Authors: Tara Pammi
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A
LEX
BROUGHT
HIS
BMW to a smooth halt and killed the engine. The neighborhood had started giving into grunge a few blocks back. A slow burn of anger rose through him with each graffitied house and run-down apartment complex he passed.
He’d known Olivia was broke, he’d read Carlos’s report that she lived in a run-down neighborhood along the outer fringes of Manhattan. But it hadn’t prepared him for the sight of it. Her little studio was on the fourth floor of an apartment building whose best feature was that it looked clean.
It felt as if a hammer was pounding incessantly behind his eyes. He had just flown back from Abu Dhabi after a week of nonstop meetings.
His eyes felt like sand was coated into them, he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in he didn’t know how long. If he thought about this using his head, as he was known to do, he shouldn’t be here. The increased frequency of Isabella’s phone calls, Emily’s incessant questions and his decision to get Emily’s custody sorted soon rather than later—his personal life was in the worst shape for the first time in twelve years. Yet, all he could think of, all he could see in his mind’s eye was Olivia’s pale face, the hurt shimmering in her huge eyes.
How could he let her go on believing the worst about herself?
His nape prickling, he watched in absolute shock as he recognized the man stepping out of her building.
What was Carlos doing here?
He was out of the car before he could blink and crossed the road. His heart beat an incessant tattoo, his mind running through so many different scenarios.
He came to a halt in front of Carlos. “Carlos, is she—”
“She’s fine. She had a little incident with the press and fell.”
Of course she did.
Thinking you had everything in control when Olivia Stanton featured in your life was a very big mistake. Alexander circled his nape and pressed with his fingers, feeling an invisible knot tighten there. “Where the hell were you?”
Carlos and he’d known each other for fifteen years. Alex trusted him more than anyone else, which was why he’d asked him to keep an eye on Olivia.
His head of security eyed him with the same remote look he leveled at everyone. “I was bringing the car around to pick her up and asked her to wait,” he muttered, running a hand through his overlong hair. “Even though they see her as ‘Olivia’, working for you is drawing enough attention. I was gone for two minutes. By the time I was back, she walked into the mob and one of them shuffled her until she fell.”
Alexander kicked a pebble with all the force he could muster and let loose a string of expletives that felt very true to the neighborhood. He stepped toward the entrance, only to have Carlos’s muscular frame block him. He rubbed his temple with his fingers, feeling his nerves tautly stretched, every muscle in him itching for a fight. “Spit it out, Carlos.”
“This isn’t you, Alex.” Carlos looked as if he was struggling for the right words, which surprised Alex even more. “You have more integrity, more discipline than any man I’ve ever known. Don’t play with that girl knowing that you’ll only break her in the end.”
Alex stood there for a few minutes as Carlos left without a backward glance, the thick silence of the night cloaking him. In all the years he had worked for him, Carlos had never commented on his personal life. Yet a few days with Olivia, and he was already her champion.
* * *
Olivia pulled her T-shirt down, its length hitting her midthigh, and squeezed the water out of her hair. Her head throbbed. She looked on the counter for the painkillers she had been given and sighed. She had left them in Carlos’s car. She could go to the drugstore around the corner but she had no energy tonight to chat with either seventy-year-old Mrs. Robbins or the twenty-year-old self-proclaimed stud Pinto.
She ran a tentative hand over her forehead, and winced as her fingers grazed the gauze dressing. Just her luck that she had to fall on a scrap of metal wire that meant she had needed stitches. She took a sip from the bottle of wine that Nate had given her and scrunched her nose in distaste.
Just great.
Now her palette was too spoiled for cheap wine. But it didn’t mean it wouldn’t get her sloshed pretty good.
She had had a hell of a week and a half. She had worked fourteen-hour days, going over the contract details and budgeting with Daniel and Nate. It had been the hardest working week of her life. It was exactly the way she wanted it.
