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“What is it?” he asked, voice quiet. “You look worried.”
She was. Worried for her own sanity. Her own well-being. Falling in love with Simon would be a huge mistake, Tula thought grimly, so she just wouldn’t do it. She would refuse to take that last step. It wouldn’t be easy, she knew, but protecting herself was too important. Instinctively she realized she needed protection, too. Because loving and losing Simon would be enough to devastate her.
“Worried?” she echoed lamely, scrambling for something to say.
“I used protection,” he assured her. “You weren’t really paying attention, but I did.”
“Oh. Thanks,” she said, though a part of her wondered if it might not have been better if he hadn’t. Then she would have had a chance at having a baby of her own. A child that would help fill the hole that losing Nathan was going to dig in her heart.
“Tula—” He pushed himself up on his elbows, took a breath and said, “We should talk about what just happened.”
“Do we have to?” she asked, hating for this time to end with what couldn’t possibly be good news. Whenever a man told a woman they had to talk, it was rarely to say, “Boy, that was great, I’m really happy.”
He rolled to one side, and the chill in the room settled over her skin the moment he left her. He stacked pillows against the headboard and leaned back, his gaze on her. “Yeah. We do. Look, this was…inevitable, I think.”
“Like death and taxes you mean?” she muttered, already hating how this conversation was going.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Yeah, I do. And you’re right,” she sighed in agreement and sat up beside him on the bed.
He was sprawled naked, completely at ease. But Tula was suddenly feeling a little fragile. A little exposed. So she grabbed the edge of the quilt and tossed it over her, covering herself from breasts to knees. “Simon, you don’t have to feel guilty or make a speech. I wanted this, too. You didn’t seduce me into anything.”
“I know.”
“Well,” she said with a small, self-conscious laugh. “Thanks for noticing.”
“Not the point, Tula,” he said. “The point is, we’re still involved over Nathan and I want to make sure we understand each other.”
She turned her head to look at him. “What are you talking about?”
Frowning, he pushed one hand through his hair. “Just that, you hold the strings when it comes to Nathan’s custody.”
She nodded, unable to look away from his eyes, once so warm and now looking as cold as the damp winter night outside. Somehow, he had taken a step away from her without actually leaving her side. Amazing that he could pull that off naked, but he managed.
“I don’t want this,” he continued, voice hard and flat, “what just happened here between us, to affect that.”
Stunned, Tula could only stare at him, dumbfounded. This was not what she had been expecting. She’d thought that he was about to deliver the old, that-was-a-mistake-that-won’t-be-repeated speech. Instead, he was intimating… “What?”
His mouth flattened into a grim line and that one eyebrow lifted. Surprisingly, she found it far less charming this time.
“Are you serious?” she demanded, indignant fury driving her words. “You really think I’m the kind of person who would use this against you somehow?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Oh, yes you did,” she told him, tossing the quilt aside and scooting off the bed. She grabbed her jeans and pulled them on over bare skin when she couldn’t spot her lace thong. “I can’t believe this. After what we just did, you could think that I, how could you think that? Amazing. And I’m so stupid. I should have seen this coming.”
“Just wait a damn minute—”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “That is about the most insulting thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you.”
“So it’s just a bonus then.”
He climbed off the bed and went to grab his own jeans. Tugging them on, he said in a patient, calm tone that made her want to throw something, “Tula, you’re overreacting. We’re two adults, we should be able to talk about this without getting emotional.”
“Emotional? Oh, could I show you emotional. Right now I want to throw something at that swelled head of yours.”
“Not helpful,” he pointed out, then looked around as if judging what she might grab and hurl at him.
“There’s one of the differences between us, Simon,” she snapped, whipping her head around to glare at him as she grabbed up her sweater. “Throwing things sounds very helpful to me right now. See, I’m not afraid to get emotional.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Now it was his turn to look insulted. “Who said I was afraid? This isn’t even about fear.”
