Indecent Exposure

by Faye Avalon

  “He said the scandal of having her daughter show up on the internet in such a way would pretty much ruin her chances of becoming mayor and kill her reputation. She’s fought so hard for her standing in the community, pulled herself up time and time again, I wasn’t about to be responsible for bringing her down. Not if I had a thing to do about it. I’ve been a thorn in her side all my life, Mitch. She deserves better than this. I’ve never seen her as happy as she’s been lately, what with her career and her personal life going so well. She so deserves to be happy.”

  “When I get the tapes, the threat to her will be over.”

  It wasn’t the only thing that would be over. While she was grateful to him, and she would never be able to say how much, she felt unable to fully celebrate because underlying everything was the realization that she had lost Mitch.

  Had her heart ever felt this heavy?

  “Do you really think he’ll hand over the tapes?”

  “If he doesn’t, he knows I’ll make good on my threat.”

  “What did he think he would gain by having evidence to use against you? Did he plan to threaten you in the same way he threatened me?”

  Mitch pursed his lips. “It’s likely he planned to post the photo on the internet in the hope it would cause me embarrassment among my colleagues and put me in a bad light with my competitors.” For the first time since that night in Paris, he gave her a brief smile. “You’re not the only one who thinks I’m conservative and staid. My professional reputation seems to have been built on those very qualities, and Zarikas perhaps hoped that by sullying that reputation, my standing in what he perceives as the ultra conservative world of finance would be compromised. What he doesn’t seem to grasp is that a naked photo of me circulating among my peers would barely cause a blip. And even if it did, all I’d have to do was deny it, claim it was manipulated to look like me. The whole thing would blow over before the print was even dry on the image.”

  “Do you really believe that? You seemed pretty fired up when you stormed into Costas’s office.”

  The fierceness returned to his eyes. “I don’t like being played.”

  She didn’t need to question him further about his meaning—it was clear in the glare he aimed her way. “You don’t just mean by Costas, do you?”

  “You could have told me, Gina. I could have helped.”

  “Why would you? I didn’t think for a moment that you’d give me the time of day if I came to you asking for help and not offering anything in return.”

  “Shit. You have a low opinion of yourself. Of me.”

  About to refute that statement, Gina snapped her mouth closed. Maybe he was right. She did have a low opinion of herself, maybe even of him. Had she really thought he would hold a grudge from what she’d done to him back in college? Had she really thought he would refuse to help her? “I couldn’t take the chance that you’d turn me away,” she said softly. “And if I’d told you everything, you might have asked to see the video before agreeing to help. I was too ashamed to let that happen. I couldn’t see any other way than to go through with it. Since you and I had history, I was pretty confident that if I hit you in the pants, you wouldn’t be able to deny me.”

  “Shit,” he said again and scrubbed his hands through his hair.

  “I don’t think that now,” she said quickly. “But you have to admit that at the time, you might have told me where to go. You weren’t exactly pleased to see me when I approached you at the civic function. In fact, you were downright cold.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I didn’t want to do it, but I was so worried I wasn’t thinking straight. All I knew was that I had to stop Costas releasing that video.” She worried her hands in her lap. “It wasn’t my finest hour.”

  “Damn straight.” He headed for the window and stood with his back to her. “How am I supposed to be sure you would have deleted that photo if you hadn’t been caught?” He turned, a blank expression on his face. It scared her more than if he’d scowled at her with that fierce look she was becoming accustomed to. “Or if you fully intended to hang me out to dry, Gina.”

  She swallowed as pain burned her throat. She ached to assure him that she would never hurt him that way, but since she’d come so close to doing exactly that, she had no argument to make. The time had come to be brutally honest with him. She had nothing to lose now, seeing as she’d already ruined any chance they might have had of being together.

  “At first I was going to do it,” she confirmed quietly. “I fully intended to take the photo and hand it over to Costas. As far as I could see, it was the only way to stop him carrying out his threat to release the video. But then I realized I couldn’t. Just before you saw the photo, I’d decided I couldn’t go through with it. That I couldn’t do something that despicable to you.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “If that were the case, why didn’t you delete it right then?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. My head was all over the place. And that’s no excuse,” she admitted. “I was thinking that maybe I could reason with Costas somehow, make him see that what he asked was impossible.”

  “And how were you planning to reason with him exactly? Slide back into his bed?”

  “No.”

  “No?” He moved toward her, slow and menacing, and she forced herself not to push back into her seat. It didn’t pay to back away from a predator, and that was exactly how he looked right then. Icy blue eyes narrowed, jaw tight, his whole body tense and alert. “You weren’t ready to do his bidding in whatever way he deemed appropriate? After you’d reasoned with him?”

  “That’s disgusting.” Having Mitch actually think her capable of doing something so abhorrent after what Costas had tried to do to him, after what he’d tried to do to her mother, hurt so much she clutched a hand to her heart. “How can you think something like that?”

