If that was the case, it was a power he intended to erase. He flicked the top of the box open to reveal two diamond studs, at least three times the size of the ones William had given her.
“Hendrix,” she gasped when she saw them, shaking her head. “No.”
“Yes,” he insisted, passing the box to her.
“No.” Her response was far more serious. She stood up, dropping the box onto the lounge behind her. She paced over to the window, observing the glittering view of Manhattan by night. Her heart was still racing. But it was also breaking. She didn’t want gifts from him. Not under these circumstances.
Hendrix exhaled in genuine frustration. He pulled another box out of the bag, and strode silently over to Chloe. “Then at least let me give you this,” he murmured, sliding the engagement ring onto her finger before she could object.
Chloe stared down at it, completely lost for words. It was the most beautiful piece of jewellery she’d ever seen. Far more than jewellery, it was art. An enormous black diamond sat in the centre of a circlet of pristine white diamonds, and even more diamonds surrounded the platinum band. It shimmered on her finger with a blinding clarity. “Hendrix,” she groaned, lifting her hand to observe the beautiful spectre. She knew she would have to take it off, but for the moment, she couldn’t resist letting the jewel dazzle her.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a week, Chloe. It’s not a spur of the moment decision.”
“To marry me?” She drawled sarcastically.
He shook his head ruefully. “It is the only way to get a man like William to back off. He will hound you until he thinks all hope is lost.”
“And you think us pretending to be engaged will miraculously make my bastard of a husband take a hike?”
Hendrix wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her to him gently. “Not only do I think it, sweetheart, I promise it to you. I will swear to you now, on my sister’s soul, that he will not fight for you, once he knows I’m in the picture.”
Hope swelled in her chest. “You’re arrogant,” she couldn’t help opining, even when her mind was starting to make way for hope.
He was, but arrogance alone wasn’t informing him. “Perhaps.”
Her smile was involuntary. “But you don’t know him. He’s very obstinate,” she niggled, shaking her head. She sucked in a breath, and lifted a hand to his broad chest. “There must be some way we can use legal means to get him to go away.”
Oh, there were. And Hendrix intended to employ them fully. But the satisfaction of letting William believe them to be engaged was too sweet to resist. “Do this my way. Let me help you.”
Courage came to her when she needed it most. “The thing is,” she prevaricated softly, “I … like you, Hendrix Forrester.” Oh! It was such a bland way to describe how he made her feel. “I like spending time with you. And I like getting to know you. And I like being with you.” She forced her eyes to meet his without cowering. “And I don’t want to ruin that by putting us into a crazy hot house.”
Feelings that were new and uncontrollable were weaving into his being. “I’ve known men like your husband all my life.” His lips were a grim slash. “Rich, entitled, arrogant sons of bitches who think they can control anyone they want.”
Chloe watched his face darken, her own expression thoughtful. “Yes,” she murmured, lifting her fingers to her temples and massaging her foggy head. It was a perfect description of William Ansell-Johns.
“He won’t care if he hurts you.”
A sob bubbled in her throat. She swallowed it. “He never has,” she said, so quietly Hendrix had to strain to catch her words. “But I don’t know that stooping to his level is the answer.”
“It’s the only way.” His hands were warm on her sides. “He’s going to make you sound …”
“Like a bad mother,” she interrupted, despair evident in the tightening of her mouth.
“Yes. On paper, he will have a point. You don’t have the financial means …”
“Because of him!” She cut in again, shaking her head with fury.
“Yes. And we’ll address that. I’ve had a team working up what we’d need to go to the authorities with a watertight case of theft. But more than that, it’s his name. It’s his family. It’s that he’ll be able to claim you kept him out of Ellie’s life. Your apartment. Even Georgia. The fact you have a British passport and could permanently flee the country. He will be able to make a persuasive case against you.”
