by Dani Collins
“You look like you’re going to faint. Are you ill?” He had instantly gone deep inside himself in the infuriating way he had, becoming impossible to read.
“I’m fine.” She really wasn’t.
“Then why are you here? For your things?” He looked to each of his cuffs as he buttoned them, all business. “I texted to ask what you wanted me to do with it.”
She had blocked him. She had feared if she started talking to him, she would fall right back under his spell. Which she was in danger of doing right now. Help me, Reve. Save me. Love me.
“This was a mistake—” She rose abruptly, and the blood rushed from her head. She set a hand on the wall as she swayed dizzily.
Reve quickly stepped forward to catch at her.
She just as quickly pulled away, brushing his hands off her. She was pretty sure she would dissolve into tears if he touched her. In her haste, she staggered into the bench, dislodging it and causing its feet to screech on the marble.
It was classic clumsy, reflexive Nina, but her panicked reaction had shocked him. She saw his eyes flash with outraged astonishment, then a shadow of stunned hurt.
He quickly blinked it away and took a few steps back, holding up his hands.
“You’re totally safe here, Nina.” Now his voice was grave and reassuring and nonthreatening enough to make her all wobbly inside.
She was acting hysterical. She was hysterical. It was taking everything for her to hold back the tears swelling in her throat.
“I just need somewhere to collect my thoughts,” she mumbled, feeling foolish and messy and horribly gauche. Was this why he hadn’t wanted a future with her? Her whole family found her disorganized and overly sensitive and somewhat oblivious.
It was true. She often didn’t have a single clue despite what might be staring her in the face. She led with her heart and saw only what she wanted to see. That’s how she’d missed the fact she wasn’t actually related to any of her relations. That’s how she’d mistaken a wealthy man’s desire for a mistress as love at first sight.
“Do you want to come sit down?” He waved toward the living room.
She moved into the familiar space of his penthouse with its vaulted ceiling and wall of windows looking onto the terrace. As she sank into her favorite corner of the overstuffed sectional, the one that faced the fireplace, she pulled the cushion from behind her back and hugged it.
“Would you like something? Coffee? Tea? A drink?” He was keeping his distance, which made her feel again like she was being melodramatic.
It was his influence making her act this way, she wanted to say. When she was with him, he sharpened her reactions to everything. The sun shone brighter, food tasted better. Orgasms became otherworldly.
“No,” she murmured, biting her lip to distract herself from how much she had missed him.
It’s okay to love someone who doesn’t return your feelings, her sister had said when Nina had crawled home, a failure on all fronts. You still got to feel it. Love is never wasted.
Easy for her to say, married to her high school sweetheart and still deeply in love.
“Do you want me to call the police?” Reve’s carefully neutral tone was unnerving. He was an assertive man who always knew what he wanted. When he had an opinion, he voiced it. If he thought a certain action should be taken, he took it.
Treating her as though she was made of spun sugar was making her unravel even faster.
“I haven’t been attacked,” she mumbled.
“There’s blood on your bag. And your hand.” His voice wasn’t quite steady. His shoulders were a tense line.
She realized he was boiling with rage beneath that clenched jaw. She looked to the floor where she’d dropped her shoulder bag. One of the sagging ropes that formed the handle held a streak of red. The heel of her palm also had blood on it.
Wonderful. Now she had to scrounge up the energy to go to the powder room.
“I shouldn’t have barged in on you like this.” She rubbed her thumb on the stain. “I was at a job interview a few blocks over. Paparazzi chased me when I came out of the hotel. One grabbed me and I punched him in the nose.”
“Because you and I were involved?” Reve’s frown was instantly thunderous. He hated sensational publicity. Hated it.
He picked up his phone, not waiting for her to clarify before he spoke to someone she presumed was Amir. “Get the names of the men outside. Let them know charges of assault will be forthcoming.” He ended the call.
“Against me?” she asked with a thin laugh. “I hit him.”
“Good.” He moved to the wet bar and soaked a cloth under the tap. “We’ve all wanted to do it.”
“Not good. I feel awful about it.”
He gave the cloth a hard twist to wring it out and brought it to her. “We’re all entitled to defend ourselves. I guess those classes your sister dragged you to paid off.”
He remembered her telling him that? She’d mentioned it the first time he’d offered to drive her home so she wouldn’t have to take the subway. The classes had been the only way her sister would allow her to leave for New York alone.
“Thank you.” Nina accepted the cloth and wiped her hands clean. “But it wasn’t about you.”
How strange to acknowledge that when her life had been revolving around him from the moment she had met him on New Year’s Eve. She’d been at the party as an assistant to her former employer, Kelly Bex, one of New York’s top designers. Kelly had wanted to snare Reve’s attention for herself, not that Nina had realized it. Seriously, she was so clueless.
“Be nice to him,” Kelly had said. So Nina had made a point of introducing herself, saying something that had made him laugh. She hadn’t realized he was a self-made bazillionaire who had gotten his start selling used car parts and was now a driving force—pun intended—in autonomous vehicles.