  As soon as the words left her mouth, Gina knew she had no right to ask the question. Mitch had every reason to doubt her. Right from the start she had been forced to play him, to manipulate him. Seeing things from his perspective, it didn’t look good that she’d been in Costas’s office when he’d stormed in. How could he know that what Costas had put her through had changed her?

  More than that, being with Mitch had changed her.

  Deep down, she knew she deserved better than a man who treated her badly. A man who could use her, discard her. Yet being with men like that had saved her from heartbreak, from being hurt like her mother had been hurt when Gina’s father had walked out.

  But wasn’t she hurting now? Had she been wrong in believing all these years that by choosing men she could never love would spare her pain? It seemed you could run, you could try and hide, but life—love—found you regardless. Then it broke your heart.

  She loved Mitch, yet she had hurt him, had come close to betraying him.

  “You can’t keep running, Gina.” He loomed over her, his quiet tone negating his fierce look. “Sooner or later you’ll have to face up to yourself.”

  Was he a mind reader or something? She nodded and looked up at him. “I never wanted a relationship that meant anything,” she admitted softly. “I thought I’d be safe that way.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “From caring too much. From relying on someone else for my happiness.”

  He reached out and lightly touched his fingers to her hair. The action was so unexpected she jumped and he pulled his hand back. “It was safer to let assholes use you? Screw you around?”

  She rubbed her suddenly chilled arms. “I wouldn’t have put it exactly that way, but yes. In effect, that’s the truth of it. In my head, I was using them as much as they were using me.”

  He slipped his hands into his pockets and raised his eyebrows. “And how’s that working for you?”

  “Not very well as it happens. By the way, I don’t think you’re conservative an
d staid.”

  “What?”

  “You said that’s what I think of you. I don’t. At least not anymore. I think I was trying to label you, to make you so far out of my orbit that I could keep pushing you away.”

  He withdrew his hands from his pockets. “And?”

  “And it didn’t work.” Okay. It was time to pull on her big girl panties and speak from her heart. She owed him that. “I fell for you,” she said, and raised her chin into the air as if the action would give her courage. “Really hard. I’d decided to delete that photo, Mitch. I swear it. I didn’t have long enough to consider the consequences because you snapped the phone out of my hand, but if nothing else, I need you to believe me.”

  When he said nothing, she kept going. “When he knew I didn’t have the photo of you, Costas told me that he might be prepared to renegotiate both the video and staying off your back if I…came back to him.”

  The wrong thing to say. His eyes flashed and his nostrils flared. “What?”

  “He told me to lock the door,” she went on quickly before she completely lost her nerve. “I was on my way out, thinking I’d head for a lawyer, maybe even come to you, then you stormed in.” She looked into his fevered gaze and made herself hold it. “I’d never been so pleased to see anyone so much in my life.”

  Relief swept through her when he lowered himself onto the sofa. He touched his fingers to her cheek and this time she didn’t flinch. Something about the way he looked at her made her insides jump.

  She wouldn’t allow herself to hope. To imagine that maybe they could get past this. That they could forge something out of the mess and find a way to carry on being together.

  Even if he did believe her about deleting the photograph, it didn’t necessarily compute that he would let go of what she’d done to him, that he would be able to forgive her duplicity. But damn it, she wasn’t going to let him simply slip away because she hadn’t tried hard enough to convince him, to make him see how much he meant to her.

  “Remember in college, when I used to knock you back?” She waited until he nodded. “It wasn’t because I didn’t want anything to do with you, it was because I did. The thing was, I knew you’d be bad news for me. I knew you’d make me feel things I didn’t want to feel. It was easier to choose men who didn’t make me feel much at all. It was safer that way.”

  Now that she’d started, the words seemed to flow. She wanted to share all of it with Mitch. Wanted him to know why she’d acted the way she had, and why she’d spent so many years choosing the wrong type of man.

  “When my father walked out I had to watch my mother fall to pieces. She loved him so much. So did I, and for years I felt guilty about that. I couldn’t understand how I could miss him so badly, when he’d caused my mother such pain. I used to hear her crying at night, even when she’d basically anesthetized herself with booze.

  “During the day, she’d try really hard to function, to be a good mother to me. I never wanted for anything and I never felt she withheld love from me because she was hurting so much. But I knew she was struggling, even beyond the ravaged look in her eyes and the paleness of her skin. I could smell stale alcohol on her when she’d be making up my lunch box for school. I’d see her hands shake when she packed my sports bag. When I’d ask her if she was okay, she’d give me this wistful smile that used to break my heart. She’d tell me everything was fine and that I shouldn’t worry about her.

  “I hated seeing her so unhappy, hated even more that I didn’t know what to do about it. I still really missed my father, but as young as I was, I vowed no man would ever drag me that low. I would never open my heart enough to let a man break it again.”

  Recalling that time, she swallowed as old feelings of desperation welled up. “I don’t remember when things changed, but one day we laughed about something silly and I thought it was the first time in years I’d seen her really happy. There was a light in her eyes and I knew something had changed. She managed to get a part-time job and started taking more interest in her appearance. We’d do each other’s hair and paint each other’s nails. It was around that time she became friends with one of the other mothers and started volunteering at the community hall at weekends. She got really involved, especially with disadvantaged groups. One thing led to another and look at her now.”

