One Night for Love (15 page)

“How is Leanne?” Tristan’s voice softened.

His gaze locked with Delphine’s. Surprise burst across her face, but she quickly recovered.

“You are kind to remember and to ask. She’s well. She’s still going to physical therapy, and we have hope that her speech will continue to improve.”

“I enjoyed my time in your home,” Tristan said. “Your family has a great deal of love.” He did not stumble over the words
family
or
love
.

“Sarah asks about you”—Delphine tilted her chin—“and Prim.”

Tristan nodded. He had no reply. There was no he and Prim, and he was uncertain now, weeks later, that there had ever been. His heart had thawed to her warmth, her kindness, her beliefs that a company, a business, could be more than the sum of its parts.

“I doubt you’ve called us here to discuss my family,” Delphine said. A grimace crossed her face and her brows pulled tight.

“No,” Tristan said. “I haven’t.”

Worry lay thick in the air. Fear of the unknown, of what might happen, was palpable to them all. They waited.

“Excuse me, sir?” Philippe stood inside the office door.

Irritation raced through Tristan. This had better be good. His assistant knew better than to interrupt him when he was delivering news of a sale.

“What is it, Philippe?” Tristan asked.

“There is a call—”

“I’ll return the call”—Tristan’s eyes flicked toward Delphine. With her age and senior position in the workforce, the sale of Metro’s research division could be career ending for her. At the very least, the sale would cause an extreme detour—“after this meeting.”

“Sir, it’s about your father. I think this is a call that you need to take.”

*

“It’s only been three weeks,” Prim said. She forced a light tone into her voice. “I’m just getting used to my parents, but I miss you and Cole and my job.”

“Is that all you miss?” Meg asked.

Prim twirled a piece of black hair between her fingertip and her thumb. After two weeks in London, she’d traded the car-filled streets for her parent’s country home. Her view of the gardens was nearly as beautiful as her view of the Pacific in Los Angeles. The lush countryside gardens no longer held her as they had in her youth. Her home was Los Angeles. She had transplanted and thrived. Her parents’ home would always be for visits, but L.A. was now home.

“Of course not,” Prim whispered. Flickers of Tristan’s smile burst through her mind. The urge to text or call or e-mail was her constant companion.

“I saw him at the Diabetes Foundation’s charity dinner last week.”

Her stomach wobbled. Meg simply mentioned Tristan and Prim’s heart rate accelerated. “Really,” Prim said. “How was he?”

“Seemed fine. I think busy.”

Prim closed her eyes. She forced her mouth to remain closed. She wanted to pump Meg for information, ask her best friend if Tristan had inquired about her, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask. To ask was to make the most horrible admission that she was, without any doubt, still in love with Tristan Rhodes.

“He asked about you,” Meg said.

Thank God for best friends! Prim didn’t have to ask Meg to fill her in on the details.

“I told him you were visiting your family, but he seemed to already know that.”

“How did he look?”

“Like shit, really,” Meg said. “He looked like he’d gotten about three hours of sleep in four weeks, plus he didn’t bring a date to the event. He was solo.”

Prim could barely admit her pleasure over the last two tidbits. Of course, she didn’t want Tristan to be sad or unable to sleep, but she did want to believe that some of his discomfort was over his desire for her and not just the outrageous work schedule that came with running Metro Media.

“I did hear that his father was in the hospital,” Meg said, her voice softer.

Prim’s heart wobbled. She knew, from Tristan, the rough relationship he had with his father. The details were still locked within her former lover, but she knew some of the bits. Prim closed her eyes.

“I haven’t heard from him,” Prim said.

“Right. But maybe you should reach out?”

“I’m not sure he’d want that. He’s so private, so closed off—”

“And yet he fell in love with you.”

“I’m uncertain that’s true,” Prim said. Sadness laced her voice. She felt bad for Tristan, but she was also confused as to what she should do for him, if anything.

“When are you coming home?” Meg asked.

“Soon.”

“You promised to be back in time for Cole’s party.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” Prim’s eyes brimmed with tears. Why was she crying? What was wrong with her? Prim and Meg said their good-byes, and Prim pressed Off on her phone. She dabbed her eyes with the corner of her T-shirt. Dammit, she was in love and not with a man whom she could convince to love her.

