“It’s fantastic,” she told him. “You should have some.”
“Are you working tonight, Dru?” His tone was cold, brusque. It lanced into her, as no doubt he intended it to do. “I thought we agreed that business ended at half five today. When I want you to perform in your role as perfect assistant, capable of any measure of small talk under any and all circumstances, I will let you know.”
“Or don’t have any,” she said blandly. “More for me.”
His mouth moved into a hard kind of curve, too intense to be a smile.
More courses appeared before them. Parrotfish stuffed with crab. Mahi-mahi in a sweet coconut curry. A platter of grilled shrimp and scallops, and another of artfully arranged sushi. The table was bright with all the colors, and the food looked almost too pretty to eat. Almost.
“Tell me something about you,” he said when their plates were full, and there had been no sound for some time save the clink of silver against china and the ever-present crash of the ocean against the shore. “Something I don’t know.” He shook his head impatiently when she opened her mouth. “I don’t mean anything on your CV, which you trot out by rote and which I know is stellar or I wouldn’t have hired you.”
Dru put down her fork and regarded him calmly for a moment, while that same alarm inside her shrieked anew. There was no reason he should want to “know something” about her. She needed to change the subject, redirect his attention. He had enough weapons to use against her as it was. Why add to his arsenal?
“What is it you want to know?” she asked, warily. She picked up her wine, pressed the glass to her lips and then decided she already felt too unbalanced. There was no need to throw alcohol in the mix and make it that much worse. “Is this when we discuss our lists of past lovers? Mine is shorter than yours. Obviously.”
His dark amber eyes gleamed, as if he appreciated her attempt to focus the conversation back on him, and what was, she was all too aware, an impressive and lengthy list indeed. But he didn’t take the bait. He only smiled slightly, and speared a plump shrimp on the sharp tines of his fork.
“You personally witnessed the ignoble end of my family, such as it was,” he said, his voice as low as his gaze was intent, and something about it shivered through her, making her ache for him in a different way. “What of yours? You never speak of them. I assume you did not spring full-grown from an office-supply warehouse, brandishing one of those gray suits of yours like a weapon.”
The expression on his face said he wasn’t entirely sure about that. Dru cleared her throat and recognized that she was stalling. She couldn’t seem to help it. There had been a time when she would have been thrilled to encourage his interest in her—any interest at all. But not now. Not when she had a much greater sense of how hard it was going to be to leave him already. What would it be like if he really knew all of her? How would she survive losing him then?
“Did you encourage personal chatter about the office all these years and I missed it?” she asked lightly. He inclined his head, awarding her the point, but he still waited expectantly. He was still not distracted from his question. Damn him. She set her wine back on the glass-topped table, feeling jerky and uneven. Unduly defensive. “We lived in Shropshire, in a village outside Shrewsbury, until my father died. Dominic and I were barely five years old.” She saw his brows knit together and nodded. “Twins, yes. We moved around a good bit after that. In the end, it was a relief to go to university and stay in one place for a few years.”
“Why did you move around so much?” he asked. If she didn’t know better, she would think he was fascinated. That he really wanted to know the answer. And maybe that was why she told him—because, despite everything, she wanted to believe that he could want that, and that trumped even her heightened sense of self-preservation. To say nothing of her sense, full stop.
“My mum had a lot of boyfriends,” she said, which was more than she usually told anyone. It was amazing how easy it was to strip all those hard, dark years of the fear and the tears and simply cram it all into one little sentence that barely hinted at either. “Some became stepfathers.”
She had no intention of telling him anything further. But when she dared meet his gaze again, he was looking back at her the way he always did. Dark eyes in that warrior’s face, brooding and intent. As if she was a mystery he wanted to puzzle out. And would.
“My mother also remarried, I suppose you could say,” he said then, in that dry way of his that hinted at a dark humor she’d never imagined he could possess. Or had thought she’d only imagined lurked in him on that one night in Cadiz. She would miss it. She could tell. “But as she is now a bride of Christ we are not meant to complain.”
Dru couldn’t help but smile, and his eyes warmed in return, and she knew then that she was going to tell him things she’d never breathed to another soul. Because she still wanted him to know her, despite how temporary this was. Despite the very real fear that it would give him too much power over her. She wanted to imagine, when he was on to his next assistant, ensconced on one of his yachts with his next blonde supermodel, that he would remember her, too. And when he did—if he did—she wanted this to have mattered. And that meant sharing parts of herself she’d never let anyone else see.
“They were always violent.” She was surprised how little her voice shook, and how easy it was to look at him and forget what she’d been through. How safe he made her feel, simply by not looking away. As if that simple act shared the burden of it, somehow. “To Mum, and then increasingly to Dominic. I was quite good at not being seen.”
“I believe you,” he said, an undercurrent in his voice. “You still are.”
