He dropped his hand and stared at her. “That’s what Evelyn saw. She saw me kissing another woman and when I pulled away, she saw that I was aroused. The last time we’d tried to make love, I couldn’t, but there I was, hot and ready for someone else.”
Cathy didn’t want to hear any more. She knew how the story ended, and she was reasonably sure she knew what it had to do with her. Stone was right. In a twisted way, this wasn’t personal. But for her the bottom line was that as much as she loved him and wanted him, he didn’t return her feelings.
“Needless to say, we left right away,” he said. “I was too drunk to drive, so Evelyn took the wheel. We started fighting as soon as we got to the freeway. She finally had the proof she’d been looking for. Her fears about my supposed infidelities had been confirmed. I tried to explain, but she wouldn’t listen. All she knew was that she couldn’t turn me on anymore but this other woman could. I’d devastated her. I’d always loved her and cared about her and in the end I’d hurt her more than anyone ever had before.”
He was silent for a long time. Cathy picked up the story. “That was the night of the accident.” It wasn’t a question.
He nodded. “She was killed instantly, but I survived. Evelyn died thinking that I’d betrayed her. All she’d ever wanted was for us to love each other. It was the only thing I couldn’t give her. I’ll never be able to make up for that. I can never heal her or fix her, and that makes me crazy.”
The pieces of the puzzle fell neatly into place. Cathy had thought she understood the ending of the story, but she’d been very wrong. The point wasn’t that Stone wouldn’t love her because he hadn’t loved Evelyn. No, that would be too simple. It was worse.
He wanted to make up for what had happened between him and his late wife. He wanted to fix Evelyn. But she was gone. So he’d found someone else to fix. In some twisted way, she’d taken Evelyn’s place in his life. Maybe he thought if he did enough good deeds, he could atone for the past.
“You think I’m Evelyn,” she breathed.
He stiffened. “Of course not. You two have nothing in common.”
She rose to her feet because the need to move was overwhelming. After folding her arms protectively across her chest, she paced to the window. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before,” she said, more to herself than to him. “There were so many similarities.”
“You’re nothing alike.”
She glared at him. “Then tell me how we’re so different.”
“I want you,” he said simply. As if the passion were enough. As if the fact that he wanted her in his bed would make up for him not loving her.
She shook her head. “That’s not good enough. You’ve used me as a means to an end. I’m just a project to you. Not even a real person.”
She thought about the unborn child she carried. If she wasn’t real, what would he think of the baby? She shuddered at the thought.
“Cathy, you don’t understand.”
She spun toward him. “I understand perfectly. You’ve been playing with my life. You can’t do that, Stone. You can’t pluck people out of their worlds, change their circumstances and not accept responsibility for what you’ve done. What did you think? That I would accept all of this, then one day politely leave and never give you another thought?”
“No. Of course not. I didn’t set out to do anything like that. I care about you. I thought we were friends. I just wanted to help.”
“In the meantime, you might also ease a little of your guilt about Evelyn.”
His expression hardened. “Nothing will ever change what happened there.”
She stared at him. “You’re right,” she said. “Why didn’t I see that before? Nothing will ever change how you feel about the past. I guess we were both acting without thinking.”
He spoke, but she didn’t hear him. The need to escape was overwhelming. She left his office and hurried into hers. Once there, she grabbed her purse and left. She didn’t know where she was going; she only knew it had to be away from here.
*
He sat alone in the dark. He didn’t want to see the room they’d shared together. In shadows he could pretend he was somewhere other than the bedroom where they’d spent so many happy hours together. Unfortunately the darkness couldn’t hide the scent of her body or her perfume. The sweet smell lingered in the air. The darkness also couldn’t erase his memories of what they’d said to each other earlier that day.
He knew he’d hurt her. Inadvertently he’d done the one thing he’d tried to avoid doing. He’d thought they could just be friends. But Cathy had been right about everything. He had interfered with her life without considering the consequences.
She’d seen right through him. She’d seen that he’d thought of her as little more than a project. A way to, if not make up for the past, then at least to make sense of it. It had taken a while for him to come to realize she was a person in her own right. By then it had been too late. They’d been involved.
He’d acted selfishly and thoughtlessly. Ula had tried to warn him, but he hadn’t listened. He’d done all the wrong things for all the right reasons, and now Cathy was paying the price.
He’d only wanted to help, he thought. Why had everything gone so wrong? Why hadn’t he seen what he was doing?
He sat in silence for a while, waiting for the answer. At last it came to him. In a moment of self-revelation followed by self-loathing, he realized he was a selfish bastard who assumed he was smarter than everyone else. He’d assumed he knew and worked for the greater good when in fact everything he’d done had been for his own self-interest. No one else’s.
There was an old saying that the truth hurts. He knew that to be true. Unfortunately his pain and truth had come too late to help Cathy. He didn’t even know where she was.
He glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight. She’d been gone for hours. What if she didn’t come back? What if she did? What was there to say to her? He could apologize, but that was such a feeble effort after all he’d done.
As if his thoughts had conjured her, he heard her footsteps in the hallway. He reached for the light by the chair just as she walked into the room.
Her hair was tousled, and there were shadows under her eyes. Despite the bit of makeup still clinging to her cheeks, she looked pale and drawn.
“Are you all right?” he asked, half rising from his seat. She waved him back in place.
She remained by the door as she spoke. “I don’t know what your plans are as far as work is concerned,” she began. “But they don’t matter to me.”
He had thought she might not want to be his lover anymore, but he’d never considered that she would be quitting, too. “I thought you liked your job,” he said. “I would like you to stay on. You’re excellent in that position.”
“I’m also excellent on my back in your bed, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to keep doing it,” she countered. Her eyes were dark green and they brightened with rage. “I will not be a man’s mistress. Not even yours.”
If she’d intended to cut him to the bone, she’d succeeded. “Please stay,” he said before he could stop himself.
“No. I can’t.”
“You won’t. There’s a difference.”
“Spare me the semantics, Stone. There was a time I would have accepted your offer. I would have stayed, even knowing there was no future here. But I’ve changed. I believe I’m worth more. You taught me that. I guess next time you should be more careful about who you’re bringing in from the streets.”
“Don’t,” he said. “It wasn’t like that. You know it. Stop making yourself into an object. We were friends for two years before any of this started. I value that even if you don’t.”
“I’ll agree that you were an important part of my life. Too important. That’s what made it so easy for me to fall into your life here. But I need more now. I need to find my own way. I need to belong.”
“You belong with me.”
“As what? An employee? As
the woman who services your physical needs? I won’t be your whore.”
That pushed him to his feet. He glared at her. “I’ve never treated you badly. You had my trust, my respect and my affection from the moment you arrived here. I wasn’t the one to initiate our physical relationship. I would never have done that because I didn’t want to put you into a difficult situation.”
The fight crumpled right out of her. She sagged against the door frame and closed her eyes. “You’re right, of course. I know that. You were decent to me. But you also used me to make yourself feel better. I’ve been a project to ease your guilt.”
He shouldn’t be surprised that she put the pieces together, but he was still embarrassed that she knew.
“Cathy, I—”
She cut him off with a shake of her head. “You wanted to fix me and you did,” she said as she looked at him. “Thank you for all your good intentions. Perhaps they should have been enough, but they weren’t. You’re trying to fix the past, but that isn’t the problem, is it? The real issue is that you’re terrified of loving anyone. You loved Evelyn and you believe that love destroyed her. So you promised to never let that happen again. Unfortunately, not loving again is a pretty lousy goal in life.”
It was as if she could see to the scarred blackness that was his soul.
“You didn’t destroy Evelyn,” Cathy said. “I wish I could convince you of that, but I can’t. You were wrong to marry her after you figured out you couldn’t love her the way a man is supposed to love his wife. But she was wrong, too. She was wrong to keep you and try to make you feel guilty enough to love her. As you learned, you can’t have romantic love on command.”
She took a step toward him, then paused. “I know,” she said softly, “because I’ve loved you for months and I’ve been hoping you would come to love me.” She shrugged. “You haven’t. There’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s not your fault or mine. It just happened. The thing is, loving you and knowing you’ll never love me back makes it impossible for me to stay.
“I grew up taking care of my mother. I lost my hopes and my dreams. Well, thanks to you, I finally have them back. I’m not willing to lose them again. So I have to go and make them happen. I’d thought we might do that together, but I can be just as successful on my own.”
She spoke so easily, he thought in disbelief. He could barely remain on his feet, but she looked fine. As if this was of no consequence to her.
She loved him. He supposed he’d known that for some time, even if he hadn’t wanted to see it. She’d woven herself into his life and now she was leaving. How was he going to survive?
“Cathy, don’t,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“Yes, it does,” she told him. “You want to live with your pain and your scars. You’re very comfortable here—hiding away like a wounded animal. I knew the risks I was taking when I fell in love with you. I knew there was a very good chance that you would never return my affection. But I did it anyway. I took the chance. It was probably the first brave act of my life and it felt good.”
She straightened. “It hurts now. It hurts to breathe and talk and to be standing here in front of you acting as if I’m not bleeding to death on the inside. But I’m doing it I’m risking it and I’m going to survive. I’m willing to take the chance and you’re not.”
“I’ve taken chances,” he said in a feeble effort to defend himself. Everything she said was the truth…about them both. She was brave, and he was simply a coward.
“I’m not talking about business,” she told him. “I’m talking about your personal life. You hide away and you refuse to take responsibility for your feelings or what you do to others. It’s not just that you won’t let yourself love anyone—it’s that you won’t let yourself love yourself.”
