Teresa Medeiros (16 page)

Arian swiveled around in her own chair, imagining him staring out over that same lonely vista of passing strangers and city streets.

“It’s Ellen. She’s pregnant.” His mother’s announcement was greeted by a silence so profound that Arian would have thought the box had malfunctioned if Brenda hadn’t eventually scrambled to fill it. “She’s my baby, you know—only seventeen. She won’t even graduate until spring. And the boy … well, you know how boys that age are.”

Tristan’s harsh laugh made Arian hug a shiver away. “Does she plan to simply drop it off on somebody’s doorstep like you did or get rid of it by more permanent means?”

“She wants to keep it. You don’t know my Ellen, but she’s a good girl, Tristan. She just made a little mistake.”

Arian was crying openly now, the tears trickling down her cheeks before she could swipe them away.

“She’ll be a good little mom, son, I know she will. If she just had some cash to make things easier … please … don’t make me beg …”

Tristan’s only reply was the rustle of paper being pulled from a drawer and slapped on a desk, then the scratch of a pen across it. “Here. Tell her there’s more where this came from. Tell her I’m proud of her for accepting responsibility for her … little mistake.”

Brenda’s startled gasp revealed far more about Tristan’s generosity than his terse instructions. “Oh, son, you’re too good to us. Why, if you’d just let me bring my Ellen here to meet you, she’d throw her arms around you and give you the biggest—”

Tristan cut off the passionate declaration without a hint of remorse. “Don’t come back on the thirty-first. I’ll have my assistant mail your check.”

Arian was still gazing out the window when Brenda
emerged from the office clutching a narrow rectangle of paper. From her reflection in the darkening glass, Arian could see that the woman had gnawed the rouge from her lips, leaving them pale and trembling. The sight failed to evoke even a ghost of Arian’s sympathy.

“Good night, miss,” Brenda shyly offered. “Thank you for your kindness.”

A stilted “Good night” was all Arian could manage.

She remained curled up in the chair as true dusk fell, knowing she should retreat to the penthouse before Tristan emerged. She could only imagine how much he would loathe her if he knew she’d intruded on his private anguish.

But when she rose, a force more powerful than fear for herself drew her toward those mahogany doors.

Tristan hadn’t lit a single lamp to shield him from the gathering darkness. He stood at the window, a lone shadow silhouetted by the city lights, a half-empty Scotch glass dangling from one hand, the other jammed into the pocket of his trousers. He’d shed his jacket and loosened his tie. His gaze narrowed on her reflection, forcing her to see herself as he must see her—as an insensitive stranger intruding on his solitude.

“It blinks, you know.”

“What?” Arian had no idea what he was talking about.

He pointed to the reflection of the little black box perched on his desk—a box identical to the one in the antechamber. A tiny green light on its top was flashing. “The intercom. It blinks when it’s activated.”

A wave of shame passed over Arian, but there was no denying her guilt. She would simply have to brazen it out. “If you knew I was listening, why didn’t you stop me?”

He shrugged. “Why bother? You’d have to stand in line to sell my pathetic secrets to the press. I can see the headline now—
BOY BILLIONAIRE BILKED BY OWN MOTHER.”

Arian perched on the edge of his desk, more disturbed by his sarcasm than she cared to admit. “I read somewhere that you grew up in an orphanage.”

“So you assumed I was an orphan? Oliver Twist and all that romantic rot? Sorry to disillusion you, but orphanages take bastards, too.”

Arian winced, but Tristan’s expression never changed. Perhaps the label didn’t bear the same stigma as it did in her own time. She could still remember the unkind remarks, the cutting slights, the pitying glances when the other children at Louis’s court had learned she had a mama, but no papa.

“Your mother must have been very young,” she said gently, wanting to pity the woman, but finding it nearly impossible in the face of his unflinching candor.

