Ramsay (16 page)

"I have a team in there now whose sole specialty is bringing back companies on the brink of financial ruin."

"I see." Her eyes wandered away again, the wheels in her mind obviously turning. "And then will you sell it? Once it's on solid ground, I mean?"

"I don't know. I haven't decided anything yet."

She nodded. "My father—"

"I know. Your father created that company from nothing. He worked hard every day, and he made it what it was before your brother got his hands on it. He loved it. He was extremely proud of it."

"Yes," she said quietly.

"I'm not out to ruin what was your father's dream. I'm trying to revive it."

She let out a breath. "I guess . . . I guess that's more than what my brother was doing."

I didn't say anything. She already knew how I felt about her brother. "I was trying, you know—"

"I know. I know that." I'd had the men looking into the company finances look into Lydia and Stuart's personal finances as well. Lydia had been putting practically every dime she earned back into the company in a number of ways—advertising, endorsement, even making up for the shortfall in payroll in the last several months. And though I was sure she hadn't fully realized it, Stuart had been spending ten times as much as he was earning, underhandedly raping the profits that should have been put back into the business. Lydia had been fighting an uphill battle, one destined for failure all along. And now she was broke. Not just broke, practically penniless. I didn't even know how she'd managed to buy the groceries I'd sent her out for. I'd felt sick to my stomach this morning when I'd received the details from my investigators.

"I suppose I'll need to find a job," she said eventually as if her mind had been following the same path as mine.

"I'd be happy to keep you on at De Havilland Enterprises. But I will not hire your brother back. And I can't have you going back to work until his issues have been resolved."

For the first time since we'd begun speaking, her eyes filled with hope. "You'll let me keep working there?"

"If you'd like to, yes. Did you enjoy it?"

Her eyes skittered away. "Mostly. It's kind of hard to say, I mean, I never really got to enjoy it per se. I was always sort of in desperation mode." She let out a small, brittle laugh.

I reached across the table and took her hand in mine. It felt cold and small, and I wanted nothing more than to take her in my arms and tell her everything was going to be okay, that she didn't have to be in desperation mode anymore. I couldn't though. I couldn't because I didn't know if that was the truth or not. I was still trying to catch up with the way things had changed course.

She stared down at our hands for a moment and when she slid hers out from under mine, she used it to pick up her wine, taking a long sip. "I should call my brother . . . warn him . . ."

"It's already been done."

Her eyes lingered on my face for a moment. "How did he take it?"

"Not well."

"Maybe I should try. Maybe he'll listen to me."

"Has he ever listened to you, Lydia? Even once?"

Watching her face pale was heartbreaking. It was as if she were scrolling through years worth of interaction and examining her brother’s actions. I could hear him shouting at her to shut up. Repeatedly. By the look of pain on her face, and the way she couldn’t meet my eyes, she had found her answer. Her next words, said so softly, made me cringe inside. "No. I suppose not." She looked lost, almost . . . guilty, as if she were somehow to blame for his failings.

I sighed. "Leave it for now. He knows what he's up against. He knows where he stands, and he knows he needs to lie low. There's nothing you can do for him."

Her eyes shifted away as she took another sip of wine. After a while, she seemed to relax a little bit, taking another bite of her dinner, though it was probably cold by this time. We both ate in silence for a few more minutes. I didn't say anything, allowing Lydia to come to terms with everything we'd discussed. She'd taken in a lot tonight and still maintained her dignity and strength, and I admired her for it.

"So, what is it you do to earn all this money that you use to
acquire
failing companies such as ours?" she asked finally. "I know you won ours in a poker game, but I assume you've acquired failing businesses before, since you had a team in place so quickly at De Havilland Enterprises?"

"Accurate assumption." I paused. "I do a little bit of everything." She raised an eyebrow, and I took a sip of my wine, relaxing now, too. She'd listened to what I had to say and though she hadn't said the words, I knew I had her agreement about coming to live with me in New York and letting me provide the protection she could very well need. Helping Stuart in any manner whatsoever made me furious and disgusted, but if it meant keeping Lydia safe, I'd do it anyway. And truth be told, even though Stuart had made his own choices, my actions had caused a new level of desperation, and I couldn't ignore that fact.
Arseways.
"You might remember I'm good with numbers."

She nodded. "Yes, of course."

"The short of it is that I earned enough money to use my talent to make some very profitable investments. I did that for a few years. I still dabble in investing, and I own a number of businesses that I have at least some involvement in, but mostly, I do what I want to do."

She stared at me for several moments. "You . . . do what you want to do. What does that mean exactly?"

I shrugged. I knew I was being evasive, but it was difficult to describe what I did—I had never attempted to put it into words before. "Whatever comes up. Nothing illegal, if that's what you're thinking."

