Page 53 of Protégé King

His jaw tics. “It’s better that way. It’s always been better that way. You’re right. If my father wouldn’t have come at you, I would never have come back because it’s better for you that way.” There is something dark and tormented in his eyes, something I’ve sensed and felt in him only a few times.

Whatever he feels right now radiates through me and rips me into pieces. My anger dissolves. I don’t want to fight with him anymore. I don’t want him to feel whatever he feels right now. “Damion, I—” But it’s too late.

He opens the door and leaves.

I rush to catch him, but as I open the door and glance around, I watch him disappear behind a trailer.

He’s gone.

Chapter Forty

Damion

It’s six o’clock, one hour before the dinner with Mary Morrison, and I’m still at the office, dealing with a financier gone south, I lined up for a client in the UK. My plan for dinner is to tell Mary as close to the truth as I can. Alana and I had a fight. I probably lost her. It’s for the best for Alana, because Mary’s right. I’m too damn much like my father to be good for Alana. Honesty matters to people and I’m going to have to be honest with Mary, brutally so, because I need this to close and close now. Every day it does not, my father has one more minute to screw it up, and one minute is often all he needs.

Bottom line for Mary: this merger is all she has, or she will lose everything. We both know it. I’m saving her. She doesn’t have time to think, either. My father will come for her if she gives him a chance. I will send her home crying, but she will still have her company. It will just be a part of a bigger company.

After dinner, I will go home, get fucked up on the most expensive whiskey I can buy on my way to dinner, and then crash in bed alone and miserable without Alana once again, and this time for good. This isn’t about what I want. It’s about what’s best for Alana.

There are things I have done that I don’t want her to know. Things she might eventually find out, one way or the other, and I won’t let that happen.

Every time I get close to her, every time I smell her sweet perfume and see her beautiful smile, I forget these things. I forget that she’s a beautiful butterfly who would be basking in the sunshine of life, if not for me. I’m the reason my father is even in her life. And the truth is, I’m no saint myself. He made sure of that. I’m not the right guy for Alana, no matter how much I want to be.

I’ve just hung up with offering my UK client a solution when my father shows up in the doorway again. It’s an interesting development, considering it’s rare he enters my office at all. He makes me go to him. For him to do the opposite not once but two times in one day cries suspicious. He wants something he didn’t get the first time he was here.

“You fix that financing problem?” he asks, just inside my doorway.

That is not why he’s here, but I’ll play this game, whatever it is. “Of course, I fixed it. Why?”

“What, exactly, is happening with Mary Morrison and Alana? The board will want this done now, not later. We need to walk into that meeting prepared to give them now.”

Of course, there it is. He doesn’t really have an answer for shutting me down. He’s working on that right now as we speak. “I’ll speak on Mary Morrison in the meeting.”

My intercom buzzes. “Damion, you have Alana in the lobby.”

Damn it, Alana, I think. Not here. My father’s brows shoot up and he calls out, “Send her back,” and then to me, “This is well timed. I can get the facts from your perfect fuck’s own perfect mouth.”

I stand up, a fury inside me that is barely contained, and rarely unleashed, but it’s a part of me. Not a part of me I’m proud of, but I’ll embrace when necessary. “Do not speak of Alana in that way or any way, not now, not in the board meeting, not to her face, or otherwise, or I promise you, you will not like how I react.”

“And how, exactly, will you react?” he challenges, his tone amused, but there’s a twitch in his left hand, a tell sign few know but me. He’s uncomfortable, really fucking uncomfortable, and I like him that way.

“I’m my father’s son and therefore I’m not a man with many limits, if any. You should be afraid but proud.”

There’s a knock on the door and a moment later, Alana pokes her head in the room. The minute she spies my father, she says, “Oh, sorry. I can come back.”

Yes, Alana, I think. Go. Go now.

“Come in,” my father says. “Come in, Alana.” He’s turned to face her now, waving her forward, into the deep, deep dark of the proverbial woods where he lurks and hunts, which is anywhere he can find her, apparently.

She steps inside and glances from him to me, her eyes meeting mine, and I swear I feel her unease, but I also feel the punch of our connection. How I think I could ever stay in the same city, let alone country, and keep my distance from her, I do not know.

“Hi,” she says softly to me.

“Alana,” I say, a soft warning in her name.

“Tell me,” my father begins, “What are you doing with Mary Morrison, Alana?”

My eyes narrow on Alana, a message of caution in their depths. She draws in a breath and glances at my father. “We’re friends. I sold her a property and she’s a fan of my show. Why?”

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