Private Parts (8 page)

I
T DIDN’T LOOK LIKE
Philippidis was there yet. Good.

Despite the roaring fireplace to her left, and the general warmth of the house after having come in from the rain, Kendall felt cold. Truth be told, she hadn’t been able to warm herself since yesterday, when she’d done the dirty deed and then run from the mill like Cinderella from the ball at midnight.

Could it be perhaps because the fairy tale was now definitely over?

The house was much larger than she might have expected. Sure, she knew that the Metaxases had accumulated a lot of wealth through their various interests in the town in the past, but somehow she hadn’t envisioned Troy living on such a grand scale. This wasn’t a mere house, this was an estate. She looked around, wondering how many wings the
place boasted, how many bedrooms and connected baths.

Debra Foss had thought it was a good idea to convert her onetime family home into a bed-and-breakfast. This would be an exclusive five-star hotel.

A female server in a black dress and white apron offered her a glass of champagne. She considered refusing. Despite her choice of attire, she wasn’t there for fun. She had something important to do.

But just as she’d chosen the dress to fit in, she accepted the drink with the same intentions…then downed half the contents before she could catch herself.

So much for good intentions.

Across the room, her gaze settled on the man she needed to see.

Troy…

Kendall instantly felt warmer.

She realized that the champagne could be as much to credit as the man she was looking at, but she couldn’t spare the brain cells needed to explore the question. She hadn’t slept a wink. And while her expensive concealer and talent with a foundation powder brush covered up her restless night, inside she was little more than a bag of jangled nerves.

She made her way toward Troy, intent on one thing and one thing only: telling him the truth.

“I’m glad you came,” he murmured, taking her elbow and placing a lingering kiss on her cheek.

This time Kendall knew that the shiver that ran the length of her arm and down her spine was one-hundred-percent Troy. Within an instant she had tuned into everything about him. The way he towered over her by a few inches. The heat of his body seeping into hers. The tangy scent of his aftershave as it filled her nose. The need that fairly leapt from his dark eyes like blue flame, catching her on fire.

“Troy, I need to talk to you,” she whispered.

His grin told her that he wasn’t getting it. “My idea, exactly. Come on.”

She wasn’t sure where he was leading her, but so long as it was somewhere private, that’s all that mattered.

The better part of the day had been spent trying to figure out what she should do. Instead, an hour ago, she’d realized what she couldn’t do. She couldn’t allow Troy to go forward thinking that he’d triumphed when he’d lost. Go through this party in a celebratory mood, ready to conquer the world and give Earnest new hope, when he’d inevitably find out it was all a lie.

But the idea of revealing the truth during such a festive event made her stomach hurt.

Look at them all, she thought as Troy led the way through the happy crowd that was no doubt celebrating Troy’s victory as much as—if not more than—the holiday season.

Finally, they were walking down a darkened hall.
She though he might be taking her to a downstairs bedroom or a study. Instead, he stopped in the middle, and then pressed her against the wood paneling, his mouth claiming hers even as his hand reached under the hem of her skirt.

Kendall gasped. Boy oh boy, had he read her wrong.

The problem was that he was quickly bringing her to his way of thinking…

T
ROY WANTED TO INHALE
her whole. He glided his tongue against hers, tasting the tang of champagne there, his own ragged breathing filling his ears. Hell, she felt good. Too good.

He’d intended to take her to the back study where he could close the door, but he hadn’t been able to last that long. Instead, he’d pressed her against the hall wall, turned on by her surprised gasp, his hand finding its way under her dress as if of its own accord.

Damn, but she was hot. He slid his fingers between her toned thighs and used his right leg to edge her knees apart, giving him the access he so hungrily sought. His index finger met with the crotch of her panties, finding her wet, so very wet. He worked his way inside the soft cotton, gliding between her swollen folds even as he deepened their kiss.

“Please…” she said restlessly.

Oh, he intended to please her, in every way there was for a man to please a woman.

