Rules of Negotiation (18 page)

It was their last weekend together and his last chance to move their relationship forward.

Tori was stubborn, but he wasn’t called The Slayer for nothing.

Chapter Eighteen

Brit pulled to a stop in front of Tori’s house and double-checked the address. The house, a small Tudor with peeling paint and a look of disrepair, stood out among the row of well-groomed lawns, large brick homes, and stone Colonials. She lived
here
? He imagined Tori in an apartment close to town, something close to takeout and good coffee—two things she claimed made life worth living. She should be in a vibrant area, full of other young, driven people. Instead, he found her in an old, wealthy neighborhood full of art galleries and antique stores. A place she didn’t belong.

Brit jumped out and walked past the beds of wilted petunias and half-dead verbena that flanked the footpath to her front porch. This, at least, looked like Tori. She was far too busy to worry about her yard.

Tori opened the door as he charged up the front porch steps. She wore her oldest sweatshirt and a pair of soft cotton shorts.

He dragged her into his arms before she could open her mouth and gave her a deep kiss, instantly molding her body to his.

“You’re not playing fair, darling,” he murmured against her ear. “Those shorts should be illegal.”

“They’re an old pair of men’s boxers,” she said, swaying against him as his mouth dropped into the curve of her neck. “Stop kissing me. We need to talk.”

“Can’t we do both?” He slipped a hand under her sweatshirt and settled it on her hip, his thumb resting on the curve of her stomach. A familiar feeling. Her skin against his. Her mouth, yielding under the pressure of his lips.

How could he walk away from this?

“Brit, the door is open.”

Without turning his head, he reached one foot behind him and kicked the door shut. “No it isn’t,” he said, and his hand moved higher, to touch one instantly erect nipple.

For a moment, Tori responded, as he knew she would. But then she straightened, her body becoming rigid. She pushed him away. “I’m serious. This isn’t going to be a good weekend,” she said.

“It’s never a good weekend,” Brit observed, only partly joking.

Recognizing the stubborn set to her jaw, he turned and examined Tori’s home. The living room had a coved ceiling with a maple picture rail on the walls and maple trim around the doorways. A brick fireplace sat on one end of the room, flanked on either side by an old brocade sofa and matching love seat. Other than those pieces and a heavy old dining set, the house was bare. No rugs on the floor. No lamps or end tables. Unopened mail gathered in a pile on the dining room table, beside a bowl filled with plastic fruit. Built-in bookcases surrounded the fireplace, displaying a collection of Danielle Steele, Agatha Christie, and self-help books he knew she would never read.

“Are you sure you live here?” he said, raising a quizzical brow.

“Of course I live here,” she said crossing her arms over her chest. “What do you mean?”

“It just looks…”

“What?”

It looks sad. Lonely. Is this what you come home to every night?

His heart ached at the sight, but he knew he couldn’t say anything. If there was one thing he had learned about Tori, it was that she couldn’t tolerate pity.

He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Empty. Like no one lives here.”

“Well that’s a nice thing to say,” she huffed, turning away.

“I don’t mean to be insulting,” he said. “It took me by surprise. It doesn’t look like you.”

Stiffly, she gestured toward the back of the house. “We took out the rugs and most of the furniture when my mother’s balance started to fail. I don’t have any money for renovations.”

“Why don’t we go upstairs?” he said, searching for a way to break the dark mood that hung over her.

“Fine.” She threw back her hair and stomped up a narrow flight of stairs. The upstairs was a converted attic with a ten-foot ceiling along the ridgeline of the roof, tapering down at the eaves to three feet. Tori’s bed sat at an angle to catch the morning sun. Brit relaxed at the sight. The room was an utter and complete disaster, but at least it felt like a home. Piles of laundry spilled out of a walk-in closet and littered the floor. A desk groaned under the weight of enormous piles of papers, files, and binders.

Hands on hips, Tori turned at the top of the stairs to face him. “So?”

Brit walked around slowly, flipping through a pile of papers on a bedside table, wiping dust off the edge of a framed picture of Tori and her mother, and then cautiously lowering himself onto the bed.

“Unlike some people, I don’t have a live-in maid, you know,” she added.

He patted the space next to him on the bed. “Sit with me.”

“No.”

He wanted to smile, but he knew that would make things worse. Oh, how he knew this woman. Her defensiveness. Her moods. The need that lay underneath the prickly exterior.