Chloe’s breath was ragged. Her lungs were burning with exertion, as though she’d run a marathon. “He didn’t want her. And he doesn’t really want her now. I had to leave him. I was scared of what he might do.” Her thoughts were coming in little bursts. Her mind was a series of blocks that weren’t quite fitting together.
Hendrix nodded. “You didn’t go to the hospital.”
She looked up into his eyes, her brain still not quite focussing. “When? When I had Ellie? I did. I was there three nights. I had the medical bills to prove it.”
The bastard hadn’t even helped with the medical expenses. Hendrix wanted to pound William. He wanted to make him suffer, for all the pain he’d inflicted on both Chloe and Eleanor in their young lives. “When William hurt you the last time.”
“Oh.” She shook her head. “The last time? No.” She furrowed her brow. “I was fine. Scared, but okay. I think I was just so shell-shocked to have left him, it never occurred to me.”
“I understand. But it’s going to be your word against his. It’s not easy to show a pattern of abuse when you didn’t go to the police or hospital.”
“It wasn’t a pattern of abuse,” she denied hotly, embarrassed to think of herself as a victim. That very emotion of embarrassment shamed her. For it hadn’t been her choice, nor her fault.
Her defence of William made his blood run cold. “Hitting a woman even once is unacceptable.”
She nodded. “Yes, but …”
“But what?” He pushed, reigning in his temper with enormous effort.
What were they arguing about? What was she saying? What did she need? Ellie. She just needed to know Ellie would be safe. “This is a nightmare.”
“No.” He wrapped his arms around her middle, holding her tight and hoping that some of his confidence would flow into her. “I’m not going to let him take Ellie, sweetheart. I’m only preparing you for the ugliness of the fight. But I can promise you, I will use every tool at my disposal to make sure he gets out of your life, and stays out.”
She swallowed, but her throat was dry. “But he’s not going to go quietly.”
“Perhaps not,” Hendrix murmured, stroking her back, marvelling at the warmth of her skin beneath her clothes. “But he will go.”
Chloe rested her cheek against Hendrix’s chest. She could feel his steady heart beating; it was strong and defiant. Confident and in control. She breathed in his fragrance and felt some of her fear ebb away.
“I’m glad I have you,” she said softly. The words came out of nowhere, and she straightened awkwardly, after she’d said them. “I’m glad I have you as my lawyer, I mean.” Her cheeks flushed.
She looked down at the forgotten feeling of a ring on her finger. It really was stunning. But it was wrong. She toyed with it, running it around in circles, and then slid it off. She held it out to him, but Hendrix didn’t move to take it.
“You have me as more than your lawyer,” he responded with a small smile that showed he understood her hesitation. “And I’m glad too. Glad that you caught the elevator to the wrong level of the building, and glad your handbag snapped right when I came out of my office.”
She shook her head. “But we shouldn’t need to resort to some kind of rouse to beat William.”
“Don’t you think he’s going to lie, Chloe? To get what he wants, don’t you think he’ll invent every fiction under the sun? Who knows what he’ll lay at your feet. Infidelity, financial recklessness, abandonment …”
She groaned and moved away from him. Her
legs felt weak, and she collapsed into the sofa. “I know.” She exhaled slowly. “I just don’t get why!”
“Because you’re his wife. And he doesn’t want to let you go.”
“But we’ve been estranged for three years. I thought I was safe.” She fixed him with a cool, blue gaze, but it was obvious she was anywhere but in his loft apartment. “That first year, I spent every moment looking over my shoulder. I was sure he’d come for me. But then, I had Ellie, and I let him know about her. And he didn’t respond.” She shrugged her shoulders. “As time went on, I started to feel safe. And free. Free enough to divorce him, even.”
Hendrix hooked the ring over his thumb and ran a hand over his stubbled chin. He’d always had a robust five o’clock shadow, and now it covered his square jawline. “And that’s when he acted.”
“Yes. He must have got a note from your firm, and I guess withdrew my savings, and had me investigated.” A shiver ran down her spine at the thought of her and Ellie having been spied on while they were carrying on their normal activities.
