Crossing Hathaway (10 page)

Although her tone remained light as a feather, it also conveyed a challenge. “Are you happy on your own?”

I stopped and looked down at her. “I-I don’t know. I guess so. Happy enough.”

A knowing smile lit up her face. “Do you think about him all the time?”

“No.” I winced at my quick response. Why did I have to be such a terrible liar?

“Does the very sight of him weaken your knees? Do you say silly things around him?”

I turned away so she wouldn’t read the truth on my face. “No,” I said with about as much indignance as I had in me.

“A mother knows when her daughter tells a fib. It’s too late, Eva. Denying what you feel is already hurting you. Why not give it a chance?”

I resumed pacing, my breath rasping out. “Why are you trying to talk me into this? Nobody has ever wanted me around, Mom, not for the reasons they claim. Even when they pretend to, it never lasts. I need to get out before he gets deep enough into my heart that he’ll shred it, just as Jack did.” A single tear tried to escape, but I blinked it away. “What’s wrong with me?”

Mom came up behind me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “Who do you think doesn’t want you, sweetheart?”

“I applied for more than twenty jobs, all ones I was plenty qualified for, and not a single call back until Cameron gave me a chance. Dad treats me like a stone in his shoe, and my birth mother left me in an Adidas shoebox on the church steps when I was one day old.” I broke away from Mom’s embrace and started for the door, the urge to run digging its claws into me. “Even as an infant nobody wanted to keep me.”

A tiny sound escaped Mom. Afraid of what I’d find, I turned slowly and stared into her glistening brown eyes, a hand over her mouth.

“Mom?” I reached for her, but she recoiled from my hand. “I’m sorry. None of this is your fault. You’ve always loved me and made me feel wanted. This has nothing to do with you.”

She took her hand away from her mouth and went to the cabinet on the far side of the room in a jerky motion, not at all like her usual graceful strides. “Please forgive me.”

I followed her with tentative steps, uncertain if I wanted to know what put the horror on her face. “Forgive you for what?”

When she faced me again, she had a folded piece of paper in her hand, wrapped with a pink ribbon. “Please understand. I intended to give this to you when you were old enough to appreciate it, but the way your dad acted toward you, and when he only got worse—I was afraid you’d run away or try to find her. I didn’t want to lose you.”

All thought stopped. With a shaking hand, I reached for the paper, yellowed with age. It crinkled in my fingers. “This—is from my birth mother? She left me a note?”

Mom backed up a step, and I followed, my blood running hot through my veins. She nodded. “Please don’t be angry with me.”

“I trusted you!” I jammed a finger at her. “You told me they were drug addicts and in jail, that they left me in a cardboard box. Please, Mom.” My voice came out as a near wheeze as I fought to contain my grief. “Please tell me you didn’t lie to me about all of that.” I wiped away angry tears and glared at the one person in my life I thought I could always count on for the truth, my sanity hanging by a thread. My temples throbbed and my throat ached from restraining the scream waiting there.

She pressed her palms over her eyes and sobbed.

I shook my head, backed away, the red walls of the living room fading to shades of gray. “No. No!”

“I thought your dad would come around, that we could be a happy family.” Hands falling away, her gaze pleaded. “If you knew your mother gave you up because her parents forced her to, then I was afraid you might look for her. She didn’t want to do it. She loved you, Evangeline, and she wanted you, so please don’t let that affect your life anymore. I love you, and I’m sorry. I didn’t know you felt like that.”

The room swayed a little as I stumbled toward the door. Mom called after me, but I couldn’t hear what she said, and I didn’t care to.

All lies.

My whole life I’d believed my birth mother abandoned me because she didn’t want me. The bittersweet knowledge that she loved me didn’t drown out the raging pain of Mom’s lies. I’d never been so alone in my life. She’d been my pillar, my foundation, but it all came tumbling down on my head.

I arrived home an hour later without a clear knowledge of how I got there, my feet aching from the walk, and the rest of me numb. After shutting off my phone, I collapsed onto my bed. I stared at my barren walls, feeling shut in, shut away from everyone and everything. At my age I should have had photos of my own little family on every wall, toys strewn lovingly on the floor, and my husband’s tighty-whities hanging over the back of the chair. I’d run from it all because of my dick of a father and jackass of an ex-boyfriend, and would continue to run. If enduring men was the price of love, then it was too damned high for me.

