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A storm was piling up on the horizon, Tula saw as she followed his gaze. Thunderclouds huddled together in a dark gray mass that promised rain by evening. Already, the wind was picking up, sending the naked branches of the trees in the park into a frenzied dance. Mothers gathered up their children as the sky darkened further and soon the park was as empty as Tula felt.
When Simon finally spoke, his voice was so soft, she nearly missed it. “You think you’ve got me figured out, do you?”
She studied him, trying to read his eyes. But it was as if he’d drawn a shutter over them, locking himself away from her.
“I thought so,” she admitted and her confusion must have been evident in her tone. “When I first met you, you reminded me of…someone I used to know,” she said, picturing her father, fierce gaze locked on some hapless employee. “But the more I got to know you, the more I realized that I didn’t know you at all. Well, that made no sense,” she ended with a laugh.
“Yeah, it did,” Simon said, shifting to look at her again, closing off the outside world with the intensity of his gaze. Making her feel as if she were the only thing in the world that mattered at the moment.
“Simon…”
“Nobody is what they look like on the surface,” he murmured, features carefully blank and unreadable as he studied her. “I’m just really realizing that.”
Ten (#u160c6387-0456-5bec-b899-43cfb3328bb3)
He was looking at her as if he had never seen her before. As if he were trying to see into her heart and mind again, searching out her secrets. Her desires.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Tula said.
“Maybe I don’t, either.” He took a breath, blew it out and after a long, thoughtful moment, changed the subject abruptly. “You know, I grew up here, in this house. My great-grandfather built it originally.”
“It’s a lovely house,” she said, briefly allowing her gaze to sweep the confines of the room. “It feels warm.”
“Yeah, it does.” His gaze was still locked on her. “Now, more than ever.”
Why was he telling her this? Why was he being…nice? Weren’t they at odds? Didn’t their argument still hang in the air between them? Only a few minutes ago, he had looked at her with cool detachment and now everything felt different. She just didn’t understand why.
“Several years ago, my father almost lost the house,” he said, forcing an offhand attitude that didn’t mesh with the sudden stiffness of his shoulders or the tightness in his jaw. “Bad investments, trusting the wrong people. My dad didn’t have a head for business.”
“I can sympathize,” she muttered, remembering how many times her own father had made her feel small and ignorant because she hadn’t cared to learn the intricacies of keeping ledgers and accounts receivable.
He kept talking, as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “He was too unorganized. Couldn’t keep anything straight.” Shaking his head, he once more stared out at the gathering storm and focused on the windowpane as the first drops of rain plopped against it. But Tula knew he wasn’t looking at the outside world so much as he was staring into his own past. Just as she had moments ago.
“My dad entered a deal once with a man who was so unscrupulous he damn near succeeded in taking this house out from under us. This man cheated and lied and did whatever he had to in his effort to bury my father and the Bradley family in general.” Simon shook his head again. “My father never saw it coming, either. It was sheer luck that kept this house in the family. Luck that saved what was left of our business.”
She heard the old anger in his voice and wondered who it was that had almost cost his family so much. Whoever it was, Simon was still furious with the man and she wished she could say something that would ease that feeling. Tula knew all too well that hanging on to anger didn’t hurt the one it was focused on. It only made you miserable.
“I’m glad it worked out that way,” she said simply. “I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for your father. And you.”
He looked at her as if judging what she’d said, trying to decide if she had meant it. Finally though, he accepted her words with a nod. “In a way, I guess it wasn’t my dad’s fault. He went into the family business because his father wanted it that way. My dad hated his life, knew he wasn’t any good at it and that must have been hard, living with a sense of failure every day.”
“I know what that’s like.”
He tipped his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. “Do you?”
She smiled, actually enjoying this quiet time with him. The talking, the sharing of old pains and secrets. She had never really talked about her father with anyone but Anna. But somehow, it seemed right now, to let Simon know that he wasn’t alone in his feelings about the past.
“My father had plans for me, too,” she said sadly. “And they didn’t have anything to do with what I wanted.”
He nodded again thoughtfully. “For me, I watched what happened with my dad and I learned.”
“What?” she prompted, her voice soft and low. “You learned what?”
His eyes narrowed as he watched her and Tula felt the heat of his stare slide into her bones.
“I learned to pay attention. To make rules and follow them. To never let anyone get the best of me. There’s no room in my life for chaos, Tula,” he said.
There was no subtext there and she knew it. He was saying flat out that there was no room in his life for her. She had figured that out for herself, of course. But somehow hearing him say it out loud left a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“I saw exactly what happens when a man loses focus,” Simon added. “My dad couldn’t concentrate on work he hated, so he didn’t pay attention. I never lose focus. I guess I did the same thing you did. Made my own choices in spite of the early training by my father.”
And those choices would keep them apart. He couldn’t have been any clearer. So why, she wondered, was he looking at her as if he wanted nothing more than to grab her and carry her up to his bed? Heat filled his eyes even as a chill colored his words. The man was a walking contradiction and Tula really wished she didn’t find that so darned attractive.
She shook her head as if to rid herself of that thought and asked, “What about your mother? Didn’t she have some impact on you, too?”
“No,” he said abruptly. “She died in a car wreck when I was four. Don’t remember her at all.”
“‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t sound like much,” she told him, “but I am.”
“Thanks.” He looked at her again and this time there was emotion glittering in his eyes. She just wished she could decipher it. Simon Bradley touched her in ways she had never experienced before. Even knowing that nothing was going to come of what was simmering between them couldn’t stop her from wishing things were different.
Wishing that just once in her life, someone would see her for who she was and want her.
“Tell me more about your father,” Simon said suddenly. “What’s he like?”
“Like you,” she blurted without thinking.
“Excuse me?”
Tula thought it a little weird that he could look so insulted without even knowing who her father was. “What I mean is, he’s a businessman, too. He practically lives in his office and can’t see anything in his life if it’s not on his profit-loss statements. He’s a workaholic and he likes it that way.”
He leaned back against a pillow tucked up to the wall. “And that’s how you see me?”
“Well, yeah.” Grateful to be off the subject of her own family, Tula said, “You’re a lot like him. Go to work early, come home late—”
“I’m home early today. Have been for the last few days.”
“True and I don’t know what to make of that.”
“I intrigue you?”
“You confuse me.”
“Even better.”
“No,” she said, inching back on the window seat to keep plenty of room between them. “It’s really not, Simon. I don’t need more confusion in my life and you’ve already made it pretty clear what you think about me.”
“That fight we had, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t mean a thing,” he told her and leaned forward.
“That’s not how you felt then,” she reminded him, trying not to notice that he was just within reach of her.
“As I remember it, you had plenty to say, too.”
“Okay, yes. I did. You made me mad.”
“Oh, trust me, you made that perfectly clear.”
“Good then. We both remember that argument.”
“That’s not all we remember,” he said, voice low, thick. He reached for her hand before she could pull back and rubbed his thumb across her palm.
Tula shivered. It wasn’t her fault, she thought frantically. It’s not like she chose to be this attracted to him. It was simple chemistry. A biological imperative. Simon touched her and she went up in flames.
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