She considered me for another moment before saying, "And the money you earned to begin making the investments?"

"That, Lydia, is another story and not something I feel like discussing right now."

She ran her pointer finger around the rim of her wine glass. "Some of it has to do with what you told me the other night—"

"Some, yes."

She licked her lips again and blood rushed to my groin. The relief of her agreement to my proposal, combined with the wine, was causing my thoughts to turn in a different direction—back to Lydia and how much I wanted her.

"The man at your party, Fionn. He works with you?"

"Yes. He's my business partner. I met him a couple months after I'd moved to the Bronx. He was in a similar position as me. Desperate. We became a team of sorts, I guess you'd say."

Sadness moved across her features. "He seems like a nice guy."

"He's the best man I've ever known."

She studied me as she nodded. "I'm glad you . . . had somebody watching out for you," she said softly.

"He did what he could."

We were both quiet for a moment before Lydia asked, "And once you have me safe and sound in New York City, what exactly am I supposed to do, contained in one apartment all day long?"

I swirled the last sip of wine and brought it to my lips, finishing off the glass. "I have a whole new set of drawers and cabinets there for you to re-arrange."

"Ha ha."

I laughed. "I suppose I could give you some work to do for my company. Let's see how it goes."

She nodded, and I stood up to begin clearing the dishes. When the table was cleared and the food was put away, I poured us each another glass of wine. Turning to her, I asked, "Tired? We could take our wine down to the water." Why did asking her that make my heart jump with nervous anticipation? Why did I feel like I was asking her out on a date and if she said no, I'd be crushed? We'd settled things between us for now. She had no real reason to spend any time with me at all.

"That sounds nice." I let out a relieved breath. "But I think I'll change into something a little more comfortable."

"Okay."

I finished up in the kitchen and then sat at the counter and answered a few emails on my phone. Twenty minutes later when Lydia still hadn't come down, I became restless. What was taking her so long? Grabbing the half bottle of wine and our glasses, I decided it was time to go get her so we could catch the last of the sunset. Glancing out the window I saw the wash of red and orange was already low on the horizon, the clouds tinged in gold.

"Lydia?" I called, knocking lightly on her door. When I didn't get an answer, I opened it slowly, calling her name again. The room was empty and my heart lurched unpleasantly.
Had she left?
But then I noticed movement beyond the French doors and saw her. My heart rate slowed, and I moved toward the doors. She had changed into a loose blue dress of some kind that was falling off one shoulder. She was standing at the rail of the widow’s walk—her hands joined on the ledge—watching the last of the sun as it slipped beyond the horizon. The lingering light cast her hair in a pale yellow glow—a few strands lifting in the summer breeze—and I could see the outline of her profile, the mouthwatering shape of her body beneath the light material of the dress.
I was entranced.
I stood there for a moment just watching her, memorizing this moment, and knowing that for me, there would never be another woman as beautiful as Lydia De Havilland standing on my balcony watching the day slip into dusk.

Lydia

The door clicked behind me and I turned.
Brogan.
He held a wine bottle against his body with his bicep, the stems of two wine glasses between his fingers. He looked debonair and sexy, and I took a moment to admire him. "Sorry, I just needed a minute. The sun was setting." I inclined my head toward the water where the last vestiges of light were dwindling, causing the surface of the water to look as if a thousand diamonds were dancing upon it. "If I lived here, I'd never watch a sunset from anywhere else."

Brogan's shoulders seemed to tense for a brief moment and then he stepped fully onto the walk, pushing the door closed behind him. He moved toward me, handing me my glass.

I had come upstairs and changed, when all the events of the day had seemed to catch up with me all at once: the emotional trip to my childhood home, kissing Brogan, telling him of the pregnancy, Stuart, that our predicament had become worse.
Far worse.
And suddenly, I was so tired. Just weary to my soul. I'd spent the last seven years—or so it seemed—drifting from one heartache to another, one challenge to another, and I felt like I'd hit my limit. In that very moment, standing in the middle of Brogan's guest bedroom, a blue sundress gripped to my chest, I'd felt like every muscle was tensed with pent-up negative energy, and I just wanted to scream. I wanted to fall into someone, depend on another person, allow someone
else
to be strong for a while. And I didn't have anyone to do that—no one at all. I'd made some peace with my parents' deaths today, but returning to our old estate had also been a reminder that I was completely, utterly alone, and the reality of that felt like a sudden, gripping despair, the cracks in my heart splintering, widening.

I'd dressed and stumbled to the widow's walk, wondering at the women who had stood on a structure just like this and felt their
own
despair, their own desperate loneliness. I'd turned and there he was as if he were the answer to a question, as if he'd somehow known I needed . . . someone. And maybe it wasn't just someone I needed. Maybe I needed
him
. And maybe that was another reason I was so damned scared.

