Sinful Rapture (The Rapture Series) (9 page)

She jerked her head up to meet his steady gaze. “Mistress?”

“What the hell?” Luc growled, moving to stand at her side.

Holly ignored her brother, instead concentrating on the massive task of maintaining her composure.

“I didn’t expect him to be a virgin,” she managed to rasp. “I’m sure you’ve had plenty of women in your past.”

Liam reached into the file folder of pain and pulled out another photo, handing it to Holly.

“This was taken three days ago.”

Holly impatiently glanced at the image of the brown-haired woman stepping out of a brick building with Ted at her side. Her former-fiancé had one arm around her shoulders and one hand on her stomach.

Her very large stomach.

Holly made a small sound of distress. “She’s pregnant.”

“It’s their second child,” Liam admitted, offering her yet another photo.

This one was of Ted in a small park as he pushed a young boy on a swing.

The photos fell from her fingers as Holly suddenly felt as if she was being smothered.

It wasn’t as if she’d ever thought that she and Ted shared some grand, epic love. Still…

How could he play the devoted fiancé while he was creating a family with another woman?

It was obscene.

“I don’t understand,” she at last managed to choke out. “If he loves this woman enough to have children with her, why would he marry me?”

Liam tossed the rest of the file on a chair behind him.

“Because she’s a waitress at the local diner and you’re Vigo Angeli’s daughter.”

***

Liam was furious.

With Theodore Wentworth Junior and his damned games.

With fate that had chosen to steal the happiness that had bubbled through him like the finest champagne until Luc had come barging into the apartment.

But most of all, with himself.

He was a gambler. He never bet against the odds.

Except when it came to this female.

And now his dreams were threatening to go bust.

Curling his hands into tight fists so he didn’t do something stupid like throw Holly over his shoulder and lock her in his bedroom, he waited for her to at last break the brittle silence.

“How long?” she husked.

He frowned. “What?”

Her cognac eyes glittered with tears she refused to shed. “How long have you known?”

He flinched. Christ. It felt as if someone was twisting a knife in his gut.

Or maybe he was just wishing he could be stabbed.

It would be less painful.

“Since the two of you became engaged.” He forced himself to admit the truth.

There would be no more lies.

She flinched, her hand pressed to her chest. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“Would you have believed me?” he demanded. “Or would you have assumed I was just trying to cause trouble?”

Her jaw clenched, revealing she was in no mood to accept his perfectly reasonable explanation.

“So you let me make a fool of myself for months?”

Liam glanced toward the silent Luc.

“It was your family’s place to make sure your fiancé was worthy of you,” he said.

Luc grimaced. “He’s right. I failed you.”

“This has nothing to do with you.” Holly waved a silencing hand toward her brother, unconsciously looking as imperious as Vigo as she faced Liam with her chin high and her pale face hard with a stubborn expression. “How did you get the file?” she demanded of Liam.

He shrugged. “I hired a private investigator.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

She frowned, but she didn’t try to pretend as if she didn’t realize he’d been fiercely determined to lure her away from Ted from the beginning.

“You just said you didn’t use the file because you didn’t think that I would believe you.”

“I said I didn’t intend to show it to you,” he clarified, his hand lifting to touch her, only to be yanked back when she took a sharp step away. Shit. He flinched, regret slicing through him like a dagger. “But I’d hoped that the bastard would grow some balls and do the right thing. When he didn’t, I paid him a visit and warned him that if he didn’t confess the truth I was handing the file over to his father.”

Holly frowned. “Why would you send it to his father?”

Liam arched a startled brow. Hell, had Holly not realized why she’d been chosen as Ted’s bride?

He swallowed a curse. As if he needed to be the bearer of even more bad news.

“Theodore the Senior has been obnoxiously obsessed with his desire to climb the social ladder,” Liam grudgingly revealed. “His son is well aware he would be disinherited if he showed up for Sunday dinner with a woman who has nothing to offer the Wentworth clan beyond her obvious fertility.”

Her teeth sank into her bottom lip, pain darkening her eyes as she abruptly turned to pace toward the glass wall.

