by Amber Bardan
“I’ve been needing to talk to you.” His voice was soft, remorseful—sober. But I’d known he was the moment I’d opened the door, or I’d have closed it without pause.
I edged into the hallway and shut the apartment behind me. “So talk.”
I’d always thought if he tracked me down he’d turn up blind drunk. This was worse. Drunk, I’d had enough.
Drunk, this time I’d call the cops.
“I joined a program.”
I finally looked at him. He’d had a proper haircut. His shirt was clean and pressed, even though I wasn’t around to wash or iron.
“I’m glad to see you’re getting yourself together.” I took a shuddering breath. “But what are you doing here?”
“Fair enough,” he whispered, and ran a hand through his hair, slowly, as though he still wasn’t sure the length of it. “Fair enough.”
My arms linked over my chest. No. My being short with him wasn’t fair. Not taking his calls did not make us even. “What do you want?”
“I want to apologize—”
“You’ve apologized to me before,” I spat, then started down the hall. I’d wait for Avner outside.
“No, I haven’t.”
I froze. The exclamation burst through the hall, bluntly honest.
“I’ve apologized for me before. I never apologized to you, for you.”
I rubbed my knuckles over my chest. That was something I’d never thought to hear him say. That I didn’t think he’d have the awareness to say. He’d apologized my whole adolescence.
“Sorry, Em, please don’t tell anyone.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Every wrinkle on his face had come out. His remorse etched into every line. I walked back to where he stood.
“I’m so sorry, Emma.”
My stomach heaved. I’d waited so long to hear them, I didn’t expect those words to hurt so much.
“I’ve been a terrible father, and I want to make it up to you.”
I held onto my arms. This shouldn’t be so hard. It should be easy to tell him to go away. I looked into his blue eyes, a darker version of mine. But there’d been a time when Mum was around, when he’d been my dad. He was never much of a husband to her, but back then he’d been my father. He’d taken me to the park. He’d taught me to cook. He’d tucked me in. I couldn’t wipe that time from my mind. Couldn’t forget those days because if I did, maybe then there was no one who’d ever really loved me.
I shut my eyes.
“Part of the program is making amends—”
My eyes flew open. “Wait, you’re here because of the program?” My hands slipped to my sides. “I thought you said you were here for me?”
“I am here for you.” He reached for my arm.
“Don’t. You. Touch. Me.” I jerked away.
He stumbled back.
A painful pulsating silence burst between us. Steady footsteps thumped behind me. I expected the hand that closed over my shoulder without looking back. I sank into him. Not because I needed protecting, but because it was safe and warm to lean on this person.
Dad’s chest expanded. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m her man. Who are you?” Avner didn’t raise his voice.
I held onto the hand curled over my shoulder.
Dad glanced between us. That familiar spark of anger flared behind his eyes. “I’m her father.”
I’d never brought someone home before because that would’ve been asking for trouble. Except now I wasn’t under his roof—he’d come to mine, and I wouldn’t hide from his disapproval.
“We’re on our way out, but perhaps I should visit sometime and introduce myself properly.” Avner didn’t curse. He didn’t say a word of threat, but it was there in a sizzling undercurrent.
Dad’s face gained color, a patchy redness I’d learned to flee from. My shoulders braced. But he didn’t explode. Not the way I’d seen him do a million times, and even after everything, I couldn’t help but hope it wasn’t only that he hadn’t been drinking—maybe he’d changed.
“Well if you do, bring my daughter with you.” He glanced at me. “Please.”
Sincerity glittered in the sheen of his eyes, and I’d have given anything to say, It’s okay, we’re all good. I’ll stop by. But these revelations and changes were ten years overdue.
I turned to Avner. “Come on, we’ll be late.”
* * *
There were many things my father had ruined for me, but ruining this date tonight seemed especially awful.
Avner watched me.
I felt every flicker of his eyes come my way, deep and intruding. He sipped his water. His mouth set hard. My fingers shook where I took up my own glass. There are things we carry around without noticing—baggage. I had mine, but for the past few weeks that baggage had spilled open, and I’d lost track of what fell out.
I gulped fizzy water. Today all my losses were reclaimed, and the suddenness of that weight was excruciating.
“Do you know what you want?”
I glanced up. I hadn’t noticed the waiter arrive. Avner waited for my response. I heard his question, and the inside of my skull filled with pressure.
“No.” I put down the glass. “You can order for me.”
His jaw worked its way into matching the brutal set of his lips, but he ordered for me. I fidgeted with the napkin in my lap. If he were any other man, this awkwardness could be resolved in a word or two. I’d simply have him take me home, and fuck him until the hurt turned off. But not Avner. He took that escape away.
He wouldn’t be lured off track with flirtation. There was no respite with him. He amplified everything. It was hard to remember why I’d chosen to be here with him. Was this what I really wanted?
Ice rattled in his glass, overloud in the hum of our surrounds. He didn’t ask, but his demand for me to speak to him blazed. I’d warned him I wasn’t girlfriend material. No exaggeration. I didn’t know how to do these things.