“William is a proud, arrogant asshole.” His voice rang with a deep, unmistakable fury. It stilled the comment she’d about to make.
“You do that a lot,” she said quietly.
“Do what?”
“You speak like you know him. Like this is personal for you, too.”
Wariness stole over him. “It is.” He prowled towards her, powerfully and intent. “For many reasons, Chloe, this is personal for me.”
He was so distractingly handsome. So masculine and confident. She watched as he closed the space between them, and settled beside her. Her mouth worked overtime to bring some moisture back. He placed a hand on her leg, and she looked down at it. The sight of the enormous engagement ring on his thumb caught her attention. “Like I said, I’ve known men like him all my life. I grew up surrounded by them.” He forced himself to render a version of his life that was close to the truth. “My sister fell prey to a man who was arrogant, rich, and thought he therefore had every right to treat her like shit.”
Chloe was a bug, caught in his web. She leaned closer, and lifted her legs beneath her on the lounge. He rarely spoke of his sister. She hoped with all her heart that he wouldn’t stop. Hendrix couldn’t have, even if he’d wanted to. “Men like William think they can take what they want. They have no respect for decency or morals.”
He was silently brooding. Chloe wrapped her fingers around his and prompted, “And your sister fell in love with a guy like that?”
“Yeah.” His smile was tight. “She fell in love with a guy just like that. He got her pregnant, and played with her. She was nothing but a game to him. And then, he got her killed.”
“Got her … killed?” Her eyes were glued to his face. She scarcely dared breathe in case it threw him off track.
His grunt was a sound of agreement. “He was driving. The night she died.”
“Oh, God. Her boyfriend was the drink driver?” She squeezed his hand; her expression was loaded with sympathy. “I’m so sorry. Hendrix, that’s truly awful.”
“Yes,” he muttered, freeing himself from her gentle touch and dragging his hand through his hair. The cornerstones of his conscience and life were being eroded.
“What happened to him?”
His black eyes flashed with an emotion that Chloe mistook for pain. “He walked away virtually unscathed.”
“He must have been devastated,” she murmured. The way her sympathy naturally extended to the man Hendrix felt had murdered his sister galled him. He stood up abruptly and strode over to the windows. The view of Manhattan barely registered.
“I doubt it. Like I said, my sister was nothing more than a toy to him.”
“But their baby …? If he didn’t mourn your sister, surely he did their baby?”
Hendrix felt like he was on a rollercoaster. It was dipping swiftly forward, and he couldn’t quite steady himself. “No. He went back to his life.”
“I don’t understand. How is that possible? If he was drunk, surely there would have been criminal charges to face. Repercussions for his actions?”
“No.”
Chloe moved to him without thinking about it. Her legs carried her forward, controlled only by the yearning to comfort him; to remove his pain. “Why not? You’re a brilliant lawyer with a whole firm at your disposal. How did he get away with it?”
“Money, Chloe. The Williams of the world are used to throwing money around to make their problems go away. His blood tests miraculously came up clear.”
“How?” She demanded, outraged on Hendrix’s behalf.
“I presume he paid the lab to switch his test with someone else’s. The police eventually concluded that it was just an accident. One of those things.” His tone rang with cynicism.
“That’s … terrible!”
“Yes,” he agreed, angling his face to hers. And his eyes were like black chunks of coal. She shivered at the rage that emanated from him. “So you see, Chloe, I know what we’re facing with your husband. I know what he’s capable of. And I won’t let you get screwed over.” He unhooked the ring from his thumb and placed it back on her hand.
Chloe stared down at it, her heart jackhammering in her chest. She thought about pointing out that William wasn’t necessarily anything like the man who’d killed Eleanor. But Hendrix was hurting, and she wanted to take that hurt away. She reached up a hand and curled her fingers around his cheek. “I’m so sorry about your sister.”
