Authors: Tara Pammi
Alexander frowned. “That’s not the point here, Liv.”
She went to the fridge and took a bottle of water, trying to tune out their conversation. She needed to stay out of this, she
was
going to. She pressed the cold bottle to her heated cheeks, fighting to ignore the slow churn of anger in her gut.
“Let Isabella know that I will press kidnapping charges if she goes near Emily again.” His words were cold, smooth and bare of anything. “And inform Emily’s school that she’s not returning.”
Her fingers clenched around the bottle and she leaned her forehead against the cold, steel surface of the refrigerator.
She stayed like that, minutes after the door closed behind Carlos. The silence shifted and snarled between them. Her nape prickled as she felt Alexander behind her.
She stiffened as he laid an arm on her.
“Olivia, you’re shaking.” He pulled her toward him, his hard body behind her a deceptive invitation. Her muscles sighed against him, the evidence of his arousal electrocuting sense into her. She went into his arms like a rag doll as he turned her. “I’m going to regret asking this, aren’t I?” He tilted her chin up. “What’s wrong?”
Olivia closed her eyes, fighting for the strength to not care. And utterly failed. “How can you do this to her, to them?”
He clenched his jaw and released it. “Isabella will only bring misery to Emily. I can’t let that happen.”
An image of her mother, blurry, yet swamped in desperation, flashed in front of her eyes. The forgotten memory wrapped its choking fingers around her throat, clawing at her. “No, please, Alexander, listen. What if Isabella’s changed? What if she’s realized the value of what she’s lost? Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“You think I haven’t given Isabella a chance? I have given her a million. Every time Nicholas hit her, I took care of her. I tried to shield her from his blows, I took them myself. I begged her to leave him, and every single time she promised me she would. And the fool that I was, I believed her. Until I realized one day that they were all lies.
“Do you want to know what happened the night she shot him? He smacked her across the face because she flirted with another man in front of him. When I stopped him, he kicked me in the gut. I was so angry. I grabbed the gun from her purse. I had only meant to scare him. To stop him. But Isabella grabbed it from me and fired it by accident. And even then, I hoped she would see how damaging their relationship was. I hoped that she would finally leave with me. And she didn’t. She didn’t care about me, what I did for her, how much I loved her. I meant nothing to her and it destroyed me to walk away, to let go, to fight the paralyzing hold my love for her had over me.”
Tears spilled onto Olivia’s cheeks. God, he had been barely seventeen. Not only had he gotten himself out, but he had taken on his sister. The anguish in his words, the pain in his eyes unraveled something inside her. No wonder he was so good at wiping away any emotion from his life, no wonder he didn’t want to feel anything.
She stood up on her toes and hugged him for all she was worth. She peppered kisses over his granite jaw, touching him greedily, wishing she could take some of his pain away. His muscles shifted and shuddered beneath her hands, the emotion in him a minefield.
Alexander tugged Olivia to him and crushed her mouth. He didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to feel and it seemed only the taste of her could numb him, could close the gaping void he felt inside.
He didn’t let her breathe. His hands in her hair, he kissed, nipped, bit her mouth until there was no more breath left in him, until he could feel nothing but the taste of her. But she didn’t back off. She gave as good as she got, her ragged breathing a soothing sound to his ears. He laughed against her throat, as she ripped his shirt open, the buttons flying around them.
Olivia sighed. His skin felt like velvet coating hard rock to her touch, the muscles shifting and shuddering under her hands. She moved her hands lower and cupped him through his trousers, her mouth drying up.
He jerked back, his features set into stone. He leaned her forehead against hers and smiled. “God, it’s going to kill me to stop this now, Liv, but I have to. I have to make sure Emily’s okay. Wait up for me, okay?”
Olivia nodded, trying to even her breathing. She ran her hands over his chest again before pulling his shirt together. There was such an intimacy around the simple act that it cut through the sensual haze around her, straight to the matter that had her heart thumping.
What were they doing?
She swallowed and locked the question inside. “Maybe I could talk to Emily. She’ll be angry with you, in fact, she’ll hate you right now. I can talk to her and convince her that —”
“No,” he said, his mouth wreaking havoc over her neck. “Don’t interfere in this. Don’t talk to Emily about Isabella, or yourself. In fact, I would appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to Emily at all. I’m already taking a big risk by—” He licked where her pulse fluttered and she held on to him to stay upright.
