"I never lied to you, Dominic,” she
defended.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re good, but you can
stop the pretense. You won’t be getting whatever incentive they
offered you. I’ll make sure of that.”
Abby smacked the bed on both sides of her in
frustration. Why was he was determined to continue to believe the
worst of her? "How can you think I was part of some scheme against
you? If I remember correctly, when we first met I told you I didn't
want to see you again. You're the one who insisted I get in your
limo back in Massachusetts. I didn't ask to come to China with you.
How could I have planned any of this?"
Dominic turned away from her. "No wonder
Zhang chose you. The lies fall from your lips with ease. I should
have left you in China."
If that was what he really thought, then this
was not the sexual fantasy she’d been building it into nor was it
their chance to repair the damage their relationship had sustained
that day.
Abby sat up on her knees and fired back at
him. "Then why didn't you?"
He looked back at her over his shoulder, his
expression twisted with torment. "God help me, I couldn't. You're
like a sickness under my skin."
He closed the bedroom door behind him with a
hand she thought she saw tremble.
A sickness?
Abby rolled over and
groaned into one of the pillows in frustration.
For the first time, doubt began to settle in.
What the hell was she doing? He didn’t love her. If his expression
was anything to go by, he didn’t even like her. Lust was a poor
substitute for love.
Her earlier belief that a simple explanation
could return what they’d shared the night before now seemed naïve.
What she’d thought of as emotional intimacy had clearly been his
idea of extended foreplay.
No
, she thought. That kind of openness
could not be faked. They had connected. She wasn’t wrong about
that. She couldn’t have misread that situation so dramatically.
Beneath his harsh words, he was still hurting.
And it was her fault.
She could have spared him the public
humiliation if she had told him everything last night. That was the
only part of being with him that she regretted. Maybe that was what
she had to say, what he needed to hear, before they could move
forward.
She was off the bed and down the halfway to
the main room in an instant, determined to not give herself time to
second guess her decision. Upon her entrance, he looked up from the
papers he’d been scanning. His expression was cold again, giving
her fair warning that he did not welcome her intrusion.
She stopped in the middle of the room and
forced her arms to stay at her sides rather than wrap protectively
around her waist like they wanted to. This was about reaching out
to him, righting a wrong. There was no place for defensiveness in a
sincere apology. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out and waited.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed
his eyes. “I’m sure you are. At least, sorry that you were caught,”
he said tiredly.
She took an awkward step toward him. “I’m
sorry that I didn’t tell you right away when I learned that Scott
was reporting back to Jake. I overheard a discussion between the
men yesterday at the hotel. I should have told you last night.”
Dominic’s gray eyes were almost black with
emotion when they reopened, dark and unreadable. Abby forced
herself to continue. “I’m also sorry that I didn’t tell you that
Zhang had arranged to meet with me today. She warned me that your
deal was in jeopardy and told me that I could help you.”
His voice held a harshness Abby was
unaccustomed to. “Even if that is true, I warned you that someone
might try to use you to influence the negotiations. You played
right into her hands.”
Abby gulped down her guilt. “I know.”
“You had plenty of time to tell me.”
Abby studied her bare feet and admitted her
weakness. “I was going to, but last night was so beautiful. I was
selfish. I knew things would change once you knew. I told myself
that there would be time in the morning to admit everything.”
If she’d thought that her explanation would
sway him, she was quickly disappointed when she raised her eyes
hopefully. There wasn’t a trace of forgiveness surfacing. “So,
manipulating the final deal in a way that forced me to agree to
your terms or lose the contract was your solution?”
Put that way, it did sound damning.
She had to make him understand. “Zhang said
it was the only way. She said the deal was falling through and if
you stepped out for even a moment you’d lose the contract to a
competitor. That’s what Stephan was there for, wasn’t it? He was
trying to undercut your deal. Zhang was right.”
