He could just walk away, keep walking down the passageway to his old room. He could just ignore her and let her know her ploy had left him completely unmoved. He should just walk away.
But the urge to show her that he wouldn’t fall for her tricks was too great. She needed to know that he knew all about the games women liked to play when there was money at stake. She needed to know that he wouldn’t be falling for any of them.
He reached a hand to her shoulder, ignoring her startled flinch at his grip as he steered her around to face him.
He overcame her resistance, tipping up her stiffly held jaw with one hand until there was no way she could avoid his gaze any longer. Slowly, reluctantly, her eyes slid upwards, until their aqua depths collided with his. In the first instant he took in the moisture, the lashes damp and dark, and he had to acknowledge she was good, very good, if she could bring on the tears that readily.
But then he saw what was inside her eyes and it slashed him to the core.
Pain. Loss. Mind-numbing desolation.
All of those things he recognised. All of those things found an echo in a place deep down inside himself, something that shifted and ached afresh as her liquid eyes seemed to bare her soul to him. It was an awkward feeling, uncomfortable, unwelcome.
He watched as she jammed her lips together as a solitary tear squeezed from the corner of one eye. Momentarily disarmed, acting purely on instinct, he shifted his hand from her chin and gently wiped the tear from her cheek with the pad of one finger. Her eyelids dipped shut, her lips parted as she drew in a sudden breath, and he felt her tremble into his touch.
Gears crunched and ground together inside him. This wasn’t going the way he’d expected at all. Because she wasn’t the way he’d expected.
‘You really cared about him?’
The question betrayed his thoughts, clumsy and heavily weighted with disbelief. But there was no time to correct it—the thought that Laurence meant more to her than a mere provider of luxury and cash somehow grated hard on his senses.
She dragged in a breath and pulled away, shrugging off his hand as she backed into a cane lounge. ‘Is that so hard to believe? Laurence made it easy to want to care about him.’
Her rapid admission changed everything, transforming his confused thoughts into sizzling hot anger in an instant as the facts slotted back into their rightful place. Laurence had ‘made it easy’. No pretence, no circumspection. She’d admitted how it had been between them with barely a blink! And it was exactly what he’d expected. No wonder she felt so crushed. She’d lost her sugar daddy along with her cash flow.
‘Yeah. I’ll just bet he made it easy.’
She edged closer, her head tilted, as if she couldn’t have heard him right. ‘I’m not sure I understand you. What exactly do you mean?’
‘It’s hardly that difficult to work out. A rich old man with a taste for pretty women and who could afford to make having one around worth her while.’
If he hadn’t been jet-lagged, if he hadn’t been awake throughout too many flights over too many time zones, maybe he would have had a chance of fending off her next attack. As it was, he didn’t see it coming.
Her flattened palm cracked against his cheek and jaw like a bullet from a gun.
Instantly she recoiled in horror, her eyes wide open, the offending hand fisted over her mouth. She waited while he drew in a long breath and rubbed the place she’d made contact, the skin under his hand already a slash of colour. But he didn’t react, not physically, and she felt the shock ebb away, felt her panicked heart rate calm just enough to match the simmer of anger that still consumed her.
‘Well, you sure pack a punch,’ he drawled, working his jaw from side to side, his eyes narrow and hard like he was assessing her all over again.
‘Nothing more than you deserved.’ He’d asked for it all right. Why would he think that about Laurence? Why would he think that about her? ‘And don’t think I’m going to apologise. I don’t have to take that kind of garbage from you.’
‘Because you can’t handle the truth?’
‘You’re unbelievable! You really believe I’m here for Laurence’s money?’
‘Most people would be lured by it.’
‘Then I’m not “most people”. I don’t want his money. I never have.’
‘Then why else would you have been living with him, a man old enough to have been your father?’
She laughed then, mostly because she knew that if she didn’t laugh, she’d probably cry with the injustice of it all. He was so wrong. He didn’t know his father. He didn’t know her. He knew nothing.
‘I pity you,’ she said, much more calmly than she felt. ‘Obviously you’re completely unfamiliar with the words “friendship” or “companionship”.’
He snorted his disbelief and her anger escalated to dangerous levels again. But this time she was determined to keep control. She had to try to remember what Laurence had asked of her. She dragged in a deep breath, battling to stay rational and calm, in spite of his attack.
‘Just because you were incapable of showing your father any respect or affection…’ she shook her head ‘…don’t assume everybody else was.’
His eyes narrowed dangerously, the resentment contained within so hard and absolute, it glistened. ‘So you looked after him out of the goodness of your heart? You stayed merely to keep him company? Next you’ll be expecting me to believe you really loved him.’
‘Somebody had to! God only knows he got nothing but grief from you.’
She jerked herself away, wanting to get out of there, wanting to get as far away from him as she could, but a steel grip on her arm stopped her dead, preventing her escape. She turned, indignant, but the protest died on her lips the moment she saw his face, his features contorted with fury.
‘Don’t you try to take the high moral ground with me. You have no idea what I felt for my father or why. None at all.’
She fisted her hand and wrenched at her arm unsuccessfully. So instead she leaned closer, so close she could feel the anger coming out of him like heat from an open fire. But his anger was nothing compared to hers—she was angry enough for both of them.
‘You’re right,’ she agreed, feeling her lip curl in contempt. ‘I have no idea what you felt or why. But whose fault is that? Mine, for being here when your father needed support, or yours, for not caring enough to be here yourself?’
CHAPTER THREE
HOURS LATER, as the first unlayering of the night sky heralded the coming dawn, Zane had given up on sleep. He lay on his bed in the room that had been his for more than half his life, the accumulated photographs and trophies from his youth still exactly where he’d left them. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he’d never left. But he knew he wouldn’t be thinking about how things used to be. Because the last few hours had shown him that all he’d be thinking about was a woman with fire in her eyes and venom on her tongue, a woman built like a goddess and who fought like a she-cat.
Even last night, when she’d lashed out and slapped him, she hadn’t backed away. She’d come back for more and she’d given more. And even when she’d agreed with him, in their final exchange, she’d hit back with such a sting in her parting comments that when she’d yanked her arm against his grip once more he’d had no choice but to let her go.
She had some spirit. He wrestled once more with the sheets as he tried to get comfortable. What would she be like in bed? He’d lay odds that she’d show as much life out of her clothes, if not more, than she did in them.
He punched his pillow one final time before giving up, swinging his legs off the