Her words made him flinch. “I take responsibility for what I did to you. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
“Yeah, well, you did.” She looked around the room. “I’ll miss this place. It was a very nice fantasy.” She turned her attention back to him. “I’ll call Ula in the morning and have her pack up my things. I’ll come back and get them later, if that’s all right with you.”
He took a step toward her. She couldn’t be leaving. Not like this. Not without giving him another chance. “Don’t go. We can still make this work.”
“No, we can’t. Besides, it would hurt too much to be with you every day and know that you didn’t love me. I need a clean break.”
“What will you do? Where will you go?”
Her gaze was level. “That’s not your concern. You have done what you set out to do. You fixed my life. Congratulations.”
He winced. “Cathy, don’t leave like this. Let me at least write you a check. You’ll need money to tide you over. Maybe you can start a business or something. I would be happy to finance anything you want.”
Her gaze turned icy, and he saw something he’d never expected to see in her eyes. At that moment she hated him.
“If you think any of this is about money,” she said curtly, “then you never knew me at all.”
Chapter Sixteen
Cathy sat on the bed where she’d stayed the first few months she’d lived in Stone’s house. She pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them tightly against her, but it wasn’t enough to hold in the feeling that she was going to fly apart into a thousand pieces.
Every part of her hurt. Just the act of breathing was more pain than she’d ever experienced before in her life. She kept repeating that she’d known it was going to be like this, that she’d long suspected he didn’t care about her—at least not the way she cared about him. But thinking it might be true and hearing it were two different things. She hadn’t realized how true that was until she’d come face-to-face with her worst fear.
She shook her head back and forth in an effort to deny the truth. She wished she could cry. Maybe that would make her feel better. Maybe then she could heal. But for now there weren’t any tears. There was only the ache inside of her and the sinking feeling that it was going to take more than one lifetime to get over loving Stone.
Even as she tried not to think about them, about all that he’d said to her, even as she tried not to place blame or think about what had gone wrong, she kept replaying his words in her mind.
She swallowed hard, but the bitter taste stayed in her mouth. He’d actually offered her money, as if she were some woman he’d bought and paid for. As if she really were just a whore. She supposed that’s what hurt the most. She could understand someone not falling in love. It happened all the time. As Stone had learned with Evelyn, love couldn’t be forced. But to have had him treat her like that. She shuddered. That made her less than a person to him, and it was more than she could bear.
She rolled onto her side and pulled her knees up tight again. A plan. She needed a plan. Think about what to do next, she told herself. That would help distract her.
First, she thought, she had to get out of here. In a few minutes, just as soon as she was able to actually draw in a breath, she was going to leave. It was after midnight, so she wouldn’t bother taking much. Her purse, maybe a couple of things to wear. In the morning, she would call Ula. Cathy stiffened in anticipation of the humiliation, but oddly there wasn’t any. She didn’t know what the older woman would think about what had happened, but she knew in her heart that Ula would only be kind to her.
Okay, so a phone call to Ula to ask her to pack up her things. She would make arrangements to have them picked up by a delivery service or something.
Item two, she would make some decisions about her future. A job and maybe a couple of business classes at the local college. If nothing else, her time with Stone had taught her that she liked the world of business.
She would have to start saving because she was about a month and a half pregnant, and the baby was going to require—
The unexpected sob tore at the back of her throat. A baby. Dear God, she was going to have a baby. Tear
s trickled down her temple and dampened her hair. She pressed one hand to her mouth and the other to her belly where a tiny life grew.
She wasn’t sure what the tears meant. While she hadn’t planned on getting pregnant anytime soon, she’d always wanted a family. Ideally she would have preferred a husband at her side, but she’d recently learned that she was strong. She and her child would be fine on their own.
Cathy sniffed as the tide of tears slowed. Eventually she was going to have to tell Stone the truth. He deserved to know about the baby. It was the right thing to do, even if there wasn’t any point. He hadn’t been interested in her, so she doubted he would care about an infant, either. But she wouldn’t make that decision for him. She would tell him. Just not tonight. She needed a few days to get strong.
She wasn’t sure how long she lay there working on gathering her strength and her courage. Finally, when she’d run out of excuses, she sat up, then rose to her feet. She felt shaky and tired, which probably wasn’t a surprise considering all that she’d been through in the past day.
She pulled an overnight suitcase out of her closet and quickly filled it with what she would need to see her through until she had the rest of her things. It didn’t take long. Then she was out of excuses and it was time to leave.
She walked down the hall toward the stairs. On a whim, knowing it was a big mistake, she moved past the stairs to the opposite side of the house where a patch of light shone out of an open office door.
Stone was still up. The fact shouldn’t surprise her. The man hardly slept. She hesitated, knowing there was nothing for them to say, yet wanting to see him one last time.
She drew back her shoulders and walked into his office.
Stone sat behind his desk, staring into space. He obviously hadn’t been to bed yet and from the look of him he wouldn’t try to sleep that night. Stubble darkened his jaw. His mouth was weary, his scars especially pronounced.
The Millionaire Bachelor Page 20
