Second Time Around

by Nancy Herkness

  “It’s the afterglow,” she said. She turned her head to look at him, causing one of the hairpins in her updo to jab her. “Ow!” She started to pull at the already loosened strands.

  “Let me,” Will said, rolling onto his side and burying his fingers in the coils of hair in search of pins. “I’ve been wanting to set it loose the whole evening.” He grinned. “But I got sidetracked.”

  His touch was gentle as he carefully pulled out pin after pin, spreading the freed locks over her shoulders and the sheets. The slight shift and pull made delicious tingles dance over her scalp and down her neck. She sighed. “Would you do this every night?”

  “Gladly,” he said, running his palm over the spread tresses. “As long as you’re naked.”

  She chuckled. “Deal.”

  He propped himself up on his elbow and continued to play with her hair, using one curl to feather over her breasts so that the tingles spread across the skin there, too.

  His gaze was on her chest, so she was free to drink in the clean, masculine lines and angles of his face. She wanted to file it away for a lonely night when she needed a good memory. As she traced the half smile that curved his lips, her heart twisted and she knew she had to end this soon. Or she would become the one waiting for him to end it . . . and it would hurt like hell.

  And she knew just how to do it. “I know it’s bad form to bring up an ex-fiancée at a moment like this but I want to be honest about something.”

  His lips lost their relaxed curve, compressing to a tight, hard line. “Then why would you?”

  “Because I wanted to hate her and I couldn’t.”

  He dropped her hair and looked away. “She can be quite charming when the occasion calls for it.”

  Kyra felt a guilty satisfaction in Will’s lackluster comment about Petra. “She’s still in love with you. I could see it in the way she watched you.”

  He sat up, his arms resting on his drawn-up knees. “She’s in love with her idea of me.”

  She wanted to run her hand over the gorgeous muscles of his back, but that would be counterproductive. “What’s the difference between her idea and you?”

  “She wants a husband who goes to work twelve hours a day at an impressive job before donning a tuxedo to escort her to her latest charity affair. And occasionally brings her home an expensive gift that she can show off to her friends.”

  “She’s working for a good cause.”

  He lifted a shoulder in denial. “She has the designer-decorated condo in Manhattan. She has the high-visibility position at a sympathetic but glamorous charity. Now she just needs a husband and two perfect children to complete the picture. I was the husband component.”

  “But you asked her to marry you. You must have felt something for her because I know you wouldn’t have proposed unless you did.”

  “Thank you.” His tone was sardonic. “She was very persistent in her attentions, and she’s very beautiful. And different from other women in my parents’ social circle, or so I thought.” He shrugged again. “I’m as susceptible to flattery as the next man. We had a whirlwind relationship, mostly conducted at events requiring a tuxedo. Which should have been my first clue that this wasn’t a match made in heaven.”

  “I’ll bet you look dashing in a tux.” His blond hair and jade eyes against the stark black and white would be striking.

  He ignored her. “And, of course, my mother engineered every opportunity she could for us to be together. That should have been my second clue.”

  “Why does your mother like her so much?”

  “Because Petra would bring me back into the fold of proper society.” His tone could have cut stone.

  “How did you discover that Petra wasn’t who you thought she was?”

  “I took her to Italy, rented a villa in the countryside built in the thirteenth century—modern by Roman standards—near one of my favorite ancient ruins.” His shoulders lifted and fell. “I had a sense that she didn’t really know who I was. This trip was meant to remedy that.”

  “It sounds unbelievably romantic.” Kyra would sell her soul to go on a trip like that with Will.

  “Petra was bored after the first twenty-four hours.”

  “Ouch.” Kyra couldn’t imagine that.

  His laugh held no amusement. “She begged me to take her to Rome where she had friends we could visit and stores she could shop in. So I did. As soon as we got back to the States, I asked her to break our engagement.” He turned to look out the window, but Kyra was sure he didn’t see anything on the terrace. “She was shocked and devastated. She didn’t understand why, which told me more than anything else about her.”

  “And she made a scene at the Spring Fling.”

  He winced. “I wanted her to announce that she was the person who had chosen to end the relationship. To save her dignity. She did that originally, but then she got drunk at the party and told everyone it had been me.”

  Now she laid a comforting hand on the back of his shoulder. “That was her choice.”

  “Only because she’d had a martini too many.”

  “Her drinking was not your fault.”

  He turned to look at her. “She was drinking too much because I broke the engagement.”

  “What was the alternative? To marry a woman who didn’t love the person you are?” Kyra held the sheet to her chest and sat up to meet his gaze on the same level. “You did the right thing. For both of you.”

  He shook his head. “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “I’ve told you things that I’ve never said to anyone else. Why?”

  “I’m safe.” Honesty that she should probably have kept to herself.

  “Safe? You’re dragging my innermost secrets out into the open.”

  “Because I’m not part of your world, so I can’t do any damage to you, even if I didn’t keep your secrets to myself.”

  She needed to remember that.

