She glared at him. “Don’t flatter yourself, Nick. Very little gets a rise out of me these days, and I’ve made damned sure that no one will ever have the sort of power over me that I so foolishly gave to you once upon a time.”
His voice was deep and almost hypnotic. “But as I recall you liked giving me that power, Angel, liked having me control you. And you always, always obeyed me. So eagerly, so sweetly. I confess to missing that sort of blind obedience.”
“I’ll just bet you have, you bastard,” she spit out. “I doubt there are many women in this world who are stupid and gullible enough to agree to your insane conditions the way I did. Too bad I had to screw it up, hmm?”
Nick stroked a thumb over his jaw, darkly shadowed as always by his rather disreputable two-day stubble. “Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing, letting you go like that,” he mused. “If I should have just ignored what you said, acted as though it never happened. But then I realize that it was the right thing to do – for both of us. You were too young, needed to get on with your life.”
Angela was horrified to feel her eyes grow wet, and clutched her desk for support as she felt her legs start shaking again. “Except I never did,” she whispered brokenly. “Does this – do I – look like someone who’s really living? You said before I looked like the walking dead but you weren’t exactly right. A more accurate term to describe me these days would be a ghost. Because that’s just about all that’s left of me, Nick, all that’s managed to survive these past few years.”
He stared at her, a horror-stricken look on his face. “Are you saying that I’m responsible for – for the way you look? That all of this – the weight loss, closing yourself off from the world, that dead look in your eyes – is because of me? Because you couldn’t cope after I -”
“All I’m saying is that I don’t want to have any contact with you ever again,” she interrupted. “By some cruel twist of fate you’ve wound up working in my office but that doesn’t mean we have to see or speak to each other. You’re nothing to me any longer, Nick – friend, lover, and most definitely not my master. So why don’t you go back to your life and forget I exist – just as you’ve obviously done such a good job at for so long now.”
Nick’s dark olive complexion had paled noticeably with each of her sharply uttered words. “Who says I forgot you?” he asked quietly. “I told Paul the truth before – you’re not a woman a man could ever forget meeting. And just because I stayed out of your life – for your own damned good, I might add – doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about you.”
Some unnamed little thrill – be it hope or joy or just awareness – shimmered up her spine at his statement. But Angela forced herself not to betray any sort of reaction, refusing to let herself look for any deeper meaning to his words. “Well, that’s sweet, Nick, really it is. But you shouldn’t have bothered, because there’s really no point any longer. You ended things – very firmly, as I recall – and maybe you’re right. Maybe it was for my own good. I’ll admit it took some time but I can honestly say I’m well and truly over you now. And on the rare occasion I’ve thought of you over the years, I just felt – nothing. Just a rather peaceful sense of numbness.”
She’d always forgotten how quickly Nick could move for such a big man. It was one of the reasons so many NFL quarterbacks had landed flat on their backs after getting thoroughly sacked by one of the hardest hitting defensive ends ever to play the game.
He’d been standing there – regarding her rather warily from the other side of her desk – and then the very next second he was beside her, grasping her almost brutally by the upper arms and she was half afraid he was going to shake her.
“I don’t believe you,” he bit out. “And you must know that saying things like that only tempts me to see just how quickly I could crack that protective shell of ice you’ve encased yourself in. To see,” he whispered suggestively, “how fast I could make you come. As I recall, that used to happen with very little effort and practically no time at all on my part.”
Angela bit down on the inside of her mouth so hard that this time she did feel a few drops of blood well up. She thought briefly of trying to push him away but knew it would be futile, like trying to move a steel plate. Instead, she forced herself not to react, willed her traitorous body not to betray her by swaying against him and letting him do whatever he desired. Just like old times, she thought bitterly.
“Go to hell,” she replied in a voice dripping with venom. “And don’t expect me to join you on the trip. I’ve spent quite enough time in that delightful place over the years and have no desire to ever visit again.”
Nick shook his head. “I could change your mind,” he bragged. “Very, very easily. All it would take would be –” he paused, his hands stroking over her arms beneath the severely tailored suit jacket as though belatedly realizing just how skinny her limbs were. “Fuck it all, Angela. You’re so frail I could snap one of your arms like a twig if I chose to. What the hell have you done to yourself? Please don’t tell me this is all a result of what happened between us.”
If her mouth hadn’t suddenly gone dry she would have gladly spit in his face. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she hissed. “I’m thin because I run a lot, that’s all.”
He eyed her toothpick-thin form dubiously. “You’d have to run a hundred miles at a crack to have lost this much weight.”
“Not quite, but that’s my ultimate goal,” she replied. “So far my longest race has been a fifty miler, but I’ve got a hundred kilometer planned for later this year.”
“An ultrarunner, huh?” Nick’s voice held a grudging respect. “Still, to put in those kind of miles you have to eat. I know a couple of guys from my gym who do ultras, and while they might be lean they’re far from skeletal. You -” he grimaced. “You need to pack at least twenty pounds on. For starters.”
Angela somehow found the strength to wrench her arm from his grasp. “Thanks for your very unwanted opinion. But it’s really none of your business, Nick. I’m none of your business.”