“Tori, I drove a hundred miles to see you. Can’t I even get a ‘hi, how are you?’”

She slumped down on the bed. “I know. I’m a frightful bitch. I’m sorry.”

He eased her into his arms. “You’ve had a long day. I understand.” After slipping off his shoes, Brit scooted back on the bed, and then guided her into position between his legs so he could rub her shoulders.

“Ohh…” Tori sighed with obvious pleasure.

“So, why don’t you tell me what this is all about?”

She talked while he massaged, describing her interaction with Karl Bulcher, a man Brit would cheerfully punch if he ever saw. He let her get it all out, knowing where she was headed. “So you see,” she finished, “I have to be there tomorrow morning. I don’t have a choice about this, Brit. And I need to be focused. I can’t afford to spend the weekend thinking about you.”

“Thinking about me?” He pulled her tightly against him. Her back nestled against his chest and his chin dropped on top of her head. “Why would you do a thing like that?”

“Because you keep sending me e-mails,” she managed to retort. “How am I supposed to get any work done? It’s very distracting, you know.”

“You are a piece of work, sweetheart,” Brit said admiringly. “You keep fighting until the bitter end.”

“I’m serious,” she said. “You should stay at a hotel tonight. That way I won’t wake you up in the morning.”

“At some point I’m going to start taking this personally.”

“Well, you should,” Tori pushed back into a sitting position, and then heaved herself out the bed.

“Come with me,” he said suddenly, the words falling, unbidden, from his lips.

“Where? To a hotel? Haven’t you heard a word I said? I need to work tomorrow.” She punctuated each word slowly and distinctly. “If I don’t work, Karl leaves the firm. I lose my most important client, and probably kill any hope of partnership in the process.”

“No. Not to a hotel. To Scotland.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Scotland?” Tori’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t believe what he’d said. “Brit, I can’t even take off the weekend. How am I going to go to Scotland?”

“You’re a fourth-year associate at a law firm, Tori, not the president of the United States. Take the week to wrap things up. Or if you’re really concerned about it, take two weeks and meet me there.”

Tori’s entire body twitched with a combination of shock and anger. “Good to know you think I’m completely expendable.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Brit said. “Of course you’d be missed. They’d have to hire three associates to replace you.”

She knew he was trying to defuse her temper with humor, but she had no interest in being mollified. The very idea of her going to Scotland was ridiculous, and Brit knew it.

She spun around on her heel and started down the stairs. “I’m getting myself a cup of tea, and then I’m going to bed. By myself.”

She padded down the stairs. Brit followed a few paces behind.

When they reached the kitchen, he leaned against a counter, watching as she strode across the room to grab the old metal teakettle. His deep voice echoed in the empty room. “You won’t even consider it?”

Tori paused, her fingers tightening around the handle of the kettle. “I can’t. I told you what Karl said tonight. I slack off, he leaves the firm. I can’t risk that.”

The amusement left Brit’s voice. “Yes, you can. In fact, if you don’t start risking it, I’m afraid you’re going to lose something far more important than your job.”

Tori’s heart fluttered. She filled the kettle and set it on the stove, then grabbed a cup and a tea bag from the cupboard by the sink. Her cell phone rang from the living room but she ignored it. Probably Karl, making sure she was still working. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Look around you, Tori. Think about it. You’re living in an empty house, spending every minute you aren’t sleeping at work. How do you expect to have any friends? How are you ever going to have any relationships?”

She stared at him, her mouth dropping open in astonishment. “You
just
figured this out about me? Brit, I do what I have to do to make partner. That’s all. That’s what I’m living for.”

“But that makes no sense!” He pushed off the counter and stalked toward her. “You are a beautiful, intelligent, vibrant woman. Why do you punish yourself this way?”

“You may not know this,” Tori retorted, “but some of us need our jobs. Some of us need to know that when the bill comes from the nursing home, they’ll have the money to pay it.”

“I get that, I do.” Brit ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I don’t get the
way
you do it. You treat everything that’s not work like it’s an annoyance. A distraction from what really matters.”

The emotions were coming too quickly for Tori to catalog. She reacted without thinking, the words spilling out in an unplanned, uncontrollable rush. “We had nothing, Brit. Absolutely nothing. My father left my mother with an overdrawn checking account, a high school diploma, and an eight-year-old kid. She worked harder than any person you’ve ever met, and now she’s in a nursing home, and she doesn’t remember her own name. I won’t risk her life. I won’t.”

