Page 21 of Kai
But the kiss—Christ Jesus! He should not have touched her. Now that he had, he knew he could not stay away. Could not give her the time allotted. He could not bloody well stay away from her, and he damn well was not going to sit by while she goes out with another man. He was not that tolerant. She was going to come to him.
And if she doesn't? The thought sneaked inside his head and caused his heart to stumble. Here he was drinking on the balcony. The breeze was whipping the leaves on the surrounding trees and seeping through to his bones. He was never usually affected by the cold, something that had always amazed Maxie. He used to tease her about her bird bones. She would be all bundled up in the fall, when he was just wearing a light sweater.
"If she doesn't come willingly, I'm prepared to drag her here, if I have to." He muttered. Shooting the rest of the scotch, he stumbled to his feet. The craving for her was like a dull ache inside him. How the hell had he spent ten years without her? How had he ever thought he had forgotten about her?
Granted, things had progressed rapidly. His father had died suddenly and then he had been whisked off to Japan to learn the way of the family. From there he had gone on to London to attend school. All the while reeling at the progression. He was head of the family, head of the company and was going to have to do his part. In all that confusion, he had thought of her fleetingly. But what about after? He wondered.
Chapter 7
"What are you going to do?" her friend asked her quietly.
"First, I am going to finish this excellent wine and then work on my designs. Oh, you mean about the letter? Nothing." She rose and went to grab the bottle. "Stop looking at me like that." She poured wine into both glasses and settled back on the sofa, one hand reaching down to comb her fingers through Brutus's thick fur.
Last night was like a dream, only it wasn't. The crumpled letter she had spent last night reading several times was living proof of what had happened.
He had not called her. She had spent a tense day at the store expecting him to. Each time a staff member came around when she was in the office, she would jump. Whenever she found herself on the floor dealing with a client and she heard the bell jingle, she expected him to walk in. If he had wanted to unnerve her, he had accomplished it brilliantly. Her nerves were shot to hell.
"His letter was--" Yvette took a deep breath as she recalled the words. "A confession and an apology."
"It doesn't matter." She gulped wine. "And you're supposed to be on my side."
"Always honey." Her friend eyed her carefully. "What are you going to do?" she repeated.
"Maybe I should just have sex with him and get it out of my system." She lifted her shoulders in a jerky shrug, the movement causing Brutus to raise his head and stare at her.
"You don't have casual sex," Yvette reminded her. "And what about Matthew?"
"One crisis at a time please." She felt as if she was coming apart at the seams. "That son of a bitch!" She gulped more wine. "He knew what he was doing. Stirring me up like this and expecting me to fall like a ripe plum in his arms. Well, that's not going to happen. I'm going to have sex with Matthew." Her eyes blazed."Who knows, it might be just what I need to get that bastard out of my system." She glared at her friend as Yvette sat there in silence. "Aren't you going to say something?"
"Frankly, I have no idea what to say," she commented mildly.
"Or I could have sex with him and still go out with Matthew. That would show him that he's not exclusive." She poured more wine into her glass. Hell, she was not driving, was she? She was already home. And what if she had a hangover in the morning? Nothing was wrong with that. She had problems--he had come back into her life and turned it upside down as usual.
"He was always a tempest," she murmured, feeling the anger draining.
"A what?"
"A storm." She sighed as she settled back and curled her legs under her. By this time, Brutus had gone to sleep and was snoring. "I knew that it would be wrong to get involved with him,even then. I knew of his reputation and was determined to stay away from him." She took a slow sip of wine. "He chased me." Her smile was whimsical. "He just would not give up. He's like that. Always had to have his way. What the hell am I going to do?"
Tongue in cheek, Yvette responded, "I thought you were going to bang his brains out."
She laughed shakily. "It's more like the opposite. What we had when we were teens was so profound, so powerful that I wept. I crawled into bed that night and cried until my eyes were swollen. It was humiliating. He did things to me--" She gulped wine again and felt the heat rising. "He--Oh God!" She took refuge in the wine and tried to ease the dryness of her throat. "He's Japanese," she ended as if that explained it.
"And tonight?" Yvette was having her own moment. The look on her friend's face told her everything she wanted to know.
"Tonight," she shook her head. "I have no idea what stopped me from begging him to take me right there in the parking lot."
Yvette leaned forward, her expression a mix of curiosity and concern. "You're spiraling, you know that, right?"
She nodded, feeling the haze of the wine loosening her inhibitions further. "I know. It's just--he has this way of making me feel alive and out of control all at once. Like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff, and he's daring me to jump. And the crazy part? I want to. I want to jump."
Yvette's hand on hers brought her back to the present. "But why now? Why let him back in when you've worked so hard to move on?"
"I didn't let him back in," she said, her voice sharper than she intended. "He just--he was there, like he always is. Like he always will be, lurking in the corners of my life, waiting for a moment to remind me that he exists. And now, he's got me unraveling. Again."
Her friend was quiet for a moment. Then, with a sigh, Yvette said, "Maybe that's the problem. You've never really dealt with him, with what he meant to you back then, with what he still means to you now."
She opened her mouth to argue, but the words didn't come. Deep down, she knew Yvette was right. She had buried the feelings, the memories, the heartbreak, but they had never truly gone away. And now, here they were, clawing their way to the surface like a storm she couldn't outrun.