“Really? Looks that way to me. My God, Simon.” She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes on him. Shaking her head, she said, “You relaxed for like what? Twenty minutes? Was I on your schedule? Did you pencil me in—Sex with Tula—then back to business?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered.
“Oh, now I’m ridiculous,” she echoed, tossing both hands high then letting them fall. “You’re the one making this into something it never was. This little speech you’re making isn’t about Nathan at all. It’s about you backing away from allowing yourself to feel something genuine.”
“Please.” He scoffed at her and that one eyebrow winged up. “This isn’t about feelings, Tula. We both had an itch and we scratched it. That’s all.”
She hissed in a breath and her eyes narrowed even farther until the slits were so tiny it was practically a miracle she could see him at all. “An itch? That’s what you call what just happened?”
“What do you call it?” he asked.
Good question. She wasn’t about to call it anything nice now. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. So instead, she ignored the subject entirely. “Honestly, Simon, the very minute you felt close to me at all, you pulled back and hid behind that stiff, businessman persona you wear as if it were just another three-piece suit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh,” she said, warming to her theme and riding on bruised feelings and insult, “I’m just getting started. You’re worried that now that I’ve been in the fabulous Simon Bradley’s bed I might try to use that in deciding Nathan’s future? Well, trust me when I say that sex with you won’t sway my decision about you taking custody…”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Was there an insult in there?”
“Quite possibly, but I wasn’t finished.”
“Finish then. I knew there was more coming.”
“You haven’t proved to me yet that you’re anywhere near ready to take care of a baby. Heck, until you were absolutely sure he was your son, you hardly went near him.”
“And that’s bad?”
“It is when you’re too busy protecting yourself to give a child a chance.”
“That’s not what I was doing.”
They stared at each other, gazes simmering with passions that had nothing to do with sex.
“This was clearly a mistake,” Tula said a moment later, when she thought she could speak without shrieking. “But thankfully it’s one that doesn’t have to be repeated.”
“Right. Probably best.” Simon shoved one hand through his hair and said, “I still want you.”
Tula looked at him for a long moment before admitting, “Yeah. Me, too. Good night, Simon.”
She left the room and he didn’t stop her. But she couldn’t help turning back for one last look as she walked out. He looked powerful. Sexy. Very alone.
And even after everything that had just happened, something inside her urged Tula to go back to him. Wrap her arms around him and hold on.
She had to remind herself that he had chosen solitude.
Eight (#u160c6387-0456-5bec-b899-43cfb3328bb3)
“I handled it badly, I know that.”
“Yeah,” Mick agreed cheerfully the following day. “That about covers it. Were you trying to piss her off?”
“No,” Simon said, shaking his head as he thought about the night before. Hell, he couldn’t remember much besides the urgent need he had felt to get her under him. Although the fight afterward was etched clearly enough in his mind. He still wasn’t sure how it had happened. He hadn’t meant to alert her to the fact that he was aware of the power she held in the situation. Hadn’t meant to throw down a gauntlet just so that she could hit him over the head with it.
All he had really wanted to do was let her know that he wasn’t going to be led around by his groin. That he was more than his passions. That sex with her, no matter how astounding, wasn’t going to change him.
Simon made the rules.
Always.
But somehow, when he was around Tula, rational thought went out the window. Today, here in his office, away from the woman who was making him crazed, he was able to think more clearly. Now what he needed to know was what exactly Mick had found out about Tula Barrons Hawthorne.
“Never fight with a woman after sex,” Mick was telling him. “They’re feeling all warm and cozy and whatever. Men want to sleep. So hell, even talking after sex can be dangerous—if you ever want sex again.”
Oh, he did, Simon thought. He wanted her the moment she left his room. He had wanted her all night and had awakened that morning aching for her. Want wasn’t the issue.
“Just skip the advice and tell me what information you turned up.”
