Sweeter Than Revenge (14 page)

“Maria,” he gasped. His panicked gaze flew back and forth behind her. “What’s up?”

“Are you okay?” she asked cautiously, coming inside and wondering if all the hours he spent hunched over his computer had shriveled his brain into a paranoid, dysfunctional lump of tissue. “If I’m catching you at a bad time—”

He sucked in a deep breath and managed a sickly smile. “Well, I’m a little busy.”

“I’m so sorry. It’s just that I need to do some filing, and I was wondering where the file room is—”

“The file room. Wow.” He loosened his collar and his daze darted behind her to the office door, reminding her of a druggie trying to score on a street corner while simultaneously scanning the horizon for cops. “You know who’s in charge of the file room? David. You should ask him.”

Her heart sank. She wasn’t ready to face David yet, and doubted she would be anytime soon, unless someone gave her a double Scotch on the rocks first.

“David?He’s way too busy to help me with something like that. And I haven’t seen any sign of him today. Can’t you help me? Please?”

When Kwasi hesitated, she flashed her prettiest smile at him—was this what Shelley had meant about shaking her tail feathers?—and he melted like butter in the sun.

“Well…okay.”

“Thank you, Kwasi. I knew I could count on you.”

Gratitude got the best of her and she made the mistake of squeezing his elbow. His pleased grin stretched to his ears and beyond, threatening to wrap around his whole head and get hair in his teeth. Stepping closer, he took a deep breath as if he wanted to shore up his courage and ask her something important. She hastily dropped her hand and stepped away.

“Maria,” he began. “I’ve been wondering if you’d—”

Without warning, his gaze fixed on a point just behind her and he froze, eyes bulging. Abject fear, of the variety that made her wonder if he would wet his pants, crossed over his features, and he gulped audibly. Bewildered, Maria whirled to see what caused the poor man such terror.

David stood in the doorway glaring at Kwasi, and judging by the simmering rage on his face, Kwasi had committed a capital offense and would shortly be tortured and hanged for it. When David’s gaze flickered to Maria, she put a polite, professional mask on her face and kept it there. Never again would she show this man her broken heart. Never. Last night was the last time.

She coulddo this, no matter how it tore her apart, and no matter how badly her knees shook. She wouldwork with David, and, even harder, she wouldlet him go and move on with her life without him. Forgetting about him wasn’t impossible, if she put her mind to it and tried hard enough.

She had to get over him.

Chapter 12

“Good morning,” Maria said.

It hurt to look at her. Staring into those crystal-brown eyes, David felt the pain of loss as a choking tightness around his throat, a flattening weight pressed squarely on his heart, and a sickening, twisting knot in his belly. Those sweet, sad, doe eyes had cried—and cried hard—over him last night, and four years ago, too. That body, wrapped today in a pretty, silky blue dress, had stopped eating and lost weight because of him. And as for Maria’s precious heart—his stomach revolted, squeezing and cramping, until he had to push the thought aside or lose his breakfast. He couldn’t bear to think about what he’d done to Maria’s heart.

What had made him think when he left Cincinnati and went back to school that Maria would understand and embrace his need to go off and finish his MBA? Or that she would implicitly understand that he hadn’t left her forever—only until he had his life in order? Looking back, he could see that he’d brainwashed himself into thinking everything would be all right when he should have known the separation would kill them both.

Why, in four years, had it never occurred to him that she may also have suffered over the end of their relationship?

Was he that blind? That stupid?

All the if-onlys, might-have-beensand why-didn’t-I’sconverged, making him heartsick and ashamed. He didn’t even deserve to look Maria in the face.

“Are you okay?” she said.

He couldn’t answer because he wasn’t.

“David?”

Her light touch on his arm snapped him out of it. Quickly looking away, aware of Kwasi watching him with wary concern, he cleared his throat and tried to focus.

“I’m fine,” he said, trying to sound brisk and efficient but only managing to sound hoarse. “Can I, uh, talk to you?”

“Uh…sure.”

Narrowing his gaze, he turned to Kwasi, who, much to David’s satisfaction, winced. Apparently, Kwasi’s hormones had gone into overdrive, causing him to defy David’s direct order to stay away from Maria; maybe he needed a little reminder.

Kwasi seemed to realize he’d screwed up, and didn’t look like he planned to do it again. “D-David,” he stammered, his Adam’s apple bobbing frantically up and down in his scrawny throat. “See, what happened was…Maria came to myoffice and asked about the file room, okay, but I, you know, told her she needed to talk to you,because youare the file-room guy. Not me.” He trailed off and looked to Maria for confirmation. “Right, Maria?”

