Talking Dirty with the CEO
Page 17
“You think I’m some kind of sensitive, wonderful guy, who makes you feel good and special and perfect? Well, you’re wrong.”
“But you do make me feel those things.”
He stepped toward her, looking down into her face. Wanting her to see. To know the truth. “Yes, I make you feel those things now. But in ten minutes, I’ll have found something new to distract me. Someone else to interest me.” He paused. “I’m not someone you want to count on, Christie. I’m unreliable, distractible, and I get bored very, very easily.”
Christie stared at him for a long moment, then abruptly her lashes fell, veiling her gaze. “I see.” A tight voice. “So, what? In a week or so, you’ll have gotten bored of me? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Now. It had to be now.
“Christie, I’m trying to tell you that I can’t be what you want me to be. I can’t be your boyfriend. I can’t be your anything. This affair between us? It has to end.”
Slowly the color drained out of her face. “What? Why? What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Then why does it have to end?”
“Because I’ll only end up hurting you. Like I hurt Jude.”
“Because you missed a birthday? Hey, I don’t care about my stupid birthday. I wouldn’t give a crap if you missed mine.”
He wanted to pull her to him. Never let her go. But he couldn’t. She had to know the unvarnished truth of what he was. “It’s not just one birthday, Christie. It’s years of missed birthdays. Years of being stood up. Years of being ignored.”
“I could make you pay attention.”
“No, honey. No, you couldn’t. Not if I didn’t want to.”
“So is that why you’ve been ignoring my texts for the past three days? My calls? Because you didn’t want to pay attention?”
“No. It’s because I procrastinate sometimes. Especially with doing things that are hard.”
“So this is hard for you?”
More painful truth. “Yeah. Like I said, I don’t want to hurt you.”
Her jaw set, evidence of the determination he so admired in her. Then she walked toward him. He let her come, realizing she was going to touch him, bracing himself for it.
And sure enough she reached him, put her arms around him. Pressed her body against his. “So don’t hurt me then.”
All his muscles had gone tight with the need to enfold her in his arms. Kiss her beautiful mouth. Hold her. But he couldn’t. The only thing he could do was protect her.
From him.
Gently he unwound her arms from around his neck and stepped away, steeling himself against the hurt that crossed her face as he did so.
“Joseph,” she said.
“No, Christie. I’ve made my decision.”
“And what about me? Do my feelings not count at all?”
God, didn’t she understand? Her feelings counted. They counted for everything. Which is why he had to do this.
“Of course they do. Why do you think this has to come to an end? I can’t do relationships, Christie, I’ve never been able to.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? Didn’t you listen? It’s not just birthdays and stood-up dates. I get bored. I get distracted. I fixate. At the moment I’m fixated on you but in another week, another month, I won’t be. I’ll lose interest. And then you’ll find I won’t pay attention to you anymore. I won’t listen. I’ll stand you up. Other things will suddenly become way more important than you.”
Christie stared at him, her brow wrinkled, clearly trying to understand. “But you said you manage that kind of thing.”
“Yeah, I manage it. But that’s all.” He stood back. “I can’t stop being this way, Christie, and I won’t suddenly get better. This is who I am. Do you understand?”
She swallowed. “I…I think so. I can handle it, Joseph.”
“Can you? Can you really?” It felt like there was an elephant sitting on his chest, squeezing out all the air. Pressing against his heart. “What happens if six months down the track I suddenly turn to you and tell you I don’t want to see you anymore? That I’m bored with you. Could you handle that?”
The determination in her face didn’t falter. “No.” Her voice sounded small and quiet. “But I could try.”
Yes, she could. It wouldn’t work, though.
He remembered his mother shouting at him. Remembered the punishments she’d dealt out. And the bewilderment he’d always felt because he hadn’t been able to help the things he’d done, driven by the restlessness he couldn’t control. He’d tried to explain it to her once but she hadn’t listened. He still remembered trying because she’d shut herself in the bedroom and wouldn’t come out.
She’d hated it. She’d hated his behavior. And he knew that because he’d heard her crying sometimes. Usually after something he’d done wrong.
And the day she’d left, he knew that she’d hated him, too.
Christie could end up like that. Hating him. And he knew if she did, he wouldn’t be able to bear it.
The weight on his chest moved, compressing his heart. Making it feel like it was wrapped in barbed wire. He made himself hold her gaze. “Yeah, well, that’s the thing. I can’t. It’s bad enough with Jude. I couldn’t handle hurting you. And that’s why you have to leave.”
She stared at him. Determined. Fierce. Then she reached out a hand toward him.
And he knew that if he took it, if he touched her again, he wouldn’t be able to let her go this time. That the selfish part of him would want to keep her as long as his ADHD would let him.
So he moved away.
Her hand dropped. “I don’t want to go,” she said thickly. “Please don’t make me.”
He swore. “You have to.”
“Joseph, I’m in l-love with you.”
The barbs around his heart sank in deep.
Too late. Too late.