Mick frowned at him and Simon thought that this was the downside of having your best friend work for you. He was less likely to take orders well and more likely to deliver his opinion whether Simon wanted it or not. “What did you find out? I know she’s related to Jacob Hawthorne, but how? Niece?”
“A lot closer than that, as it turns out. She’s his daughter.”
“His what?” Simon went on alert. “His daughter?”
His mind raced as he listened to Mick give him more details.
“Hawthorne and his ex split when Tula was a kid. Mom moved with her to Crystal Bay. Tula visited her father often, but several years ago, she appears to have cut all ties with people here completely—including her father. My source didn’t know much about it, just that Tula’s a sore spot with the old man.”
He had already known about her moving to that little town with her mother, Simon thought. But why would she cut all ties with everyone here, including her father? And why had he never heard about a daughter before? Was the old bastard protecting his child? Simon wouldn’t have thought Jacob Hawthorne capable of familial loyalty.
“And,” Mick added, “seems that when she started publishing children’s books, she began using her middle name, Barrons. It’s a family name, after her maternal grandmother. That grandmother left a will that provided a trust for Tula so that she—”
He straightened up in his desk chair and leaned both forearms on the neatly stacked files on his desk. “How big a trust?”
Mick thumbed through the papers he held. “To you, fairly small. To most of the world, very nice. It at least allowed her to buy her house and support herself while writing.”
“Her books don’t earn much?”
Mick shook his head. “She has a small, but growing readership for her Lonely Bunny series. The money will probably improve, but between her writing and the trust, she gets along and lives well within her limited means.”
“Interesting.” Her father was rich and she lived in a tiny house nearly an hour away from the city. What was the story behind that? he wondered.
“She hasn’t seen her father in a few years that I can find,” Mick continued. “But then, the old man almost never leaves the city, either.”
Hell, Simon thought, Jacob hardly left the Hawthorne building. He had a penthouse suite at the top of the structure that was his company’s headquarters. He ruled his world from the top of his tower and rarely interacted with the “little people.”
But as he thought that, Simon had to wince. Until the other day when he had deliberately gone through the store chatting with his employees, people could have said the same thing about him. There were some very uncomfortable similarities between Simon and his enemy.
“Is there anything else?” he asked, mainly to get his mind off that realization.
“No,” Mick said, laying the sheaf of papers on his lap. “I can probably get more if you want me to dig deeper.”
He thought about that for a moment. If he turned Mick loose and told him to dig, he’d have every piece of information available on Tula Barrons within a couple of days. But did he need more? He now knew who she was. He knew that she was the daughter of his enemy.
That was plenty.
While Mick talked, offering advice that he wasn’t listening to, Simon tried to consider the situation objectively. He was attracted to Tula, obviously. The passions she stirred in him were like nothing he’d ever known. But now he knew who she was and damned if he could bring himself to trust a Hawthorne. So where did that leave him?
“What’re you planning?”
He glanced at Mick. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right. I’ve seen that look before,” his friend said, settling into the chair in front of Simon’s desk. “Usually just before you’re plotting some major takeover of an unsuspecting CEO.”
Simon laughed and missed his point deliberately. “No CEO is ever unsuspecting.”
“Damn it, Simon, what’re you up to?”
“The less you know, the better off you are,” he said, knowing that his friend would try to argue him out of the plan quickly forming in his mind.
“You mean the less you have to listen to my objections.”
“That, too.”
Mick slapped one hand down hard on the arm of his chair. “You’re crazy, you know that? So what if she’s a Hawthorne? Her father’s a miserable old goat. She’s got nothing to do with him.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Damn it, Simon,” Mick continued. “She split with him years ago. Doesn’t even use her real name for God’s sake.”
“She’s still his daughter,” Simon insisted. “Don’t you get it? The daughter of the man who tried to destroy my family is now in charge of when I get custody of my own son. How the hell am I supposed to take that, Mick? What if she just decides to never approve my custody of Nathan?”
“You really think she’d do that?”