“Tori…” Brit reached out to touch her shoulder but she jerked away. He ignored her and reached out again, this time turning her to face him. “Tori, you can’t go back and fix things for your mother. I don’t care how successful you are. It won’t change what she went through.”

“No. It won’t. But I sure as hell can make sure I don’t repeat her mistakes.”

“Ah. I see.” Brit dropped his hand. “You’re determined to cast yourself as your mother, and me as your father. You refuse to accept the possibility that maybe there’s a man out there who’s worth taking a chance on. And yes, I know I didn’t exactly start out the right way, but things have changed. At least, they have for me.”

Tori’s throat caught. “What changed?”

“I don’t want you for a month, Tori. I thought that would be enough but it isn’t. I want more. I want to rub your shoulders as you fall asleep. I want to cook you breakfast in the morning. I want you to come away with me because you can see that work isn’t the most important thing in the world.”

Her mother’s voice echoed in Tori’s head.
Before you trust a man, Tori, ask yourself, Where will you be if he leaves you? How will you keep going after he’s gone?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Work
is
the most important thing to me. I can’t afford to take this weekend off. Not for anyone.”

He threw up his hands in frustration. “So that’s it? You’re ready to give it all up for a weekend in the office?”

“Give what up? Give up a short-term affair with a man who is running away from his own life and trying to reclaim his lost youth? Sorry if that doesn’t sound more promising than a lifelong career.” Tori knew she was lashing out at him, perhaps unfairly, but it seemed vitally important that he stop looking at her with those solemn, sad eyes. He needed to feel a little of the heartbreak that was enveloping her.

“I screwed up a lot of things in my life, Tori. I worked too hard for too long. I tried to order around my family like they were a bunch of unruly kids. I’m lucky they didn’t disown me. But I’m ready to start over.
You’re
determined to stay here in this empty, hollow house, running in your hamster wheel, terrified to let anyone into your life. Who’s running away? Me, or you?”

“You knew what I had to offer,” Tori said, closing her mind to any further attacks. “We said one month, no commitments. I kept my end of the bargain.”

“Well, I didn’t.” Brit looked around the room, and Tori could feel him cataloging the dust on the appliances, and the stack of dishes in the sink. “I wasn’t ready to walk away from you. That’s why I asked you to come to Scotland. But now I wonder if maybe I was wrong. Maybe you don’t want to start over. Maybe I
should
walk away.”

“Please, go right ahead,” Tori said, her heart breaking in tiny, tingling pieces. “It isn’t as though I wasn’t expecting it.”

“If I leave, I’m not coming back,” Brit warned, his dark brows pulled together, his eyes boring into her as if they could see into her very soul. “You say I’m trying to reclaim my lost youth, and maybe that’s true. I wasn’t happy with the life I was living, and I’m starting something new. I want you to come with me, but I understand if that’s not possible.”

Tori’s entire body felt as if it had become a single, open wound. She stifled a cry of pain. “You’re not playing fair. You’ve got a perfect family, and a job, and money, and it’s all waiting for you when you come back.” She slammed down her cup on the counter, her entire body trembling with restrained emotion. “You’ve got everything to come back to and I’ve got nothing, Brit. Nothing but Goddamn Karl Bulcher!”

Brit paused. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

Tori blinked. “What? You mean…”

“I mean, I can’t ask you to give that up.” He strode forward and pulled her into a quick embrace. “You need to get some sleep. I’ll stay at a hotel tonight. You won’t hear from me again. I hope things work out for you, Tori. I really do.”

Then, as quickly as he had come, Brit turned around and left.

…

So you gave her the ultimatum and she turned you down.

Brit drove away from Tori’s house feeling like he’d ripped out his own heart. When he’d walked into that house and seen how she’d been living, he should have known the answer to his question. Of course she wouldn’t come away with him.

Tori’s scars went far deeper than he’d imagined. It would take a bulldozer to get her away from her job.

He forced himself to keep driving, even though every muscle in his body screamed at him to turn around. He was done trying to fix people. He had reached out to her and she’d pushed him away. He had to move on. It wasn’t as if they were married. They weren’t even dating, according to Tori. He’d tried to change the boundaries of their relationship—if one could even call it that—and she’d said no.

End of story.

So why did he feel like walking out her door was the biggest mistake he’d ever made?