“Seventeen. Just like her precious Ellen.” He took a sip of the Scotch. “I’m sure she convinced herself she was doing the best thing by giving me up. She couldn’t have known there wouldn’t be much demand for shy, brainy kids with stringy hair and Coke-bottle glasses. Most of my potential parents never got past the photo.”

Arian wanted him to stop. He might be able to relate such a tale without betraying even a trace of emotion, but his passionless confession was flaying her tender heart to ribbons.

“I hated the ones who made it as far as the interview the most. They were all polite, of course. Painfully polite. But somehow that only made it worse.”

She inched closer to him without realizing it. “What happened to your moth—to Brenda after?”

“Shortly after she left me on the orphanage steps with my name pinned to my shirt, she dropped out of high school to marry a construction worker, moved to a three-bedroom tract house in Newark, and raised three kids with good solid blue-collar names like Bill and Danny … and Ellen.”

Arian had always longed for a sibling to ease her loneliness. “So you have brothers and a sister?”

Tristan swung around. She recoiled from the virulence of his expression. “No. My mother has other children.”

Arian’s fingers trembled with the urge to touch him, to comfort him. But before she could, his mask of icy indifference slipped back into place, warning her she would earn nothing for her foolishness but frostbitten fingers.

She clasped her hands in her lap to keep them from betraying her. “How did you and your mother come to be reunited?”

He propped his hip on the corner of the desk opposite her. “ ‘Reunited.’ Such a touching word.” His scathing smile implied the opposite. “Since I was never adopted, my name never changed and it wasn’t that difficult for Brenda to trace me. She called three years ago to request a meeting. I canceled all of my appointments for the afternoon, put on my most expensive suit, my finest cologne, and waited for her to arrive.”

“She didn’t come?” Arian breathed, fearing the worst.

He lifted the glass to his lips for a long draw before answering. “Oh, she came. At two o’clock on the dot. Things were a little awkward at first, as you can imagine, but we managed to carry on a civil conversation. You see, I’d already decided to forgive her. Convinced myself that she didn’t deserve to suffer any more than she already had. After all, she was just a girl when she gave me up. A ‘good girl’ who’d made a ‘little mistake.’ ”

Arian’s hands curled into fists as anger surged through her, anger toward the woman who’d dared to make this man feel as if he were nothing more than a careless blunder to be regretted for the rest of her life.

“Brenda chattered on and on about her second family. About her husband Earl, who’d been forced to go on disability after he suffered a back injury at work. About her oldest son Bill, who desperately wanted to attend an Ivy League school, but lacked the grades to
snag a scholarship. About sixteen-year-old Danny, whose multiple DUI’s had earned him a court-ordered stay at an expensive rehab center.”

Arian could too easily imagine Tristan sitting behind this very desk, growing colder and colder as each of his mother’s words drove an icy wedge of betrayal deeper into his heart.

“By the time she’d confided her own particular weakness—afternoon trips to the horse track to bet on the daily doubles, I knew she didn’t want me any more than she ever had. She only wanted my money.”

It was Arian’s turn to rise and seek the window. Her turn to stare out over the lights of the city so Tristan wouldn’t see the tears glistening in her eyes. She knew instinctively that he would scorn her pity. All she had to offer him was her rage.

“I wouldn’t have given her an allowance,” she said bitterly.

Tristan rose from his own corner of the desk, stunned by the ferocity of Arian’s passion. He’d never had anyone to defend him before. Never even expected it. He’d always been content to stand on his own, as he had since the day he was born.

Yet there Arian stood, little more than a wraith in black leggings, black turtleneck, and bare feet, ready to do battle with any dragon who dared to cross his path, even his weak and calculating mother. Something irresistible and dangerous coiled through his belly.

“What would you have done? Put a curse on her?” Tristan spoke the words lightly to douse the tension smoldering between them, but when Arian spun around to face him, her wrath was still hot enough to strike sparks.

“I’d have thrown her out on the street. I’d have told her never to darken my doorstep again. Her or any other member of her rotten brood.”

