Damage Control Read online

  Seconds tick by, heavy like stone, and I stare at her, taking my time to reply, containing my simmering anger, but I let her see it. I let her feel the steel wire whipping here and there, and I don’t give her a path to dodge it or even soften its blow. Finally, I release her, but before she can move, I’ve gripped the waist of her blouse again, dragging her to me, the impact of her soft curves against mine a little too right to be so damn wrong.

  “Tell me,” I demand, my tone roughened by the emotions I don’t want to name or feel for that matter, nor do I want to be staring into her eyes, looking for whatever the hell I’m looking for that I won’t find. Or maybe I will, and that’s the problem. She doesn’t want me to see it either, cutting her gaze to stare at my damn buttons again. “Look at me,” I demand of her.

  She inhales, a soft sound that I don’t want to be sexy, but holy fuck, everything about this woman is sexy to me and that only pisses me off again. She lifts her chin, looking at me with those too blue eyes, and whispers, “I am sorry.”

  “Is that a confession?”

  “It’s an apology.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything.”

  I don’t like that answer. In fact, I hate that fucking answer, and I don’t hate any more easily than I love. Worse, I’m pretty damn sure I’m headed to one or the other with this woman; maybe I’ve already reached both. My gaze lowers to her mouth, lingering there, mine ready to claim hers, to punish her. “I wonder,” I say, my gaze finding hers, heat simmering low in my limbs, one part lust, another part fury, “how it is that I didn’t taste your lies. I wonder if they’ll taste differently now that I know they exist.”

  I lower my head, leaning into her to find out when she shoves my chest, and says, “No!” before twisting away from me, leaving me no option but to risk hurting her if I don’t release her. I let her go; my idea of “punishment” is defined in many ways, and that includes her willing submission.

  Emily wastes no time with her freedom, darting away from me and charging for the foyer. I stand there a moment, inhaling a calming breath and contemplating my next move and her potential departure. If I let her go, I find out where her panic leads her and to whom. But if that happens, will I ever find out how those lies really taste and why I’ve missed them? That’s not an option, and I start walking, my long stride eating up the space she has put between us. I exit the kitchen to the foyer, just in time to see her slip her purse across her chest.

  She glances up at me and dashes for the door, and I let her reach it, entrapping her from behind. Still, she reaches for the knob and I shove my hand on the wooden surface and hold it shut. She turns to find me almost on top of her, so close I could taste those lies right now, right in this moment. I could fuck her right here and now, the way she’s been fucking me over and over for days.

  “You’re such an asshole,” she hisses, surprising me with her attack. “Why can’t you see that I’m protecting you?”

  “Protecting me how?” I demand, all kinds of possibilities stirring in my mind. The Feds. The Martina cartel. My brother. “And from whom?” I add.

  “Since protecting you meant not telling you what I have going on, I wouldn’t be protecting you now if I told you. And what exactly is the difference in you pretending to fuck that woman to protect me and me keeping secrets to protect you?”

  “You aren’t who the hell you told me you are. That’s the damn difference.”

  “Fucking someone else or me hiding my identity to protect you. Which is worse?”

  “Since I didn’t fuck another woman, but you did hide your identity, that answer is pretty damn clear.”

  “I could say about ten things to that, but then you’d just make some scathing remark I don’t deserve. You didn’t even ask me why I hid who I am. You just attacked me.”

  “This isn’t a little thing.”

  “No,” she says. “It’s not. Not at all, but not for the reasons you assume.”

  “You’re still trying to turn this one on me and it won’t work. All you had to do was just say ‘I can explain’ and then do it. If you had, we’d be having a different conversation.”

  “Right,” she says, “and starting the conversation with ‘no more lies’ is certainly the way to invite me to share my deepest, darkest secrets.”

  “I gave you every reason to trust me. Every reason to tell me what you chose not to tell me. You want delicate little questions? That’s not me and it’s sure as hell not me after I find out from someone else you’ve been lying to me and I have to question every moment I ever spent with you.”

