Merediths Awakening (22 page)

“You’re wrong.” He fought to keep his voice even. His Princess wouldn’t respond to his temper, and losing control of it would only make matters worse. “I never betrayed you. I protected you.”

She didn’t give, not an inch.

“You gave yourself to me, and when you did, you gave me the right to take care of you.”

“I don’t need your protection.”

“I beg to differ.”

“I don’t need your protection,” she repeated. “I don’t need your so-called love either.

I’ve managed just fine for the last twenty-nine years without it. I don’t belong to you, and I will not be with a man I can’t trust and who doesn’t trust me.” In her eyes, he could see she meant every word. His Princess had been damaged, maybe damaged beyond repair. She would not, could not, look at things from his perspective. She believed he’d betrayed her, and that was the one thing she couldn’t forgive.

He could love her with his entire soul, and would until his last breath, but he couldn’t heal her. She had to do that herself. And he couldn’t keep banging his head against her wall of ice. It just hurt them both. So Tony did something he never thought he’d do.

He gave up.

“Meredith, I love you. You captured my heart five years ago, and have held it ever since. I could not, can not, stand by and see you in danger.” He waved away her attempt to interrupt.

“I say you belong to me, and I believe it. Just as I belong to you, heart, body and soul. I always will. But I understand now that loving you isn’t enough.”

“You don’t know me,” she started, but Tony held up his hand to stop her.

“I do know you, and that’s why I’m going to end this before we hurt each other beyond recovery.” He cupped her chin in one hand and brushed his lips lightly over hers.

She was utterly still, and her eyes reflected anger and fear.

Resting his forehead against hers he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before releasing her and stepping back. His voice was ragged as he whispered, “Frost.” She didn’t try to stop him when he walked out the door. But then he hadn’t expected her to.

* * * *

He wanted nothing more than to go to the site and bury himself in work, but when he found Marcus Worthington waiting at the reception desk Tony resigned himself to another messy confrontation.

Wordlessly he followed the other man into his office. As Worthington closed the door, Tony took a deep breath and prepared for battle.

“Care to explain exactly what is going on between you and my sister?” Worthington’s voice held the commanding tone of a Dom.

“Not particularly,” Tony responded, completely unimpressed.

“Let me rephrase, then,” the other man said. “What the hell is going on between you and my sister?”

Tony sighed, and faced Marcus. “Right now? Nothing. Five years ago, and again during your little vacation? I claimed her.”

Worthington’s eyes narrowed, and Tony knew he was picturing him at the club, the women he’d dominated over the last five years.

“Listen, Renatto. My sister isn’t one of your submissives, to be used and discarded.

She’s not one of the club groupies who can handle the kind of relationships men like us offer.”

Tony saw red. “You’re right. Meredith isn’t one of my submissives. She’s my woman. And as for being a ‘club groupie,’ is that how you look at your woman?” Worthington didn’t have to answer out loud. The offended rage in his eyes was enough of an answer. “All right, then,” Tony pressed. “You don’t look at your woman as some kind of whore because she loves what you give her.” Worthington gave a low growl, but Tony wasn’t finished. “But you’re perfectly willing to label your sister as such for needing the same thing from me.”

“I’ve
never
thought of Meredith as a whore,” Marcus started heatedly, but Tony interrupted.

“We both know that’s not true. You dragged her out of Velvet Ice five years ago when she was still trembling from my touch.”

“You took her up against a wall. You stole her innocence.” Worthington’s voice rose with each word, but Tony didn’t back down a whit.

“
You
stole her innocence. You took a beautiful, generous woman with an untapped well of love, and you made her feel dirty. You may not have said it in so many words, but you made her feel like a whore, and she still carries that inside.” Tony advanced on the other man, not stopping until they were nose to nose. “You asked what the hell is going on between your sister and me? I’ll tell you what. I’ve spent the last week trying to undo just a little of the damage you’ve done to her. Just enough so she would trust me enough, open up enough, to let me make her happy.

“But today I realized it’s never going to happen. Your father hurt her, but you broke her.”

He fully expected the other man to take a swing at him, and he would have welcomed the fight. Instead, Worthington drew a ragged, painful breath and turned to stare out the window.

“The Old Man was incapable of love, was cold with all of us,” he said after a while.

“But most of all with Meri. She was a female, which meant she was weak. I didn’t know he hit her. She covered that up until the last time.” He rubbed a hand over his face, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Now I wonder if she was testing me. I was her big brother. Her protector. She might have been waiting for me to care enough to see past her disguises.

“I didn’t know he was hitting her, but I did know he hurt her heart every day. I was living my own life, had the job, a new wife. I didn’t take the time to protect her. And then things with Karen went to shit, and there was Meri, my sweet, innocent baby sister getting involved in the same lifestyle that had destroyed my marriage.” He turned and met Tony’s eyes. “I thought I was protecting her. I overreacted, and hurt her, but I was trying to protect her. Then Stirling died, and I opened my eyes, but it was too late. My sister, my Meri, was gone as surely as if she’d died along with our father. And she’s never let me apologize. Never let me close enough to try to fix any of it.”