  He stared at her for a long moment, appalled at her answer. “You’re wrong. I told you because I trust you with a confidence that goes back years.” He’d known even as a college student that this woman had a bone-deep integrity. Maybe it was the contrast to her cheating roommate that made her stand out, but she always had.

  “Thanks,” she said with a brief smile, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. And he realized something else. She didn’t trust him in the same way. There was something holding her back from the future she’d imagined, but she wasn’t willing to share it with him.

  That sent a surprising spike of hurt through his chest.

  What made women conceal themselves from him?

  He cupped his hands over her shoulders, loving the silk of her skin, and brought her back down onto the bed with him. Rolling onto his side so he could see her face, he feathered his fingers over her temples and traced along her eyebrows. “Entrust me with your secrets.”

  Her smile was nervous, as he continued to whisper his fingers over her cheekbones and jawline. “Are you attempting a Vulcan mind meld?” she asked.

  “You know my past. I want to understand yours.”

  “I told you I dropped out of Brunell and my parents both died. Those were the big events.”

  He suddenly saw the hole in her story. “But after your mother died, you could have gone back to school and you didn’t.”

  “It’s nothing mysterious, just a lack of funds.”

  “So you came to New York to make your fortune.”

  She huffed out a breath, clearly frustrated by his persistence. “A friend from home who’d moved here told me how much she was making as a bartender at Stratus. She offered to put in a good word for me with Derek, the manager. I got a crash course in mixing cocktails from the manager at the restaurant in Macungie where I’d worked part-time and filled out the application for Stratus. I had to send pictures, too. That was kind of weird, but once I came for the interview, I understood.” She snorted. “Even then, Derek assigned one of the other bartenders to tak
e me shopping.” She picked up a lock of her shining hair, dangling it from her fingertips. “I learned fast and grew my hair long for the tips.”

  “And I had to cut mine short for the venture capitalists.” He thought of her arriving in a city that could eat you alive with nothing but her intelligence and an introduction to a bar manager and something twisted in his chest. For all his struggles with his parents, he at least had never been entirely alone. Maybe that was the difference he saw in her. The toughness necessary to cope with being orphaned so young.

  “So you got the job.”

  “And here I am,” she said, sweeping her slender arm around in a graceful gesture. “In bed with a billionaire.”

  “Ah, so you’re only sleeping with me for my money,” he joked. When she flinched, his attention sharpened. “I was kidding.”

  “I know. It’s just a sensitive topic with me. One of the bartenders at Stratus really did go after wealthy customers for the gifts they would give her.”

  “And it shocked you.”

  “You can take the girl out of Macungie but you can’t take Macungie out of the girl.”

  “I’m glad it shocked you.” He combed his fingers through her hair where it spread on the pillow. “So you’ve made your fortune?”

  She snorted. “I’m working on my second million because I hear the second one is easier than the first.”

  “Smart-ass.” And then he waited, letting the silence draw out.

  Finally she looked at him, her brown eyes snapping with anger. “Would I be bartending at Stratus if I’d made my fortune?”

  “That would be a rhetorical question,” he said. “What are you leaving out?”

  “Why does it matter?” She started to roll away from him, but he snaked his arm around her waist to keep her close to him.

  “Because I want to know you. Not like Petra.”

  She went still, her body tense, her face turned away. He thought she wasn’t going to answer him, but she suddenly looked back at him, her eyes liquid with unshed tears. “My mother tried to build a barricade against death by buying things. Jewelry. Clothes. Shoes. China. Crystal. She ran up astronomical credit card bills. I’m still paying them off.”

  “You’re not responsible for her debts.”

  She looked away again. “She took out new cards with my name on them when hers hit their limits. I didn’t know.”

  “A good lawyer could get you out of those.” But shock rippled through him at the betrayal of a mother using her daughter’s name without telling her. And then crushing her daughter under a mountain of debt. The monumental selfishness of it brought on a wave of fury.

  “Oh, I’ve done everything I could to reduce it,” she said, her voice utterly flat. “The house went because she’d taken out a second mortgage. The car, gone. I returned everything I could. I negotiated payment schedules. I got interest rates lowered.” An ironic smile twisted the soft curves of her lips. “I’m quite an expert on credit card debt. But the truth is that she bought all the stuff, so it needs to be paid for.”

  Another wave of fury washed over him, followed by the unaccustomed sense of being powerless. For all his vast fortune, he couldn’t help her, even though whatever debt she had would be just a drop in the bucket for him. But she would never accept his money.

  She must have read his silence as disapproval because she said, “My mother was terrified of dying. I can’t blame her for that.”

  His answer was to gather her up in his arms and cradle her against his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  He felt her resistance soften until she relaxed into him with a tiny hitch in her breathing. “I felt horrible for being angry with her even as I mourned her.”

  “You had every right to be angry.” He stroked her hair as though she were a child. Maybe at that moment she was one, a child betrayed by her mother.

  “I’ve never admitted that to anyone before, so we’re even,” she said, her breath whispering over his chest.