Risk?
Thinking became hard when he touched her. “I can’t risk anything else going wrong on top of Kim’s news.”
“I understand that but—”
“No, Liv. You need to stay out of this. If we want to see this crazy thing between us through, I need you to behave.”
She flinched and stepped back. “Or what? You won’t screw me?” Hurt seethed and boiled inside her, her stomach falling. “This is a first even for me, conditional sex.”
Color swam into those razor sharp cheeks. “Don’t cheapen it. That’s not what I meant.”
“No?”
A hard glint appeared in his eyes. “You have to know it can be nothing more than a fling, Liv, whatever this is between us.”
“No, I don’t know that.
‘No casual sex for Alexander King.’
Wasn’t that the headline when they voted you the perfect man? Every woman you dated, you did because you thought she could be the perfect woman, you had an equal relationship with them. Whereas with me, it seems you have automatically lowered your standards. Why’s that, I wonder?”
He grabbed her and forced her to look into his blue eyes, scorching her with his gaze. “This is different. I’ve never done anything like—”
“Of course it is. Because I’m not good enough for anything other than sex and the pretense that I’m Kim, right?”
She tried to push him off but he didn’t let her. “That’s not what I think,” he said hoarsely.
His grip on her was relentless until she gave up the fight and sagged against him, tears pooling in her eyes. Her gut felt as if it was turning on itself. “What were you thinking? Have me pretend to be Kim and screw me on the side until you had Emily’s custody and then go looking for another perfect woman?”
His utter silence cut her open like a whiplash. Her chest hurt with every breath.
“You really are a heartless bastard. Only I forgot that for a while.” She scrubbed her cheeks bitterly. “You know what? I’m actually going to take your advice. Take control and walk away. Because of all the mistakes I’ve made in my life, you would be the worst.”
Alexander stood stunned as Olivia walked away, her spine ramrod straight. The raw pain in her eyes knocked the breath out of him, rendering him silent.
Would he have touched her, kissed her, if he had known that beneath that self-sufficiency, that defiant determination, Olivia was hurting? Was she right? Had he broken his own rules because somehow he had assumed that Olivia didn’t deserve better?
Shame spiraled through him.
Every word he said, every action of his since he had met her, mocked him. Had he assumed he could sleep with her and then walk away with nothing changed?
He rubbed a hand over his eyes and stared at the door. Even now, the need to walk into that room and take what he wanted, to promise her anything just so that he could wipe the grief from her eyes was feral. But he couldn’t, not if he wanted to face himself in the mirror tomorrow morning.
He had to limit the damage to his life.
He had to walk away from Olivia before the havoc she wreaked on him, the pain
he
caused her, became something that he could never undo.
CHAPTER TEN
O
LIVIA
THANKED
THE
flight attendant, leaned back into the luxurious leather seat and took a sip of her coffee. In the seat opposite her, dressed in a severely cut Ralph Lauren dress, Emily King sat rigid, the tension from her lanky frame swathing them all. There was such a depth of sadness in her gaze that Olivia couldn’t look away.
Ever since she had arrived at Alexander’s penthouse this morning, mere hours before they had boarded the flight, Emily had attacked Alexander with a savage anger. And more surprising was Alexander’s infinite patience with his sister. Amid Emily’s continuous barbs and tantrums, he had been nothing but incredibly gentle.
A chill crawled up Liv’s spine.
Watching Emily was like looking in the mirror and seeing her most self-destructive version, even if she hadn’t known it then. Confused, starved for attention, willing to go to any lengths. With every passing minute, it was becoming harder and harder to keep her mouth shut.
“We’ve been over this, Emily.” Alexander sighed as Emily, once again, refused anything to eat. “Starving yourself won’t get you anywhere.”
Her blue gaze, so much like her brother’s, glittered with determination. “No, but it hurts you, doesn’t it? And right now, that’s all I care about.”
Olivia gasped at the bitterness in the teenager’s tone. Could Alexander not see that she was a train-wreck waiting to happen?
Every instinct within her wanted to help the girl, maybe even grab her and run once they landed in New York, before Alexander’s rigid constraints pushed Emily into doing something reckless.