He reached out to caress her cheek and she flinched from his touch, causing his full, sexy mouth to tighten in disapproval. “Maybe I want to make you my business again – Angel.”
This time she did slap his hand away, fury giving her the sort of defiant courage she’d never dared displayed to him before. “Don’t call me that,” she growled. “You lost the right to do so when you cut me out of your life.”
Nick’s dark eyes, so much like her own, blazed furiously as he grabbed her left hand and squeezed it hard enough that she winced. “Tell me – does anyone else have the right to call you that – Angel?”
She glared at him, trying to pull her hand free of his iron grip. “None of your goddamned business. But I am seeing someone, yes. Someone who doesn’t impose unreasonable restrictions on when and where I can see or call him, or dictate the sorts of things I’m permitted to talk about when we’re together. In other words, Nick, an actual living, breathing human being who has blood in his veins rather than ice.”
“Speaking of ice,” he drawled in a deceptively casual voice. “Whoever this prince of yours is it doesn’t seem as though he’s been very successful at melting the deep freeze you’ve erected around yourself, does it?”
Very deliberately she gave him the sort of seductive little smile he’d always found irresistible. “Hmm, but then, as the saying goes, who really knows what goes on behind closed doors. Maybe what you see in front of you is just a façade, and I save the real me for my private life.”
Nick chuckled, seeing right through her little pretense. “I can see you still like to play with fire, Angel. But don’t forget that I’m the expert at that game. After all, who better than the devil himself to know his way around fire?”
He stepped back from her then as she only glared mutinously, refusing to further engage in their banter. He paused at the doorway of her office, and she recalled that somehow he always found a way to get the last word in.
“This is far from over, you know. The more I think about it, the more I realize just how much I’ve missed having you in my life. And how intriguing it would be to have you back. Fair warning, Angel. I always get what I want.”
With a knowing wink, Nick left as silently as he’d arrived, leaving her to stare after him in stunned, frozen silence.
The sun was already setting in the mid-April sky by the time she could summon up the presence of mind to move again. Her hand closed briefly around her coffee mug, her fingers itching to hurl it against the nearest wall and watch the cold brown liquid remaining inside to trickle down slowly like streams of blood. Instead, she released her death grip on the mug and marched outside to Cara’s neatly arranged desk. Telling herself that not only wouldn’t Cara mind but would be jumping for joy instead, Angela slid open the top left drawer where she knew her assistant kept the stash.
Five minutes later she’d wolfed down a Hershey bar, a package of peanut M & M’s, and a semi-stale, pre-packaged cinnamon bun without even being aware of her actions. And with each bite, each swallow, each increase in the massive sugar rush torpedoing through her bloodstream, she cursed Nick – for coming back into her life so unexpectedly, for being even more of a bastard than she’d remembered, and – damn it all to hell – for being every bit as sexy and irresistible as he’d been the very first time she’d seen him.
PART TWO
The Devil
Chapter Three
September, Five Years Earlier
She knew who he was the moment she saw him, even standing clear on the other side of the cavernous conference room. After all, there weren’t many men who had his height – six feet six inches – or shoulders that were so wide his suits just had to be custom made to accommodate their breadth.
When she’d learned on her very first day on the job that Nick Manning – the famous football player for both the Stanford Cardinal and the San Francisco 49ers – not only worked in her new office but was among the highest producing brokers, she’d wondered when she might actually get a glimpse of the man.
It had taken almost two full weeks – and this mandatory-attendance meeting with the firm’s CEO who was visiting from New York – to finally afford her the opportunity. But, she reasoned as she allowed her gaze to roam freely and thus far unobserved over the magnificent, manly specimen, the wait had sure as hell been worth it.
The impossibly tall, intimidatingly muscular body clothed in an impeccably cut charcoal gray pinstriped suit looked as though it was still in the kind of shape needed to play pro football tomorrow, if he so desired. And the to-die-for body was just part of the whole package.
From this angle she could only see his face in profile, but that was more than enough to form an impression of strong, ruggedly handsome features, darkly tanned skin covered in an irreverent two-day stubble, and thick, expertly styled hair as black as her own locks. She wondered briefly if he had any Italian or Latin blood in his background, or perhaps even some black Irish.
And then she was no longer capable of even a single logical thought, including her own name, because Nick Manning chose that particular moment to glance across the room, his sharp, dark-eyed gaze locking on her like a laser beam.
She would remember that exact moment for weeks, months, and even years later – the moment when time froze in place; when her heart was beating so fast she thought for sure it would burst right out of her chest cavity; when her palms grew sweaty and her breasts suddenly felt swollen and achy. And when she fell deeply and helplessly under his spell.
That intense, all-encompassing gaze performed a swift but thorough inspection of her face and figure, and Angela offered up a silent prayer of thanks that she’d taken some extra pains with her appearance today. She’d known that the CEO of Jessup Prior would be at the meeting, as well as several other high-level executives from the home office in New York. Not to mention all of the local office management staff, and every one of the brokers, including the very top producers. She’d worn the best of her five suits – the chic black Vivienne Westwood that had been purchased at an end of season sale at Neiman Marcus. Her girlhood friend Julia – who was mad about clothes and a would-be fashion designer – had helped her pick it out, insisting that it made her look both professional and smokin’ hot at the same time. Angela wasn’t totally convinced about the latter, though she had to admit that the slim skirt and short, form-fitting jacket made the most of her slender, five foot eleven inch frame. With the three-inch black pumps she wore, she topped six feet easily, making her not only the tallest woman here but probably taller than at least half the men present as well.