  He wanted to shelter her in his arms and fend off the world for her, a protectiveness he’d never experienced before. Ironic, since she clearly didn’t need or want him to.

  Even more ironic that Petra would have welcomed his newly discovered desire to play the male defender but he had felt the compulsion to escape from her.

  Maybe it all boiled down to the fact that he didn’t really want to commit himself. He was too restless, too dissatisfied with his life to allow another person to share it.

  “What time do you have to be at work tomorrow?” he asked before he thought too much about his flaws.

  “Ten,” she said, surprise evident in her voice.

  “Then you can stay the night here. My limo is at your disposal to go home in the morning.”

  He felt her start and wondered what the hell he was doing.

  “I . . . I’m not sure,” she said. “I have things I need to do before work. Errands.”

  She didn’t want to stay with him. Now he wanted it more than ever. “You can leave at whatever hour you need to.”

  “What time do you go to work?” She crossed her hands on his chest and propped her chin on them. The movement pressed her breasts against him in a way that made his cock stir.

  “Whenever I feel like it.” He tucked his chin down to meet her gaze with a smile. “Sometimes it pays to be the CEO.”

  “But when do you usually go?”

  “Around seven.”

  “I knew you were a workaholic,” she crowed. “You always pretended not to be in college, but you didn’t fool me. No one makes the dean’s list without doing the work.”

  “Writing college essays was pleasure, not work. Most of the time.” He loved to dive into a piece of literature and roll around in it until it would reveal itself to him in some new and breathtaking way.

  “Because you knew how to BS.”

  “I’m offended. My essays were based on hours of research and analysis,” he said with a lifted eyebrow.

  “You forget that I took a couple of the same classes you did. I could tell when you hadn’t read the material and were winging it in class discussions.”

  “I’m pretty sure the professor could, too,” he admitted.

  “But you had such a glib tongue that they let you get away with it.”

  “Allow me to use my glib tongue to persuade you to stay until morning,” he said.

  “Okay. Go ahead and tell me why I should stay.” Her expression was one of exaggerated anticipation.

  “Oh, I’m not going to persuade you by talking.” And then he rolled them both over and slid down her body.

  Chapter 10

  Will strolled into his COO’s office, an exact duplicate of his own, only reversed so the two walls of windows looked over the Hudson River and uptown while Will’s shared the river view but faced downtown. Greg was on the phone, so Will went over to watch a tugboat shoving two barges upriver. He realized that when he was in his own office, he almost never looked at the view.

  Today, though, the view was less compelling than his memories of the night before. And the morning after. It wasn’t just the sex, though. Kyra kept turning his perspective on end, making him examine new possibilities. Forcing him—no, leading him—into honesty about himself. He wasn’t sure he was entirely comfortable with all of his revelations to her.

  But he’d hated helping her climb into the limo this morning, her hair braided into a thick rope that swung over her shoulder. She wouldn’t even commit to seeing him tonight because of her damned bartending job. She said it would be late when she got out, as if he cared what time she came back to his bed.

  So he’d fired off a text with a John Donne quote that popped into his head.

  Licence my roving hands, and let them go,

  Before, behind, between, above, below.

  He felt a flash of heat as he remembered her response, some lines from Algernon Swinburne, which she confessed were really about a woman but she felt described him just as well.

  The long li
the arms and hotter hands than fire,

  The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,

  The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs

  And glittering eyelids of my soul’s desire.

  He’d expected sass and she had given him passion. He’d been knocked off-balance.

  Will’s attention was jerked away from Kyra as Greg finished his call and leaned back in his ergonomic chair. The gray in his salt-and-pepper hair caught gleams of morning sunlight. “I can tell you want me to do something.”

  Will dropped into a chair in front of the desk and stretched out his legs. “If I want you to do something, I ask you into my office. When I have an idea, I come to yours.”

  “The fine points of your upper-crust etiquette are too subtle for me. I’m just a blue-collar kind of guy.”

  “Yet you’re wearing a suit and tie.”

  “I’ve sold out.” Greg grinned. “What’s your idea?”

  “Dog food.”

  That startled a crack of laughter from Greg. When Will didn’t smile, his COO lifted an eyebrow. “What kind of dog food?”

  “Food for dogs with delicate digestion. It has to be limited to a few fresh ingredients with no preservatives. I was thinking it could be Ceres for Canines.”

  “May I ask where you got this idea?”

  “An after-school care center in South Harlem. They have a program called K-9 Angelz where the kids are responsible for dogs as part of their education. One of the dogs had digestive problems, so an old college friend of mine came up with a recipe that solved them.” Will saw reservations forming on Greg’s face. “We would offer it only in upscale locations where dog owners pamper their pets. But I see a real market with plenty of margin there.”

  “I’m worried about putting the Ceres brand on dog food. Might freak out some human customers.”

  “I think it will add cachet to the dog food and some warm fuzzies to the human food, but we can let the marketing wizards figure that out.”

  Greg looked as though a thought had just struck him. “This college friend of yours. Would it be the same one who made you smile last week?”