“Prim?” Her mum walked toward her in a robin’s-egg-blue skirt and white sweater set. Her mum had the same sweater set in every color. “Darling, are you okay?”

She didn’t want her mum witnessing her cry. Prim nodded and scraped her hands under her eyes. Mrs. Baxter folded her long body onto the bench beside Prim.

“Darling, would you tell me why you’re crying and what you’re hiding from? I feel that I’ve been patient and supportive, and now, darling, I really want to know.”

Prim shook her head. She pulled her feet up onto the bench and settled her chin onto her knees. “It’s nothing, Mum, really. Just work.”

“Or that horrible man who purchased your company? Is that it? Did he fire you?”

Prim pushed a smile to her face. While her mum might appear to be all smooth manners and etiquette, she was a tough, street-brawling type of woman where her only daughter’s honor was concerned.

“He’s not horrible, Mum, just maybe a bit confused.”

“You’re in love with him!” she whispered. “How did this happen? When did this—”

“Mum, really I can’t talk about it right now. I simply can’t be in love with him because I don’t think he was ever in love with me.”

The weight of her mother’s arm dropped over Prim’s shoulder.

“Oh my darling, I am certain he must have been. How could any man that you cared enough to love not fall in love with you?”

A tiny smile pulled at Prim’s lips. Her mother, although so different in many ways, now tried to be supportive of the life Prim had chosen. Mrs. Baxter had wanted parties and prams for Prim, not conference rooms and negotiations and endless hours and travel. Her mum had shaken her head and tsked when Prim broke off her engagement and informed her parents that she planned to attend B-school and permanently relocate to California.

“Darling, oftentimes it takes men much longer to process their emotions. They’re such different creatures than us, not better or worse, but different. Have you spoken to him?”

Prim shook her head no.

“That definitely does not sound like my daughter. Sitting in a garden, crying over something she wants?”

Prim pressed her eyes closed. No, that definitely didn’t sound like her, not at all. She opened her eyes and saw her mum’s intent gaze.

“I think, darling, that it may be time for you to go home.”

“What? But Mum, why, I—”

“You’ve run away, you’ve licked your wounds, and now, as we all must, you have to go forth and confront your fears.”

As much as she didn’t want to admit it, this time her mum was completely right.

“I’m not a fan of masked parties,” Prim said. She held the elaborate mask that Meg’s designer had created just for her, a lovely off-white color with gold beads and plumed feathers.

“Maybe you’ll have fun?” Meg’s voice was hopeful. “Have you called him?”

Prim shook her head. Her fingers ran along the velvet of her mask. “Our agreement was quite clear. Three months. He must have gotten me out of his system.”

“Oh, Prim,” Meg said. “I’m not so sure. I think you keep saying that so you won’t have to believe what you know to be true.”

Prim had gotten the closure she needed the day she read the article in
Business News
about Tristan entertaining a sale of Metro’s research division to Optimax. “We’re simply too different,” Prim said. “I’m not what he needs and he’s not what I want.”

Meg’s bright blue eyes latched onto Prim’s. “I did the same thing with Cole, kept saying to myself that he wasn’t the right one, as though it were a mantra I needed to believe. But just because I said it over and over again didn’t make it true. It would have been easier, but it was impossible to ignore that Cole was the right man for me. Prim, I feel the same way about you and Tristan.”

Prim closed her eyes. She couldn’t hear this now.

“He’s loyal, and kind, and the most driven man, aside from my own husband, that I’ve ever met. You may think you want laid-back and easy-breezy, but you don’t. You’ll eat alive any man who isn’t as driven as you. You want Tristan. So what’s blocking you? Why won’t your heart let him be the man for you; why won’t you go to him and at least find out if his feelings truly ended, because I doubt that they did.”

Prim placed the elaborate mask on her face. “Thank you for the mask,” Prim said. She leaned forward and kissed each of Meg’s cheeks. She had no words to say in reply to her friend.

Meg sighed. She knew that Prim was dodging this conversation. “I’m going downstairs to check on the caterer. Take your time up here.”