  “We’re done,” she rasps out, delicately clearing her voice before adding, “We both know that, so let’s not drag this out. Let me out of here.”

  I study her for several beats, reading uncertainty in her face that I want to understand, to taste on my tongue, a little too much. “Yes,” I say tightly. “Let’s get out of here before I strip you naked and fuck you, which I have no doubt we’ll both enjoy, but I won’t be sure who’s seducing who. And I won’t be that damn naked with you ever again.”

  “I told you why I did this, Shane,” she murmurs, defeat in her voice.

  “To protect me. Funny. My father loves to use that as an excuse.”

  “That was your excuse for being with that woman,” she fires back, that fiery side of her I like too damn much returning.

  “I wasn’t fucking that woman and you know it.”

  “Do I? Because you’re judging me by your family’s actions, while their blood runs through your veins, not mine.”

  I press my fists on either side of the door by her head. “Being a bitch does not help you right now.”

  “Being an asshole just proves you’re an asshole.”

  “Lying only makes you—”

  “Honorable in ways you’ll never understand,” she blasts back.

  “I’m going to understand,” I assure her. “Sooner rather than later.”

  “I’d like to leave, sooner rather than later.”

  “We’re going downstairs to the hotel restaurant to eat dinner.”

  She blanches. “What? No. I’m not having dinner with you.”

  “You will. The lies started with dinner, and so it’s only appropriate they end with dinner.”

  “No—”

  “And you’ll do it because you owe me that damn much.”

  “What is dinner going to do but draw this out, Shane?”

  “We’re going to dinner,” I insist, knowing she could try to run, but also knowing she’s being followed, and that ultimately might be the only way I find out the truth of who, and what, she is really all about.

  “What keeps me from leaving?”

  “Nothing but you,” I assure her.

  “I’m going to leave.”

  “Then leave, Emily. I’ll find out the answers from someone else, and be colored by their definitions. If that is how you want to end this, then it says a lot about who we are and what we are.”

  “Don’t do that to me.”

  “I’m just being honest, a trait I value.”

  “If you knew what—”

  “But I don’t,” I say, pushing off the door, damn ready to get her out of here before I really do strip her naked, and there’d be no coming back from how cold and hard I’d fuck her right now. And apparently I’m still just foolish enough to actually hold on to a hope that she really has an explanation for all of this that makes it possible. As if she wants to douse that idea, she quickly says, “Dinner won’t change what I’m willing to tell you.”

  Displeased in about a hundred ways, I turn her to face the door, her back to my front, her lush backside nestled intimately against me. I arch around her, my lips at her ear, my hand flattening on her belly. “Much has already changed, Emily,” I assure her. The floral scent of her perfume teases my nostrils with bittersweet memories of me wrapped in that smell, in this woman, whoever she is. “And so much more is about to.”

  “I was weak,” she murmurs. �
�I should have ended this before you could feel the way you do right now.”

  “But you didn’t,” I say, not bothering to ask why. That answer is in the secrets she thinks she isn’t going to tell me tonight.

  She leans back into me, a subtle sway before she melts against me. “I tried,” she whispers, her hands sliding to my thighs, and holy fuck, her touch is too damn right for her to be wrong. The idea jolts me and I step back, taking her with me to open the door, before I then set her away from me, and into the hallway. “It’s time for that dinner and conversation.”

  She stumbles slightly and damn it, I want to right her footing. I want to save her, when I might be the one I need to be saved after this, after her. I watch her catch her balance and start walking, her pace even, when I have a feeling she wants to run; and even knowing Seth will have her followed, I don’t want her to run. Reaching behind me, I shut the door, and in a few long strides, I catch up with her, but she doesn’t look at me. I think it’s fairly clear that she doesn’t want to see the distrust in my eyes any more than I want to see the lies in hers. Once again, we’re well matched, but for all of the wrong reasons.