They’d chatted for a half hour and, rather than going home with Kelly, Reve had taken Nina’s number, asking her to dinner the next evening. Nina had mentioned it to Kelly at work the next day, innocent as a spring lamb, asking if there was anything Kelly wanted Nina to bring up with him.
While Reve had seduced Nina that night, Kelly had browsed recipes for cooking and eating the hearts of her enemies. It wasn’t until Nina was holding a cardboard box of her things on the street a few days later that she’d realized she’d been fired in direct retaliation for her budding affair with Reve. Her roommate at the time had also been an employee of Kelly’s, so Nina had lost her sublet, too.
Reve was a much faster study. He’d understood the dynamic straight away but hadn’t been particularly remorseful. However, since Nina had had no job and no home, he’d taken her in and offered to make reparations by supporting her career aspirations. She had let him act like a superhero because she had thought he believed in her work and wanted her to succeed.
He had wanted her in his bed. That was all. That was the happily-never-after to that story.
Even after she’d figured it out and tried to move on, he had affected her life. He’d left her so hollowed out she’d abandoned her dreams and scurried back to Albuquerque, where she had struggled to even look for work. She had lived with her father and swept hair in her sister’s salon. When she did go on interviews, she failed to land jobs because she was walking around with such an angry look on her face.
Not today, though. Weirdly, this thing with Oriel Cuvier wasn’t about him. At least, it hadn’t been until she had run in here and drawn him into it.
Oh, heck. He was going to kill her when he realized that.
Reve took the cloth and threw it all the way across the room, where it landed in the sink with a dull thud.
“Why are they chasing you, then?” He dropped into the armchair that faced her. “Some other man you’re seeing?”
She could have barked out a wild laugh at that. What did h
e think? That she had walked out on him for turning her into a paid escort so she could take up with another man in exactly the same capacity? As if she could even think about other men after him. Even as she sat here, she was thinking, Why couldn’t you have loved me just a little?
She gave herself a mental shake and said facetiously, “Yes. Duke Rhodes.” Oriel Cuvier had been at a premiere in Cannes with the actor six weeks ago. That’s what had started Nina down this rocky path of self-discovery. “Haven’t you seen our photos?”
“The has-been from those ‘Frantic and Fuming’ action movies?” He grimaced. “He’s too old for you.”
“I’m being sarcastic,” she said with exasperation. “You really haven’t seen them?”
“You blocked me, Nina,” he said in a tone that was falsely pleasant. “How could I see any of the photos you post?”
Wasn’t it supposed to feel satisfying when the object of your block realized it? She just felt petty and obvious. Now he knew how much he’d hurt her.
“They’re not my photos. They’re on the entertainment sites.”
“I don’t look at that garbage.” His face hardened with genuine anger. “But if they’re chasing you because of him, why the hell would you lead those vultures to me?”
CHAPTER TWO
“I DIDN’T! I was across the street and they surrounded me. I panicked and ran to what was familiar.” She hugged the pillow she was still holding. “I didn’t expect Amir to call you.” Her chin trembled. “I just wanted to catch my breath.”
Reve had been born skeptical. The life he’d led had honed his cynicism to a razor-sharp edge. The first time Nina had spoken to him, he’d seen her angle. She’d been cutting in line ahead of her own employer, a shark of a woman named Kelly Bex, to get to him.
That put Nina on his own level of ruthless buccaneering—not devoid of a conscience, but willing to leap on an opportunity when it presented itself in a bespoke suit with a Patek Philippe wristwatch and a gold credit card made from actual gold.
He respected that. Plus, she was pretty as hell. Mesmerizing with her silky, shiny hair and her expressive brows and her delicate oval face. She was curious and interesting and made him laugh, so he’d let her run her game. Why not? He liked to play as hard as worked.
He’d thought he was embarking on an affair with a like-minded partner, but their relationship hadn’t gone the way he’d expected. Nina possessed an artistic temperament. She was naturally passionate and sensitive and effusive. She challenged his assumptions, and pushed up against him and excited him. Sparks had constantly been flying, especially in the bedroom. They were an A-hazard combustible combination, and his body refused to forget it.
The lust she provoked in him had been her ticket into this penthouse. He’d known he was being a fool. Emotions were a tool for manipulating a reaction. He sat in marketing meetings all the time where they discussed how to stir up envy and turn it into a luxury car purchase, but he’d still allowed her to enthrall him.
When she had stormed out because he had declined to eat dinner with her father, he’d seen it as a tantrum intended to bring him to heel. He’d balked—hard—expecting her to come back once she cooled off, but she hadn’t.
Her social feeds had reassured him she was alive and spending time with her father, and then three days later he’d seen a “good to be home” post. The phone he’d bought her turned up at the desk downstairs, and he discovered she had blocked him from every aspect of her life.
That abrupt cutting of ties had thrust him into a fractured moment of fearing he had genuinely hurt her. Dread had leaned a sharp elbow into his integrity. He wasn’t the most moral of men, but he didn’t harm people. He didn’t use them up and throw them away.
