“Ha.” Naomi snorted and padded over to her couch. She sat down with her legs folded underneath her. She didn’t bother looking to see if he was following, because she knew he was. He’d come to say his peace, and although she wouldn’t believe a word that came out of his mouth, she’d listen.
Lucius joined her in the living room, but rather than sit beside her, he wisely chose the adjacent chair. He leaned down and faced her with his arms resting on his thighs. He let out a long sigh as if pondering his words. She noticed him glance at her coffee table to see the tabloid and the picture of him with the other woman across the front page. She’d retrieved it from the trash in her office as a reminder to never be stupid again where Lucius Knight was concerned.
“Well?”
His dark eyes glanced up and focused on hers, and Naomi felt the familiar tug whenever she was around him. She was angry that he could still make her feel lust for him when she knew he wasn’t interested in anything other than sex from her.
“You saw the tabloid?”
She didn’t answer, she just glared at him. She’d think that much was obvious.
“And I suppose you think that I’ve been using you this entire time and couldn’t wait to get back to my former lifestyle?” Lucius surmised.
Still she remained silent.
“It’s not like that, Naomi. That picture doesn’t show the depth of despair and turmoil I’ve been going through since learning Arthur was my father. And I admit I could have handled it better.”
“You mean sexing me in my own house and running out like a thief in the night?” Naomi responded.
Lucius visibly winced. “I’m sorry I made you feel like that, Naomi. That wasn’t my intent. That night I needed you and you were there for me, and I’m grateful that you were. And I’m sorry that I didn’t call you to let you know I was okay, but it was bit much to take in all at once. And Arthur’s death has only added to it.”
“Don’t you think I know that, Lucius?” Naomi folded her arms across her chest. “I wanted to be there for you, but you shut me out.”
“I—I recognize that.” He spoke slowly, as if he were choosing his words very carefully. “But I needed to handle this alone and in my own way.”
“Oh, you weren’t alone,” Naomi replied, pointing to the tabloid. “You’ve had several females to keep your bed warm.”
Lucius glanced down at the paper and back at her. “I—I’m sure it looks that way, but that wasn’t the case.”
“What I do know, Lucius,” Naomi replied quickly, “is that I never should have trusted you. You’re the same player you’ve always been, bedding women and then tossing them aside when you’re done with them. Silly me, I thought I was different—” she laughed scornfully “—but the joke is on me.” She rose from the sofa. “I’ve heard what you had to say and now you can leave.”
She started toward the foyer.
“Naomi!” Lucius rose to his full six-foot-two height and blocked her path. “Don’t do this. I don’t want to leave like this.”
“Like what, Lucius?” She glanced up at him. His dark eyes were unfathomable—she couldn’t read him any more than she ever could, except maybe when they were filled with lust. “You and I both know this—” she motioned back and forth between them “—was never going anyplace, right? You only wanted Brooks and Johnson, and in the process I caught your eye and you decided you wanted to have sex with me.”
Naomi shrugged. “I get it. I really do. Well, you’ve done both. You took me to bed and Kelsey’s ready to sell you her shares. You won! I’ve nothing left to give you, Lucius. And you sure as hell have nothing to give me.”
“Naomi, please.” Lucius’s arm circled around her waist.
Naomi hated that her traitorous body trembled at his touch. A riot of sensation coursed through her system. That he could still have an effect on her even though she knew he didn’t truly care about her. He didn’t love her like she loved him.
“Stop!” Naomi pushed at the hard wall of his chest, trying to get distance from him.
“Baby...” He tried to pull her into his embrace, but she pushed him again.
“Stop! Don’t baby me, Lucius,” she cried out. “I told you I loved you. The last time we were together. I admitted how I felt about you. And yet here you stand, not even acknowledging those feelings.”
* * *
Lucius stared at her. She was right. He’d thought she might be too preoccupied with the tabloid to bring up her declaration of love, but he was wrong. Naomi was a strong woman and she wasn’t backing down.
“Nothing to say, slick?” Naomi jeered, calling him by the nickname she’d given him that he disliked. “Cat got your tongue?”
He was torn. He didn’t want to hurt her, yet he wasn’t ready to say the words it was so clear she needed to hear back. Even though he’d felt the emotion. At times when they were together, Lucius had wondered if he was indeed falling in love with Naomi, but loving someone who had the power to hurt him scared him.
Naomi stared at him wide-eyed, waiting for his response.
“I—I...” He stumbled over his words. It was the first time in his life he was ever unsure of himself, of what to say. He couldn’t tell her what she needed to hear, but he could show her.
So he acted instead. He reached for her, pulling her firm against him and then dipped his head. Her lips parted beneath his. He didn’t know if her response was because he’d surprised her or because she was submitting to him, but he enjoyed it all the same. He delved into her mouth, gliding his tongue back and forth across hers until he heard her moan. He backed her up, pinning her between the wall and him as he ravaged her mouth.