“Right,” she said, watching David. “But I know you’re too busy to help with something like—”

“Actually, I’m not,” David told her.

“Oh,” she said.

A long, pregnant pause followed, during which he held his breath as she fidgeted and flipped her ponytail over her shoulder. If she wasn’t exactly anxious to spend any more time in David’s toxic presence, David could hardly blame her.

“Well…great,” she said finally.

“Great.” Stepping closer, he put his hand at the small of her back to steer her back to her office. He looked over his shoulder and glared at Kwasi, who flinched and made an almost imperceptible whimpering sound.

“I’ll take it from here, Kwasi,” David said, giving him a tight warning smile that made Kwasi shrink in on himself like a deflating basketball. “You remember what we talked about yesterday, don’t you?”

“Yeah, man.” Kwasi’s head nodded violently enough to shake his brain loose from its moorings. “Don’t worry, because I—”

Ignoring him, David turned and started down the hall with Maria, staying much closer to her than he needed to if he wanted to retain his last little bit of sanity. His brain repeatedly commanded his hand to dislodge itself from the supple, silky curve of Maria’s back, but his hand refused to listen. Worse, he couldn’t stop staring down at the side of her face, wondering what she was thinking about.

“There’s the file room.” He pointed as they passed it.

“Thanks.”

Suddenly they were in her office, and he finally let his hand slide down and off her back. She raised her gaze to his and they stared at each other in awkward silence for a minute. To cover his discomfort, he looked around at the office, which now looked habitable. There was one more thing to add to his long list of things to be ashamed about: making her work, even for thirty seconds, in this dump. At least he’d had the decency to have the janitor clean some things out last night after she left.

“How’d you get to work?” he asked after a while. “Ellis or I would’ve driven you.”

“I took a cab.”

A cab? He had a tough time picturing that. The Jag, sure, or a limo. Not a cab.

“I’m happy to take you home,” he told her.

“No, thanks.”

The extreme politeness in her tone and the coolness in her eyes felt exactly like being whammed in the belly with a baseball bat.

“It’s no trouble,” he insisted.

“I can take a cab wherever I need to go.”

“But that’s silly.”

“Maybe, but that’s what I’m doing.”

Try though he did, he couldn’t see a way around this impasse, which stretched between them like a gulch. Finally he gave up.

“Maria,”he murmured, wishing he could do something to get rid of that faint pleading note in his voice, “we still have to work together.”

“I know.”

“Can we do that?”

“I can.”

He believed her. She looked bored and wooden, as though nothing remotely unpleasant could penetrate the invisible brick wall surrounding her, and he’d bet that if Joseph Stalin showed up at her office door, she’d claim she could work with him, too.

They stared at each other. Actually he stared at her while she watched him with those flat eyes. Finally she held out that stack of files she’d had under her arm this whole time. “If that’s all,” she said, “I have work to do.”

“Uh, yeah,” he stammered. “Sure.”

She turned to leave, but he discovered he couldn’t let her go. Desperate to keep her nearby, to tie her to him somehow, he spat out the first thing that came to mind. “Wait.”

Her shoulders stiffened. Pausing, she hovered in the doorway without looking back.

“Anastasia’s interview with USA Every Dayis at her house at eleven. She’ll be expecting you. You can ride with me.”

Now she did look around, a disturbed light flashing in her eyes, penetrating her aloofness. “Oh, I can meet you there,” she began.

“You can meet me in the lobby at ten-thirty.”

It was a mandate, and she knew it. Nodding unhappily, those files still under her arm, she left.

David lingered in her office, absorbing the faint scent of her perfume and the energy coming from her chair and her desk and her space. He just couldn’t leave; he had to be close to whatever small part of her he could reach at the moment. One persistent memory refused to be denied, and after a while he stopped trying to push it away. Staring at the colorful blue aquarium desktop setting on her laptop with unfocused eyes, he remembered the first time they’d made love and the indescribable sweetness of the connection he’d once shared with Maria.

He’d never believed sex was a religious experience any more than he believed sex should be called making love, but now, after being with Maria, he’d have to rethink both those positions.

The late-morning sun had shifted, keeping the room bright with light filtering through the blinds. They lay, spooned together, in his enormous bed, which was about the only furniture in his minimalist—hell, bare—apartment. Not that he’d given Maria much spare time to notice the amenities or lack thereof.

She was now the center of the universe, much as he’d like to pretend otherwise. He couldn’t hold her tight enough, but he kept trying; letting her go was inconceivable. Her butt pressed against his groin, keeping him warm and hard. Every now and then she’d wriggle against him and he’d hold her closer. Maybe in a minute she’d complain that he was about to snap her ribs, but until then they’d stay just like they were.

