by Tara Pammi
A lick of fury came alive in his gaze and she wished she hadn’t made the remark. “Why did she?”
She ran a hand over her throat. “Did you never ask Kim?”
He shrugged. “I know that it pains her to mention your mother. So I left it at that.”
Bitterness rose like bile through her, choking her. She abandoned us, Liv. Kim’s words rang in her ears. Yes, their mother had found an escape from their father, leaving them at his mercy. With their mother gone, he had turned his corrosive attention to them. But the one thing Olivia remembered despite her father’s best efforts was the cloud of misery that had always surrounded their mother. “How perfect you are for each other, looking down your noses at weaker people, sweeping it all under the rug so that none of it touches you. Did Kim say our whole family was perfect, like her?”
He raised a brow, his gaze raking her. Her nails dug into her palms. “She could hardly claim that with you as her twin.”
For once, his caustic comment hurtled her out of the past, from under the crushing weight of memories. She wondered if that’s what he had intended. A hint of kindness beneath the ruthlessness? There she was again, imagining things that weren’t true. “No, she couldn’t.” She tried to push away the memories to a corner. “That wasn’t fair to Kim.” Her twin loved her no matter what. “But it’s the one thing Kim and I’ll never agree upon. She never forgave my mother for finding escape, for leaving us with our father.”
Alexander stared at Olivia. Because he understood Kim’s anger. Even more surprising, because for all that he knew about Kim and her twin, he was learning that Olivia had suffered the most at the hands of her father. And she was the one with more sympathy for her mother. “And you have?”
She shrugged, her fingers laced tight in her lap. For once, the casual gesture, her well-worn defiance couldn’t hide the pain glittering in her gaze. And it reached out and stirred a part of him he kept locked tight. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Nothing to forgive?” He couldn’t keep the anger out of his words. “What kind of mother leaves her daughters at the mercy of a man she hadn’t been able to cope with herself? Especially one like Jeremiah, who’s a bully even in the boardroom.”
“What if she had no choice?” she threw back at him. “It couldn’t have been easy to cope with my father and us. I know, because she had never been in the best of health. Even before she left, I was a handful, failing classes, mixing with the wrong crowd, and every time I failed, he blamed her, called her a useless mother.”
He pulled her white-knuckled fist into his hand, surprised yet again, by the jolt of sensation that ran up his arm. But he didn’t drop it as every instinct in him warned him to. It scraped him raw, her belief that she was somehow responsible for what her mother had done. It was an abyss he was very familiar with, having climbed out of it through sheer will. “You cannot hold yourself responsible for her leaving, Olivia. Just because you weren’t a model child doesn’t excuse her.” He should know, because he had done everything he could to be the perfect son and still it hadn’t been enough.
She pulled her hands back, anger flashing in her eyes, dark and blistering. “Not everyone is strong and perfect like my sister and you.”
He frowned, the fact she thought him perfect not sitting right with him. He was far from it. The fact that all he could think of at that moment was to lean forward and kiss her trembling mouth, sink his hair into her silky hair and muss it up as it had been before was proof enough.
No, he was just like any other man, one slippery slope away from temptation, from becoming that needy, hurting boy he had once been. Just thinking about the past filled him with shame. How many blows had it taken before he’d learned to not interfere between his parents, how many days of crushed hopes that he could somehow make it all better? How much self-discipline to get rid of the nauseous guilt even when he had finally walked out?
“No one who’s known you could call you weak, Olivia.”
Shock flickered in her gaze, her hands slow and shaky as she pulled the wrap closer around her. “You obviously didn’t see me fleeing my father with my tail between my legs at the reception.”
The bitterness in her words surprised him, even more so that it was directed at herself. She was a mass of contradictions, one minute—a fighter who didn’t take any punches, the next—a vulnerable woman too aware of her own weaknesses. “Actually, it’s what tipped me off that it was you and not Kim. And I understand why you did it. I’ve been a witness to Jeremiah’s temper more than once. Not every battle is worth fighting and it doesn’t make you a coward.” As he’d learned the hard way.
Her gaze flew to his and lingered. A smile curved her lush mouth, mischief dancing in her eyes. “Are you thanking me for not causing a scene at the reception?”
He laughed at the way she turned the tables on him. “Since you were the cause of it in the first place, no.”
Olivia couldn’t shift her gaze away from him. His mouth bracketed into deep grooves, his blue eyes crinkled with laughter, he was gorgeous, divine. His smile reached out like a wave, something deep inside her roaring in response. Looking away from him, she thought back to the afternoon when she had finally given into temptation and looked him up on Google. But she hadn’t found anything of a personal nature, which was what she had been looking for really.
What she had found about him was enough to give her a complex, though. A successful businessman who specialized in investing in small businesses in dire need of capital, influential board member on a wide variety of charities, and even the women he had dated in the past—all successful businesswomen in their own right, had only good things to say about him. Alexander King, apparently, was the perfect man by all accounts. She thought she might be a little sick.
In contrast to her life, which was a comedic mixture of wrong decisions and desperate measures to compensate for those wretched decisions, his was a faultless canvas where nothing ever went wrong. Because there was no room for emotions, feelings or the mess they caused. Her gaze flicked to him and shied away, a chill sweeping up and down her arms.
