November 15, 2009 by admin
Filed under Contemporary Romance, Looking for Home, Nan Donahue
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Later that evening M tapped on the door to Jonathan’s office. For the last forty minutes she’d sat in the kitchen trying to cloak herself with a blanket of calm.
It proved to be a useless exercise.
Bottom line? She had to tell Jonathan what she’d learned today. The whole situation made her ill for so many reasons, but this was the right thing to do.
“Come in.”
She bit her lip, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
M gave herself a bit more time by letting her eyes sweep the room before landing on him. She didn’t know a lot about interior design, but this room fit him somehow.
Most of the house screamed rich old man, old money. The office, with its clean lines and bold strokes of colour felt more young urban professional than rich old man.
M’s eyes clung to him as he stood. Why did he affect her this way? Not long ago she swore she’d never let another man have any sort of power over her emotions. Especially a man like him. Someone who made her feel like a peon standing before a prince. She didn’t need her lowly stance crammed down her throat every time she looked at someone.
Yet despite her intentions, with just a look, he made her smoulder. Fires long doused danced to life, and she felt the tickle and lick of their flames.
She pressed a hand against her belly. Control. She needed control. But the fact that she knew—knew—he felt the heat too, made control elusive.
Well, what she needed to tell him would extinguish the fire, and likely lower her in his estimation.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Yes. Is everything okay?”
She gulped. “Um…no.”
He settled back in his chair and waved to her to take a seat. He didn’t say anything, just arched a brow, and waited.
M laced her fingers together in her lap and looked at them. ‘There’s something I need to tell you. Today…this afternoon…”
She looked up when she heard his chair squeak. He’d leaned toward her. “Yes? Today? What happened today that you need to tell me about?”
“Alicia dropped her ice cream cone on my foot.”
He dropped back in his chair, an expression of disbelief crossing his face. “And you’re making this big of a deal about it? Lady, do us both a favour and pack your bags now. She’s a kid. Stuff happens. If you can’t deal with that you shouldn’t have agreed to this.”
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Just tell him. She gripped her fingers together so tightly the colour leached out of them. “She asked me if I was going to hit her. She thought I would hit her for making a mistake. And I knew. I had to ask her, but I already knew. Summer used to hit her.”
For an instant his face went blank, pale. Then his eyes blazed, and he morphed into the beast she’d likened him to yesterday.
He jumped up and came around the desk to her. “What? That’s impossible. She would have told us.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Summer told her she’d hurt your father if Alicia ever told either of you.”
“She’d hurt Dad? That’s crazy.”
“No. It makes sense. I’ve watched your sister. She loves you, and she’d try to protect you. She let Summer hit her to protect you and your father.”
He prowled around the room, fury rolling off him in waves. “My God… I knew she was trash. I tried to warn my father, but he couldn’t see past her face, and the fake way she smiled at him. But hey, why should I be surprised? She was just one more in a long line of low women that played my father for the sucker he was.”
Tears ran unchecked now. And her nose. She’d kill for a Kleenex. “I’m sorry.”
He whirled on her. “Would you stop it! Stop apologizing. What happened between you and Alicia?”
“I didn’t hit her!”
He sat down at his desk, lowered his head into his hands, and gripped his hair with his fists. “What did you say to her? She seemed okay. A little quiet, but she’s been quiet since she met… oh God. That’s why she’s been acting so strange around you.”
M gave in and wiped her nose on her wrist. Eewww. “I told her to tell you if anyone ever hit her, or scared her. Even if it’s me. She’s supposed to run right to you, no matter what anyone says. I promised her I would never hit her.”
She looked at him and repeated. “I would never hit her.”
Jonathan just stared at her.
She’d known this deal had to be too good to be true. Things just never came this easily to her. “I’ll leave. I understand. Would you mind…” Her breath hitched, and she swiped a hand across her cheeks. “Would you mind if I spent the night and left in the morning?”
He opened a drawer and rooted around, then stood with a box of tissues in his hand and came around the desk.
“Here.”
She grabbed one and wiped her eyes. Grabbed a second and honked her nose. What did she care? At this point she was way beyond worrying about her dignity.
He reached behind him, grabbed a waste basket, and silently handed it to her.
He confused her. Why be nice? “Thanks.”
“Why do you want to leave?”
“I… I don’t want to leave! But I…you…Summer…”
“You’re not Summer, and I never said you were. I never thought you were. Were you being truthful when you said you wouldn’t hit Alicia?”
“Yes! It’s wrong! My parents…” She stopped and looked away from him. “I made a promise to myself a long time ago. To never hit a child. I repeated that promise to your sister today. I won’t do it!”