“Don’t, Christie. Please—”
“That’s really why I’m here. To tell you that. To tell you I love you. That you make me feel so strong. So good about myself. “ She searched his face. “And that I want to do the same for you. Make you feel the way you make me feel.”
Tell her the truth. How good she makes you feel.
No, he couldn’t. What he had to do was stop procrastinating. End this now. And save them both the pain later on.
“I’m sorry, Christie,” Joseph said, and he made his voice sound hard and flat. “But you don’t make me feel anything at all.”
…
A punch to the gut. No, more like a bus.
What could she say to that? Nothing.
She wouldn’t beg. She wouldn’t plead. She’d spent too many years wanting her family’s approval, their praise and their love, to do the same with Joseph.
Maybe, at one stage, it would have been enough to have a week or two. Or even a couple of months. But it wasn’t now. She wanted more. She deserved more. Hadn’t Joseph himself shown her that?
Christie swallowed back the pain. Ignored the cold little animal that had nested in her heart. Lifted her chin. “Okay. If that’s the way you want it.”
Then she turned on her heel and walked out.
Chapter Twelve
Joseph ran. The steady thump of his feet on the treadmill normally soothed him, but not today. Four weeks after Christie walked out of his office and he couldn’t settle. Not on anything. He upped the pace, the sweat pouring off him, running harder, faster.
But his mind was like the treadmill, going over and over the same old ground. Christie’s pale face, eyes gone dark. Pain clear in the depths of them. And her voice.
Okay. If that’s the way you want it.
Liar. It wasn’t the way he’d wanted it. When she’d told him he’d made her believe in herself, he’d felt like more than an against-the-odds success story. More than a brilliant IT genius. More than a guy with ADHD. More than a label.
She’d made him feel like a person. She always had.
The door of his office opened and Jude came in.
Joseph cursed. He’d ordered Amy, the receptionist downstairs, to run interference on any visitors, especially visitors like his sister, but something must have gone wrong. Still, he didn’t stop running.
“Did we have an appointment I forgot?” he panted out.
She’d been trying to contact him for weeks now, asking him what was wrong. For some reason she wouldn’t take his “nothing” for an answer.
“No. You’ve been avoiding me so I thought I’d go direct. Beard the lion, etc.”
“How did you get past Amy?”
“I told her there was a courier outside with a huge bunch of flowers for her and he didn’t know where to put them. She couldn’t leave the desk fast enough.”
Slick, that was Jude.
She paused in the middle of the room, arms folded. “I want to talk to you.”
“I’m in the middle of a workout.”
“Actually, you’re in the middle of a meltdown.” Striding over to the treadmill, she punched the button and the machine began to wind down.
Joseph put his hands on the bars on either side of the machine and gave her an irritated look. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not the one being ridiculous. Look at you. How many times have you been on that thing today?”
Five. Maybe six. Not that she needed to know that. “None of your business.” He reached for the towel on the floor nearby, mopping his face.
“It’s her, isn’t it?”
Joseph didn’t look at his sister. “No.”
“Ah.”
“What do you mean, ‘ah’?”
“Well, you didn’t immediately ask who I was talking about. Which means that it’s definitely her.”
Damn Jude. Damn her to hell.
Joseph swung the towel around his neck, stepping down off the machine. “I’m not talking about this now, okay?”
“Why not? Scared?”
“I’m not scared.”
“Yes, you are. You’re terrified.”
He turned away, suddenly viciously angry. The same kind of anger that had dogged him for weeks now. “Leave it.” He stalked over to his desk, picked up the water bottle sitting on the top, and took a long swallow. “I meant to say, got an e-mail from Caleb yesterday. His contract with that UK club is almost up and he’ll be coming home in a month.”
Judith scowled. “Wonderful,” she muttered. “Now my day is truly complete. But can we not talk about Mr. Shag-Anything-That-Moves?” She fixed him with a look so sharp the edges just about cut him to death. “I want to know about this woman who’s got you tied up in knots.”
“She hasn’t—”
“Crap. You’re so wound up all you need is a pair of ears and you could stand in for the Energizer Bunny. What the hell are you so afraid of?”
He let out a breath. Put down the water bottle. “She’s in love with me. That’s what she told me. And you know what’ll happen? One day I’ll miss an important date or I’ll zone out one too many times, or I’ll forget she even existed for a moment. Or even worse, one day I’ll wake up and I’ll find she doesn’t interest me anymore. And it’ll hurt. It’ll hurt her. She doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment.”
Jude stared at him. “And how do you feel about her?”
A slow clench of his heart. “I like her, but that’s it.”
“Rubbish.”
“It’s not rubbish.”
“Sure it is. You feel something for her. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be pushing her away like this.”
He scowled at her. “I’m not pushing her away.”
“Aren’t you? It’s what you always do, you know. When anyone gets close. Caleb and Luke are just about the only people other than your family you haven’t managed to alienate, though God knows you certainly tried hard enough.”
“Jude—”
“No, don’t try to deny it. You push people away, then use the ADHD as an excuse not to have to deal with it.”
He found his hands closed into fists. “It’s not an excuse.”