His blood felt like liquid fire in his veins, and his body pulsed with the need to bury himself inside her. He needed this. It had been days since he’d tasted her. And she tasted the same. No, better than he remembered. Naomi was an unforgettable woman, and the all-consuming passion he felt with her was like nothing else he’d ever known. There was no way he could look at, let alone be with another woman. So why couldn’t he tell her he loved her?
His fingers began creeping beneath her top, and the jolt of reality must have hit her in the face, because Naomi sprang away from him as if she’d been burned.
Naomi gulped in a breath. “Okay, you’ve proven that I’m still weak for you, that I have no self-control, but I do have some modicum of self-respect. And I want more, Lucius, but you’re just not capable of giving me what I want—what I need. So you have to go.”
He stared at her for several long beats. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and take her to her bedroom and remind her how good they were together. But what would that solve?
“Please go, Lucius,” she ordered when he hadn’t made a move to leave.
“All right, I’ll go.” Lucius walked to the door and opened it but turned to glance back at her. “But I need you to know that it wasn’t just sex for me, Naomi. I do care for you. Perhaps not in the way you need me to right now, but I do care.”
He closed the door behind him and quietly walked to the car. Once inside, he glanced back at the craftsman-style house. He knew Naomi was crying inside. He wanted to go in and comfort her, to tell her he loved her, but he couldn’t.
So he drove away.
* * *
“Lucius, I’m so glad you came to see me,” his grandmother said when he stopped by her home later that evening.
He’d had to take some time to get himself together before he dropped by. His visit at Naomi’s had been the hardest thing he’d ever had to do. To see her hurting and to be unable to fix it was heart-wrenching and had shaken him to the core. He’d thought about going back to the gentleman’s club and drowning his sorrows again, but what would that do?
Instead, he’d stopped by the office to go through the hundreds of emails and calls he’d rec
eived while he’d been MIA the last several days. It was there that he’d seen an envelope from a courier sitting on his desk.
When he’d opened it, he’d been shocked to see it was from an attorney’s office. After tearing it open, he’d scanned the letter and tossed it down. Inside was his invitation to the reading of Arthur Knight’s will. What the hell? The man had never even acknowledged his existence and now all of sudden he’d been invited to the reading of his will? Why? What did it mean? And would he go?
If nothing else, he should to satisfy his curiosity as to what Arthur could possibly have wanted to say in death that he hadn’t been able to say in Lucius’s thirty-four years of life.
He brought the letter with him to his grandmother’s, because if anyone could help him make sense of it all, it was her. He was, however, shocked to see she had a guest when he walked into the living room. “Mother.” He regarded Jocelyn quizzically as he sat down. “What’s going on, Grandma?”
She followed him into the room. “I figured someone had to get you two together to talk.”
“That’s not your place, Grandma.”
“Like hell, it isn’t, boy,” she responded hotly and pounded her chest. “I raised you, because she was too afraid to face you. Too afraid to stay and be the mother she should have been. Too afraid to tell you about your father, and now he’s gone.”
“That’s right, Grandma. And it’s because of her that I never got to know the man. And he’s dead. D-E-A-D.” Lucius glared at his mother, whose eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“I know I’m to blame, Lucius,” Jocelyn said. “I—I just thought I was doing what was best for you, what was best for everybody.”
“By taking away my choices?” Lucius asked. “And leaving me fatherless? Motherless?”
His mother lowered her head. “I’m so sorry, you don’t know how much. Sometimes, Mama—” she looked up at her mother “—I think about how different things would have been if I’d told Arthur I was pregnant with Lucius.” She shook her head in frustration. “But I didn’t. And—and I can’t take it back. Instead I’m left out in the cold to grieve for him alone. I can’t even go the funeral.”
“You’re here because of your choices, Jocelyn,” Ruby responded. “There’s no denying that, but—”
Lucius interrupted her. “She doesn’t have the monopoly on grief, Grandma. I didn’t get invited, either. Instead all I got is this.” He held up the envelope. “An invitation to the reading of the will.”
“That’s something, Lucius. Perhaps he’ll acknowledge you in some way,” Jocelyn said hopefully, sitting up straight.
“Because he was too cowardly to do it in person?” Lucius snorted.
“I didn’t bring you both here to gripe at each other.” His grandmother stepped between them. “I brought you here because you both—” she looked in Lucius’s direction “—are grieving. I think you could lean on each other during this time, help each other through it.”
Lucius shook his head. “I’m sorry, Grandma, but that’s never going to happen. I will never forgive her for denying me my father. Never.”
He rose to leave, but his grandmother stopped him. “All this anger you have inside you, Lucius. It isn’t good. You have to let it go. You have to forgive. If you don’t, it’ll eat you alive and taint everything that’s good in your life—like that young lady you’re in love with.”
His mother perked up from her seat. “What young lady?”
Lucius turned to glare at her. “That’s no concern of yours.”
“Lucius,” his grandmother reprimanded.
“Her name’s Naomi Brooks. But it doesn’t matter anyway. Naomi wants nothing to do with me. Why? Because I have a block of ice where my heart should be,” Lucius responded. “And that’s because of you.” He looked in his mother’s direction.