“Witch,” he murmured.

Arian’s eyes darkened with such wounded alarm
that he softened his accusation with a lazy smile before cupping her delicate jaw in his hand. “You beautiful, vindictive little witch.”

Suddenly, Tristan wanted to taste her on his lips more desperately than he’d ever wanted to taste the Scotch. His groin stiffened with unbearable longing, fading his smile.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he ordered.

“Like what?” she whispered, blinking up at him.

“As if I were a pint of Häagen-Dazs and you’ve been deprived of sweets for a lifetime.” Tristan’s fingers tightened on her jaw. He would have felt guilty for trying to frighten her away if she hadn’t already scared the bloody hell out of him. Against his better judgment, his thumb strayed out to stroke her trembling lower lip. “Maybe I should just indulge your little sweet tooth. You know all my secrets, so maybe I can coax you into confessing a few of your own. I’ve always found pleasure to be a most persuasive incentive.”

As Tristan drew her into his arms, Arian thought of a hundred secrets to tell him, a thousand things to confess. But her words melted into a broken sigh as he lowered his head to plant a kiss against the throbbing pulse in her throat. His tapered fingers caressed her nape with ruthless tenderness, sending languorous waves of delight tingling through her body. A sweet tongue of fire flickered to life low in her belly, threatening to become a roaring blaze with each sensual stroke of his fingertips. Not even the lecherous Reverend Linnet had dared to touch her with such shocking and exquisite familiarity.

Linnet’s threats and bullying had failed to defeat her, yet Tristan mastered her with nothing more than a nibble of her willful flesh and a few practiced caresses.

“No!” Arian wrenched herself from his arms, stumbling backward into the desk.

He reached to steady her, whispering, “Arian, don’t …”

She was deaf to his hoarse plea. Terrified she would find only a mocking reflection of her own carnal weakness in his eyes, she fled, realizing even as she did so that there was nowhere left to hide from her own folly. She’d already betrayed her most dangerous secret, the one she’d struggled to keep from herself since the first moment she’d laid eyes on Tristan Lennox.

His mother might not want him, but she, Arian Whitewood, most definitely did.

Wearing one of Tristan’s nightshirts, Arian sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of the penthouse’s living room window and watched the lights of the city wink to life through the falling curtain of darkness. She dug her tablespoon into the open pint of Häagen-Dazs and brought another mouthful to her lips. Never in her most decadent dreams had she imagined such a sinful delicacy. The sweet cream melted in her mouth, but the dark, rich aftertaste of the chocolate lingered. ’Twas like her encounter with Tristan the previous night. Bitter, yet sweet. Pleasure mingled with the threat of pain.

Not the sort of pain she had anticipated, either. Not a noose around her neck, but a man’s fist closed snugly about her heart. She had misjudged him sorely it seemed, only to discover he was even more dangerous than she had feared. He might accuse her of being a witch, but he was the one guilty of weaving an enchantment more powerful than any spell her feeble magic could cast.

She set the frozen cream aside, her appetite deserting
her. Tristan Lennox was nothing like the raven-haired prince she had always dreamed of. He was terse and mocking rather than patient and kind, wicked instead of noble, and possessed of a dark sensuality that precluded the spiritual. If she were wise, she would forget the million dollars and use the amulet to flee to some place or time where he could never find her.

Hugging her knees to ward off a chill, Arian wondered if Tristan was staring out another window at that very moment. The foreign city viewed through her pensive reflection had never seemed so vast or so lonely. Who did Tristan see staring back at him? she wondered. The accomplished, devastatingly handsome man he had become or the shy, homely boy he had believed himself to be?

She rested her cheek on her knee. Her heart ached for that boy. She wanted to draw him into her arms and promise him he would never be unwanted again. But Tristan had not been seeking solace when he’d drawn her into his arms. He’d wanted something more tangible than her pity or her comfort.