“But then I got older,” she said. She was far too captivated by the way he watched her, as if he was supporting her that simply, that completely, to respond to the strange thing he said. She filed it away. “And they started to notice me more.” She swallowed, then shook her head slightly, as if to shake away the memories. His gaze darkened. Hardened. “There was one named Harold who was the worst. Always trying to get me alone. Always quick to stick his hands where he shouldn’t. But when I told Mum she slapped my face and called me a liar and a whore.” Dru shrugged, almost as if that memory didn’t still sting. Almost as if she was so tough it hardly registered, when the truth was, she’d never said that out loud before. Not like that. “So when I could, I left. The last time I saw her I was nineteen.”
The only other person she’d shared her dark history with was Dominic, and they’d always used their own shorthand—never quite mentioning the facts of what had happened so much as the effects. She’d never told any of her mates at university, or even the small handful of boyfriends she’d had back when she’d still had time for a social life. It had seemed so private, and so terribly shameful, and her mates had all been about having a laugh, not dredging up the horrors of Dru’s childhood. She’d enjoyed them precisely because they weren’t the sort for intimate confidences or bared souls. It meant hers were safe.
She jerked her gaze away from Cayo’s now, reaching blindly for her wine, no longer caring what it might do to her. It was better than what he was doing to her simply by listening. By making her feel safe when there was no such thing. She knew that better than most.
“And your brother?” Cayo asked after a moment. “Your twin? You’re not close with him either?”
It shocked her. It felt like a kick in the stomach, an attack, and her first reaction was pure, unadulterated fury. And then, if she was honest, a lot of it was that same old, terrible guilt she always felt where Dominic was concerned.
“Not as such, thanks,” she snapped at Cayo, not caring if she was being unfair. “As he’s dead.”
And then she hated herself. So deeply and so comprehensively it made her feel ill. She slid the wineglass back onto the table and wrapped her arms around her middle, certain she needed help to keep herself together.
Cayo didn’t look away. He gave no indication that he minded that she’d snapped at h
im like that, out of nowhere. He simply sat much too still and much too close across the table, watching her fall apart.
“I’m sorry,” he began after a moment, his voice calm.
“No,” she interrupted him, her words feeling thick in her mouth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that. How would you know? Only it was rather recent and I’ve still not managed to figure out how to talk about it. About him.”
“Recent?” Cayo frowned then. He looked as close to confused as she’d ever seen him. “What do you mean by recent? I don’t recall you taking any time off.”
In the past five years. He didn’t have to say that part. It was understood.
“Time off?” She shook her head, then let out a hollow little sound, not really a laugh at all. “It’s not as if you give out any personal time, Cayo. I can’t imagine even having asked for time off. Look how you reacted to my resignation.”
That muscle leapt in his jaw, betraying his temper. His eyes went black with something that looked again like pain. Tortured and grim, the way he’d looked that night in Milan. It made her want to reach over and touch him, soothe him. And once more, she deeply regretted her words the moment they hung in the sweet night air between them, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. And she couldn’t take them back.
“Yes,” he said after a moment in a deep, rough voice she hardly recognized. “Of course. I am such a heartless monster that I would keep you from your brother’s funeral, purely out of spite.”
Her own heart seemed to tighten at that, and she shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“After all,” he continued in the same dark and bitter tone that made her want to weep and to protect him, somehow, from whatever made him sound that way, even if it was her, “what do I know of family? You are the only person in the world who knows how little regard my own grandfather held for me. You heard him. You are also the only person in the world who has maintained any kind of close relationship with me for any length of time.” His smile then hurt to see. “You would certainly know how little qualified I am to speak on the subject of families.”
She felt awful, and it moved in her like heat. Like fear. And she couldn’t stand it.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, almost crossly.
He froze. His dark eyes widened.
“I said I doubted you would give me time off,” she said, very distinctly. “You are a demanding boss, Cayo. You insist on round-the-clock availability and access. I had no reason to think you would greet the news that I even had a personal life with anything but horror.”
“You have no idea what I would do,” he replied tightly.
“I know exactly what you would do,” she retorted. “It’s what you pay me for. What you offered me three times my salary and the private island of my choice for, if memory serves.”
For a moment he only looked at her. The moment stretched out between them, and despite what she’d just told him, Dru had no idea how he would react. None at all.
And then, impossibly, proving how little she knew him after all, he threw back his head and laughed.
She’d never known he could laugh. It was an infectious sound. Joy moved across his hard, fierce face, the laughter lighting him up, changing him, changing her—
The truth slammed into her, stealing her breath, making her head spin. The scales fell from her eyes, and hard—so hard they seemed to bruise her on their way down.
She was in love with him.
And quite clearly, she had been for a very long time.
Once again, she’d been fooling herself. She’d called it an “infatuation,” called it her “feelings for him.” She’d minimized it in her own head, worrying only that this trip would take recovering from. She hadn’t dared so much as think the truth. Meanwhile, she’d chosen to lose herself in his life. She’d never thought to ask why she’d been passed over for that other job three years ago even though she’d known perfectly well she’d been qualified for it. Worse, she’d chosen to keep her distance from her brother—when he’d died, but even before, if she was honest. It was easier to send money from afar than it was to roll around in the messes Dominic had made, though it hurt her to admit she’d done exactly that. She’d done all of it.