  She hadn’t realized Mitch had taken her hand until he squeezed it. “It took her years to get where she is now, Mitch.”

  “And you didn’t want to ruin it for her,” he said softly. “That’s the real reason you wanted to keep that video from being released.”

  She met his gaze. “Can you imagine what sort of scandal it would have created for her?”

  He ran his thumb lightly across her knuckles. “From what I know about her, your mother seems to have made herself into a strong, formidable woman who could handle just about anything.”

  “She has,” Gina admitted with pride. “But I didn’t want her made an object of ridicule in the press. Have her colleagues looking down their noses, people withdrawing their support for her candidacy because of something incredibly stupid that I’d done.”

  Gina watched the way he brushed his thumb across her tightened fist. “I didn’t want her to be ashamed of me. Oh, I know I acted up at school and I haven’t exactly had the best track record in men, but I’ve never hurt her, Mitch, and I’ve never done anything to cause her this much embarrassment.”

  “So what changed your mind?” His tone soft, he touched his hand to her chin, encouraging her to face him. “Why didn’t you give Zarikas what he wanted?”

  Oh hell, were his eyes ever that blue before? Were they ever so…understanding?

  “I couldn’t hurt you that way. I couldn’t…”

  He shifted a little closer. “What? You couldn’t what?”

  She wanted to touch him, but her heart was racing, her body trembling so much that she didn’t dare move for fear of collapsing. Only his hand holding hers, solid and supportive, gave her the strength to continue. “I didn’t plan to fall for you. I didn’t expect to feel what I did. What I do.”

  His eyes heated and his fingers tightened. “What do you feel, Gina?”

  The laugh that escaped was driven by pure nerves. “You’re not going to let me off the hook are you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” This was it. No time for stalling or for hedging around the truth. She was determined to lay it all on the table. If he rejected her, told her he didn’t reciprocate, she’d deal with it. What she wouldn’t deal with any longer was her own cowardice in facing up to the truth. In chancing losing the very thing she’d always worked so hard to avoid. “You want me to say the words? That I’ve fallen in love with you? Well, okay, I think I have.”

  His smile seemed to take forever to get where it was going, and while it did, Gina’s heart stopped at least three times. “You only think?”

  She was too pent up to react to his gentle teasing, but she placed her free hand on his chest. Such an amazingly powerful chest, all that solid muscle flexing beneath his shirt. “No. I’m copping out and I promised myself I wouldn’t do that. I don’t think it at all, I know it. I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  After long moments during which her heart did the stopping thing again, he dropped his forehead against hers. “That’s a relief. I thought I was the only one suffering here.”

  Her pulse quickened. “What do you mean?”

  A gentle smile curved his mouth, and he stroked a finger along her cheek. “That I’ve fallen in love with you too.”

  There weren’t any words to describe the feeling that flowed through her, but she still needed the answer to one question. “Do you believe me? About deleting the photograph?”

  “I believe you.”

  A lightness, a loosening of a knot tied tight around her heart, made her sigh. She slid her arms around his neck.

  Mitch pul
led her tight against him. “When you came up to me at the civic function? You took my breath away, the same way you did back in college. I wasn’t going to return to that time, to let you affect me the way you did then. I thought if I gave you the cold shoulder, you’d back off.”

  “Perhaps I would have, if I’d had the choice. You were pretty dismissive.”

  He smiled. “Do you forgive me?”

  That was a no brainer. “Yes.”

  “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  She shook her head, her heart so full it thickened her throat.

  “It means that while I might have dropped my former staid and conservative ways, I’ll reinstate them to insist we’re exclusive from now on.”

  How could he possibly think she wouldn’t be on board with that? “That’s absolutely fine by me.”

  He raised his eyebrows, but the glint was evident in his blue eyes. “It means that you’ll have to relinquish your former bad girl ways.”

  “Also absolutely fine. In fact, it sounds perfect. My days of choosing the wrong man are well and truly over.”

  And as she moved into his kiss, she knew she’d never spoken a truer word.

  Epilogue

  Mitch frowned. “Are you sure about this?”

  Gina sidled closer to him from where they sat in the bar at Jake Malone’s club. “If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t have suggested it. This way, we can test things out before we go ahead and purchase anything for our own very personal use.”

  His frown deepened. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.” Gina sipped her wine, her stomach fluttering. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was the way Mitch looked at her—a mixture of desire and concern—or the thought of what lay in store. “I’m fine with it. And it’s not as if we haven’t indulged since we got engaged. You’ve tied me up, spanked me even, and I didn’t freak, did I?”

  “Shh.” Mitch took a furtive glance around the bar and the handful of couples enjoying a drink. Gina had to bite her lip to stop from smiling at his discomfort. “This is an entirely different thing, and you know it. It’s different in the privacy of our bedroom, but here?”