She’d left her long, stick straight raven hair loose today, instead of clipping it back into a ponytail or coiling it into a messy knot at her nape. Her makeup was minimal but still managed to accent her big, dark eyes, sculpted cheekbones, and the full-lipped mouth that was a tad too wide.
And it seemed that Nick Manning approved wholeheartedly of the pains she’d taken with her appearance, judging from the gleam in his eyes and the slow smile he gave her as their gazes remained glued together. She smiled back at him, sending him a silent message that ‘yeah, you’re hot, I’m hot, and we really ought to get together and let spontaneous combustion take its course’.
But then their office manager took the podium and announced that everyone should take their seats so the meeting could begin. And just like that, Nick turned and made his way towards the seat that had likely been reserved for him in one of the front rows of chairs, breaking not just eye contact but any hope Angela might have been harboring that he was actually going to approach her.
She should have known better, she scolded herself as she took her own seat with the other trainees – towards the very back of the room, of course. From all the office gossip she’d overheard the last two weeks, it was a certified fact that Nick Manning did not date co-workers. And from some of the stories Angela had listened to – some with horrified disbelief – an awful lot of women before her had done their damnedest to change his mind. He’d been ruthlessly pursued by brokers, administrative assistants, receptionists, and even by his own clients, and had spurned every one of them. And, if the gossip could truly be believed, a few of the women had become so aggressive in their pathetic attempts to get his attention that they had either been fired on sexual harassment charges, or, in the case of a client, her account had been transferred to a different branch office.
So, she realized with a sigh of resignation, that smoldering hot look of awareness she had just exchanged with him was all for nothing. Oh, she didn’t doubt that maybe he had found her attractive – she wasn’t all that experienced with men but she certainly wasn’t naïve, either, and she knew quite well when a guy thought she was hot. But given Nick’s reputation, Angela realized that looking was as far as he would take it.
Maybe she should quit her job, she thought in mild amusement. It would be worth it for the chance to date the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen. Worth it to have wild, screaming sex with him even one time, to experience the barely leashed passion she’d glimpsed all too briefly in that burning gaze of his. But even as she thought of doing something so rash, she knew it would still be pointless and futile, not to mention foolhardy.
From a practical perspective, quitting a job she’d just started two weeks ago would be the height of irresponsibility. The recession that currently had the country in a stranglehold had made finding a decent job extremely difficult, even for someone like herself who’d just graduated summa cum laude from Stanford with a finance degree. Under normal circumstances, she’d have had her pick of high-paying job offers, but times were anything but normal right now, with so many firms laying half their workforce off, or going out of business altogether.
And even if she hadn’t worked at the same firm as Nick, any prospects of a long-term relationship with him were unrealistic, if not impossible. All the gossip she’d been unwillingly subjected to indicated that Nick went through women as often as he changed s
hirts. He was rarely if ever seen out with the same female more than once, and was extremely closed-mouthed about any of his relationships. He also, according to yet more gossip, favored blondes or occasionally redheads.
‘So you’ve got two strikes against you,’ she told herself in resignation. “Co-worker and brunette. Well, it was a nice little fantasy while it lasted.’
Angela forced herself to put the unattainable Nick Manning out of her mind and focused instead on what their visiting CEO was speaking about. None of the conference rooms back at the office had been large enough to accommodate everyone at once, so the meeting was being held at a hotel around the corner from the office. There was to be a cocktail reception after the meeting, where in theory she’d be able to meet the CEO and other executives. But she knew the chances of that actually happening would be highly unlikely, given the sheer number of people present, and of her lowly ranking in the office hierarchy.
One of her fellow trainees – there were a total of seven in the group, four men and three women – had joked that the office layout was just like the passenger decks on old-time cruise ships, where class distinctions had been very clearly enforced.
“The top floor is where all the big producers are,” Noah Whitmore had related. “So that’s like – I don’t know – the first class cabins, the big suites. The middle floor is where all the manager’s offices are located, plus some of the mid-level producers. I guess we’d call that the promenade deck. And the bottom floor – well, kids, that’s where they’ve stuck us. The trainees, the junior brokers, the mailroom. We’re in what they would have called steerage in the old days.”
And while Noah had certainly been a bit dramatic about the whole thing, he hadn’t been all that far off the mark. It had been made very clear to the new batch of trainees that they had no reason to venture to the uppermost of the three floors occupied by Jessup Prior in this high rise building smack in the middle of San Francisco’s Financial District. But from various comments Angela had heard, it was rather like a different world up there. The offices were rumored to be huge, every one with a jaw-dropping view of the city, and each one more lavishly furnished than the next. The talk was that they had their own private lunch room, several spacious conference rooms, and an espresso cart available at all times of the day.
Shattered Page 4