“What makes you think you were anything more
than a pawn to Zhang? Do you really think that someone like you, a
teacher for God’s sake, can understand the politics of
international commerce?” His cutting words hung heavily between
them.
Shame descended on Abby like a cold cloak,
but her pride kicked in. She met his eyes and parried, “Why don’t
you tell me how you really feel, Dominic?”
He stood, scattering some papers fall on the
floor around him as he did. His face was pinched with anger. “You
were supposed to be a distraction. I brought you with me to keep my
mind off how shitty this past week has been. But you couldn’t stay
out of my business. No, you had to get involved.”
He’d used her and the confirmation hurt Abby
deeply. She had known from the beginning that a woman like her had
no place in his life, but she had let herself begin to believe that
she was more than a convenient sex partner for him. How could she
have been so stupid? Abby put a cold hand to her mouth. “I thought
I was helping. I thought you needed me.”
His sarcastic tone was a dagger to her heart.
“And that was your real mistake.”
Abby lashed out, “I understand now why your
mother left your father. If he was anything like you, she was right
to leave. He probably looked down at her and kept her separate from
his business. Not to protect her, but because he thought he was
better than her.” Abby straightened her shoulders and fought back
the tears that were welling in her eyes. “You both treated Nicole
the same way, so why should I be surprised that I’m no different?
Oh, my God, I thought all your tough talk was sexy, but I see it
for what it is now. You’re afraid of letting anyone close so you
treat everyone equally badly.”
She turned away in disgust, but one more
thought sprung and had to be expressed. She half turned back and
said, “I thought I loved you, but I didn’t know you. You might have
all the money and power in the world, but you’re not good enough
for me. The man I give my heart to will see me as his partner; he
will let me in. He won’t try to keep me in some home he visits
between business trips. He’ll share his life with me and our
children will grow up into healthy adults, not twisted and
emotionally barren monsters like you.”
In a voice which had become monotone, Dominic
said, “Get some sleep. We’ll be landing on my private island off
the coast of Italy in a few hours.”
Abby let the slam of the bedroom door be her
answer. She went to the plane’s phone and dialed the number on the
crushed card in her pocket. “Zhang? If you meant what you said
about helping me, we’re on our way to Dominic’s private island near
Italy. I want off that island as soon as you can send a plane.”
Abby held her breath. If Dominic was correct,
Zhang would have no reason to help her now. If she was indeed no
more than a pawn to her, she would soon know.
“Don’t bother to unpack,” Zhang answered.
“You’ll be on a flight home minutes after you land.”
Relief flooded Abby. She might have been
wrong about Dominic, but at least Zhang’s support had been sincere.
The tears that Abby had held in poured forth. Her throat tightened
with spasms, making the words almost impossible to get out. “He
doesn’t love me, Zhang. He doesn’t even respect me.”
“Do I have to kill him?” Zhang asked in all
seriousness. Oddly, Abby found comfort in Zhang’s extreme question.
It had been a long time since anyone had leapt to defend her. She
had carried the burdens of others for so long that she had
forgotten what it felt like to turn to others for help.
“No,” Abby said grudgingly. “But I do want to
leave.”
Sounding relieved, Zhang said, “Consider it
done,” and hung up.
Abby banged the receiver a few times as she
tried to hang it up on the wall. Her hands were shaking with
emotion as she collapsed onto the bed and gave into the tears that
she no longer had a reason to hold in. Loud sobs wracked her body
and she hoped Dominic heard them and felt even the smallest bit
sorry for being the complete jackass he was.
Dominic swept the remaining papers off his
desk, watching them float aimlessly toward the carpeted floor of
the plane. He flipped on the radio to block out the sound of Abby’s
crying and paced the room.
How had he become his father? After a
lifetime of despising the man for his maltreatment of his mother,
Dominic had just treated Abby the same way. Even the dismissive,
superior tone of his voice reminded him of the bastard he’d sworn
to be nothing like. My God, Abby was right, there was very little
mystery as to why his mother had left and hadn’t wavered once in
her decision to cut them from her life.