He thrust his index and middle fingers deep into her, his thumb seeking and find the pearl in the nest of her curls. Her breathing quickened and she seemed to have a hard time swallowing as she threw her head back against the wall, her lips parted, her lashes fringed against her flushed cheeks. He slid his fingers out and she instantly objected, bearing down against his hand.

She moaned into his mouth when he met her demand to be filled again.

Christ, he was going to take her right there. Forget that a mere twenty feet away dozens of people milled around the big room. He didn’t care that any one of them could walk down the hall at any minute looking for the bathroom or coatroom or both. All he could concentrate on was his urgent need to surround himself with everything that was Kendall.

It didn’t help that she fumbled with the front of his pants, apparently longing for the same thing.

He thrust his fingers deep into her dripping wetness again…and again…then pressed hard against her clit. She reacted as if it was a button and he’d just opened the floodgates.

Her cry filled his ears. He kissed her to muffle the sound, and then found himself kissing her for the mere pleasure of kissing her.

He’d never needed a woman so much. Wanted her morning, noon and night.

And now that they no longer had business between them, they could get down to the personal.

“Move here,” he asked.

Kendall seemed to be having a hard time catching her breath.

He removed his hand from between her legs and held her hips tight instead.

“What?” she whispered.

“Move here. To Earnest.” He kissed her, forcing her head back against the wall. “I want to see you. All day. Every day…”

She tried to break off the kiss, but he refused her escape until she was kissing him back as impatiently as he kissed her.

“I want you so much I could burst,” he gritted out.

“Troy, I—”

“Come on,” he said. “There’s a study back this way.”

She planted her feet when he tried to pull her down the hall. “Troy, wait a minute.” Her throat clicked with a thick swallow. “I need to talk to you… Now…”

“We can talk in the study.”

“No, we won’t. We’ll have sex in the study.”

He grinned. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

“But you won’t want to have sex with me once you find out…”

He pressed himself against her again. “Darling,
I can’t imagine a single thing you could tell me that would make me stop wanting you.”

Her eyes shined brightly in the dim light. “Trust me. This will.”

He knew an instant of pause. As he stood looking at her, he saw not merely her pained expression now, but her somber look yesterday. Remembered that he hadn’t been able to contact her. And that even when she’d shown up tonight, she’d done so to “talk to him.”

“Please,” she whispered. “You have to let me get this out.”

Icy awareness swept over him, dousing his desire. He stepped back from her, his hands still holding hers, but otherwise not touching. “You have my complete attention.”

A loud crash sounded from the great room. They both looked in that direction as people hurried across the hall entrance on their way somewhere.

“What the hell…?”

Troy let go of Kendall’s hands and strode toward the direction of the sound. Where the guests had been spread out before, now they all stood in a half circle around what he expected was ground zero.

“Percy, no!” a female voice shouted.

Troy pressed his way through the crowd until finally he stood in the inner circle. Kendall joined him.

It took a moment for him to realize what he was
looking at. Piano…his father…Caleb’s mother, Phoebe…and Manolis Philippidis.

Troy’s grimace turned into a frown. He’d known it was asking for trouble, letting his father even casually romance Phoebe Payne. While it appeared she was done with Philippidis, apparently he saw things in a different light.

And had just smacked the top of the piano down to make his point.

His father stood staring the other man down, Phoebe in between them, a petite figure in pink with her hand against Percy’s chest.

“Please, stop,” she said to them both. “This is not worth fighting over.”

Percy pushed against her hand, looking ready to reset Philippidis’s clock with a raised fist.

The ruckus had earned more than the guests’ attention. While he didn’t look, he knew when Ari, Bryna and Elena joined him and Kendall on the front lines.

Philippidis’s grin was a little too wide for his liking. “You’re right,” he said to Phoebe. “This isn’t worth fighting over.”

His Greek accent was thicker than usual, belying his true feelings.

“Because there really isn’t anything to fight over, is there?”