He didn’t need them, either, but he felt her absence more keenly than he’d expected. It still put a sick knot in his gut recalling how discarded he’d felt for those few dark minutes.
Then he’d remembered that she’d left her precious sewing machine. This whole charade was a taunt. She had wanted him to chase her, but he refused. He’d sat back and waited, knowing she would turn up when she was ready, and here she was.
The part where she was claiming to have been chased here by paparazzi was an odd way to save face. Definitely not the quickest way into his good graces, but he knew how nightmarish those scrums could be and she seemed genuinely distressed. There was a haunted look around her eyes. Tension pulled at the corners of her mouth. Her cheekbones stood out as though she’d lost a few pounds. She was naturally slender and tall, but she had never struck him as fragile.
His heart sat crooked in his chest as he realized she hadn’t smiled once yet. In fact, she looked like a rabbit run to ground.
“Are you sure they didn’t hurt you?” he asked with gruff concern.
He was still twitching with adrenaline from noticing the blood on her hand. For a few seconds, he’d gone to a very violent place. He’d always been a scrapper, but today, imagining someone had hurt her so badly she was terrified of him, he had known he could kill.
It was sobering. And a stark reminder that she brought more tumult into his life than was comfortable. In fact, he was sitting here filtering through a thousand reactions when he ought to have already dismissed her from his life and left for his engagement.
“I’m fine.” She was rubbing her thumb into the heel of her palm. “I might have a bruise later, but I’m just...” She heaved a sigh that contained a metric ton of despair. “Tired.”
That he believed. The way she stared sightlessly at the fireplace, her mouth pouty with desolation, bothered him. He didn’t like seeing her like this, trampled and sad. It slipped past the armor he was donning and sank like an ice pick in his gut.
He fought softening toward her while she blinked slowly once, twice, then drew a breath and shot him a tight, brave, flat-lipped stretch of her lips that was evidently supposed to be a smile. She set aside the pillow.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have come to you.”
His lungs tightened in a very visceral reaction. Why not him?
This was her strange power over him, though. She said and did things that tugged reactions from him with a barbed hook. He didn’t want to be the sort of man who could be led by his emotions. It left him open to all sorts of strikes.
He clenched his jaw against any declarations of concern or offers to help and stood.
She rose and shouldered her bag, tugging her hair free from the strap, making him want to reacquaint himself with how satin-cool those wavy tendrils were and how warm and smooth her skin was.
He jerked his gaze away. “I’ll take you out through the underground parking and drop you wherever you’re staying.” It was the decent thing to do. That was the only reason he offered.
“A subway station is fine, thanks.”
“I’ll take you home,” he insisted. “Your things are in storage downstairs. It will only take a minute to have them load—”
“No.” She hit him with a look that accused him of hate crimes. “Why do you still have it? Sell it. Give it away. Throw it away. I don’t care, but it’s not mine.” She disappeared into the powder room and slammed the door.
And there was the flare of temper that lit his own, making him want to bang on the door and demand she explain herself.
No. He wouldn’t let her manipulate him again.
He went down the hall to finish dressing, determined to end their association once and for all. Determined to ignore the gravel that sat heavy in his stomach as he did.
* * *
“Do you need a few more minutes?” Reve asked stiffly as she joined him in the elevator. He’d put on a tie and jacket and looked fantastic, the bastard.
Nina looked and felt like the crumpled tissues in her hand. She was as tired of crying as she was of everything else, but why had he thrown her shattered dreams in her face like that? Why?
“I’m fine.” She felt his gaze on the side of her face, intense enough to leave a radiation burn.
His car was waiting by the elevator when it opened. He moved to open the back door himself and she slid in, slouching down even though the windows were tinted.
He came in beside her and gave her a disgruntled look, then flicked his gaze to their surroundings as though checking for cameramen.
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
“Lower East Side.”
“Where?”
“A friend’s studio. His lease runs out at the end of the month and he’s in Australia. He said I could use it. The price was right.” She spoke with indifference, as though she wasn’t dreading going back there. “Drop me at whichever subway station is along the way,” she told the driver, adding to Reve, “I don’t want to keep you from...whoever you’re seeing.”
She flicked her gaze to his razor-sharp lapels, trying not to contemplate who he’d dressed to see.
“It’s a lobbying fundraiser,” he said.
“Oh, well, you know I’d love nothing better than to keep you from giving crooked politicians your money. Take me home, then,” she said facetiously.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I’ve already paid for the tickets. Lower East Side,” Reve said to the driver, and closed the privacy screen.
“I was being sarcastic. The subway is fine.”
He put up a finger as he dialed his phone and brought it to his ear.
She looked out the window. The word tickets—plural—had stuck like a blade in her stomach. The knife twisted as she heard a woman’s voice answer his call.
“I’m running late,” Reve said. “I’ll meet you there.”
Nina did her best to transport herself out of body while the woman promised to “tell Daddy” and said, “See you soon.”
