by Tara Pammi
He watched with a weird fascination as she crossed her legs and looked up at him.
The nervousness he had spied just moments ago had disappeared. She sounded steady, without a hint of anger or upset. Even though the last time they had laid eyes on each other she had been half-naked in his bed, her face bereft of color as he had dressed and informed her that he was done with her.
There was no reproach in her tone for his behavior a month ago.
Her calm composure grated on him like the edge of a saw chipping away at wood.
She drove him to be the very worst of himself—seething with frustration, thrumming with desire—whereas she remained utterly unaffected.
He settled down on the coffee table in front of her and stretched his legs so that she was trapped between them. He flipped open the file next to him against his better instincts, to finish what he had come for. “Your proposal is brilliant.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that,” she threw back, her chin jutting out.
He smiled. The confidence creeping back into her tone was not a surprise. When it came to her company his estranged wife was a force to be reckoned with. “Is that your standard response to a potential investor?”
She snorted, and even that was an elegant movement of her straight nose. “It’s my standard response to a man who I know is intent on causing me maximum damage.”
Diego frowned. “Really? Have I done that?”
She snatched the proposal from his hands and the scent of her wafted over him. He took a breath and held it fast, the muscles in his abdomen tightening.
Droga, two minutes in her company and he was...
He expelled it with the force of his self-disgust. Pleasure was not the reminder he needed.
“You already had your revenge, Diego. After I walked out on our marriage six years ago you refused to divorce me with the express purpose of ruining my wedding to Alexander. Then you seduced me and walked out four weeks ago. Isn’t that enough?”
“Seeing that you went back to your life, didn’t even falter for a second, I’m not sure.”
Something flickered in her molten brown gaze as she spoke. “I propelled my sister and Alex into a scandal, putting everything Alex has worked for at risk.”
“Again, them—not you. From where I stand nothing has gotten to you. Apparently nothing ever gets to you.”
She ran her fingers over her nape, her gaze shying away from him. Sudden tension pulsed around her. “You left me utterly humiliated and feeling like a complete fool that morning. Is that better?”
He had wanted her anger, her pain, and it was there in her voice now, thrumming with force. But it was too little, too late. Even now it was only the prospect of her precious company having caught his interest that was forcing any emotion from her.
“Maybe,” he said, shrugging off his jacket.
Her gaze flew to his, anxious. “Tell me—what do I need to say so that you’ll leave my company alone? What will save it from the utter ruin you’re planning?”
“I thought your confidence in your company was unshakeable? Your strategy without pitfalls?”
“Not if you make it your life’s mission to destroy it,” she said. Her voice rang with accusation, anger, and beneath it all, a curious hurt. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Anyone who crosses you, who disappoints you, you ensure their ruin. Now it’s my turn.”
She straightened, her hands folded at her middle. The action pushed her small breasts into prominence. He trained his gaze on her face as though his life depended on it. Maybe not his life, but his very sanity relied on his self-control.
He didn’t plan to lose it again.
“Six years ago you were obsessed with revenge, driven by only one goal—to ruin your father. You didn’t care who you hurt in the process. You took his small construction company and expanded it into an empire—encompassing energy generation, mining. If I were to believe the media—and knowing you personally I’m very much inclined to—you are called a bastard with alarming frequency. You crushed anything that got in your way. Including your own father.” She shot up from the seat and paced the length of the room. “I don’t believe in wasting precious time fighting the inevitable. So whatever you’re about to do—do it. But I won’t go down without a fight. My company—”
“Means everything to you, right? You should be held up as an example to anyone who doubts that women can be as unfeeling and ruthless as men,” he interjected smoothly, feeling that flare of anger again.
She stared at him, her gaze puzzled. “Why do I get the feeling that that’s not a compliment?”
“It’s not.”
Her fingers tightened on the windowsill behind her. “We’re even now, Diego. Let’s just leave it at that.”
He moved closer. He could see his reflection in her eyes, her slender shoulders falling and rising with her rapid breathing. Her gaze moved to his mouth and he felt a roar of desire pummel through his blood. It was impossible not to remember how good she had felt, how she had wrapped her legs around him and urged him on with soft little growls.
If he kissed her she wouldn’t push him away. If he ran the pad of his thumb over the pulse beating frantically at her throat she wouldn’t argue. She would be putty in his hands.
Wasn’t that why he felt such a physical pull toward her? Because when he touched her, when he kissed her, it was the one time he felt that he owned this woman—all of her. Her thoughts, her emotions, the core of her.
He fisted his hands. But it would prove nothing new—to him or to her. Self-disgust boiled through him for even thinking it. He had let her get to him on the island, burrow under his skin until the past six years had fallen away and he’d been standing there with her letter in hand.
Never again.
He needed a new beginning without being haunted by memories of this woman. He needed to do what he had come for and leave—now.
“I realized what I had done wrong the moment I left the island,” he said, unable to stop himself from wringing out the last drop of satisfaction. He had never claimed to be a great man. He had been born a bastard, and to this day he was one. “I’ve come to rectify that mistake.”
