The moon spilled in through the skylights, painting the room in shadows. The candles on the dresser that Preston had lit earlier had died down. Her body, though, was still flushed from Preston’s lovemaking. Overcome with emotion, Lily brushed a kiss on his well-shaped mouth. Preston pulled her closer, sucking her bottom lip between his teeth and nibbling on her flesh.
She wanted him again. But she longed to have their relationship settled. She broke their kiss, and Preston kept her close to him in the intimate cocoon of their bed.
“What did you want to discuss with me?” she asked him when her breathing settled.
“I have an offer for you. Wait here.” He padded naked through the room to his closet. She loved the way he looked naked. His hard body moved with ease and grace.
When he removed a small box from his coat, she grabbed her present, too. The one she’d made for him from her heart. He had a gift for her, she thought.
She turned on the nightstand lamp, wanting to be able to see his face when he realized he was in love with her. And she knew that it would probably shock him. He’d been resistant to emotions since they met but he’d changed since the night they’d visited the graveyard.
“I have something for you, too.”
He sat next to her on the bed. He stared at her chest. Her nipples tightened. If they were going to talk, it had to be fast. She tugged the sheet up to cover her breasts.
“Talk fast, Lily.”
She nodded. “This is harder than I thought it would be.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I do. You see, Preston, while I’ve been searching for true love and convincing you it existed… What I mean to say is I’ve found the perfect couple.”
“Who are they?”
“Us.”
“Us?”
“We’re perfect for each other.”
“Lily, listen, we’re good in many ways, but that doesn’t make what we have love.”
“How would you know what love is?”
“I know what it isn’t.”
“Then why are we together?”
“Lust, money.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“What do you want?”
“Your love. I love you. Those aren’t words that I say lightly but I need you in my life.”
“Lily, I’d like you to be part of my life. Things don’t have to change.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a gift for you that will cheer you up.”
She doubted it, but took the small jewelry box from him. Inside was a beautiful diamond pendant in the shape of Cinderella’s slipper. It took her breath away and proved to her how well they knew each other. She felt like the struggling girl to his wealthy prince.
“I’d like you to be my companion for the next year.”
His words made no sense to her. She suddenly realized that Preston wasn’t thinking of happily ever after. “Companion?”
“Yes, travel with me and be my partner.”
Oh, God. Her heart shattered in a million pieces while he continued speaking. Telling her the places they’d go. Barbados, again.
Preston saw a future for them that involved her running from the past, too. And she wasn’t willing to do it. Wasn’t willing to chuck a lifetime worth of memories for a man who thought that lust and money were the key ingredients to a successful relationship.
On shaking legs, she stood. Preston stopped talking, and she felt his gaze on her as she gathered her clothes. She was embarrassed by her nudity and hurried to put on her jeans and shirt. The damned buttons were crooked but she couldn’t fix them now. She tossed her lovely dress into her garment bag and started putting her other things in there.
“Lily, where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“I don’t have time for games. I have to be in Barbados on Monday.”
Anger left her speechless for a moment. She was less important to him than his schedule.
“How can you be so stubborn? The truth is all around us.”
He stood, but she couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t see the man who’d taught her the beauty of physical love and the pain of the emotional. “The truth is there is no perfect couple or perfect love.”
“I know love isn’t perfect. All I know is that I’m in love with you.”
He put his arms around her. Cradled her in his warmth, rubbing her back and speaking gently in her ear. Tears burned the back of her eyes. She blinked frantically trying to stall them. “Calm down. Please don’t leave like this.”
She loved him, but not enough to give up her life and become what he hated. And she knew she would. He’d start giving her gifts instead of his time and because she’d spend her time alone waiting for him to return to her she’d take them. She pictured herself alone in a hotel room in a foreign country while Pres was off working.
“I can’t stay. I’ve been telling myself that you can love. You see, I’ve loved you for a long time, and I know that love hurts. But you won’t even admit you can be hurt by it.”
“That’s because—”
“Don’t say it doesn’t exist. You have to take a risk for love to come to you.” She stalked away from him.
“The truth is, Lily, I know all about so-called love. I’ve heard those words before, and every time I wasn’t willing to pay to keep that person around, love disappeared.”
“I’m different.”
“Prove it.”
Ah, a ray of hope, she thought. “Open my gift.”
He opened the card and read the quote inside. He didn’t touch the wrapping on her heart. “I knew it.”
His soft words should have elated her, but the expression on his face told her that he’d missed the point.
“‘Love is a rain of diamonds in the mind,’” he said, softly.
“Did you understand why I left it?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry but I don’t have a shower of diamonds for you. If you open the box, we can consider this a deposit.”
Lily searched the room for her purse. There was no way Preston was ever going to understand. He couldn’t love her because he only understood one thing: money and the power it held over humanity. She blinked again trying to hold back her tears.