His chest was rising and falling with the strength of his breathing. What could he say? She’d been as much a victim as Eleanor. The same man had weaved poison through their lives.
“I want to go to bed,” she said quietly, her hands dropping to his chest.
“Are you tired?” He queried, realising belatedly that they hadn’t eaten.
“No.” She shook her head, sadness in her expression. And something else. She stood on tiptoes and captured his lips. Her kiss was warm and gentle. Soft and filled with promise. A promise that it would be okay. Not for her, but for him. She felt his ache, she understood his sadness, and she was kissing it away.
He groaned, deepening the kiss, and lifting her against his body. He didn’t want her gentle touch. He didn’t want her to be soft with him. That was too much. More than he deserved.
Her body, on the other hand, he was powerless to resist. He carried her to his room, not even pausing to turn the light on. He didn’t do anything that might delay his coming together with Chloe Ansell-Johns. His need for her was all-consuming. As though he could erase all of the chaotic disaster that had brought them together in the first place.
He made love to her as though he was possessed by demons. Which, he acknowledged hours later, he was. Demons of the past, and demons of a future which would not feature Chloe.
Not when she learned the truth.
And so he held her tight in that moment, aware that he would have to let her go soon enough.
For the time was near. Soon, he would put his plan into action. Soon. But not yet. He wasn’t ready just yet.
CHAPTER NINE
The falling rain should have been his first clue. It was heavier than usual; a real downpour, it drenched New York with a thunderous insistence.
Hendrix sat in his chair, his eyes dark, his mood darker still.
“I can do this, sir.” Clint Douglas was not prone to nervousness. But the always over-bearing Hendrix Forrester was in a strange mood. He’d barely looked at Clint since he arrived in his office an hour earlier. Only a small nod every so often gave any indication that Hendrix was listening.
“Perhaps,” Hendrix conceded quietly.
Far, far beneath him, the stage was being set. William would be near enough to the building. If he hadn’t in fact already arrived. And Chloe? His stomach dropped as he thought of her. The woman he’d intended to use as a pawn in his revenge plot now stood to find out, for the second time in her young life, that men were untrustworthy bastards.
“Do you w
ant me to?”
She’d been in his apartment for a fortnight. She, and Ellie. If it was possible, his gut ached even harder. The little girl with the mop of fair curls and beaming eyes had worked her way into his spirit in a terrifying way. Despite his best efforts to keep a hard heart, he’d fallen under her spell too.
“No.” He tipped his head, so that he could face his young associate.
“No what, sir?”
Hendrix turned back to the view. “No, I don’t want you to take this meeting. You’ve got all the paperwork in the file?”
“Yes.” Clint had already gone over this. Whatever was going on in his boss’s wonderful brain, it was not focussed on their client’s imminent divorce proceedings. “This is the last chance to reach a settlement before going to court.” How did one accuse their boss of not being up to a task? Especially when the boss in question was as magnificently well-regarded as Hendrix Forrester? The wunderkind of the legal scene, he was renowned for his genius.
“I am aware of that.”
Clint winced. Yes. A brilliant mind, Hendrix had read through the thinly-veiled query. “Do you mind if I ask what your tactic is?”
Hendrix expelled a long, slow breath. His tactic? Did he have one? His fingers gripped the arms of his chair. “I’m going to get rid of William Ansell-Johns.”
Clint frowned. “Yes, sir, but how?”
Hendrix didn’t respond. “Let me know when he arrives.”
The dismissal was obvious. Clint stood, lingering for a moment, before shaking his head and leaving the office altogether. He waited in the foyer with Maria and Grace, Hendrix’s two assistants. There were definitely some perks to coming up to the boss’s floor of the building.
William Ansell-Johns and his attorney arrived right on time. Clint saw them coming off the elevator and took his queue. He moved straight into Hendrix’s office. “He’s here.”
Hendrix stood. His suit was jet black; it matched his eyes and lashes perfectly. “Excellent.”
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