Blinded by his earlier anger, he had refused
to listen to further excuses from Jake or even entertain Zhang’s
attempt to convince him that time would reveal Abby’s innocence.
However, none of his varied contacts had been able to link Zhang to
Abby or Abby with Jake. His personal security team had not dug up
anything more damning on Jake than a text requesting that Scott
follow him from bar to bar and arrange transportation if Scott had
deemed Dominic too impaired to drive. Another text instructed Scott
to keep the press as far away from Dominic as he could and to
inform him if Dominic made any moves that could be publicly
damaging to his image or himself.
Dominic had postponed returning to the plane
to give his team more time to research recent events. However, with
each discovery the inconceivable became less deniable.
Abby might be telling the truth.
He thought back to their first encounter and
the simple way she’d been dressed. Jeans and a t-shirt were not the
clothes of a hired siren. What if she really had been there simply
to help her sister? She said she’d stayed out of concern for him.
He had repaid that kindness by practically chasing her around his
brownstone and then insulting her.
As he looked back over their time together,
he felt ashamed by his actions in a way he never had before. Each
step of the way, Abby had freely offered her companionship and her
support. Because of her, he’d been able to spend a few days as
simply Dominic; not a defiant son, not a corporate magnate, just a
man mourning a loss.
He groaned as his recent outburst replayed in
his head. He’d mocked her for being a teacher, when in reality it
was one of the many things he admired about her. Unlike him, she
had a passion for what she did that was not driven by greed or
personal gain. And it was that desire to help that had brought her
to China with him.
It was conceivable that Zhang could have used
Abby’s concern for him to manipulate her into delivering the
additional contract pages; which had forced Dominic to make his
first act of philanthropy. However unwillingly it had come about,
his company would now have a positive cultural impact on billions
of women and lead the way for other large corporations to support
international social causes and, surprisingly, that knowledge
filled Dominic with an unsettling feeling of satisfaction.
The media called him a hero, but the real
hero was Abby.
Without her, he might have gone on believing
that the world had somehow cheated him and deserved to be treated
accordingly. How had he gotten so politically powerful without ever
wondering if he could use his influence to better the lives of
those less fortunate? Had it been arrogance or obsession which had
allowed him to deal with third world countries without ever
considering that he could affect more than their exchange rate?
In less than a week, Abby had changed him
forever. And what had he given her?
He had barged into her life, blackmailed her,
used her, and dragged her off to China for purely selfish
reasons.
No, there wasn’t much about the last week
that he was proud of.
What had this trip been like for her? He
could only imagine and, once again, admire the strength of her
character. He remembered her saying that she hadn’t traveled
outside of the states before. But she had done it for him without
complaint. She’d accepted being deposited at a hotel in a foreign
country with body guards who were little more than strangers to
her.
She must have been terrified when she’d
overheard the guards discussing their surveillance of him; unable
to trust the very people he’d told her to rely on. Why hadn’t she
come to him when she’d heard? What had she said? She’d wanted one
more night of intimacy with him before breaking the bad news.
He couldn’t fault her there, either. Hadn’t
he been the one who had repeatedly reminded her that what they had
was temporary? He’d thought that by saying the words he could gain
some control of his emotional response to her. Instead, it had held
her silent when she most needed someone to talk to.
From what he’d been able to gather from
Scott’s team before he’d sent them packing, Abby had met with Zhang
for the first time yesterday. Scott had admitted telling Abby that
he’d seen no harm in the meeting. He also detailed their next day’s
outing into a rural community for the sole purpose of showing Abby
China’s educational needs. At the time, Dominic had dismissed his
words as part of their web of lies, but now he considered them.
Someone like Abby would have been easy to manipulate. Once she’d
seen the need and been told that Dominic’s livelihood relied on her
taking action, Abby would have done what she thought was right.
Especially, if as she said earlier, she’d fallen in love with
him.