“Well, it looks like you’ve won our bet,” she said.
“This wasn’t about a bet.”
“No, it wasn’t. But it was a gamble all the same.”
“Stop talking like you just lost big in Vegas. I’ll shower you with diamonds.”
“I’d rather be showered with your love.”
He said nothing. She sniffled and knew that blinking wasn’t going to stop the tears from falling. “Goodbye Preston.”
She ran from the room as if the demons of hell were chasing her. But she knew they weren’t. Her demon was all too real and more painful, because she knew that he didn’t have to be a demon but chose to.
Thirteen
Preston picked up the jewelry box that Lily had discarded in her mad dash from the room. He called down to security and asked one of the guards to follow Lily home. To make sure she made it back to her place safely.
Uncomfortable with the feeling that he was alone again, he crossed the suite to the bar and poured himself a stiff drink. The alcohol bit as it went down, but he didn’t flinch. Unnamed emotions roiled through him as he caught his own reflection in the mirror across the room. He looked like a man who’d lost everything.
He threw the glass against the wall and listened to it shatter. The suite felt too small and confining. Memories of Lily were everywhere. He saw her as she’d been just a few nights ago, standing at the window and looking at the darkened lawn. He saw her in her workshop refinishing the settee that now graced one of the walls.
He remembered her face when she’d offered him a massage because he was tired and he’d seduced her into his bed once again. Knowing that he couldn’t give her what she needed, he’d offered her only what he had.
; And it wasn’t enough.
He called the airport and had them ready his jet. He needed to get out of New Orleans. Away from the slow-beating rhythm of the South and the memories of Lily. She’d taught him to care again and then left him.
He walked into the bedroom to dress and caught sight of Lily’s gift to him. He’d never opened it. Never looked at it to see what it was she’d given him. He’d been so focused on making her stay with him.
He would open it later. He packed his clothes and glanced around the suite one last time. Something glittered in the corner of the room. Lily’s shoe. That pretty silver high-heeled shoe that she’d worn last night. The shoe that had made her feel like a princess and him like her fairy-tale prince.
When had the prince turned into a pumpkin? When had the clock struck twelve for them?
He placed her shoe in his briefcase next to the wrapped gift. He told himself it was so that he’d have something to remember her by, but he knew he’d never forget Lily.
He called downstairs to have his car brought around and walked out of the suite that had become more of a home to him than he’d ever had before. More of a home than he’d ever expected to have. He never looked back and didn’t now as he walked away from the resort. But he wanted to. He wanted to glance over his shoulder and see in his mind’s eye Lily standing in the doorway.
But he didn’t.
It was chilly in the early-morning hours. The road was clear of traffic as late-night revelers slept off last night’s celebrations. Preston tried to make sense of Lily’s departure.
He still couldn’t understand what she wanted from him. He’d promised her a life of excitement and riches for at least a year.
Maybe she wanted more than a year, he thought. Maybe she didn’t care about the money. In retrospect it seemed as if he might have overreacted to her quote about diamonds. Normally if a woman walked out on him he wouldn’t care, but he’d already acknowledged to himself that Lily was anything but normal in his life. He picked up his cell phone and dialed her home number.
It rang eight times.
“Hello.”
Lily’s voice sounded as if she was still crying. A strange pain assailed him, but he didn’t examine it. Angel, I never meant to hurt you.
She sniffled but said nothing else. He hung up the phone. Lily wasn’t a woman who’d live with a man without the hope of family and lifelong commitment. He had no right to her sweetness and he knew it.
The silence in the car was deafening, and his own thoughts were making him crazy. He turned on the CD player and the sounds of Miles Davis filled the car. Lily had it cued to her favorite song, “I Thought about You.”
He’d give himself tonight for the memories and then he was moving on. Lily Stone was a part of the past, and Preston Dexter never, never looked back.
New Orleans was gearing up for Mardi Gras, but Lily didn’t feel like celebrating. She’d signed the contract to refurnish and redecorate an older mansion that a friend of Preston’s had purchased. It had hurt to hear his name, but she was trying to move on. Falling out of love wasn’t easy. In fact, it was really hard. Her brothers were planning a visit for Mardi Gras the first week in February and Lily knew she had to get over Preston before then.
She had to start sleeping again. She had to find a way to forget about the two of them on her love seat almost making love. She had to find a way to forget he’d ever shared her bed and then shared her kitchen with those soulful eyes of his that made her want to show him the world because for all his wealth Preston couldn’t see it.
The cellular phone rang and she answered it. Nothing but silence on the other end.
“Hello?”
“Lily, its Jay Rohr. We’re processing the final payment to you today and I wanted to thank you again for the wonderful job you did with White Willow House.”
“Thanks for the opportunity, Jay. I learned a lot from the project.” More than he’d ever know, she thought.
“Are you at your office, Lily?”