I didn’t know how to satisfy the questions in his expression.
What would I say if I tried to explain? I could admit what Dad had done, but how could I explain that I didn’t hate him?
That I couldn’t turn off the longing of a daughter for her parent any more than I could turn off the agony that he wasn’t one. Who wouldn’t judge that I still fought myself not to give in every time I saw him?
Avner’s agitation reverberated between us, and there was too much of my own anger choking me to know or to care if it were with me.
Because I was angry—furious. Furious that after a year, Dad had shown up uninvited at my personal sanctuary and demanded forgiveness on his terms not mine.
Furious over all the things he wanted to be forgiven for. Furious that no amount of anger would ever change the fact he’d always be my dad.
And I’d always have to live with that.
The food came. My stomach roiled at the smell of it.
Why’d he have to turn up today?
This should’ve been a great night. Avner had managed to pick the one exclusive little restaurant I’d been dreaming about coming to for years. This should’ve been a great night before a better day tomorrow, when I’d finally have my meeting with Waldolf.
I pushed the prong of my fork into a perfect little disk of scallop, then made the mistake of looking up.
Avner stared at me. My fork clattered onto the plate. His bright eyes pierced all the way into the crowded space inside me—heavy and full with all I was feeling. Incomprehensibly, something shifted to let him in.
And there was room.
Miraculously there was room for him and everything else.
The pressure in my chest eased.
“Avner, I—”
“Your usual table, Mr. Waldolf?”
That name leaped out over the din. Avner’s attention shifted from me to across the room.
Dean Waldolf passed by us. I glanced up at him. He didn’t stop, but time seemed to slow, and his gaze cut through me like an ax.
My chin dropped to my chest.
The way it rained in my life always seemed to flood my world.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
My chair squeaked across the floor. I went to the restrooms, lowered the seat of a toilet and, unhygienic or not, sat.
Shit, shit, shit.
I sank my elbows onto my knees, and took shallow breaths.
I’d fucked up. Not anyone else—me. The universe might hate me enough to land Dean here on the same night as I was—but this was the kind of place someone like him would frequent. It was the kind of place he’d frequent and I’d come, and I’d not mentioned when I made my appointment that Avner was no longer simply an acquaintance like I’d claimed.
I forced myself to breathe, then got up, reapplied my lipstick, fanned my cheeks and left the bathroom.
I stopped in the hallway.
Dean leaned against the wall. “I asked for full disclosure.”
I glanced down the empty hall, then turned back to Dean.
“You said he was a friend of a friend.” He straightened, his fingers moving to the knot at his throat. A knot too big, too perfect, too fancy for Thursday night at a restaurant. “You told me you didn’t like him.”
My gaze flicked to his and I swallowed. Maybe I’d fucked up with the non-disclosure, but the snarl he wore was far from professional.
He stepped toward me, and his voice dropped. “I don’t enjoy being made a fool of.”
Ah. For a moment I’d thought he was jealous.
Wounded ego in a boss, I could deal with.
“I’m sorry. You did ask me to be up-front, so I will be. This dating thing only just happened.” I raised my chin and didn’t look away. “My personal life has nothing to do with my business life. That, I can promise.”
“But I don’t do business with liars.” He squinted, and moved past me.
My heart gave a single painful squeeze—the raw insidious beat hammering a brutal reminder of what I had to lose.
I grabbed onto him. “I wasn’t lying. I give you my word this is brand new. It’s not serious.”
He eased free of my grip, but didn’t continue past me.
My pulse slowed, but my chest ached like an open wound.
“I believe you. I’m inclined to trust you.” His features evened. “But you know who I don’t trust?” He took my shoulders. My breath caught at the uninvited touch, but I didn’t wrench away—I stilled, because he leaned to my ear. “I don’t trust Avner Malfacini.”
Air whooshed back in a gasp.
“I had to make it my business to look into him, and now I must wonder how much you know about the man you’re dating?”
My spine fused.
He released me abruptly, gaze fixed over my shoulder, and my lungs froze. I knew exactly who had joined us and why Dean had whispered.
“You said your involvement wasn’t serious—you may need to prove that.”
Chapter Fifteen
Emma
Dean left without another glance. The tension crackling behind me almost had me wishing he’d stayed.
“Not serious?” The accusation was a bitter hiss at my back.
I turned around only as fast as my adrenaline-wasted limbs would allow. “We’ve been seeing each other a week.”
Truth.
Officially, a week tomorrow. That’s new. A week. Not serious.
Not life-decisions altering.
His gaze swept me up—hooked me into him. My body tightened, cells drawing together with the urge to fall against him and confess to things I couldn’t possibly believe.
“Not serious?” This time his voice was soft, but the question a challenge. He closed the space between us. A door squeaked down the hall but we didn’t move, holding ourselves inches apart. “Will you turn your back on me now because that is what was asked of you?”