There was a fragile sort of hope in Worthington’s eyes as they stayed locked on his.

“But she let you get close.” When Tony made a move to disagree Marcus insisted. “She did. You got close enough to hurt her. That’s more than anyone else has done in the last five years.

“Do you love my sister, Renatto?”

“She’s the very breath in my body.”

“Then don’t give up on her. Don’t let her go. She needs you.” The words caught in his throat, but they had to be said. “I have to let her go. You, of all people, know I can’t force her trust. She has so much pain inside, so many places and people she needs to make peace with. Until she does, she can’t give over to me. And she doesn’t want me, doesn’t want us, enough to do it.”

*

When Tony pulled up in front of his Grandmother’s house, he didn’t even bother to go to the door. On a sunny summer day there was only one place his Nona would be.

Sure enough, when he wandered around to the back of the house he found her sitting on a stone bench beneath her beloved lilacs.

He went to her as he had when he was a boy, beaten and wounded, to sit at her feet.

Neither spoke, though after a while she dropped one hand to stroke his hair. Eventually the peace of the sun and the flowers worked their magic on the tension knotting his shoulders, and he leaned back against the bench with a long sigh.

“Why are women so difficult?” Tony let his frustration show in his voice, and received a quick tug to his hair for his pains.

“Why are men so impatient?” Nona answered serenely. “So what has your woman done to make you so impatient?”

“You waited for Papa,” he said instead of answering. “For five years you waited, and when he came for you, you were ready. You gave yourself to him with your whole heart, holding nothing back.”

“Caro, your Meredith is not like me.” He snorted out an amused agreement and she rapped the top of his head with her knuckles before continuing. “For one thing, I came from a family filled with love. Your Meredith comes from a family filled with fear and judgment. It must be very difficult for her to accept that anyone could love her unconditionally.” Tony threw her a troubled look as she continued. “For another thing, I knew my Matteo was coming for me. He told me, and for the whole of the five years we were separated, he sent me letters, poems, flowers… We were apart, but never once did I doubt he was working for me and for our future. You’ve already told me your Meredith did not know she was waiting for you. Bambino, you must give her time to catch up with you! You can not undo in five days the damage of five years.” He turned troubled eyes to her ageless face. “I don’t understand why she can’t even give me an inch. I’m not asking her to run to my arms, just to trust me. To let me care for her. To protect her.” He trailed off when Nona raised a brow in understanding.

“So, you’ve been trying to protect your woman?” He nodded, knowing he looked self-righteous, but dammit, he
was
self-righteous. It was his place to protect his woman.

Nona nodded sagely. “And did this protection involve keeping things from her?”

“Only things that could put her in danger,” he argued. “Only things that could put her in harm’s way.” He could hear himself losing his forceful edge. “Only things that were corrupt and should never touch her. She’s had so much pain, Nona. Was I so wrong to try to spare her more pain?”

Nona drew him up to sit by her on the bench. Cupping her hands over his cheeks, she looked at him with eyes filled with compassion. “Oh, my Tonio. It is never wrong to try and spare the ones you love pain. But there is some pain in this life one must face. And you can not sacrifice trust on the altar of protection. How can she trust you to protect her heart when she can not trust you to tell her the truth?”

“I’m afraid between the two of us we’ve destroyed any trust that was there, Nona.” Drawing the older woman into his arms, Tony laid his cheek against the top of her head.

“What if she can never trust me?” Nona made soft, comforting sounds. “What if she can never love me?”

In her beautiful lilac garden, Nona held her grandson and wept the tears he could not weep.

*

She was spending, Meredith reflected, an awful lot of time lately sitting at her desk with her head in her hands.

In the week since her confrontation with Tony, Marcus had resumed his role as head of the company with a vengeance. They had agreed Matthew had done an amazing job setting up the offer for their newest property development, and had set about designing a position of actual responsibility at the company. Her baby brother was thriving, both professionally and personally, if Trey’s stories about his pretty new girlfriend were to be believed. Of course, if all of Trey’s stories were to be believed, Daniel Ellis had just as much to do with Matt’s current happiness as the sweet young Shannon Whitney.

Meredith groaned, and rubbed at the spot between her eyes where it felt like an ice-pick was lodged. Too much information she just didn’t want to know.

Besides, watching Matt and Shannon, and Marcus and Carrie, filled Meredith with such a yawning emptiness she was nearly paralyzed by it. She had to believe in love, how could she not when faced with the evidence, but she knew love wasn’t for her.

While she was enjoying the more comfortable relationship developing with her younger brother, she did not like the direction her relationship with Marcus was taking.

After five years of letting her put him off, Marcus seemed to have had enough.