Mom’s beseeching stare etched itself onto my mind and tore the wound open a little more. I didn’t know what to do when I had to face her after what she’d done. How could I ever trust her again? I sat up and roared, pressed hands to my face. It was too much all at once, so I forced the images and her words away.

When I managed to divert my thoughts from Mom, Ben’s kiss burned and tingled on my lips again. The sensory memory of his tender, yet urgent, touch induced a sigh. I didn’t know which one was more agonizing, Mom’s betrayal or a happiness I could imagine with Ben but was too terrified to pursue. I wouldn’t end up like Mom. No way. Nuh-uh.

My birth mother’s letter burned a hole in my pocket. Unable to find the courage to read it, I turned on the TV in my bedroom and concentrated on the bright images to drive away the ones I didn’t want to see.

Although I couldn’t imagine falling asleep, my BlackBerry’s ring woke me to a new dawn.

I fumbled for my phone on the nightstand, disoriented and groggy.

“Yeah?” I answered. The word came out of a throat scratchy and swollen from crying. I didn’t want to think about why I’d been tearing all night.

“Eva, what the hell?”

I sat up, wrestled with my tangled bird’s nest of hair. “Cameron? Is that you?”

“You know damn well it is. You need to get your ass out of bed and into work. The janitors dragged my sorry butt out of bed an hour ago after being up with my kid half the night, so you’re first on my shit list.”

My clock said it was six a.m. “Uh, Cam, it’s six in the freakin’ morning! Have you been smoking the cheap stuff again? I don’t have to be to work until eight thirty.”

“Are you telling me you don’t know about this?”

“God, what is this, Jeopardy? Listen, I don’t have the brainpower for cryptic shit this morning. Can you please pretend I’m an idiot and tell me what I’m supposed to know about?”

“Just get dressed and get to work. Do not pass ‘Go,’ do not collect two hundred dollars. Don’t even take time for a shower. This mess is going to take us a while to clean up.”

The dial tone rang in my ear.

I smacked my palm against my aching forehead and fell back against the pillows. “Fuck.”

I dashed off the bus and ran up the stairs to work. My mind conjured horrible images of the IT office in ruins, caused by everything from floods to acts of terrorism, none of which Cameron could pin on me. What else could it be?

When I made it to the outer door of the IT office, I stopped and forced deep breaths. Just because the fire he lit under my ass actually burned, didn’t mean he needed to know it.

My pulse slowed, and I pulled open the door, stopped, and froze. Vases overflowing with roses covered every inch of work surface in the office, as well as most of the floor, except for a single clear path that led to my desk. The sweet, fresh scent engulfed me as I took tentative steps forward. The roses were orange with thin ribbons of flame red. Beautiful.

When my tired mind made the connection that the flowers were intended for me, my muscles snapped taut, and I pressed my palms against my forehead.

Oh no. He didn’t!

Cam leaned out of his office, wading through the floral ocean, his glare fixed on me. “Care to explain this, Eva? Who sent them?”

“I, uh—no idea. Seriously.” Chuckling awkwardly, I continued forward, eying one giant crystal vase on my desk containing at least five-dozen flowers. The corner of a white envelope poked out from the middle. It might as well have been an alligator about to snap off a finger by the terror it induced in me.

“Well, why don’t you read the fucking card so I know whose ass to shove my foot up?”

My brain went numb as I thought it through. None of the Quality Engineers had the kind of money it would take to buy that many roses.

Fuckballs.

I rushed to my desk in case Cam lost his patience and decided to read the card himself. My life was complicated enough without my boss thinking I’d been knocking uglies with the Big Cheese. I opened the envelope with shaking fingers, pulled out the small white card, and turned it over. Only five words were written: I like what I see. It was signed “B.”

What the hell did that mean? My brow wrinkled. Did he get off on semigeeky women wearing men’s dress shirts? Was that some sort of lame pickup line?

Cam stepped up behind me. “Well?”

I jumped and shoved the note into my pocket. “I’ll take care of it.” I avoided his stare as I went for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

On my way to the exit, I peered at him over my shoulder. “I told you … to take care of this.”