I stared at him—into eyes there was no looking away from. His face, which had played through my mind these past two days as I turned over every moment of the time we’d spent together. His face, which I’d pictured as I’d painted my toenails, straightened my hair and shaved my pussy in anticipation. Memories of those eyes, that face, had kept my heart beating faster than could be healthy the entire time I’d waited for tonight.
“No,” I whispered. “No, I won’t.”
His eyes flashed, electricity snapped between us. He grabbed my waist, but I slammed my palms on his chest. “Avner, I want to work with Waldolf.”
His grip squeezed. The triumphant set of his jaw faltered.
“But I won’t do what he implied.” I took a breath. “I’ll go to that meeting tomorrow. I’ll explain that I can’t accept that kind of ultimatum, and it’s up to him if he still wants to work with me.”
“No.” He squeezed me to him. His palm traveled my spine—lazy—all the way up to the back of my neck. “You won’t work with him.”
His attention dropped to my lips. I felt those fingers on my neck, that thumb on my skull, and they almost overwhelmed the thumping questions and denials ready on my tongue.
“Why?”
His lashes lowered, his eyes darkened, and I recognized that look—the calculation. The same he’d laid on me the night of the gala. He’d shredded me with his cunning.
He’d turned me inside out to serve his own purpose. He wouldn’t tonight. I wouldn’t allow it.
“Give me some reason why I shouldn’t work with Waldolf?”
He lifted me by the base of my skull to lean up on my toes. Then his body was against me. His scent in my nose. His heat seeping into my skin. “Because I told you not to.”
Cold snapped through me. I jerked. He held me against him.
“Don’t you trust me? Haven’t I proved myself to you yet?” His voice lowered, so silky it wormed its way into me though I’d prepared myself against it. “Haven’t I been there for you?”
He ran his free hand down my arm, brushing across my wrist, heavy with his gift, and took my hand.
I blinked slowly. He had. He’d come for me when I needed him most.
His mouth hovered so close—kissably close.
He’d looked after me when I was ill.
“I, Emma, like you too.”
Those words came back to clutch around my heart. Hadn’t he given me thoughtful, personal gifts? Hadn’t he said we were friends?
“You’re mine, Emma.” His breath washed against my lips. The taste of him hit me in a slamming fist of lust. His. My pussy grew slick—she knew who she belonged to. I’d said it.
Maybe I belonged to him. Maybe I was his.
His fingers pushed between mine, fusing our hands.
Maybe this too would feel good.
“That means you’ll work for me.”
I came back to myself with a gasp. For him? I pushed back, out of his arms. My elbow caught, arm fully extended from where he held my hand.
His grip tightened, his expression shuttered closed before he released me. My heart pounded as though I’d held my breath far too long—as though I’d almost suffocated.
This was the second time he’d asked me to work for him. Not the first time he’d sabotaged me with Dean.
“How much do you know about the man you’re dating?”
Could Avner have known Dean would be here?
My gaze darted down the hall to the door back into the restaurant, then returned to Avner. The light above us lit him up.
Did he have some greater interest in my research than he’d let on?
“You don’t
get to say where I’m going to work.” My arms hugged against my chest. “So give me one good reason other than you said so.”
“Baby, that’s the best reason there is.” He smiled, that wicked ruthless smile, and stepped in, trapping me between him and the wall. “Haven’t you figured out yet—” He kept coming, until there was no escape. Until plaster pushed against my back and if I so much as breathed he’d be touching my front. “—that it pays to do as I say?”
My mind flashed a hundred times over, with memories so sharply sweet of reaping the rewards of giving in to him. His nostrils flared as though he could smell my body’s response. He sank a hand on the wall over my shoulder.
He really knew how to play to win.
Too bad my life wasn’t a game.
“I meant it when I said I wouldn’t stop seeing you because of what someone else does.” My lips shook, but I held his gaze. “But I will absolutely end this because of what you do.”
That smile twitched down into the flattest line.
His eyes grew slitted. It took all I had not to look away. I cared for Avner. I didn’t know him. Right then, I couldn’t trust him.
“There’s no going back, I told you that.” He said that matter-of-factly. As though this whole thing was set. As though I had no choice.
No choice to refuse him.
No choice to walk away.
“What are you going to do?” I patted his chest, and this time the duplicitous smile was all mine. “Hold me hostage on a company yacht?”
He sank closer, until the tip of his nose knocked mine. “Perhaps I will.”
“I’m not Angelina.” My fists clutched in his shirt. “You’d have to chain me in the hull, and even then you’d better sleep with one eye open.” I swept my foot behind his ankle and thrust the top half of his body forward. “Or not at all.”
He grabbed my wrists, and I fell with him. He turned, and his back hit the wall. Any other person would have fallen on their ass.
Not him.
But now it was him between me and the hard place. Even if his grip on my wrists tethered me to him.
“Don’t leave.”
My anger bottomed out. I stared at him. All that arrogance, possessiveness, bullying bossiness dissolved, and I saw him as I’d seen him when we’d made love. As I’d seen him when he asked if we were friends—vulnerable and exposed.