“God.”

“Holly, please,” he husked, not sure what he was pleading for.

Understanding. Forgiveness. A second chance.

“You let me get into my wedding dress and wait with two hundred guests for a groom who was never going to show up.” She slowly turned to reveal her accusing expression. “Do you know how embarrassing that was?”

Liam grimaced. “I truly thought he would call off the wedding, princess. I never dreamed he would be enough of a bastard to simply not show up.”

A sharp, humorless laugh was wrenched from her throat. “What is it with me?” she demanded, her voice thick with tears. “Is there any man who isn’t going to betray me?”

Liam recoiled, feeling as if he’d taken a physical blow. “I never betrayed you.”

The cognac eyes blazed with fury. “You let me be publically humiliated and then you swooped in like some knight in shining armor and convinced me you genuinely cared.”

Hell. When she put it like that…

“I do care,” he rasped. “I love you.”

She made a sound of disgust, heading toward the elevator. “If that’s your idea of love, you can keep it.”

“Holly.”

She stabbed the button that opened the steel doors. Entering the elevator, she turned to send him a warning glare.

“Just stay away from me.”

Liam was in instant pursuit. He understood her need to get away from him, but she was in no condition to be on her own.

Not when she was so upset.

But he’d barely managed more than two steps when his arm was being grabbed in a painful grip.

“Let her go,” Luc commanded.

Liam sent his companion a death glare. “Fuck that.”

“That wasn’t a suggestion,” Luc warned, his fingers digging into Liam’s arm with enough force to leave bruises.

He hissed as the elevator doors closed, whisking Holly away from him.

“Damn you,” he snarled. “She needs me.”

“Right now she needs some time to cool down and think clearly,” Luc warned.

He was right.

Holly was too hurt to listen to his frantic justifications.

That didn’t, however, make it any easier to let her walk away.

“You just want to keep us apart,” he accused the man who was looking at him as if sizing him up for a coffin.

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t want to protect my sister?”

“I’m not the one you need to protect her from,” Liam pointed out in rough tones.

He was a long way from forgiving the Angeli clan for not bothering to stop the engagement.

“You hurt her,” Luc accused.

Liam jerked his arm free. “That was never my intention,” he muttered.

His companion wasn’t impressed. “Why didn’t you just tell her the truth?”

In hindsight it was the obvious solution.

At the time he’d been terrified of losing her.

“She already blamed me for stealing the company she thought was going to be hers,” he said, shoving his fingers through his damp hair.

Luc breathed a curse. “It was never going to be hers. I told her that Vigo was playing games with her.”

Liam grimaced, remembering Holly’s heartbreakingly fragile expression when she discussed her prick of a father.

“You know that, and I know that, but she’s spent her entire life feeling as if she was on the outside looking in. She wanted to believe that she’d finally earned a place in her family.”

Luc gave a sharp shake of his head, his face hard with disgust.

“Trust me, being on the outside is the perfect place to be when it comes to my dysfunctional family.”

“Holly only knows that she wasn’t considered good enough to live with her father in his big mansion, or to be asked over for Christmas dinner,” Liam said, unable to understand any father who would use his children as if they were pawns on a chessboard. His own dad might not have had a fortune to pass along to his kids, but he’d loved them with a fierce devotion that meant more than any amount of money. “So when she thought he was going to name her as his heir, it made her feel as if she’d finally won a place in his heart.”

“The bastard doesn’t have a heart,” Luc informed him.

“Yeah well, she blamed me for snatching away her chance at happiness.” His jaw clenched as he remembered her explosive fury when it was announced that Vigo had sold his company to none other than Liam Conner. Thank god she had never been a big fan of carrying concealed weapons. “Can you imagine how she would have reacted if I’d been the one to tell her that her perfect fiancé was screwing around with another woman?”

“Fine. I get it,” Luc grudgingly conceded. “But why didn’t you come to me?”

Liam turned to pace toward the kitchen, reaching into his fridge to pull out two beers.