“Baby.” His grandmother moved from her chair and cupped both his cheeks in her small, frail hands. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to be alone anymore. If this girl loves you as much as I suspect she does, then all you have to do is open your heart and allow the love in. Tell her how you feel. I promise you, love will help heal your heart like no other.”
“Grandma...”
“Trust me, boy, I’ve been on this earth a lot longer than you. Tell her you love her ’cause I know you do. I see it.” She motioned with her two forefingers between both their eyes. “I saw it the first time you told me about her, but you’ve been too scared or too blind to see it.”
“Mama’s right.” His mother rose from her seat. “Don’t be like me. Don’t let love slip through your fingers, Lucius. Otherwise, you’ll regret it forever.”
Were they right? Lucius thought. Was it possible to have the love he’d always wanted in his life if he just reached out and grabbed it? If he told Naomi he loved her, would she accept him with all his flaws and baggage? Would she be with him always? There was only one way to find out.
Chapter 19
“I had the papers drawn up as you requested,” Adam said, sliding the stack across Lucius’s desk and stepping back.
“Thank you,” Lucius said, looking up from his computer monitor.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to take care of this for you?” Adam inquired. “I know you have a lot on your plate.”
“No, I want to do it,” Lucius replied.
“All right. You know once you do this, you’ll own majority interest in Brooks and Johnson.”
“I’m aware.”
“You know Naomi won’t be happy about this. You’re going to get a lot of resistance from her on any changes you want to implement.”
“I can handle Naomi.”
“Famous last words,” Adam laughed. “Any man that thinks he can handle a woman has grossly underestimated her. She could cause you real headaches if you’re not careful.”
Since he’d left his grandmother’s nearly a week ago, he’d given serious thought to what she’d said. And had come to a conclusion on what he had to do next. When all was said and done.
“You might be right about that.” Lucius closed the folder he’d been working on. “Which is why I’m putting a plan in motion that will ensure I have Naomi on my side.”
“That sounds mysterious,” Adam replied. “Care to explain?”
Lucius shook his head. “Nope. But you’ll see soon enough.” He rose from his chair, grabbed the envelope with the papers Adam had drawn up and headed toward the door without another word.
* * *
“Daddy, what are you doing here?” Naomi asked when her father found her sitting on her favorite love seat in her parents’ backyard, wrapped in a blanket.
“C’mon, baby girl,” he said, joining her on the love seat and underneath the blanket. “I know where you go when you have something on your mind. You want to go someplace peaceful, quiet, so you can allow yourself to be introspective. Same as me. Plus, Gemma called and said your car was parked outside the house in the middle of the day.”
Naomi smiled. Her sister was always a little too nosy for her own good. Couldn’t she start her weekend early if she wanted to? “Yes, I guess I got that gene from you.” She bumped her shoulder with his.
“You’ve always been the most like me,” he said. “Tim is like your mother. He’s more deliberate, but you and me, we’re all heart. Always have been and always will be.”
“Yeah, well, wearing my heart on my sleeve has gotten me in the predicament I’m in.”
“And what’s that?”
“In love with a man who doesn’t love me back.”
“Lucius.”
Naomi nodded. She’d hoped that Kelsey had been right and that Lucius perhaps was too overwrought or caught up in his emotions to tell her he loved her, but it had been nearly a week since she’d kicked him out of her house
and she hadn’t heard from him. It had hurt more, because she’d gotten her hopes up that Kelsey had been on to something, but she too had been wrong. Lucius didn’t care about Naomi any more than he did the hundreds of other women he’d been with.
Apparently she wasn’t so special, even though he cared for her.
“I don’t believe that,” her father said. “Did he say that?”
She turned to him. “No, but it was what he didn’t say that made it crystal clear how he feels about me, Daddy.”
“Then he’s a fool if he doesn’t realize what a gem he has in you.”
Naomi smiled. “Daddy...”
He circled his arm around her shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze. “I love you, baby girl. And one day you’ll find someone worthy of all the love you have in your heart.”
“I know. I just wanted Lucius to be that man.”
“I know, pumpkin.” He cupped her head to his shoulder. “Just give it some time. Because in time, it’ll hurt a little less.”
Naomi doubted that was even possible. Lucius was her first love, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever find another man that made her feel like he did. He made her feel sexy and alive, bold and daring, as if she could do anything when she was with him. She missed that feeling. Would she ever find it again?
* * *
“Lucius, this is a risky move.” Kelsey handed Lucius back the pen after she’d signed her shares of Brooks and Johnson over to him later that afternoon.
After receiving the papers from Adam, Lucius had come directly from the office to Kelsey’s home in Belmont Shore. He’d known he would have to act quickly, not just for his sake, but before they sold to another buyer. Adam had gotten wind that another of his competitors had made the Johnsons an offer.
“Yes, I know.”
“Naomi was on the fence on whether she wanted me to sell to you,” Kelsey responded, rubbing her seven-months-pregnant belly. “Owen and I were seriously entertaining another offer to make Naomi’s life as easy as possible during this transition.”
Taming Her Tycoon Page 17