Fortunately, the limo came to a stop again. With her hand in his, she stepped out, her gaze rising upward to take in the lavish building in front of them. She shouldn’t have been surprised that the Ritz was their destination. Still, she just stood there, taking in the glamorous setting until Alexander nudged her with his hand at her back.
The moment they stepped inside, it was like entering a different world. Even her father, who looked down his nose at everything, would have been impressed by the deference shown to Alexander by the staff. She had very little time to appreciate the vaulted ceilings, the architecture around her before they were shown into what was a private banquet hall. She glanced around her luxurious surroundings, trying very hard to not gape openmouthed. Light glinted off the gold paneling on the walls, playing shadows with the sparkling fountain. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, the silverware twinkling in the shards of its light.
That feeling of not being good enough when she had been at one of her father’s lavish parties returned with full force. She swept her hand over her hip, the exquisite silk of her dress restoring her nerves a bit.
“Stop twitching, Olivia,” Alexander whispered into her ear, and she shivered. “You look absolutely stunning.”
How did he read her mind so easily? Her heart flipped, and she forced herself to draw a breath, to not read too much into it. “So the point of us being here is that someone from the press will see us and come to the conclusion that everything is hunky-dory in your world?” she said flippantly.
His gaze scanned the private ballroom. “The point of us being here is that I have an important business meeting to conduct.”
She looked around the impeccably dressed guests, couples smiling at each other, women checking out each other’s designer duds. She made a mental n
ote to thank him later for her own. Even the best dress in her suitcase would have made her stand out like a sore thumb in this crowd. “This doesn’t look like a business meeting to me.”
He nodded at someone on the other side of the hall and pulled her in that direction. She stiffened as his hard body pressed into her, her skin singeing where he laid his palm on the bare skin at her back. “Not every business meeting is conducted in a boardroom. Some men prefer to cloak it under the guise of a pleasant evening. It gives them a chance to size me up. This particular one being of old school, places high value on propriety.”
She stared at the middle-aged couple he was smiling at. “And you need to impress him?” she said, curious despite herself.
“Don’t look so gleeful about it.” His blue gaze twinkled. In that moment, he was the suave, astute businessman, the one that had been lauded on more than one business magazine. “Actually, it’s he who needs my capital.” She smiled, the pulse of his excitement a tangible thing. “Integrating his business into King Enterprises and bringing it forward into the twenty-first century is the challenge I’m looking forward to.”
Of course. She nodded and smiled as they joined them.
Henry McIntyre looked her up and down shrewdly as Alexander introduced her. “I’ve been following your business’s progress for a while now, Mrs. King,” he said, his gaze razor sharp. “You’re a rising star, and now that you have the sharpest businessman around on your side—” he tilted his gray head toward Alexander “—I’m sure you’ll leave us all behind in a cloud of dust.”
Olivia mumbled her thanks and settled down. Her hand trembled around the champagne flute as the older man went on in the vein of how perfectly matched they were in every way. She was no stranger to the fact that Kim was successful, as driven as Alexander. Yet Olivia had never felt the hollowness she felt inside. And it had more to do with the man sitting next to her than any career success Kim had achieved. Feeling like a fake of the worst kind, she leaned back against her seat and tuned out the conversation around her.
She was on her third glass of champagne when an excited, almost incoherent babble swept through the banquet hall, like a quiet drone of buzzing bees. Alexander and she turned at the same time. He stiffened in his chair, tension radiating from every inch of him, his skin a stark mask over the sharp angles of his face.
Olivia would have recognized the pair anywhere, even if they weren’t Hollywood stars. Nicholas King and Isabella Fiori. The first thing that stuck her was how much he looked like them. He truly had the best of both the worlds. The second thing was that neither of them was as shocked to see him as he was to see them.
Alexander pushed his chair back and stood up, leveling a furious gaze at Henry, who fell back against the gilded chair.
“I owe her a favor, Alexander. Just hear her out.”
Alexander shook his head, his features set in stone. “You’ve just lost the chance to save your business.”
His words were coated with a dark fury that drew a line down Olivia’s spine.
“Alexander?” she whispered as he tugged her up.
He didn’t respond. Just stared at the approaching couple, his eyes cold and hard. Squashing the questions pounding inside her head, Olivia returned the pressure on his fingers, hoping to get through to him, to break the bubble of emotion that held him immobile in its hold. But he didn’t move, not even a flicker of eyelid.
The silence in the hall prickled along her skin. She swallowed as she looked around. Every gaze in the banquet hall was focused on them with greedy curiosity stamped across their faces, an indecent hunger as though they couldn’t wait to see a crack in the man they all envied, to see him bleeding.
She bit her lip. He loathed losing control, yet he seemed oblivious to anything around him. Her mind made up, she stood in front of him and cupped his jaw. He still didn’t look at her. Pulling some air into her lungs seemed hard work, her heart revving up faster and harder at what she was going to do. She swept her hands into his hair and pulled his head down. The tangy scent of him pervaded her as she arched closer and pressed her lips to his.