Because Olivia would bet her last precious dollar that the teenager wasn’t going to meekly obey.
She set her coffee cup down and cleared her throat. “May I speak with you, Emily?”
“Stay out of this, Liv,” Alexander roared at her.
“You’re Olivia, not Kim,” Emily instantly caught on, her gaze studying Liv curiously.
Liv nodded, smiling as Alexander’s muted curse reached her ears.
A tentative smile curved Emily’s mouth, her anger at her brother momentarily forgotten. “I’ve heard so much about you at school. My friends and I think you are the coolest. Everyone’s always talking about how you broke so many of those stupid rules, I mean, you were even expelled because you—” Pink flushing her angular cheeks, Emily pursed her mouth, her gaze anxious. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to... How did you end up with Alex of all people?”
Olivia sighed. Really, how equipped was she to dish out advice to a confused teenager? To actually think, she had indulged, even if for a crazy second, that she could steal Emily away from Alexander’s care. “That’s a long story, Emily.”
Alexander’s wrath next to her was a tangible thing. Even Emily looked anxiously from him to her. “The last thing Emily needs is a talk with—”
“And once again, I don’t care what you think,” Liv burst out. Their gazes collided, tension spiraling tighter and tighter. “What will you do? Cut me out of your life if I don’t behave? Oh, wait, you would have already done that except you need me.”
Alexander glared at her. “Don’t push it, Liv. You’ve already gotten yourself kicked out of a project to work on and who knows what’s next. You know more than anyone—”
“How ruthless you can be?” she finished, her insides trembling. “Yes.”
Emily’s laugh reverberated around them. “Wow, I like you already.”
Olivia ran shaking fingers through her hair. This was
so
not what she had intended when she had opened her mouth. She leaned forward in her seat. “I understand how much you want to see your mother. I can even imagine all the ways you’re scheming to get in touch with her once you’re in New York. My punishment when I didn’t stop talking about my mom was to be packed off to boarding school, too. I hated my father so much for that.”
Right on cue, the color leached from Emily’s face. “Then you know how much I—”
“I do. But please don’t do something you’ll regret for the rest of your life, Emily. Once you go down that path, there’s no—”
“I don’t need another adult preaching me.” Tears filled her blue gaze. “All I want is to see my parents.”
Olivia clutched the girl’s hand, memories she didn’t want to remember swarming her, the helpless, stifling feeling that had been a constant companion. Every decision made for her, every choice taken out of her hands, from something as trivial as dancing classes that she’d hated, to something as important as what she remembered about her own mother.
Every nerve in her wanted to help Emily escape. Because, Alexander would never give his mother another chance. Instead, she forced herself to concentrate on how much she had regretted her own actions when it had been too late.
“I understand, I really do. But there’s a fundamental difference between you and me.” She struggled to speak through the lump in her throat. “Your brother might be an arrogant, controlling ass but he loves you. I’ve no doubt about that.
“If I had had someone who truly loved me like that, I like to think my life would have turned out differently.” Olivia smiled through the tears clogging up her vision, at the void opening up inside her. Her heart wept for the teenager she had been, for the girl who had never had the chance. “That I wouldn’t have made a mess out of it like I have. And you do. I’m not asking you to let Alexander walk all over you, but don’t do something that will ruin your life to get back at him.”
She moved to the seat next to Emily and huddled toward her. She had no idea if anything she had said made sense to the younger girl, but Liv was damned if she let Alexander browbeat her into not caring. Especially in the coming days, knowing what Alexander had planned for her, Emily was going to need a friend. “Tell you what. How about anytime you need to blow steam, or have an I-hate-Alexander-King session, you call me?”
A smile split Emily’s mouth, and Olivia swallowed. She looked beyond Emily to Alexander, the pregnant silence from him sending a shiver up her spine. Their gazes met and held, her chest hurting with each breath she pulled in.
“Believe it or not, I’m the founding member of that club,” she said, wondering when, if ever, her heart would learn.
* * *
Olivia thanked the receptionist on the ground floor of King Towers and walked toward the seating area, the tap-tap of her high-heeled boots an echo in her ears. She checked her reflection in the gleaming coffeepot as she poured herself a cup. A neat French plait held her unruly hair back. A white dress shirt added the touch of professionalism she needed to add to her unconventional long skirt and leather boots.