Melancholy flowed through Prim. She wanted to direct her unhappy feelings toward Meg and tell herself that Meg had no idea what she was talking about, but Prim was smarter than that. She knew from her own experience with Meg and Cole that best friends often knew more than you might like. Prim had understood that Meg was wallowing alone in her apartment, stuffing her face with Oreos and chips. Prim’s version of wallowing didn’t involve calories, but it did involve fleeing. She was back now. Returned to L.A., as promised, just one day before Cole’s party. Even though Prim had returned, she had no intention of confronting Tristan about her lingering emotions. She would pretend that the twelve-week agreement had resolved all of her feelings for him.

But the twelve weeks had resolved nothing. She looked into the mirror. The masquerade ball required seventeenth-century costumes, and she wore a plush dress of pale blue that pushed up her breasts. The giant white wig she’d placed on her head was heavy. What was Meg’s fascination with seventeenth-century France? Why had she decided on this theme for the costume party? With the garters and bustier and hosiery, Prim felt trussed like a turkey. While at her parents’, she’d pulled out one little authentic bit of history, a brooch that had belonged to her father’s mother. The memory of the ring that Tristan had made for her flashed in her mind. Why would he go to such expense for a charade?

Wait. Why
would
he go to such expense for a charade? Prim’s heart broke open—Tristan wouldn’t. Tristan was a man who thought of the bottom line. A man who did things with painstaking accuracy after careful study. A man Prim now believed might have been on the verge of love and not even realized his feelings. She gazed into the mirror. Twelve weeks had not been enough for her, and there was no way with the heat and the chemistry between them that twelve weeks had been enough for Tristan. She had been a fool to think otherwise, and tonight Prim knew she had to find out.

*

“This outfit is ridiculous,” Tristan said. He turned to Philippe, who stood just outside his private executive bathroom. “Can you believe this? Grown men in stockings? What kind of sadist requires men to put on stockings?”

Philippe fought the desire to laugh. Tristan saw it on his face.

“And a wig? Only the wife of one of the wealthiest men on the planet could require such insanity,” Tristan said. “If I didn’t want her business so badly, I wouldn’t attend.”

“Yes, sir,” Philippe said. “Might I say you look quite dapper.”

“Dapper?” Tristan rolled his gaze to the ceiling. “Dapper is not a word that I ever want anyone to use to describe me.”

“Sir, just to be clear, the meeting today with the division heads? On a Saturday? This meeting was meant to inform the staff that you won’t be selling Metro Media? That you are in fact courting the favor of Meg Jackson and TBC and that we are in with Metro Media for the long haul?”

Tristan’s eyes went from his trusted assistant, who was so much more than an assistant, back to the mirror in front of him. “Yes,” Tristan said. “Yes. Put it on my calendar to call Optimax on Monday. I’ll let them know that our research, marketing, and publicity divisions are no longer for sale.” His eyes flicked toward Philippe’s reflection in the mirror. “I’m keeping Metro Media. I’ve decided to make this company my home.”

A smile hovered around Philippe’s mouth as he handed Tristan his mask. The last time Tristan had worn a mask, he’d found an unknown stranger and bedded her, a stranger who became a twelve-week lover. Twelve weeks which were meant to quell his desires for Primrose Baxter, but those twelve weeks hadn’t quelled his desires, they’d only created a greater and deeper fire that turned to a cold block of pain upon her leaving.

He wanted Prim; he wanted her with all his heart. He wondered if his sudden desire to keep Metro Media wasn’t some sort of tribute to what he truly wanted in his life: her. His fingertips edged over the black velvet. His lips pressed together. Why was he being so stubborn? Why hadn’t he called her? He’d picked up the phone many times, but he hadn’t followed through. She’d been quite clear about her desires. She wanted only twelve weeks with him, nothing more, and yet he still wanted her. He realized now, after weeks of being without her, that the emotion he had for Prim was deep, so different than what he’d ever before experienced. All he wanted now was for Prim to be happy. He wanted her happiness more than he wanted her for himself.

He placed the mask on his face and his lips hardened. He would get through tonight. She would, of course, be there. Who would be on her arm? Perhaps someone he knew, God help the poor man. While Tristan wouldn’t assault the guy, he would be fighting desperately hard not to beat the man to a bloody pulp. Just because his head had decided to give Prim what she wanted, her freedom from him, it didn’t mean his heart was prepared to see her with someone else. There was little hope, but he would try at the very least to let her know what she meant to him.