He stared at her for so long she began to fidget. “Don’t you believe me?”
“You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe you.”
“Oh. Then…you’ll let me stay?”
He inclined his head, but his eyes never left her face.
Oh, this is just so unfair. He sat propped on the side of his desk with ankles crossed, and hands in his pockets. Although the clench of his jaw and the fire still blazing in his eyes belied his calm pose, he looked supremely in control of his emotions.
And her? Her emotions were still spinning in the vortex initiated yesterday when she arrived at his door. She’d cried more in the last day than she had in years.
Okay, that wasn’t true. She’d done her share of crying a few months ago, but that had nothing to do with her family. At least not directly.
“I’m not like them.” Which one of us am I trying to convince?
“You’re not like who?”
“My family.”
He didn’t say anything, just kept up with the Superman, x-ray vision thing. What was with the people in this house? Every single one of them had looked at her with that spooky ‘I can read your mind,’ intensity.
“Did you talk to your parents this morning?”
M sucked in a breath and drew herself up. “I talked to my mother.”
He watched her for a moment. “And how did it go? She must’ve been upset.”
A mantle of ice descended on her, freezing out all emotion. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
She pushed herself up out of the chair. “Anyway, I just thought I should tell you about what Summer did. I think Alicia’s okay. She seems like such a well adjusted little girl, considering what she’s been through, but maybe you should talk to her about it, and decide whether or not she needs any help with it.”
Jonathan’s jaw clenched. “Oh, you can be sure I’ll be talking to her. It’s a good thing Summer is dead, because she wouldn’t have liked dealing with me. I’d have forgotten all my mother’s lessons on how to treat ladies. Not that Summer was a lady by any stretch of the imagination.”
M cringed. Stop taking everything he says about her so personally. He’s talking about Summer, not you!
Jonathan reached out and grasped her bare shoulder. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless. All of it.”
I wonder if this is what a hot flash feels like.
Ice gave way to blistering heat. Her breathing stilled, her heart took wings, and her tummy clenched. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, her knee joints gave, and she nearly swayed toward him.
Please God, let me be reacting to some sort of bug I’ve picked up, not his touch.
But she couldn’t fool herself. As his thumb began a slow, circuitous movement on her collarbone, she accepted—no, she didn’t accept, she acknowledged—the impact he had on her. With nothing more than a simple touch he underscored the fact that sex influenced more than the body, because he tugged on sexual strings in her mind, her heart.
No, no, no! This is richy rich. Your boss. Remember that!
She pulled away. “It’s okay. Um…I’ll go now. Goodnight.”
As her fingers grasped the doorknob, he spoke again. “Em…Ember?”
A hysterical laugh bubbled beneath the surface. Ember! What a perfect choice. Because sure as death and taxes, the fire may have banked when I pulled away from him, but the remains still smoulder.
She shook her head but didn’t look back at him.
He sighed. “Would you please tell me your name?”
Another shake of her head. He already had enough to mock her about. Why give him more ammunition?
“I’m sorry about this afternoon. I know I hurt you somehow when I asked about the business you’re starting, but I didn’t mean to. I did mean what I said about helping you. Helping with start ups is part of what I do. If you don’t have a business plan, I can assist with its preparation. If you’ve already got one, I’d be happy to look over it for you. No charge.”
Without releasing the doorknob, she turned back to look at him. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you offering to help? You don’t know me, and we’re not friends, so what gives?”
He didn’t physically take a step back, but he somehow withdrew. His eyes bore into hers for a moment before dropping to the floor. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his pants, then looked back at her. “I don’t know.”
And she could tell it bugged the hell out of him.
Something was going on between the two of them. She knew it, and she knew he knew it. Neither of them wanted it, neither of them liked it. But it was there.
So much for believing sexual chemistry is nothing but a bunch of hocus pocus. Here I am. Your new poster child.
Oh, she’d been attracted to men before. On all sorts of levels. But she’d never—ever—felt this pull. She’d never felt anything so complex, so amazing, so mysterious.
Her cognitive self shied away from him. Urged her to remember he had the power to hurt her. Her intuitive self, independent of all reasoning, whispered something else in her ear. A siren’s call, telling her he’d provide a safe harbour, maybe even the home she’d looked for all these years.
Fortunately, her cognitive self stepped up and kicked little Miss Intuition’s butt.
“I don’t know either. But thanks for the offer.”
This time he didn’t stop her from leaving the room.
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Thanks to Nan Donahue for sharing one of her manuscripts.