“Yes, it is. What do you think’s going to happen? That once people find out who the real you is, they’re going to run away?”
“No, that’s got nothing—”
“Not everyone is like Mum.”
He stopped, looking at her in shock. “What’s Mum got to do with this?”
Jude’s blue eyes had that stubborn, uncompromising look they always got when she was going to tell him something she knew he didn’t want to hear. “I know you blame yourself for the way she left.”
“No, I don’t. That was a decision—”
“You do. Even at thirteen you knew how difficult your behavior was for her to manage. Dad was hardly around, so she had to cope on her own. And she couldn’t.”
“I’m not having this discussion.” Joseph turned, walking blindly toward the door of his office, not even sure where he was going. Only knowing he had to leave.
“Don’t push her away.” Jude’s voice was like an arrow in the back. “You say you don’t want to hurt her, but isn’t that what you’re doing now?”
He put his hand on the door handle. “No, I’m trying to prevent her from being hurt any more than she already has been.”
“Are you so sure? Remember how you felt when Mum left? Aren’t you doing to her exactly what Mum did to you?”
He stopped dead, his hand motionless on the door handle.
“You love her, I know you do.” Jude’s voice was very quiet. “And you said she loves you. Don’t throw that away.”
Joseph stared at the wooden grain of the door.
You love her.
Did he? Had he fallen in love with Christie?
“I don’t want to let her down,” he heard himself say hoarsely. “Not the way I have with you.”
“You’ve never let me down. Not when it counted. Not once.”
He wanted to believe that. Wished he could believe that.
Throwing the towel to one side, Joseph stalked out of his office, suddenly needing space. Air. In the area outside, activity came to a standstill as everyone looked at him and then abruptly went back to their tasks.
Jesus, he’d never heard his staff so quiet. And in fact, now that he thought about it, they’d been quiet for the past four weeks.
Afraid of you because you’ve been the boss from hell for the past four weeks.
A barb of agony sunk deep inside him. Yeah, he hadn’t been right for weeks now. Hadn’t been able to concentrate. Hadn’t been able to think. All his reminders had gone out the window and he’d missed some important deadlines because something had distracted him. Something stupid like searching for Gothic metal songs online or trying to find vintage parts for a certain computer on a specialist website. Stupid, irrelevant things.
And now his staff was scared of him because he’d been a moody bastard.
He swore under his breath, took the elevator down to the ground floor, and walked outside. Walking down the sidewalk just because he needed to walk. To move. To get away from the horrible, terrible restlessness that burned inside him.
When would it go the hell away?
He passed a shop and had his attention caught by a pair of shoes in the window. Ugg boots.
Christie.
Something inside him faltered, like missing a step going down stairs, making his breath catch.
You love her, Joseph. Don’t push her away.
And suddenly longing gripped him. A longing so intense he couldn’t breathe.
He missed her. Missed her smile, her quick wit, her laughter, her curiosity, her passion. The way she calmed him. The way he could look at her for hours and not have the restlessness eat away at him. Hell, he even missed her stubborn determination and her spine of pure steel.
He missed her so much it left him aching ri
ght down to his bones.
He did love her.
The knowledge of it held him rooted to the spot, an unconscious hand on the shop window, staring at the shoes on display.
He couldn’t let her go. Regardless of what was best for her, what was best for him was her in his life.
Joseph stepped away from the window and went into the shop.
…
Christie was knee-deep in zombies when the phone on her desk rang. She tried ignoring it for a while—the level she was playing in Zombie Force Online was a fiendish one—but when it became apparent that whoever was on the line wasn’t going to give up, she cursed and logged out of the game.
“What?” she snapped into the phone with very bad grace.
“Christie?” said Claire, the Total Tech receptionist. “You have a visitor.”
Feeling bad because really, Claire was very nice and didn’t deserve such rudeness, Christie made an effort. “Sorry, Claire. Bad moment.” Bad whole month in actual fact, but Claire wasn’t to know that. “Send them through.”
To tell the honest truth she wasn’t that interested in visitors. What she wanted was to continue her lunchtime Zombie Force game because God knew there was nothing more distracting than killing a bunch of zombies.
Not that she needed distraction, of course.
No, she was doing very well, thank you very much. Doing well not thinking of him. Not wondering what he was doing or where he was. Concentrating only on work and the new piece Ben had approved, her article on the resurgence of vintage computers and a how-to guide on rebuilding them. She was enjoying it. Even though the computer she’d started restoring sat on her kitchen table, still at the same stage as when Joseph had visited. She just hadn’t been able to face returning to it.
But she would. Of course she would.
At some point in the distant future when her heart had somehow miraculously healed itself.
“Don’t you want to know who it is?” Claire asked and Christie finally picked up on the small quiver of excitement in the other woman’s voice.
“Not particularly,” she said, frowning at the phone. “Is it someone exciting?”
“Oh, yes.” Claire’s voice had descended into a whisper.
And a hand closed around Christie’s heart in sudden foreboding. Oh, God, no. It couldn’t be.