lodged somewhere in her throat. A moment ago he’d been so angry. That was more than stubbornness and a passionate nature. He’d almost looked as if he hated her.
“Not here,” Nik said again, but this time the words were mashed between their mouths and swallowed up quickly.
Alexa parted her lips, inviting him in, and when he thrust his tongue into her mouth with a groan, she knew that he was hers.
She sucked on his tongue, pulling him closer by the shirt front, reveling in the nearness of him after their long drought, in the way his erection grew strong and insistent between them. It was the only thing between them. She would make sure of that. She would explain everything and he would forgive her. They would forgive each other. And they would move on—together.
Clinging to his shoulders, she pushed her breasts against him, the nipples sharply defined, even through the many soft layers of winter clothing. She rubbed them over his chest, savoring the erotic friction.
When Nik pulled away, his lips were moist and slightly swollen.
He looked down at the points of her nipples sticking out beneath the crumpled cashmere and he swallowed audibly.
“Don’t take them out,” he warned her in a way that told her that he very much wanted her to.
Alexa slid her hands up and down his arms. “Why? Because of the open-door policy or because yo
u can’t resist them?”
He raised his eyes to her face. They were brilliantly dark and blue and perfectly serious. “I can resist you,” he told her. “You don’t trust me. You don’t—”
Alexa took one of the hands she was holding and pulled it up and under her sweater and silky bra until was it was resting against her heart. Beneath the hard dryness of his palm, her nipple pulsed in the rhythm of her heartbeats.
Nik lowered his forehead to rest on hers. “God, Lexy!”
His breathing hitched as he played with her nipple, squeezing and tugging it into a small pebble until they were both gasping. Then, with one swift movement, he pushed both bra and sweater up over her breast, exposing it to his hungry mouth when he leaned down to seize it.
Nik devoured her hot, sensitized flesh with teeth and tongue, suckling on her nipple until all of her nerves seemed to be attached directly to it and every draw sent lightning flashes to her extremities, curling her fingers and toes. Before he moved on to the second breast, her pussy was already damp and ready for him.
Alexa stroked his sandy hair back from his fever-hot forehead. “Do you have a condom?”
Nik jerked back from her touch. “What? No!”
She tried to smile as he straightened up but she felt vulnerable and exposed. “It’s okay, we can—”
“No, we can’t,” he said, cutting through her words. Then, when he saw her expression, his smoothed out a little. “Not like this, I mean. In your hotel room, like we said.”
“Okay.” Alexa fixed her clothes back into order. “I’ll see you then.”
She managed to walk across the room fine but she had to turn back at the doorway for one last glance at him. He was looking out of the window with his phone to his ear, his back to her.
Even though she knew she would see him in just a few hours, a pang shot through her.
He loves me.
* * * *
At twelve exactly, there was a knock at her hotel room.
Alexa swung open the door with a glad smile she could not suppress.