Because I had a feeling needing Brogan Ramsay again was going to ultimately break my heart.

I turned back to the water. "Do you know why this is called a widow's walk?"

He leaned a hip against the rail and took a sip of wine. "Because they offer an unimpeded view of the sea. Women would walk them as they looked out to the water waiting for a glimpse of their husband's ship. And often, their husband would never return."

I nodded, again picturing the nameless, faceless woman who might have walked one very similar to this long ago, her dress billowing in the wind, a handkerchief balled in her fist, tears streaming down her face as she waited for her beloved. "I studied history in college." I paused, taking a sip of wine. "It's always been the women who have had it the hardest, you know. We're always the ones who have to wait—for your ships to arrive, your wars to end, your pride to be soothed, for your bodies to be returned from some battlefield, some foreign land. We're always the ones stuck while you men fight for the things that are so important to you for reasons we can't understand. We wait, and we wonder, and we hurt."

He tilted his head, his eyes searching mine. "The men have been the ones to fight the battles, to be killed, wounded, scarred, captured."

I shook my head. "Waiting. The waiting, the uncertainty, the not knowing. It's the greater heartache, the greater torture. Can you imagine, coming here night after night, pacing . . . pacing, being so powerless to do anything except wait? Like a slow death . . ."

Brogan was looking at me in that intense way he had, as if he was trying to figure out the things I wasn't saying to him. And truthfully, I didn't know if there was anything I wasn't saying to him, or why I was suddenly so filled with pain for the women who had suffered the fate I was describing. Maybe I was just . . . emotionally distraught, overburdened.

"What did you want to do with a history degree?" he finally asked.

I shrugged, letting out a pent-up breath. "Teach most likely. I hadn't decided when it became clear I was needed at the company. I earned my degree, but I never really used it." I took a sip of my wine.

"It wasn't always your intention to work there."

"No. It was my intention to babysit Stuart." I sighed, the weight of that truth falling off my shoulders. "I've obviously done a piss-poor job."

"No, Lydia. You singlehandedly kept that company running in the black—even if it was always just barely. I've looked into the books."

I looked at him sharply. But of course he had. He was trying to fix things, trying to create a future for the company my brother had almost run into the ground. Of course he needed the details of exactly how that had happened, other than Stuart's penchant for gambling. Speaking of which, "Do you count cards, Brogan?" I asked the question that had crossed my mind several times since I found out Stuart had lost our company to him in a poker game.

He paused, a frown furrowing his brow, but then answered, "Yes."

Surprised, I turned my body toward him. "I didn't think—"

"You didn't think I'd admit to it after winning De Havilland Enterprises from Stuart in a card game? Why not? It's not as if I even work at it. It just comes naturally. I think it'd be more effort
not
to count cards."

"Is it really fair to gamble then? Isn't that—"

"Cheating? I don't believe so. But maybe we disagree."

Did I disagree? Not exactly, I guessed. He was only using his God-given talents. Still, if Brogan hadn't contributed to Stuart's downfall, would he, could he have eventually turned his life around? Or was
I
the fool for continuing to hope for that? By continuing to bust my own ass to keep our heads above water so he didn't have to? In truth, maybe Stuart had been headed for ruin with or without Brogan's involvement.
Take care of your brother, Lydie.

"Will you show me?"

"Show you?"

"How you count cards."

He frowned, tilting his head, his tongue running over his teeth, just as the landscape lighting flickered on below, casting him in an aura of gold and drawing my attention to the blue of his eyes. Funny, in his office that day, I had described them to myself as icy, but I'd never thought them icy before then, and I didn't tonight. It was said eyes were windows to the soul, and if it was true, that soft, soft blue spoke of things I was almost frightened to acknowledge. And God, he was breathtakingly handsome—his masculine beauty was almost painful to look at because it made me want to possess him, and I didn't think that was wise. It hadn't been then, and it probably was less so now. "We'd have to play a game for me to show you."

"All right."

He nodded his head toward my room. "Let's go inside." I followed him off the widow's walk. The night was closing in, the sky turning a deep, twilight blue as the first stars appeared.

Brogan placed the wine bottle and his glass on the top of the dresser and I followed suit. "I'll go get a deck of cards." He left the room, and I sagged down onto the bed. What I should probably tell him was that I was going to sleep. But I didn't want to sleep. I wanted company. I wanted
his
company.

He returned a few minutes later, having changed into a pair of jeans that rode low on his lean hips and a black T-shirt that showcased his broad shoulders and muscular chest,
and
he was wearing his glasses. I sat up on my knees, and he joined me on the bed, sitting on the very edge. He'd grabbed our wine glasses and handed me mine. I took a sip and set it on the bedside table. He placed his on the wooden bench at the end of the bed.

