Exposed (Tropical Nights) (18 page)

“It’s no trouble,” Lukas said. “Hey, are you okay? You look a little flushed.”

“I’m fine. It’s just hot and crowded in here and it’s making me a bit dizzy. I need to step outside and catch my breath.” Rachel took a few steps back, trying to make a quick escape while appearing nonchalant about it all. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

She turned around quickly, intending to thread her way through the dancing couples and out onto the terrace before Lukas could follow, but she was brought up short when she accidently walked straight into a man who must have been standing right behind her. “Whoops. Sorry,” she mumbled without looking up. She tried to scoot around him but he put a hand firmly on her arm, stopping her.

“Rachel.”

Every bodily function slammed to halt—her pulse, her breathing, her capacity for rational thought. The entire room and all the people in it seemed to fade out of existence. All she could hear was the blood rushing in her ears as her heart jolted to a start again. All she could see was the onyx studs of the tuxedo shirt in front of her as she stood frozen, unable to look up and see who she’d bumped into. Not that she needed to see his face to know who it was. There was no mistaking who had said her name, no doubt about who was touching her.

“Leo.” She forced herself to bring her gaze up to his.

“Everything okay here?” Lukas asked from behind her. She’d forgotten he was there. She’d forgotten he existed at all. “Do you know this guy?” He sounded a little confused. Rachel knew the current of all the unspoken longing and unresolved issues passing between her and Leo was so strong it was almost tangible, and Lukas would have to be in a coma to miss it.

Rachel managed to answer Lukas with a nod, unable to speak or look away from Leo.

Leo’s completely ignored Lukas. His eyes were locked on Rachel, his expression unreadable. “Dance with me,” he said, the tone of his voice as inscrutable as his face.

Lukas stepped forward to stand at her side. “Hey, buddy, back off.
I’m taking her outside for some air.”

Leo stiffened and he tore his gaze from Rachel to thr
ow an irritated glare at Lukas. Rachel put a hand on Leo’s chest, and while he didn’t relax completely, she felt some of the tension in his body ease slightly. “It’s okay, Lukas,” she said as she turned to him. She forced a casual-looking smile. “Leo and I have some catching up to do.”

The two men stared each other down for a
second, until Lukas, obviously no fool, took a step back. “Sure thing,” he said. And then Lukas walked away, or the floor opened up and swallowed him, or he simply poofed out of their plane of reality and into another. Rachel had no idea because all of her attention was focused on Leo and she took no notice of what Lukas did or where he went.

At that moment, she wouldn’t have noticed the building crumbling down around them.

Leo put his arm around her waist and they moved to the music. They stood within inches of each other as they danced, but there was an agonizing gulf between them so wide they might as well have been standing in different rooms. He was rigid, his jaw tight, and he stared over her head like the most riveting thing in the world was happening off in the distance. Rachel had spent the last several weeks aching to be in Leo’s arms once more and dreaming of the moment she would see him again, but now that the moment was here, she wished she were anywhere else. Anywhere but in his arms as he held her stiffly and avoided looking at her.

They danced in silence. Each moment that passed without him speaking to her caused her heart to break a little more, until she was surprised it was still beating at all. The tension built inside her until she thought she would be crushed underneath it.

“Oh, Leo,” she whispered, unable to stand the cold silence a second longer.

He looked down at her and the mask of impassivity
he wore slipped for the briefest instant, giving her a tiny glimpse of the hurt she’d caused him. 

“I’m so sorry,” she said in shaking voice.

She didn’t know if she was brave enough to say what she needed to or if it would even help. Maybe Leo didn’t want to hear it, maybe she would just make things worse, but the words were bubbling up inside her with such force she thought she would burst if she didn’t let them out, no matter what the consequences. So she took a deep breath and let it all pour out of her.

“I’m so sorry for everything that happened. I never meant to lie to you. I didn’t know Karen had told you I still worked for
Economy Today
, and when I did find out, I tried to tell you.” The words came out of her in a rush, and though Rachel knew she was in danger of babbling, she couldn’t stop until she explained it all to him. “I tried during our first meeting, but you got a phone call and we were distracted, and then I was out the door before I had another chance. I know it doesn’t seem like I tried hard enough, that I should have just blurted it out at the very beginning. And I totally should have. It’s just…” Rachel shook her head, trying to sort it out in her own mind so she could make sense of it to Leo.

Leo stood stiffly in front of her, not reacting, though Rachel could feel his heightened emotions coursing through him. She wished she could read him, could decipher the expression on his face and know if what she told him made any difference to him, if she was at all successful in breaching his anger. She was so nervous she wanted to tear away from his arms and bolt from the room, but she forced herself to finish what she
’d started.

“
By the end of our first few days together, I was already falling for you,” Rachel continued. “I wanted to tell you the truth but I was so scared it would be the end of our interview and we would never see each other again. I couldn’t bear that. I was looking for any excuse to be near you, so I avoided telling you while convincing myself it was because the right moment never came up.”

Leo didn’t say anything, but he relaxed just enough to give her the courage to continue.

“I know you have no reason to believe me, but I wasn’t going to write the story. I think I knew it by the end of the first day, but I didn’t fully admit it to myself until the night of the cocktail reception. There really was no excuse not to tell you Friday when you called me, except I let myself get caught up in the fairy tale of flying down with you to a beautiful island. I was so afraid of saying anything and letting reality crash down around me.”

Rachel realized they had stopped dancing some time ago. They stood facing each other on the crowded floor, no longer moving, no longer touching. They were surrounded by a crush of happy couples dancing and laughing in circles around them,
and Rachel felt entirely, completely alone.