Stupidly, she had hoped that she might see Alexander again on her many trips to King Towers. Every time a tall man with broad shoulders had passed by her stomach had dived. Until she’d realized what small potatoes LifeStyle Inc. was in Alexander’s business empire. Of course there had been no sight of him. She finally had stopped looking when she’d heard someone mention that he was out of the country.
Which was for the best. It was easier to hate him, be angry with him at a distance, to assure herself that he had no power over her, that the time she had spent with him in Paris had left no mark on her.
Self-delusion—1, bitter reality—0.
The doorknob rattled from the outside. “Go away, Pinto,” she yelled. The fiddling didn’t stop. Her heart in her mouth, she turned around when the door was pushed through and Alexander walked in.
She sank onto her bed, her knees trembling. “You broke the lock!”
A look of pure rage crossed his features, tight lines fanning around his mouth. “You call that a lock?” He pushed the door shut behind him with a grunt, the thud shaking everything in sight. “I didn’t even have to put my weight on it. Do you know that there’s a weirdo outside in the corridor peeking at your door without blinking? And you’re walking around dressed in that,” he muttered through gritted teeth, “flimsy little thing.”
Liv stared at him with her mouth hanging open. “Pinto’s absolutely harmless.”
“No one’s harmless in New York. He could...do anything to you and no one would know.”
While he ranted and raged around her, she took the opportunity to simply look at him, starved for the sight of him. There was a hint of stubble to his jaw, a sunken, haggard look to his eyes. Yet nothing punctured the potency of his presence. She tucked her hands at her sides, every muscle in her quivering to touch him, to feel his solid strength with her hands.
She raised her gaze and met his, the scorching naked hunger in it robbing the breath from her. Her skin prickled with awareness, jolts of desire, hot as lava, sparking off every inch of her. For long, taut moments, they stood like that, staring at each other.
“Get dressed, we’re leaving.”
She jerked her head, wondering if she heard him right. “Not only did you break the lock on my door, you’re ordering me around now? The landlord will raise my rent again.”
Was the man going to ruin everything for her?
She shivered as a breeze flew in through the window. “You’re not the boss of me, at least not directly,” she added, as a gleam entered his eyes, “so get out.”
He didn’t say anything. Just maneuvered his tall, lean frame to the narrow counter and stove, which was technically her kitchen. He opened the cupboards above the counter, and the refrigerator, his movements rough and frustrated with each passing second.
He was standing there like he’d every right to, looking down upon her home, ordering her around, chipping away the wall of hurt and anger she had built up.
She did need the word
stupid
tattooed on her forehead.
She turned around and folded her hands, striving for a calm she wasn’t feeling. Dark color slashed his sharp-angled cheekbones, and her nipples instantly puckered, rasping against the thin material of her tee. “What?” She spat out the word, nothing more coherent coming to her aid.
He loomed over her, a giant, mobile wall of anger. “You have no food, a creep outside that door, you might have a concussion and you’re getting—” she winced as he cursed “—drunk. You’re a hazard to yourself.”
“Not that I’ve to explain myself to you, but I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”
She swallowed as his gaze swept over her breasts. When had he moved so close that she could see the dark shadow of his skin under the white shirt, that she could smell the hint of spice in his cologne enough to buckle her knees?
He raised his hand and ran his long fingers over the graze on her cheek. “And look how well that worked out for you.”
Her breath hitched in her throat.
His mouth was a tight line as he studied the gauze, as if he’d waited on purpose before he acknowledged that she was hurt. “Why didn’t you wait for Carlos, Olivia?” His fingers trembled over her skin. “You know what rabid dogs they can be.”
She did. But she had been so angry and she still couldn’t get over how vicious they had been. She shouldn’t have drawn their interest at all. She had spent the past six months doing everything she could to maintain a low profile, except for the small incident with Vincent. Yet they had come after her just because of her connection to Alexander. His obsession over his privacy made so much sense now. “They just swarmed me as I was leaving King Towers. I’m not even... Anyway, I wanted to hit one idiot. You should see this one. He’ll put the whole horde that hounds you to shame. I can proudly say I’ve provided this particular scumbag with a livelihood so far. But of course, he couldn’t just let me be, he has to put a spin on everything that happens in my life.”