“No, I’m on my way home. Why?”
“I wanted to fax you the final change order for signature.”
“Oh, I can swing by and get it.”
“It can wait until morning if you’re on your way home now,” Jay said.
“I am.”
She asked about his wife and their new baby, a girl they’d named Angela, and then she concluded the call. She wanted a baby of her own. She’d spent the day in the import yard, and she was tired. She’d found a piece that she knew Preston would love but had not purchased it because she was going to get over him.
Pulling into her driveway, she sat for a moment looking at the small Creole cottage that been her home all her life. She remembered her mom and dad dropping them off to stay with her grandmother while they went off to explore cultures of hunter-gatherer tribes around the globe. She remembered leaving in the black limo the day they’d buried her parents. Playing tag football on the front lawn with her brothers.
But as she looked at the house now, she realized that hanging on to possessions wasn’t going to bring those people back to her. She’d stayed put for so long, craving normalcy and routine and only now realized that she’d been letting life pass her by.
Preston had given her someone to love, but she’d never been brave enough to love him more than her home. More than this old house and Crescent City. She opened her door slowly. She wasn’t going to get over Preston because they were meant to be together, and if she had to follow him around the world to prove she loved him for him and not his money she was going to do it.
“She’s on her way home,” Jay Rohr said.
“Thanks, Jay. I owe you one,” Preston said, disconnecting the call.
It had taken him three weeks to open the gift from Lily. He’d been sure that it was a steel watch or gold pen. Some sort of trinket that was worth a lot of money. His heart had stopped when he’d uncovered the photo heart she’d given him.
He’d stood in the empty living room of his penthouse apartment. The one with no photos of his family or links to his past and realized that love had been staring him in the face all along. That love had been what had kept him in New Orleans long after he needed to stay there.
That love had been why he’d hidden behind long-ago learned behaviors instead of remembering what Lily had shown him. That love was giving. How many times had he heard that and not understood.
Finally he did, and he only hoped it wasn’t too late. He’d been waiting on her porch for almost four hours and it was getting late. He’d had Jay call her cell phone on some pretense of business, but he wanted Lily back where she belonged. Back in the place he’d foolishly kicked her out of. Because he knew now he couldn’t live without Lily. Oh, he’d survive but his quality of life would be below poverty level.
He’d missed the slow rhythm of New Orleans, Lily’s jazz music and her crawfish pie. He’d missed the simple evenings they’d spent together in her family home.
But most of all he’d missed Lily. He’d delegated the Barbados resort to one of his junior vice presidents when he understood that his heart was in New Orleans. The organ he didn’t think he’d had before a sweet, sexy redhead had dared him to believe in love.
How was he going to convince her that he’d changed his mind? A car pulled into the driveway, and Lily sat behind the wheel for a minute before stepping out of the car.
She looked more beautiful to him than anything he’d ever seen before. His hands started shaking and his palms grew sweaty. Oh, God, he didn’t know if he could do this. What if she had given up on him?
He stepped from the shadows of her porch. “Lily?”
She froze.
For once he had no words. No glib comment or challenging dare. He had only his heart and he knew he wore it on his sleeve.
Carefully she crossed to him. The stadium jacket she wore was too big, and she seemed to have lost weight since he’d seen her last. He hoped to God she wasn’t sick.
When she was an arm’s lengt
h away, Preston pulled her close for a hug. Her curves fitted his body in all the remembered places. Damn, she felt good.
“I know you deserve better than me, Lily, but I can’t let you go. And I want to get married and raise children with you and spend the rest of our days challenging each other.”
“Why, Preston?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I need the words.”
He took a deep breath. “I love you, Lily.”
She stared into his eyes. The only other time he’d ever uttered those words he’d lost the most important person in his life. Suddenly tears ran down her face and she hugged him to her tightly.
“I thought I lost you,” she said.
“I thought you did, too.”
“You’re sure about this?” she asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“When do we leave for Barbados?”
“We’re not going. I don’t have to oversee the opening of each new resort. I will have to go to the grand opening celebrations but I don’t have to be so hands-on.”
“Won’t you miss it? I don’t want you to regret being with me.”
“I suspect that you’ll keep me busy.”
“Where will we live?”
“I’d like to divide our time between New Orleans and New York.”
“That would work. I can take on fewer decorating jobs and just do refinishing work.”
“We can talk about the details later,” he said. “I have something for you.”
He pulled her shoe from his pocket and got down on one knee. He took her left hand in his and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “Lily Stone, will you marry me?”
Lily crouched down and kissed him. “You bet.”
Preston stood and scooped her up in his arms, carrying her into the house to seal their love with lovemaking that put to rest the doubts of the past.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0321-1
THE TYCOON’S TEMPTATION
Copyright © 2002 by Katherine Garbera
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
The Tycoon's Temptation (HQR Silhouette Desire) Page 13