Her stomach a jumble of knots, she smoothed the nonexistent creases out of her black skirt. After everything that had happened with Alexander, she’d almost given up. She had done that before, had let her personal life, her impulses cloud her professional judgment.
For the first time in her life, she had come fully prepared, worked her backside off to be ready. And had worked ten times harder to convince Nate that she should be allowed to pitch.
She had used every bit of logic at her disposal to achieve it. LifeStyle Inc. and by extension, King Enterprises’ flawless reputation for fair business practices, which really had been the easy part seeing that Nate was obsessed with Alexander’s immaculate reputation and business acumen, and her own efforts in the past six months to forge herself a career, how hard she had worked on the presentation, how she was the one best equipped to make it a success, it had been little short of begging.
And the more she had tried to convince him, the more she had realized the truth in Alexander’s words. She had been too ready to give in, to walk away. Only the need to prove him wrong had fueled her willpower. He must have known how his disparaging words would motivate her.
She was ushered inside a vast conference room. She connected her laptop to the screen and checked her settings. A huge rectangular table stood at the other end. She opened a bottle of water from the side table, and took a drink. She switched on the remote and her presentation appeared on the screen.
One by one, a few executives, all dressed in identical black suits, entered the room. A bead of sweat ran between her shoulder blades as she scanned each face, her stomach twisting on itself. She had worked hard to get here and she wasn’t going to let anyone derail her.
The glass door clicked open, and she turned, steeling herself.
She clutched the edge of the dark oak table, her knuckles turning white at her grip. Her heartbeat notched up, sick fear lodging into her throat.
The man who walked in was not Vincent Gray. She mustered a smile as he introduced himself as Daniel Adams.
Her jaw slackened, a rush of gratitude and something else, something she didn’t even want to acknowledge rose up inside her. For a few interminable seconds, she just stood there, as he settled into the last chair in the center of the group.
“I thought we would be pitching to Mr. Gray.”
The newcomer spoke up. “Mr. Gray resigned recently. Do you want to begin, Ms. Stanton?”
Nodding absently, Olivia turned sideways and looked at her presentation. For a horrifying minute, the screen looked jumbled. She took a deep breath and focused on how much she had overcome to be here.
Shutting out everything else, she began highlighting their campaign. Within minutes, she found her stride, excitement a huge ball in her stomach. She was halfway through when she was interrupted.
“We’re launching a sportswear line, products to be used by men and women interested in outdoor activities, and your primary campaign tool is Twitter. Does anyone else see the problem here?”
Olivia could feel the color flushing into her face. “Yes, but—”
“We’re not just launching a new sportswear line,” Daniel said. “We want people to think of our clothes, our gear, as synonymous of a new lifestyle. So the campaign for it should spur people into action, into living their life instead of talking about it on their computers.”
Olivia smiled, excitement thrumming in her veins. It was exactly what her campaign was designed to do. “And to do that you have to use social media,” she piped in, clicking through to the next slide. “What our agency is proposing is a twenty-first century treasure hunt, sort of a Twitter driven
Amazing Race.
We’ll have the usual advertising through television and billboards, but you’ll lose a big chunk of your audience if you neglect social media. We start in a city like New York, feed clues online for a treasure hunt in a National park, for the prizes—the new gear you’re selling, hidden all over the city. Soon LifeStyle Inc. will be on the mouth of every teenager, every woman or man who has ever been on a social media site.”
She didn’t give them a break. She continued talking through the campaign, gaining more and more confidence with the intelligent questions thrown her way. By the end of the allotted two hours, she felt as though she had run a marathon herself. She handed the folders that detailed the campaign to all the members. A couple of the men congratulated her on their way out on the innovativeness of the campaign. Her mouth dry, she shook Daniel’s hand and answered some more questions.
“You’re the last agency on our shortlist, Ms. Stanton. I’m confident enough in my board to say your campaign provides exactly the kind of exposure we want. Congratulations. We will contact your agency with our final decision in a few days.”
Olivia held her tears back through sheer will until the room emptied. She had done it. She had found something she was good at, achieved something through her own talent.
She tugged her laptop bag onto her shoulder, dying to get back to the office and give Nate all the details. She was going to celebrate her achievement tonight, she wasn’t going to let one man ruin it.