  We fall into step as we so often do, which is something I have never experienced with any other woman. But when I would normally reach for her, I do not, for the same reason I got us the hell out of the apartment. I don’t need to fog my senses with the feelings this woman obviously delivers, when I didn’t even believe that was possible. She wants to protect me? I’m protecting myself, and I’m not sure what bothers me more: The idea that she doesn’t want my protection because she doesn’t trust me or because she’s my enemy.

  In all of sixty seconds, we round the corner and stop at the elevator bank, neither of us looking at each other. I punch the call button while she hugs herself, a defensive stance that means little that I don’t already know. She’s guarded. She’s always been guarded. I knew this. I knew she had some ghosts in her closet, but I thought they were things she wasn’t ready to tell, not things she completely erased. The elevator dings almost instantly and I hold the door for her, not just because it’s the gentlemanly thing to do but because I want to control every moment I’m with her tonight.

  She steps inside the car, and while she is often bold and even confrontational, tonight she walks to the opposite side of the car, leaning on the wall, arms folded in front of her chest still. I join her inside, punching the lobby button, I rotate to face her, my hands on the railing of the wall behind me. Her long brown hair is sleek, her navy skirt and blouse simple but professional, though now I find myself wondering if her limitations are choice or circumstance. I wonder a lot of things I should have wondered sooner.

  The elevator doors shut, sealing us inside a steel box with her lies and my questions. The car starts to move, and our gazes collide, the connection a punch in my chest I don’t want her to have the power to deliver. But she does. I am vulnerable in ways I swore I never would be with a woman, or anyone for that matter, and I’d actually forgotten the lessons my family taught me years ago. What my mother warned me about with Emily. The people closest to you can hurt you the most. My jaw sets hard, my stare now sharp glass shards of accusation.

  Apparently far from oblivious to that fact, Emily lifts her chin and declares, “I am not going to sit through dinner with you looking at me like that.”

  “How am I looking at you?”

  “Like I’m one of the many people who you can’t trust and who have betrayed you.”

  “Change my mind.”

  “So I’m right,” she says, her voice cracking. “You do think I’m one of them.”

  “There are many things going on in my mind right now.”

  “I told you—”

  “Don’t tell me anything in this elevator.”

  “Right,” she says tightly. “Because everyone in your family is watching everyone else, so it has cameras.”

  “You know me and my family well,” I say dryly. “And yet I know far less about you than I want to know.”

  “I thought we weren’t talking in the elevator?”

  “I want to know more of you,” I say, putting a double entendre to use. “And that’s not something I mind anyone knowing.”

  “You know more than you think,” she replied, thinking on her feet, and choosing her words to play to the same audience I am.

  “And yet you still feel like a mystery to me,” I reply, and it’s in that moment the elevator slows and dings. Her gaze jerks toward the doors and I glance up and register that we are now on the fourth floor, rather than our destination. Not about to let a wall of human bodies give Emily a chance to escape, I close the distance between us, and by the time her gaze returns to me, I’m standing in front of her. She looks up at me, her lips parting in surprise, her gaze meeting mine, and there is no mistaking the flash of torment in her eyes that I want to understand.

  The doors open and male voices sound, moving closer to us as they enter the car, crowding Emily and me, and in turn, forcing me to remove the step I’ve left between us, my hands bracketing her waist. She sucks in air with the contact, her hands wrapping my wrist, and I’m not sure if she’s holding me in place, or wishing she could move me and escape. The doors shut to my right and the car jolts into action, while Emily sways forward, catching herself with a palm on my chest. Seeming to be stunned by what she’s done, she tries to pull it away, but I cover her hand with mine, holding it to me. Her gaze seems to instinctively jerk from those spellbinding buttons to my face, offering me a glimpse of the confusion etched all over hers. She doesn’t know if she wants to hold on to me or push me away. In that, we are one, but I am not comforted by her conflicting emotions. She’s trapped by her own lies; what she does with the freedom I’m about to give her will speak volumes about who she is, and who we are together.