She only meant to snag his attention for a minute, to distract him from whatever it was that choked him in its grip.
Instead, his hands crept up her back, circled her nape, pulled her into his hard body with a force that knocked the breath out of her. Her breasts crushed against the wall of his chest, the juncture of her thighs cradled by his, every line of muscle in his body pressed against her shaking ones. Her shocked gasp misted into nothing as he made a rough sound in his throat, and crushed her mouth with his.
Warm and soft, his lips flushed against her lower lip. He tasted like whiskey, like pure, torturous heaven. He pressed his advantage, his tongue invading her mouth, erotic as it dueled with her own, and the intoxicating taste of him exploded inside her mouth. Heat, unlike anything she’d ever known, slithered low and furious in her belly, curling into pinpricks of pleasure all over.
She had wondered about this moment since the minute she had laid eyes on him. Yet reality was nothing like she had imagined. There was no seduction, nothing civilized, nothing controlled about what he did to her. He prodded and plundered her mouth, drew her tongue into his mouth, his actions almost savage, as if he needed her taste to sustain himself. A moan escaped her as he nipped her lower lip, his harsh breathing puncturing the sexual cloud fogging her senses. She tilted her head away from him to pull some air, and his mouth trailed over her jaw toward her neck. It was so tempting to stay like that, to take whatever he gave, to let herself go.
But she couldn’t ignore the little voice that said he really didn’t want to kiss her. She couldn’t forget she was a stand-in and for her sister, of all people. The passing mention of Kim was enough to electrocute her drugged senses back into reality.
She cupped his jaw, the pads of her thumbs tracing the grooves around his mouth. “Alexander? Get a grip, or I swear I—”
He cupped her face and tilted it up in a rough movement, his gaze blazing. As if he didn’t want to stop. After only a few seconds that felt like another eternity, he nodded and pulled her to his side. Just as his parents reached them. She could feel their gazes upon them. She ran a hand over her trembling lips as she turned around.
“Hello, Alexander.” Isabella drawled his name, her accent thick. Liv searched her voice for a trace of affection. The very lack of emotion sent alarm bells ringing through Olivia. “It is good to see you.”
Alexander didn’t move or bend his head even though it was clear that his mother wanted to kiss his cheek. Nicholas King didn’t utter a word, either. Only stood at his wife’s side, his blue eyes, hard and flinty.
“Isabella,” Alexander said. “I would call it a pleasure but we both know I don’t have your talent for acting. So let me get straight to the point. What the hell are you doing here?”
The silence that followed sounded like a deafening drumbeat to Liv’s ears.
Isabella smiled, not betraying her reaction even by the flicker of an eyelid. But then, the woman hadn’t won an Oscar for nothing. “We are married again.”
Alexander’s fingers dug into Liv’s flesh as his grip tightened on her shoulders. If he had been angry before, Liv didn’t even have a name for the blistering emotion pouring out of him now. “And you thought I would want to celebrate the good news with you?”
He turned Olivia with him, half dragging her toward the exit.
“No,” his mother said behind them. “I want to see Emily. And I won’t let you stop me anymore.”
It was only because she was flushed so close to him, in tune to his every breath, to every nuance in his face, that Liv felt the imperceptible shudder that ran through him. And it sent a pang of ache shooting through her.
But he didn’t turn around. Only halted long enough to utter, “No.”
And just like that, they w
alked out, Olivia still reeling with shock.
CHAPTER SIX
OLIVIA THREW HER metallic clutch onto the coffee table and followed Alexander into his bedroom, teetering on the heels. The ride back in the limousine had been filled with nerve-racking silence, punctured only by Alexander’s numerous calls on his cell phone. He hadn’t given her a chance to interject a word.
The sound of a shower running in the bathroom halted her footsteps at the entrance to his bedroom. He didn’t want her there. She knew that as surely as the tingle she still felt in her lips. But she didn’t care. Something had happened and she had no idea what. And she wasn’t going to leave the room until she had some answers.
She undid the winding straps of her sandals. The lush carpet felt heavenly against her bare feet. Moving to the French windows, she pulled the dark curtains away. The king-size bed, complete with black silk sheets, drew her gaze, robbing her mind of everything else. She swallowed hard, wanting to run her hands over the silk, the scent of him rapidly drugging her senses. And that’s how Alexander found her.
Staring at his bed like a sex-crazed twit.
A black towel tied low on his hips, he ran a hand through his hair. “Leave, Olivia.”
Her gaze drank him in, her breath stuck in her throat. He wasn’t overtly muscular, yet there was definition to every muscle in his chest. His hair, still wet, clung to his scalp. Rivulets of water slithered down his chest, tugging her gaze to his washboard stomach and disappeared into the towel. She scrunched her brows as if she could telekinesis the towel to drop.
She knew she heard him, because she felt the responding signal from her own brain. Move. Run. Yet it seemed her muscles were incapable of following up. Her skin tingled all over. She licked her lips, rubbed her fingers absently over her nape. Dampness pooled at her sex and yet the man hadn’t even touched her. The sound of his towel hitting the floor, denim sliding over his skin, every cell in her was attuned to each sound he made.