With his bottom arm he supported the delicious weight of her breasts, rubbing his thumb over her nipples every few seconds because it made her shiver every time and because he could. With his top arm he smoothed the black satin of her hair away from her neck and nuzzled, wondering when he’d get tired of the scent of lemons on her skin. The answer, he very much feared, was never.

They’d made love twice in about half an hour, and in another thirty seconds or so he’d be ready to go again. He’d had every intention of going slowly with her—she was a little younger than he was, and just coming off a bad relationship—and if he’d been a better man, he’d have turned her away at the door. Right now, though, with her in his arms and everything right with his world, he was pretty glad he wasn’t a better man. No doubt he should take her out to lunch or make some attempt to do something with her other than lose himself in her body for as long as she’d let him, but a bed with Maria in it was not a place one left voluntarily. He’d take her out to a spectacular dinner later. Much later.

Grinning with a ridiculous happiness, he kissed her shoulder and she stirred.

“David?” she murmured in a hoarse, sleepy-sexy voice that did unthinkable things to his already tight sex.

“Mmm?” He pressed his nose to her hair, rooting for her scent the way a pig roots for truffles.

“Are you ever going to talk to me?”

For a long minute he couldn’t think of anything to say and didn’t trust his voice to say it. Powerful, primitive emotions warred in his chest, and he was afraid to consider what they meant.

“I’m afraid of what might come out of my mouth if I start talking right now,” he told her, the truth.

Don’t leave me andI need you so much it scares me came quickly to mind, followed closely byI can’t stand the thought of leaving you at the end of the summer andmaybe I should quit school and move back here. This is lust, he reminded himself sternly.Lust. Only lust.

Not for one second did he believe it.

“Was it that bad?”

He heard the humor in her voice and, beneath that, the vulnerability. “Awful,” he said, nibbling her ear. “I really suffered.”

Laughing, she elbowed him sharply in the ribs and tried to pull away. He yelped but held on, pulling her back from the edge of the bed.

“Let me go,” she cried. “I don’t want to be the cause of any more suffering.”

Wrestling her into submission—she was surprisingly strong—he pinned her hands above her head, rolled on top of her and settled between her legs. The contact between his hard length and the scalding wet softness of her body made both of them go still. Maria’s eyes rolled closed and she whimpered, arching into him, reminding him of a druggie getting a fix. He felt exactly the same way.

“I’ll give you another chance in a minute, Ree-Ree—”

“Ree-Ree?” she squealed, looking something less than thrilled to be given such an undignified nickname.

“Don’t blow it this time, okay?” he whispered inches from her lips, grinding against her and ignoring her outrage.

Her lids flickered open and she studied him with the sultry eyes of a woman who knew her own power and meant to use it. One corner of her mouth turned up in a taunting, thrilling smile.

“I’ll give it my best shot.” She slid her hands down his back and over his butt, pulling him closer by digging in a little with her nails and—

Maria’s desk phone rang, scaring the hell out of David and rudely shoving him out of his glorious memories; he didn’t have the faintest idea how much time had passed. He jerked his mind back to the present, determined not to remember how he’d slid into Maria’s tight, hot body, or how they’d stayed together like that all afternoon and night, or how she’d stared at him the whole time as if he was the only man in the universe and the only man for her.

Muttering, still feeling disoriented and agitated, David shoved off from her desk and stalked down the hall. Time to return to his own office, where he belonged, and get back to work.

David went back to his office, where he sat at his desk and remembered, in vivid detail, pretty much every moment—the good, the bad, the ugly and the sublime—he’d ever shared with Maria.

He did notdo any work.

Once he took his finger out of the leak in the protective dam he’d built around his mind and let a memory or two trickle through, the crack widened. Finally the dam itself crumbled and memory after memory surged through, obliterating every other thought he might have. The first time he saw Maria. First smile, first touch, first sigh. First movie, first picnic, first dinner. Everything flooded through. After a couple hours of this torture, it was time to collect the source of all his torment and drive with her to Anastasia’s house.

He couldn’t wait.

Maria met him at the elevator with a wary half smile, then studied the tips of her sexy high-heeled sandals. His pulse went wild. The elevator dinged, he put a hand to that same silky spot at the small of her back to usher her inside the mirrored car, and his hand burned. She brushed by him to press the button for the garage level, and his body canted toward her, listing to one side like a sinking ship. She stared fixedly at the lighted numbers above the door, and he stared fixedly at her. She cleared her throat and his heart leaped, wondering what she would say and dying to hear whatever it was.