His gaze flickered to hers. “What did he say?”
She tried to even out the hurt from her tone. “He asked me how I was enjoying the success that was bestowed upon me by my brother-in-law.”
“You couldn’t ignore it and walk away?” He sounded ragged, at the end of his rope. “Why do you act on every impulse that runs through your head?”
“Why do you care?” She pushed the words through a throat raw with hurt and longing. She was slowly losing the strength to fight him, to fight this. Every argument with him eroded her decision to keep her distance, every little flash of concern beneath his cutting indifference knocked off a little more of her resistance. “Why are you here, Alexander?”
A huge sigh rattled his body, and he sank to her tiny bed. He tugged her down and she scooted over to keep a little distance between them. His long legs stuck out in front of him as he planted them on an old armchair. He pushed his hair back with his fingers, and held his head in them. “There’s something I need to tell you. And I—” she turned her head, giving into the urge to just look at him; his jaw was locked tight “—wanted to see you.”
She felt as though her heart would explode out of her chest. She clutched her middle, a shiver running through her. “Don’t do this. I—”
He reached up, his thumb moved over her mouth, silencing her. “I couldn’t let you go on believing that what I wanted between us, the casual thing...that it had to be that way because it was you,” he said, his words harsh and tense. “You should give yourself more credit, Liv. And that’s just not when it comes to your career.” The tenderness in his gaze undid her. “You deserve the best any man can give.”
Olivia trembled at the impact of his words, a river of dizzy joy flushing her from within. Her legs folded under her, her heart bursting into speed. “Then why?”
“Isn’t it enough that I’m saying it, Liv?” He turned away from her. “You’re the most resilient, most courageous woman I’ve ever met.”
“Please, Alexander. I deserve the truth.”
“It’s not you. It’s how I react to everything about you. It’s the power you have over me.” Olivia’s heart jumped into her throat. He sounded guttural, like the admission was wrung out of him under promise of pain. “I don’t have control over myself with you. I lose all rationality. I don’t know myself, I’m capable of anything, everything. I become the worst of myself and I loathe it.”
It destroyed me to walk away, to let go, to fight the paralyzing hold my love for her had over me.
Olivia shivered at the memory of his words as realization slithered through her, both crushing and freeing, like the roller coaster that took her on a dizzying high at the price of the downward spiral. What she was was what drew Alexander to her and what he felt for her would be what would drag him away.
A pang of something shot through her, leaving her giddy and pained in equal measures. She felt a fist squeezing her chest, a sudden chill grabbing hold of her, and everything blurred for a second. The heartbreaking, breath-robbing, gut-clenching truth was that she was falling for him.
And she didn’t know how to stop it, there was no parachute to slow the descent, only the utterly terrifying truth that it would end with her heart crushed into so many pieces.
There was no happily ever after for her. Because this man who stared at her with incredible desire in his beautiful eyes, who felt something for her but abhorred the fact that he did, he was
it
for her.
Because no one could hold a candle to Alexander, no one would even come near scratching the surface of what she felt for him today, and despite all his efforts to deny it, to crush everything, no one would understand her, no one would love her better than he did.
Every inch of her trembled and shuddered as he tugged her hand into his. He kissed the sensitive spot on her wrist, his mouth a searing brand. “I can’t get you out of my mind. I want to touch you, I want to kiss you and I want to cover every inch of your skin with mine. And I’ve reached the end of my rope. Tell me to leave, tell me to get the hell out of your life. Because I can’t promise you anything, I can’t give you what you deserve.”
She wanted to move away from him, to hold on to a little sanity. But she couldn’t. If she sent him away, she would never see him again. Because whatever he claimed, he was a man of integrity. He would never speak of this again.
The thought sent waves of nauseating panic prickling over her skin. How could she deny herself the chance to be with him?
Winning the advertising contract for her agency, proving to herself that she was more than her choices, that she could succeed at something, they were all things she had needed. And she had them now. But couldn’t she change the fundamental part of her that felt so much.