It was early, but hell, if he ever needed alcohol it was now.

“Believe it or not, I fell in love with Holly the night I met her,” he admitted, returning to his companion to offer him one of the bottles.

They both took a minute to enjoy the crisp beer before Luc heaved a resigned sigh.

“Actually I do believe you.” He polished off the beer and set the bottle on a nearby table. “Did you tell Holly?”

“She knew.” Liam twisted his lips in a rueful smile. There was no one in the room the night they met that hadn’t been aware of his stunned fascination with the dark-haired beauty. “But I’m a gambler from a family that doesn’t have a drop of blue blood. She was convinced that princely Theodore was the husband that would impress Vigo.”

“The worthless son of a bitch,” Luc growled.

“She refused to admit that we were destined to be together. I wanted—” Liam bit off his words.

Luc narrowed his gaze. “What?”

Liam hesitated. He wasn’t pumped about the idea of revealing his most intimate thoughts to anyone, let alone a man who was virtually a stranger.

But wasn’t a fool.

Luc Angeli could be his biggest obstacle or his greatest ally when it came to winning Holly’s forgiveness.

“I wanted her to come to me,” he said, scrubbing his hands over his face. God, he missed Holly. Even though they’d shared less than twenty-four hours together, he’d become accustomed to having her near. Now he didn’t know where she was. Or even if she was okay. Dammit. “To accept that she loved me without having to expose Theodore. Foolish, I suppose.”

“No, not foolish. Hell, I even admire the sentiment,” Luc assured him. “But right now you have to hope she can forgive you long enough to explain.”

Liam turned, and with one violent jerk of his arm sent the empty beer bottle sailing into the fireplace.

It exploded into a thousand shards, representing the pieces of his broken heart.

“Shit,” he breathed.

Holly ordered the taxi to take her to the Playhouse.

In part, because she was afraid that Liam would follow her to her apartment. But mainly because she needed the comfort of her best friend.

Thank god Sasha had come in early to deal with paperwork.

With her usual efficiency she had Holly whisked into her small office and a plate of fudge brownies shoved into her hands.

Now Holly paced the hand-woven carpet that matched the surprisingly delicate Louis XIV furnishings. The rest of the club was so…modern and bold and intensely sensual. It was always a shock to get a glimpse of the traditional, hardheaded businesswoman beneath the dominatrix façade.

“Men suck,” Holly muttered, licking the chocolate from her fingers.

She’d had three brownies, but everyone knew that the calories didn’t count when a man had pissed you off.

Leaning against the desk, Sasha was casually dressed in yoga pants and oversized T-shirt.

Her usual uniform of black leather and tight bustier would be put on before the customers started to arrive.

“Preaching to the choir, sister,” she assured Holly.

Holly turned to pace to the other end of the office. “A woman would have to be an idiot to trust them.”

“True.”

“They claim to love you and then…” With a dramatic motion, Holly slammed her fist into the palm of her hand. “Bam.”

“Love?” Sasha didn’t bother to hide the shock in her voice. “Are you referring to Liam?”

Holly glanced at her friend in confusion. “Of course.”

“He actually said the L word?”

A renegade warmth flooded through Holly’s heart at the memory of Liam’s expression as he’d insisted he loved her. He’d looked so…fierce. So desperate for her to believe him.

Abruptly she slammed the door on the painful image.

“Focus, Sasha,” she snapped, speaking more to herself than her friend. “He set me up to be jilted.”

“Technically, Ted was the one who jilted you,” Sasha gently pointed out. “The selfish dick.”

Holly halted her pacing to glare at her supposed friend.

What was wrong with the woman?

She’d come here for a thorough, epic male-bashing session.

“You’re not defending him, are you?” she asked.

Sasha reached for a brownie, nibbling at the corner. “No, I’m just pointing out that it wasn’t Liam who asked you to be his wife while he was making babies with his mistress. Or decided to make a fool of you by not showing up for his own wedding.”

Okay. It was true that Liam hadn’t been the one to jilt her. But he was at least partially responsible for her being so publically humiliated.