Kim trembled all over, an almighty buzz filling up her ears.
“A mistake?” Her throat ached as it pushed that word out.
His golden gaze gleamed, a knowing smile curving his upper lip. “I forgot a tiny detail, although it was the most important of all.”
He plucked a sheaf of papers from his coat pocket and slid them on to her desk. Every inch of her tensed. The words on those familiar papers blurred.
“I need your signature on the divorce papers.”
She struggled to get her synapses to fire again, to get her lungs to breathe again.
The innocuous-looking papers pierced through her defenses, inviting pain she had long ago learned not to feel. This was what she had wanted for six long years—to be able to correct the mistake she had made, to be able to forget the foolish dream that had never stood a chance.
Her palms were clammy as she picked up the papers.
“My staff at the villa were never able to locate the copies you brought.”
She shivered uncontrollably at the slight curiosity in his words. Because she had torn them up after that first night when Diego had made love to her.
No, not love. Sex. Revenge sex. The this-is-what-you-walked-away-from kind. For a woman with an above average IQ, she had repeated the same mistake when it came to Diego.
She turned the papers over and over in her hands. This was it.
Diego would walk out of her life. She would never again have to see the foolishness she had indulged in in the name of love. What she had wanted for so long was within her grasp. Yet she couldn’t perform the simple task of picking up the pen.
“You could have sent this through your lawyer,” she said softly, the shock and confusion she had held in check all evening by the skin of her teeth slithering their way into her. Her stom
ach heaved. “You didn’t have to come yourself.”
He leaned against the table, all cool arrogance and casual charm. But nothing could belie the cruel satisfaction in the curve of his mouth. He wanted blood and he was circling her like a hungry shark now that he could smell it.
“And miss the chance to say goodbye for the final time?”
“You mean you wanted to see the fallout from your twisted seduction?”
“Seduction?” he said, a dark shadow falling over his features. The force of his anger slammed into her like a gale. “Why don’t you own it, like you do everything else? There was no seduction.” He reached her before she could blink. “What does it say about us that even after six years it took us mere hours after laying eyes on each other to end up in bed? Or rather against the wall...”
Her stomach somersaulted. Her skin sizzled. He was right. Sex was all she could think of when he was close. Hot, sweltering, out-of-control, mind-blowing, biggest-mistake-of-your-life-that-you-made-twice sex.
She would die before she admitted how much truth there was in his words, how much more he didn’t know.
She grabbed her pen and signed the first paper, her fingers shaking.
She lifted her chin and looked up at him, gathering every ugly emotion simmering beneath the surface and pouring it into her words. “It’s nothing more than a stimulus and response—like Pavlov’s dog. No matter how many years pass, I see you and I think of sex. Maybe because you were my first. Maybe because you are so damn good at it.”
The papers slithered to the floor with a dangerous rustle. She felt his fury crackling around them. He tugged her hard against him, his body a smoldering furnace of desire.
She had angered him with her cold analogy. But it only made the void inside her deepen.
His mouth curled into a sneer. “Of course. I forgot that the cruise, those couple of months you spent with me, were nothing but a rich princess’s wild, dirty rebellion, weren’t they?”
She felt a strange constriction in her chest, a tightness she had nothing to fight against. A sob clawed its way up her throat.
She hated him for ruining the most precious moments of her life. For reducing them to nothing. She hated herself for thinking he had loved her six years ago, for losing her mind the moment she had seen him again four weeks ago.
For someone who had been emotionally stunted for so long, the upsurge of emotion was blinding—pulling her under, driving reason from her mind.
She bunched her fingers in his jacket, his heart thundering beneath her touch. “It’s good that you’re so greedy you came back for more. Because I have news for you.”
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU HAVE NEWS...?” He frowned, his fingers locked in a tight grip over hers. “What, princesa? Do you have a new man lined up now that your sister has stolen the last one? Do you think I give a damn?”
“I’m pregnant.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. Not even a muscle twitched in his mobile face.
Hot satisfaction fueled her. She had wanted to shake his infuriating arrogance. She had. On its heels followed raking guilt.
Her knees buckled under her. Only Diego’s hold on her was keeping her upright.
God, she hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. She hadn’t even dealt with what it meant to her, what it implied...
What did it say about her that the only positive thing she felt about the pregnancy was that it could shock Diego like nothing else could?
After the way he had treated her she owed him nothing. And yet keeping him in the dark required a price higher than she was willing to pay.
He had provided her with the best opportunity to tell him, to get it done with. For all she knew he wouldn’t even care. He had wanted revenge, he’d got it—with little scruples—and now he had divorce papers ready. And he would keep on walking.
His gaze sliced to her, searching her face. Her composure unraveled at his silence.
The roguish arrogance was gone from his face, replaced by a resolute calm. Every inch of her quaked.
“Is it mine?”