Troy thought he might have been insulting Phoebe…until he looked at Kendall.

“Isn’t that right, Ms. Banks?” Philippidis asked.

Only Kendall wasn’t looking at him, she was looking at Troy. “I’m sorry. So sorry,” she said almost silently.

“What in the hell is going on here?” Troy demanded.

His father pointed at Philippidis. “This son of bitch barged in here and nearly took my hands off with the piano top.”

“Yes, well, if you’d kept your hands out of my cookie jar…” he taunted.

Phoebe puffed out her chest and drew her shoulders. “I am nobody’s cookie. And even if I were, I most assuredly am not yours, Manolis.”

He looked about ready to slap her.

Troy positioned himself so he didn’t have a shot.

“Troy…” Kendall said.

He looked at her stricken face and then back at Philippidis. “What did you mean that there is nothing left to fight over?”

The Greek straightened his jacket by way of the bottom hem, looking far too smug. “Perhaps this is a question you should be asking your Ms. Banks.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Very well. Then allow me to insist that you refer to my attorney concerning this matter…Ms. Banks,” he said again.

Troy’s stomach felt coated with mercury, as if he’d
taken on the full brunt of the electricity earlier and was still reeling from the aftereffects.

Ari emerged from the crowd of faces. “That’s what I needed to talk to you about, Troy,” he said.

Jesus, was he the only one who didn’t know what was going on?

“Troy, I…” Kendall began.

He held up his hand to ward them off.

“I’d prefer Philippidis tell me this himself.”

The other man looked only too happy to finally indulge him. “Remember what I told you six months ago?” he asked. “In Greece, on my wedding day, when your no-good brother ran off with my bride?”

Ari looked about ready to clock him.

“I told you that I would get you. I would not stop, I would never rest, until I settled this score between us.”

The floor tilted under Troy’s feet, but he fought to hold on, to understand what Philippidis was saying.

“You didn’t read the contract a final time before you signed yesterday, did you, Mr. Metaxas?”

He looked to Kendall and then his brother. Both of them averted their gazes.

“For if you did, you would have seen that I now have controlling interest over Metaxas, Inc.” He pointed his finger in Troy’s direction. “Whatever is yours, is now mine…”

T
HIS WASN’T POSSIBLE.
T
HERE
was no way this was happening….

Troy looked to his brother, who finally met his gaze. Ari nodded almost imperceptibly. And then Kendall confirmed it as he watched a single tear slide down her pale cheek.

Elena gasped and put her hand over her mouth, while behind him, his father rushed Philippidis.

“You son of a bitch!”

Troy held on to the old man, even as he tried to break himself out of an ice-cold daze.

What did Philippidis mean he had complete control over Metaxas, Inc? That wasn’t possible. He’d been meticulous. So careful. There was no way there was anything in that contract that he hadn’t checked and double-checked a hundred times.

Unless…

Unless Kendall had slipped in an altered version on the day of the signing.

Somewhere a clock ticked, ice melted in a glass, silverware clattered to a plate. But aside from the low rush of hushed voices on the fringes of the crowd, no one said a word.

All day he’d been operating in a euphoric vacuum. Convinced he’d finally won a long, hard victory. That the town of Earnest had, indeed, been saved.

Instead, he’d been duped. Lied to. Cheated.

His father strained against his hold.

“No, Father,” he said quietly. “Please, allow me…”

And he hauled off and hit Philippidis directly in his big, fat Greek nose…

T
HE GROUP GASPED AS ONE
, a few cheering as Manolis stumbled backward, only to be stopped from falling by Ari, who stood him neatly onto his feet and then shoved him back toward the middle of the room.

Kendall’s heart beat so heavily in her chest it hurt. She wished she could have told Troy before it had come to this. Clued him in. But as she looked at his granite face, she wondered what difference it would have made in the end. He would have looked at her the same, regardless. Would have known she was to blame. Would have hated her.

But if she’d been the one to tell him, she could have also tried to convince him she was sorry.