  The car halts, and once again her gaze is averted, any answers I might find in it hidden. I’m hoping like hell she really does stay and that a table in the restaurant will offer her the security to tell me the truth, no matter how ugly it might be. I fight the urge to reach for her hand and hold on to her, instead stepping to the side and facing forward. She joins me, standing beside me to watch the doors open, as if ready to launch herself forward, and I remind myself that one way or another, I’m getting my answers, and despite my desire that she stay, letting her escape and following where she leads might be the easiest answer.

  The two men with us exit, clearing our path, allowing us to walk into the corridor, and in that moment, I say to hell with making it easy for her to run. She lied to me. Leaving won’t be easy. I reach around her waist and snag her hip, aligning our legs as we walk, preventing her escape. “Shane, I—”

  “It’s dinner,” I say. “You’ll have an audience to protect you.”

  She digs in her heels and stops, turning to face me, her hand landing on my chest again. “I don’t need to be protected from you. You need to be protected from me.”

  Red flags go up all over again. “Do you know how many ways I could read that? Are you trying to warn me here or what?”

  “No. Yes. No. Not from what you are thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “You already told me you think I’m spying on you, and I’m not.” She presses her hand to her face. “This is not working.” She drops her hand and looks at me. “I have to go.” Abruptly she pulls back from me, and being that we’re in public I have to let her go, and we both know that.

  She turns and takes a step, gasping and stopping dead in her tracks as my father steps directly in front of her. “Mr. Brandon.”

  Tall, with thinning gray hair, his custom blue suit hangs on his now frail, cancer-ridden body like it belongs to someone else, but there is nothing frail in the way his gaze lands on Emily.

  “Emily,” he states. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  She grips her purse with a death hold, her spine going ramrod stiff, and a wave of protectiveness overcomes me that says much about my instincts wi
th Emily and my father. I step to her side, close; my palm settling possessively on her lower back. “Why are you here, Father?” I ask, the demand short and clipped by design. I’ve told him to get his damn mistress out of the Four Seasons, considering I’m in the residential side of the building.

  His gray eyes, still so much like mine, cut sharply to me. “I came to see you,” he declares, reaching into his blue suit jacket and producing an envelope, which he offers me. “The deed to your apartment as requested. I’ve signed it over to you.”

  Aware he has a self-serving motive of some sort, I snatch the envelope from him, stick it in my pocket, and disinvite whatever conversation he hopes to have. “Go home to your wife.”

  “She’s occupied,” he says. “As she is far more often than you realize.”

  Holy fuck, I want to ask what that means, but I don’t give him the satisfaction. “Do you blame her?”

  His lips tighten, the only telltale sign that I’ve hit a nerve, but his reply is not what I expect. “No actually, I do not. I’m going upstairs to the apartment I still own, and will continue to own.”

  “That’s not acceptable. I want you, and your plaything, out of my home.”

  “Well then, son, you’ll be pleased to know that the doctors say you won’t have to tolerate it for long. I’ll be dead soon.”

  A tight hot knot forms in my chest, tension tightening my body, and Emily’s fingers flex into my arm, her hip pressing ever so slightly into mine. “The dead-man-walking card doesn’t work with me.”

  “We both know that’s not true, son,” he says. “If only it worked as well on your mother as it does you.” Instead of using this as more bait, he leaves us to stew, ending the conversation. “I’ll leave you to your evening.” He flicks Emily a look. “We’ll talk in the morning.” He steps around us and starts walking, but I make no attempt to move, nor does Emily dart away, which she well could in this moment. I stand there. She stands there. And much to my irritation, he’s right. He’s hit the human side of me, my emotional side, which is reacting to the promise he will soon be dead. I inhale, working to contain rather than reject what I feel, which is too damn much. Because you can’t control what you reject, and me having control is absolute survival for me, and perhaps my entire family. Perhaps Emily too.