“That
’s really what it boils down to, isn’t it? Fear.” Rachel gave an almost bitter laugh. “I was afraid to keep the truth from you and terrified to come clean. I was scared you would never want to see me again, but the thought of you sticking around and forcing me to confront my feelings for you was just as chilling.” She brought her arms up and hugged herself, as though her words were coming true and actually stripping her of heat. “I don’t expect your forgiveness. I certainly don’t deserve it.  I just wanted you to know I never acted out of malice.”

Silence hung between them. Rachel chanced a glance at Leo and saw he was studying her intently, obviously absorbing what she told him. It unnerved her how unreadable he was at that moment, how stoic he seemed. She had absolutely no idea how her words had affected him,
or even if they had any effect at all.

“Come with me,” Leo said finally. He took her by the hand and led her off the dance floor and away from the party. He
found a small exhibit room off a side hallway and ushered her inside. He shut the heavy fire doors to give them privacy and paused at the doorway, as if trying to gather his thoughts. Rachel stood nervously in the middle of the room, wondering what was coming next. Then he strode across the room and stopped a few inches in front of her, so close she could feel his breath in her hair. Rachel stared at her feet, too cowardly to meet his eye.

“I get it,” he said simply.

Rachel whipped her head up. Whatever response she had been expecting, it wasn’t that soft declaration. “Get what?” she asked. Her emotions were running so high she felt disoriented, and she couldn’t figure out what Leo was talking about.

“Everything. I understand what happened and why we both did the things we did.
I get it now.”

Rachel let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding as relief flooded through her. She hadn’t realized just how on edge she’d been waiting for his response until it came.

Leo continued, “When I first saw the text message from Karen, I was so blinded by anger I didn’t stop to think anything through. But the last few weeks have given me a chance to get some perspective.” He reached out to take her hand but stopped before touching her, letting his arm fall back to his side. Rachel thought she understood. If they touched each other now, they would never tell each other all the things that needed to be said. “I realized I was so quick to condemn you as a defense mechanism. I’ve spent most of my life shutting people out of it in a misguided attempt at self-preservation. I…” Leo frowned and ran a hand through his hair. Whatever he was about to say weighed on him heavily. “I never talk about this…”

“About what?” Rachel asked gently.

Leo tensed and he let his breath out in a rush. Rachel could see how hard he was struggling with what he was going to tell her. “My brother Charlie died of leukemia when he was seven and I was ten. As you can imagine, it was a horrific experience for the entire family.”

She ached to touch him, to offer him some small comfort, but she held back, knowing she needed to give him space to speak.

“It was a long, painful, and gut-wrenching process,” he continued. “When he was…gone, my mother withdrew into herself. She spent many hours shut up in her room, not speaking to anyone, barely eating. I would walk past her door, desperate to see her, and hear her sobbing inside with such anguish it scared me and I would run away. On the rare occasions she did emerge from her room, it was like she was nothing more than a shell of a person. She looked like my mother and sounded like her, but it was all on the surface. There was nothing more left of her on the inside, if that makes sense.”

Rachel put a hand on Leo’s arm,
unable to hold herself back any longer, her heart breaking for him. “I’m so sorry, Leo.”

Leo nodded and leaned into her touch
, accepting her sympathy. “My father disappeared too. He’d always been a workaholic, but after Charlie’s death he spent almost every waking hour at the office. It got to the point where he was like a stranger, where it was weird when he was at the house instead of gone.” He looked down at his hands, studied them as he clenched them into fists. “I understand now why they did it, that they were overwhelmed with so much grief and sadness they could hardly function. But as a ten-year-old boy, all I knew was that they’d basically abandoned me, that my brother had died and that was awful enough, but now my parents couldn’t stand to be around me, like maybe they’d wished I was the one who was gone.”

Pain tore through Rachel’s heart at his words.
“Oh, Leo, no. They couldn’t have thought that.” She touched his hands and he threaded his fingers through hers.

“I know that now,” he said
in a shaky voice. “But it was so confusing at the time. I was basically left to fend for myself. Eventually, as I reached adulthood, my parents began to come back to themselves and our relationship started to thaw. It wasn’t easy; I was still battling so much anger and hurt and confusion, but we were all trying.” His mouth pulled down in a bitter frown. “It was just when I thought we might actually have a chance at becoming a normal family that my parents were killed in the crash.”

Rachel closed her eyes, overwhelmed with sadness for what Leo had been through. She wanted to comfort him but
didn’t know how. She felt lost and helpless. Repeating how sorry she was in the face of such devastation seemed almost offensively inadequate. She opened her eyes and squeezed his hands. “I can’t even imagine what you went through.”

“It almost broke me,” Leo admitted. “Everyone I loved was gone and I almost couldn’t handle the grief. I was angry and bitter. It felt like they had abandoned me and I couldn’t shake the sense of betrayal. I know that isn’t rational, that
no one left me on purpose, but I couldn’t help it. The only way I could cope was by shutting down my emotions and making sure I never got close to anyone again. If I never let myself feel anything for another person, I wouldn’t get hurt again.”

“You were too young to deal with that by yourself,” Rachel whispered. “You did what you had to do to survive.”

Leo nodded. “And it worked. I succeeded at keeping everyone at a safe distance.” Leo cleared his throat and leveled his gaze at her. “Until I met you.” He brought one of Rachel’s hands up to his chest and placed it over his heart. “You charged right through every last wall I’d built to protect myself, knocked them down until they were rubble at my feet. I started to open up to you in ways I never had before. Ever. With anyone. You made me say things, do things, feel things I couldn’t control. It absolutely terrified me.” He squeezed her hand. “I was falling for you and I couldn’t stop it. When I saw that text, I seized on it as an excuse to cut you off and shut you out, just like I do with everyone. I realize now that I
wanted
to think you’d lied to me. It took the decision out of my hands, gave me a perfectly good reason to turn my back on you before you could do it to me.”