“If what you say is true,” Troy said. “Then the contract is null and void. I signed under false pretenses.”

Philippidis ran the back of his wrist across his chin, picking up a drop of blood that had trickled from the side of his mouth. “You initialed every page, my boy. Signed it, indicating you’d read every last word.”

“The night before!”

Philippidis’s chuckle chilled Kendall to the bone. “Yes, well, go ahead and sue me. It will take years and cost millions.”

Ari stepped forward. “What do you mean to do?”

“What?” the Greek asked. “Well, I intend to shut everything down, of course.”

“I won’t let you,” Troy promised.

“Yes, well, too bad you won’t have the authority. The law is on my side.”

Kendall admired Troy’s courage. And knew that he would do exactly as he promised.

But in the next moment, she saw something else. A sliver of defeat. As if he’d been fighting so hard, for so long, that he no longer had anything to give. That this had been it. His last stand. And if he lost this battle…well, then the war was over.

Her heart expanded against her ribs.

And she knew a grief unlike that she’d felt before outside of death. But this was like a death, wasn’t it? A death of trust.

“Ari…”

It was Elena’s voice, low, tinny. Kendall looked to find her as pale as a misty night, her hands gripping her rounded belly.

“Just a minute,” he said to her as he advanced on Philippidis. “All this because you couldn’t marry a woman you didn’t love?”

“Ari!” Elena’s voice was more insistent now, drawing every gaze to her.

She gasped and stared at her feet where a puddle was accumulating.

T
ROY CLOSED THE BACK DOOR
of Kendall’s car, the only one not blocked in given her late arrival. Elena lay with her knees tented, her head on Ari’s lap in the backseat. He was instructing her to take shallow breaths, probably something he’d picked up in those classes he’d been attending with her lately.

Troy moved to the driver’s seat only to find Kendall strapped in.

“Get in,” she said, nodding toward the passenger’s side.

He knew a moment of pause, but only a moment. It was important that they get Elena to the clinic in the next county as soon as possible. And, whatever issues he might have with the woman behind the
wheel, she was proving surprisingly efficient in this emergency.

As they’d helped Elena in, Kendall had asked rapid-fire questions, learning that the mommy-to-be had been experiencing contractions for at least the past six hours, although she hadn’t identified them as such because she was only twenty-six weeks into her pregnancy.

Too early.

Even Troy knew that much. She still had over two months to go.

As Troy got into the car and Kendall put it into gear, he remembered earlier when he’d thought Elena had looked too pale. Had noticed the odd way she’d touched her stomach. Yet she’d been so busy with the party preparations that he hadn’t stopped to consider what might be happening.

If she lost this baby…

Kendall reached over to touch his arm.

“Don’t worry,” she said quietly. “My sister gave birth early and everything was fine. They can work miracles nowadays.”

“Breathe,” Ari was coaching in the backseat. “Hang on…”

A glance in the side mirror found at least three other cars trailing them. Once they were on the road, Kendall stepped on the gas while Troy put in a call to the sheriff to let him know they were coming through town and why. As soon as they hit the outskirts on
their way to the highway, Barnaby pulled out in front of them, lights blazing, leading the way.

Troy allowed himself to glance at Kendall. He experienced myriad emotions that he couldn’t identify as a group, but could pick out.

Betrayal…

Hurt…

She hadn’t had a chance to put on her coat, but she didn’t appear chilled. She was white around the mouth, but that could easily be attributed to their current situation rather than having anything to do with him.

“Why?”

The question was out before he realized he was going to ask it.

She looked at him. He watched as her eyes brightened with tears. But while he was the one who had asked, he realized he wasn’t ready to hear her side. Not yet.

Possibly not ever.

The prospect pounded the invisible knife in his chest in even further.

“Oh, God!”

Elena, louder than before.

“We’re almost there, we’re almost there,” Ari told her as Kendall honked at the sheriff to go faster….