All to cater to and care for a man who would never love her back. Who hadn’t the slightest idea what love was.
Then again, came that voice inside her, brutal and unflinching, do you?
The world seemed to tilt around her wildly, sickeningly, as if she’d found herself trapped on some carnival fun ride. She felt a terrible shame wash through her, scalding her. She’d wanted her damaged, selfish mother to love her as she should have done. She’d wanted all of those stepfathers to love her like a daughter. She’d wanted Dominic to love her more than his addictions. And Cayo … He couldn’t love anything, could he? So she’d settled for making him need her instead. And she’d thought he valued her for that, if nothing else.
Was that what she’d wanted, in his office that day that seemed so long ago now? Had some part of her believed she would fling her resignation at him, still smarting from the printed email she’d found, and he would leap to his feet and declare his love for her?
Of course he hadn’t. No one ever had, and Cayo wouldn’t know how, even if he did feel the things she did. Her entire life was a great and complicated monument to deeply pathetic, sadly epic, and wholly unrequited love.
She was such a fool.
And he was watching her now, that unexpected laughter still on his face, making him more than simply beautiful in that hard, fierce way—making him handsome, too. Almost approachable.
It broke what was left of her heart.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his eyes still bright as they searched hers, sharpening as they saw whatever must have been there—the truth, she feared. The terrible truth she could never, ever let him know.
She didn’t know how she did it.
“I’m fine,” she managed to say. He frowned, no doubt at that shaky note in her voice that made her sound anything at all but fine, so she gestured at her mouth, and lied. “I’ve bit my tongue, that’s all.”
Time, it turned out, was the one thing Cayo couldn’t control.
It was the afternoon of her final day—which neither one of them had mentioned directly yet, though it hung there between them no matter how many times he’d taken her the night before, or this morning—and he could not bring himself to pay attention the conference call that she was participating in as his representative. He sat next to her at the small table in the office, his legs stretched out before him, and found he could do nothing at all but watch her as she spoke into the speaker phone in the center of the table.
“I’ll be certain to bring that to Mr. Vila’s attention,” she said, in that smooth and capable voice of hers that, now he knew what lay behind it, made him burn. “But in the meantime, I think we need to take another look at those figures before we jump to any conclusions.”
Maybe it was that he could see her, when the rest of the people on the call could not. No doubt they pictured the usual Dru, in her sleek suits and dangerous heels, her hair tamed and twisted out of view. But he saw the real Dru. Wild hair and that hint of color on her pale skin, the dusting of freckles across her nose and shoulders. Bare feet and a turquoise sarong wrapped around a hot pink bikini. Not in the least bit professional, not that anyone could have told that from her cool voice.
She was magnificent. She was his. And she was going to leave him.
He didn’t know what he was going to do about that, he only knew he couldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t.
But he also knew he’d run out of options.
She propped her head up with one hand as she listened to the call, the various executives talking over each other, all of them completely unaware that Cayo was listening to them dither and bicker. He’d found that it could be highly educational to use Dru in this way, to make them think they were talking to someone far more approachable
than Cayo ever was. He’d found it helped ferret out all manner of truths.
He wished the same could be said of Dru herself.
“Mr. Vila prefers to be offered potential solutions when presented with problems, Barney,” she said into the speaker. “I can certainly raise your concerns to him, but I suspect he’s going to give you a similar reply. Only he won’t be quite as polite.”
There was some laughter, and she glanced over to smile at him, her gray eyes sparkling nearly silver. Real, he thought with satisfaction. Not one of her work smiles she trotted out to placate or soothe him from time to time, all of which he’d come to hate. But even so, he knew she was still hiding from him. He didn’t know what, or why, but he could see the secrets in her eyes. Even now.
Perversely, it only made him want her more.
He’d told her that she was the only person he’d ever had any kind of close relationship with, and the stark truth of that haunted him. She was the only person alive that he had ever trusted. He had allowed her unparalleled access to all parts of his life. To him. No employee had ever been so entrenched in his personal life before and he had certainly never allowed one of his women anywhere near his business. Only Dru bridged those worlds. Only Dru.
And his time with her was almost up.
Giving in to an urge he hardly understood, as if it might ease the sudden heaviness in his chest, Cayo reached over and took her hand. Her eyes flew to his, but he concentrated on the slide of her fingers against his. The way they fitted together so well, even here. He brought her hand up to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of it. She curved her palm to better fit against his mouth, his jaw, as if she was holding him too, and something shifted inside him. A wall he hadn’t known was there tumbled down, and he knew, then, what he must do.
There was one way to keep her. One strategy he hadn’t tried. It would keep her close. With him. And so what if it wouldn’t be precisely as it had been? It was good enough. He might even like having her as his family, whatever that word really meant. She was the closest thing to it he’d ever known.
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