Page 91 of Close Pursuit

She was absolutely correct. But he wasn’t about to tell her that.

She was almost there. Almost ready to spite him. He would never, ever forgive his father for making him do this. Grimly, he pounded in the final nail into his own coffin.

He steeled himself and managed a casual shrug. “Fine. If that’s how you feel, get out.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Long enough for her rage to melt. Long enough for her eyes to fill with tears. Long enough for him to call himself every foul name he could think of for doing this to her.

But what choice did he have? Hehadto stay on the tightrope. And he had to get her to step off of it now before it got any higher off the ground. He had no net to catch either of them.

Katie picked up her purse and walked out of the hotel room.And he didn’t stop her.

She ignored the smirk a bellboy threw her as she crossed the lobby. The kid no doubt thought she was a hooker done with a job. Screw him. Her heart had just shattered in a million pieces.

She couldnotbelieve Alex would steal the list of names and places for his father. He hated Roman!

She’d stormed out of the hotel and asked the doorman to hail her a cab before it occurred to her that family relationships weren’t necessarily simple things. It was entirely possible that, as much as Alex claimed to hate his father, he also craved his father’s approval. Maybe even his father’s love.

She had, in fact, established tonight that Alex did appreciate and want love in spite of his big words to the contrary. Maybe he wanted his father to love him, too?—

Dammit, she was not going to make excuses for Alex! It was wrong to steal that list and that was all there was to it. But Lord, it hurt to realize that she hadn’t gotten through to him.

Her mother had always said it was folly to try to change a man, but Katie had really thought she could save Alex from the darkness within himself. At some fundamental level of his being, he’d seemed to want her to save him.

How could she have read him so very wrong? It shook her confidence in her ability to understand people. Heck, it shook her confidence in people. She’d been so sure, deep down in her heart, that Alex was a good man. Until his abrupt and complete about-face after a two-minute call with his father proved her so terribly wrong.

She suspected it would hurt for a very long time before she got over him. If she ever got over him. How could she ever look at Dawn and not see him? Her arms ached to hold the baby. Her baby.

She looked at her watch. It was after ten p.m. Too late to visit the convent, darn it. But there was one other thing she could take care of tonight. Now, while she was still angry and the hurt hadn’t taken over her soul. She had to do it now, before her resolve faltered.

She scrolled through her cell phone and found André Fortinay’s emergency cell phone number. All of D.U.’s field staff had the number.

“Hello?” he answered right away. The faint French accent was noticeable in his voice tonight.

“André? I’m sorry to bother you this late. It’s Katie McCloud. We have a problem.”

Alex sank onto the edge of the bed as the door shut behind Katie. He felt…empty.

When would he ever learn? It was always this way when he was a kid. If he found something to love—a teddy bear or a stray cat or even a friend from school—his father tore it away from him. Told him to be tough. To have no feelings. Discipline his mind. How was the bastard still doing that to him?

No, wait. Hadn’t Katie just said he was doing it to himself, now? Was she right?

Alex swore violently as he grabbed a little bottle of whiskey out of the refrigerator and downed it in a single gulp. These mini-bottles weren’t going to cut it. He called downstairs and had the bar send up a fifth of their best, with a fat tip if it could be here in five minutes or less.

The bottle was delivered and he skipped pouring it and tipped it up, taking a healthy gulp. Better. He was going to get drunk off his ass and pray oblivion laid in wait at the bottom of this bottle.

Katie sat in a chair in the hotel room she’d hastily checked into across town, as far from Alex as the Metro would take her. She stared at the gray carpet, her mind blank. She’d done it. She’d betrayed Alex.

She’d gone behind his back and warned André that Alex was planning to steal his master list of staff and their postings abroad.

The Frenchman’s reaction had been odd. He’d seemed almost…amused that Alex had told her what he planned to do. Of course, he’d been grateful for the heads’ up, but he hadn’t been nearly as alarmed at the moral breakdown in one of his doctors as she would have expected.

He had questioned her in some detail regarding Roman’s phone call and what Alex had said afterward about the call and his decision to do what his father asked. Come to think of it, that had been about the time André started to chuckle.

There was nothing funny about this situation! It sucked. She’d just lost the man she’d been falling in love with. Lost him to his grasping father and to the dark urgings of his wounded soul.

How in the hell was she supposed to compete with those? Apparently, the answer was that she couldn’t win. Blood ran deep in families. Of all people, she knew that coming from the big, tight clan that she did.

She sat there for a long time before finally crawling into bed.

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