K
ENDALL LINGERED OUTSIDE THE
waiting room where the Metaxases were gathered. They’d first
gone to the clinic, but Elena had needed attention that they couldn’t give her, so she’d been rushed to the hospital, where they all now waited for news.

She rubbed her forehead. Troy had driven with his father from the clinic, leaving her alone in her car. Why she’d followed, she had no idea, other than she wanted Elena’s baby to be okay.

But being around the people she’d hurt so badly just made her feel worse.

But you did it in order to save your own family…

Funny how the argument didn’t seem to hold much water now, as she stood looking at the other family pulling together during a crisis. Of course, none of them seemed aware of her presence, everything else in their lives deemed unimportant until one member was out of danger.

Except for Troy.

It was curious how tuned in to him she was. Oh, she’d always been aware of him sexually. Even during their most intense business negotiations, she’d been acutely conscious of him as a man.

But this…this somehow surpassed all that.

She seemed to sense exactly when he was looking at her—as he was now—an oftentimes hard and unforgiving, other times confused and pained expression on his handsome face even as he stood talking to his father or cousin.

“Is it true?”

Kendall turned to face Caleb, who juggled coffee cups. She looked down.

“I was in the kitchen when it all went down, but Bryna tried filling me in on the way over.” He narrowed his eyes. “I already know that it’s something Philippidis would do. But you…did you really doctor the contracts?”

She closed her eyes and slowly nodded.

Silence.

She thought he’d left her but when she cracked her eyelids, he still stood there, looking at her. As if trying to figure something out.

“Here,” he said, holding up the cups. “One of these is for you.”

The relief Kendall knew was so complete she nearly slumped over with it. Not because he’d given her coffee. But because Caleb Payne was a man who would know firsthand what her situation with Philippidis was like…and hadn’t judged her harshly on her actions.

“Thanks,” she whispered, accepting a cup.

She watched as he went inside the waiting room and handed the rest of the cups out.

Kendall’s gaze met Troy’s and her heart leapt. If Caleb could forgive her, was it possible that Troy might also?

He turned away from her, taking that slender glimmer of hope with him.

Whatever else she was, she wasn’t a monster.

“Excuse me,” a doctor in full scrubs said to her.

“Yes?”

“Are you with the Metaxas family?”

“Yes…I mean, no.” She nodded toward the waiting room where Troy was already advancing on them. “They’re in there.”

“What is it?” Troy asked. “Is she all right? Is the baby…”

“She’s fine,” the doctor said. “And the baby…well, congratulations. It’s a girl.”

Behind him, Ari appeared, an ear-to-ear grin on his face that couldn’t quite mask his concern.

“She’s so tiny…but she’s crying her little lungs out. They say that’s a good sign…”

The doctor added, “She’s in critical condition and will be in NICU for the foreseeable future, if you’d all like to see her…”

Kendall listened as he went on to say that they’d only be able to do so through a window, and not to be worried about the tubes and monitoring devices. And if Elena was up to it, they could also briefly visit her.

The family began down the hall. She stayed behind, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off a chill. She was relieved that both mother and daughter were okay, but reluctantly acknowledged that this was where her participation ended.

She’d already overstayed her welcome.

“Kendall?”

She turned, hoping it was Troy who was seeking her out.

Instead, it was Ari.

“Thanks,” he said simply, looking perplexed at the word considering what had transpired earlier in the day.

“You’re welcome,” she said, feeling curiously choked up. “Congratulations. I’m glad both Elena and your baby girl are going to be okay.”

“Amygdalia.”

She blinked.

“My mother’s name.”

She smiled. “It’s beautiful.”

“No, it’s not. But it’s tradition. And I figure she should have to suffer with the Greek curse the same as all of us. We’ll be calling her Amy.”

Kendall gave a bittersweet laugh, watching as he offered her a final wave and then hurried up the hall to rejoin the rest of his family.

In that one moment, she didn’t think she’d ever felt so alone.

And it didn’t help to know that she had only herself to blame…