He spread his arms in a gesture to the IT garden. “You’re just going to take off and leave me with all of this frou-frou shit?”

Biting down on a few choice curses, my fingers curled into fists. “Just send out an e-mail to the whole office. Say that anyone who wants some free roses can come to the IT department. Knowing the women who work here, I guarantee there won’t be a single one left by eight thirty.” I turned and looked at the bouquet on my desk, released a sigh. Nobody had ever given me flowers before. It’d be a shame to give them all away. My voice fell low and I spoke into the floor. “They can have all but the ones on my desk.”

Cam chuckled, stepping nearer. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You heard me.”

“Oh. My. God. You’re as red as a damn fire truck.” He sauntered over to stand beside me, wearing a giant grin and folded his arms over his chest. “Here I thought this was a prank, but it’s much more interesting than that, isn’t it? Someone’s trying to break the infamous ‘I don’t date’ Evangeline Ross.” More chuckling. “Looks to me as if it’s working.”

Scowling, I pulled open the door, went out, and slammed it behind me. Cam’s laughter followed me down the hall as I went, gritting my teeth.

Were the roses another attempt to screw me over? I stopped in front of the elevator, my mouth dropped open at the revelation.

Bastard.

Hathaway could send me for coffee that didn’t exist, and give me a test I wasn’t supposed to be able to pass, but screwing with me in front of my colleagues went too fucking far.

By the time I made it to Mr. Hathaway’s floor, a red storm brewed in my head. He was so going to get a piece of my mind. A few pieces, in fact. I sped past Brent’s empty desk, whipped open the door and went into Hathaway’s office. I didn’t stop to ponder why the inner door wasn’t locked.

Lights shone a bright swath of white down the center of the room and a hint of his cologne lingered. I inhaled, until I realized what I was doing and shook my head.

“Mr. Hathaway?” I bellowed, my irritation ringing out like hell’s bells, fished the card out of my pocket and headed for the stairs. “Where are you?”

A faint sound caused me to stop and listen. It sounded like music but muffled. I marched up the steps to the dim upper level and listened again. The sound came from the direction of the boardroom, but no lights shone under the closed door. I edged along the wall into growing darkness, my spine tingling harder with every step.

A tiny strip of brightness spilled out beneath a door at the end of the hall, and the music grew in volume. I marched to the end, grasped the knob, and pushed. A large loft-style apartment spread out before me. Black leather sofas sat in a group in the living room with a glass coffee table in the middle of the huddle. A white kitchen stood to my left. “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon, thumped from large speakers in an entertainment center to my right.

“Mr. Hathaway?” I crept farther in. Like me, he had no pictures on the walls or anywhere else in the room. The honey-toned hardwood floor gleamed. “Hello?”

By the time sense overruled my curiosity and told me I shouldn’t be in his apartment, Mr. Hathaway wandered into the room from a hallway beyond the kitchen. He hummed, his face buried in a fluffy white towel he used to rub the water from his wet hair. Droplets trickled down his bare skin, glistening in the overhead lights. My gaze traveled downward and my eyes grew wide. He didn’t have a stitch of clothing on.

“Oh, for the love of God, why are you naked?” At his yelp, I covered my eyes with my hand as I tried to ignore the tightening and throbbing of my nether regions.

Fabric swished, and I hoped to hell he’d wrapped that towel around his man bits.

“Evangeline,” he said, tightly at first but his tone relaxed. “I wasn’t expecting you so early.”

Against my body’s will, I kept my eyes averted. “What happened to Mr. Hide-in-the-dark? How did you go from that to walking around butt-freakin’-naked?”

Chuckles mingled with his manly sigh. “I tried to scare you away, but you kept coming back. I tried to keep my distance, but you kept drawing me in. I wanted to hate you, to think you were a mindless, gold-digging woman like the rest I’ve met, but you made me laugh and shamed me at what I do best. I figured I had nothing left to hide from you.”

My eyebrows pinched together as I struggled to come up with something intelligent to say. “Is this one of those keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer kind of things?”

I opened my fingers long enough to see a grin slip across his full mouth, mirthful but serious too. Determined. “I don’t want to be your enemy, Evangeline.”