Her gut started that dangerous fall again. She needed to get herself under control. Because Diego was a master at reading her. Whatever she wished, he would do the opposite. Just to make her life harder.
She needed to play it cool. “Why do you think I’m giving you the good news?”
“You slept with me mere hours after laying eyes on me again,” he said, his golden gaze betraying his fury, “while the man you were ready to marry still had his lapdog out looking for you and your twin was being your damned placeholder in his life.”
She trembled as he walked away from her, as though he couldn’t bear to breathe the same air as her.
“And you went back to him as soon as I left you. Except he was two-timing you just as you were doing him. So I repeat: is the baby mine?”
“That’s not true. Alex and I—”
She shut her mouth with a snap, leaned back against the soft leather, trembling from head to toe. Guilt hung heavy in her stomach. The media, her father—the whole world had crucified Liv, while Kim was the one responsible for it all.
Except Diego knew where she had been and what she had been up to while Liv had pretended to be her. And of course Diego thought Kim had quietly crawled back to Alex, that nothing had changed for her. That she had jumped into his bed from Alex’s and then jumped straight back.
That was untrue on so many levels.
Even before Diego had made his true intentions known Kim had broken it off with Alexander. Only Diego didn’t know that.
Her next breath filled her with his scent—dark and powerful. Her eyes flew open.
He raised a brow, watching her with hawklike intensity. “It’s a simple question, gatinha, and sadly one only a woman can answer.”
There was nothing in his tone—no nuance of sarcasm, no hint of anger or accusation—nothing that she could latch onto and feed her fury, her misery.
“Alex and I...” she whispered, feeling heat creep up her skin. “We—”
“All I need—” his words came through gritted teeth “—is your word. Not a day-by-day update on your sexual activity.”
Mortification spread like wildfire inside her. Really, she needed to get a grip on herself—needed to stop blurting out things Diego had no need to know.
More information on her non-existent sex-life fell into that category without a doubt. She already had a permanent reminder of how scandalously she had behaved. And now Alex and Liv, her father—the whole world was going to find out...
Her gut churned again with a vicious force. “Of course it’s yours.”
His jaw tight, he nodded. His easy acceptance, his very lack of a reaction, sent a shiver running down her spine. She had expected him to burst out, had braced herself for an attack.
Why did he trust her so easily? He had every right to demand a paternity test. Every right to question the truth of her claim. That was what she wanted from him. That was what she expected from him.
Instead his self-possession—something she usually prided herself on—grated on her nerves. She was still panicking. She had blurted out the news in a petty fit of pique. Whereas he didn’t even blink.
She laughed, the sound edging toward hysteria. “What? No accusations? No demands for proof? No talk of DNA tests? Just like that, Diego?”
He turned away from her to lean against the wall and closed his eyes. He ran his hand over the bump on his nose. Tension overflowed from him, filling up the huge suite, rattling like an invisible chain, reaching for her. His eyes flew open and her gaze was caught by his.
“DNA tests are for women to whom being pregnant with a rich man’s child means a meal ticket to a better life. An accusation my father threw at my mother every time she showed up with me on his doorstep, begging for support.”
His words vibrated with emotion. His very stillness, in contrast to the loathing in his words, was disquieting in the least. “However, with our history,
I don’t think that’s what you’re going for.”
Kim tucked her head in her hands, wondering what she had started. A lump of something—she refused to call it gratitude—blocked her throat, making it harder for her to speak. He could have turned this into something ugly if he wished. He hadn’t.
Everything within her revolted at being obligated to him for even that small display of honor. It made her weak, plunged her into useless wishing.
She couldn’t let him put her in the wrong. She couldn’t forget that the very reason she was in this situation was because he had orchestrated payback.
She felt the hard wall of heat from his body and stiffened.
“For a woman who fairly blazes with confidence in every walk of life, your hesitation would be funny if it wasn’t the matter of a child. Are you not so sure who the father is yourself?” he whispered softly, something deadly vibrating in his tone.
“There’s no doubt,” she repeated.
Thinking with a rational mind, she knew she should just tell Diego the stupid truth. That she had never slept with Alexander. But then Diego would never leave the truth alone.
“Now that we have solved that particular puzzle, what do you need from me?”
It took her a moment to realize that he was waiting for an answer. A chill began to spread over her skin. “I...I don’t need anything from you.”
“Of course not.” An edge crept into his tone, his gaze devouring her. Something stormy rumbled under that calm now. “Then why tell me?”
“Honestly? I wasn’t thinking,” she said, wondering if she was destined always to make mistakes when it came to him. “You were gloating. You were...”
“Nice to know something touches you,” he said, a fire glinting in his gaze. She opened her mouth to argue and shut it just as quickly. “And if I hadn’t been here to gloat? Would you have called me then?”
“That’s a question I don’t have to answer, because you are here. And stop pretending as though this means something, Diego. You were ready to walk out of my life, and I say keep on walking.”
“Your arrogance in thinking that you know me is astounding, querida. Did I teach you nothing four weeks ago?”