Without a word, he took the cards out of the box and shuffled them effortlessly, his eyes remaining on my face as his hands fanned and folded the cards as if by magic. I couldn’t help laughing softly. He raised a dark brow.

"What are we playing for?"

I gave him a wry smile. "You've already bankrupted my family. Plus, it would be a fool's bet on my part. You just admitted you count cards."

"I wasn't talking about betting money."

"What then?"

He shrugged. "Truth or dare."

"You'd end up getting all my truths and dishing up all the dares."

"How about if we play a game completely based on luck then? I'll still count cards, but it won't offer me any rewards. I'll just know what's coming. Winner gets to choose whether he or she wants a truth or a dare from the other."

"I thought in truth or dare the
loser
got to choose what they were willing to give up."

"I've never thought that was very fair. Why should the loser get to choose their fate?" His smile was lazy.

I thought about it, sucking on my lower lip. My heart was thumping at a quickened pace, and I wasn't sure I wanted to admit that what I felt was . . . excitement. I wasn't sure about the dare part, but I wanted Brogan's truths. This was my chance to get a few. "Okay."

He simply nodded, fanning the cards out once more and folding them back together. He placed them on the bed and nodded to them. "Cut?"

I did and then he picked them up and began dealing. "What are we playing?" I asked.

"War."

I raised a brow. "I thought we'd already played war."

He chuckled. "Oh no. Those were just the battles, Mo Chroí." But he tilted his head and looked up at me in that sweet, teasing way he'd done when we were teens that had always made my stomach do somersaults.
It still did.

I watched him as he dealt the cards, noted the very slight scruff already on his jaw despite that he'd been clean-shaven that morning, the way his inky black lashes created shadows on his cheeks, even under the lenses of his glasses, the strong line of his jaw, the slight cleft in his chin, the way he held his mouth in that rigid way. And yet, I knew how soft it could be, the warmth of his lips, exactly how his tongue tasted—that exotic male spiciness that spoke to everything feminine inside of me. I wondered if he tasted the same everywhere, wondered at the flavor of his most intimate skin. I felt wetness pool in my underwear and achy pressure settled between my thighs at my own thoughts.

Brogan suddenly looked up at me, a knowing glint in his eyes as if he knew exactly where my thoughts had gone. He moved more fully onto the bed, grabbing a pillow and lying on his side, propped up on one elbow.
My God, the man was sexy.

He turned over his first card—a six—and glanced up at me. I turned over my card—a queen—and gathered both. "My truth or dare?" I asked.

He shrugged. "We can play that way or we can wait for a war."

I bit at my lip. "Let's wait for a war. These truths or dares shouldn't be easily won."

"Nothing good ever is."

I grabbed a pillow as he'd done and stretched out next to him. Our positions felt very intimate, our bodies facing each other, our faces close. Of course, the fact that we were in bed—or rather
on
bed—together intensified the intimacy. We played for another few minutes before there was a war. I won. He gave me a small smile.

"I want a truth," I said immediately.

"Okay." I noticed his pulse beating steadily at the side of his neck and had the sudden desire to kiss him there. He watched me closely, seeming to still and I wondered what I'd revealed on my face that caused him to study me the way he was.

"How do you do it? The numbers, I mean."

He tilted his head, considering. "I honestly don't really know." He looked behind me, frowning slightly as if he was trying to figure out how to word his answer. "I've always seen the world in measurements. I constantly compute lines, relationships between objects." He looked at the wall to our right where two pictures hung. "Those pictures are a sixteenth of an inch off." I studied them. They looked perfectly aligned to me. "I notice all these things all the time. It doesn't bother me, and I don't think about it necessarily, it's just—"

"Part of you."

He nodded. "Yes. I see the world in numbers. Everything. And with actual numbers, it's like," he rubbed his fingertips together, "I can feel them. I feel their weight, their value." He furrowed his brow. "It's hard to explain. It's just . . . the way my mind works."

I nodded. I found it fascinating. I found
him
fascinating. Hadn't I always? But he looked slightly uncertain, picking up his cards and moving us away from the topic and back to the game.

We played for a few quiet moments, both of us sipping our wine here and there before there was another war. After I'd turned over a ten, I asked, "Who's going to win this round?"

Brogan's lip tipped up. "Me, most likely with a face card." Sure enough, he turned over a jack.

"Impressive," I murmured.

After another few rounds, we both turned over the same card. My eyes met his. "Another war," I said dramatically, breathing out the word. He laughed and my heart squeezed, suddenly realizing what a rare sound it was.