He’d pressured her into family dinners twice during the week. Once with him, Carrie, Matthew and his girlfriend. Once with just him and Carrie. While the meals were nowhere near as boisterous as her dinner with the Renatto family, the conversation had been warm and playful. Nothing like the family dinners of her childhood.

Worse, Marcus refused to allow her to stay reserved. He’d started teasing her, like when she was a teenager. He’d become affectionate, tugging at her hair and tweaking her nose. He didn’t let her remain distant, and this new warmth hurt almost unbearably when it butted up against five years of hurt.

She tried to stay focused on the job, but even there she couldn’t escape the memories of Tony or her conflicted feelings toward her brother. Work was inundated with the details of the drug investigation. The police had decided to keep Jenner undercover at the construction site. Rather than shutting down the operation immediately, which would have been Meredith’s preference, they’d decided to set up some sort of sting, sacrificing the small-time dealers to cut off the head of the beast.

With every meeting, every decision, she thought of Tony. And every night as she lay alone and aching in her bed, she craved Anthony with a hunger that left no room for anger, or hurt, or fear.

So, when Marcus entered her office Friday afternoon and shut the door, she was ready for a distraction and spoiling for a fight.

* * * *

“We need to talk, Meri.” Meredith wasn’t sure she liked his reversion to her childhood nickname. Meri’d died five years ago, when she’d cut off her hair.

“Marc, I’m tired and bitchy, and really not up for the emotional gymnastics you’ve been engaging me in this week.” Maybe honesty would get him to back off.

“Well, we’ve put this off for far too long already, so you’re just going to have to get up for it.” Okay. Or maybe not.

“Five years ago Karen completely emasculated me. She took my feelings for her, my need to care for her and have her belong to me absolutely, and twisted them for her own purposes.” His sigh revealed his self disgust.

“She made me question everything, including the rightness of my sexual preferences.”

Meredith didn’t even try to hide her wince at his plain speaking. “Please, Marcus, I am asking you not to do this. Not now. Not when it’s too little, too late.” He just shook his head and persisted. “She made what we did in bed dirty, and I let that dirt rub off on you.” Marcus moved around her desk, and did something that froze her protests on her lips. Her omnipotent older brother got on his knees before her, taking her hands in his.

“I said horrible things, unforgivable things to you the night I found you at Velvet Ice.

I slashed at you because of my own pain, and then I sent you home to let the Old Man finish the job.

“You never let me get close enough again to apologize, and I let you keep me away.

I was wrong five years ago when I shamed you, and I’ve been wrong every day since then when I let you push me away.”

Meredith was speechless. She’d never have believed Marcus had it in him to apologize. Not to her.

“I love you, Meri. And I hate I didn’t protect you. I hate what Stirling took from you, but I hate what I did even more. I know we can’t ever undo the past, but I’m asking you to forgive me. Let us build something new, something real. I want to be more than a casual acquaintance and business partner.”

“It’s in the past, Marc,” she finally forced out. “If you need my forgiveness, you’ve got it. As for the rest, I just don’t know. I don’t know what I have in me to give.”

“I’ll take that for a start. But Meri, I do know what you have to give. So much love.

And so much of it is for Tony Renatto.”

Meredith felt herself freeze at the mention of Tony’s name. “Marcus, you are my brother, and we had twenty-four decent years before our … troubles. For those years I’m willing to try. But Tony Renatto and I don’t have that history, and I won’t love a man who would betray me.”

Marcus stood and led her to the corner couch. Sitting down next to her, he kept his grip on her hand. She wasn’t sure if she felt reassured or trapped.

“Men like Renatto and me,” he began hesitantly, “well, obviously we feel the need to be in control.” She watched, fascinated, as a dull flush crept up his neck. “God, this is not a conversation I ever wanted to have with my sister,” he muttered. “It’s not about making our women slaves, no matter what anyone says. It’s about having their absolute trust. It’s about taking such good care of them they never want for anything. It’s about doing everything in our power to make their lives as close to perfect as possible.” He looked up, let his eyes glance off hers and focused back in on their linked hands.

“A man like Tony Renatto could never knowingly expose his submissive to hurt or danger. And, Meredith, you aren’t just a submissive to him. You’re his heart.

“He saw the damage we’d done to you, Stirling and I, and he had to try and heal it.

And when he discovered the drugs at the site, all he saw was yet another thing that would hurt you. His gut instinct was to protect you. He couldn’t do anything else.”

“He lied to me, Marcus. He used my body and my feelings against me to keep me from questioning him.” Now she was the one flushing with embarrassment.

“Meredith, he’s a sexual Dom. As much as it pains me to even think about, that is who he is and what he needs to be to you. Yes, he lied to you. He evaded your questions.

But he didn’t betray you. His motives were pure, and he tried to protect you out of love.

It’s a long road back to trusting him completely, I know. But you
can
trust him. You
need
to trust him, because he’s the one man in all the world who can make you whole if you’ll just let him.”