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That crack in her control was the thing that niggled most. She had been such a coolheaded fighter up to that point. He’d seen it in the way she’d doggedly tried to argue with him. At any other time he would have admired such a quick, clear ability to reason her way out of conflict. Hell, he probably would have tried to hire her. People who could step past emotion to straighten out a tense situation were gold.
All he’d seen at the time, however, was an attack. A cold-blooded one. His mind had been so skewed by his experience with her father and brother he’d stayed on the offensive, refusing to hear her, especially because she’d been so levelheaded in her defense. He’d read her wrong because, until those last moments, she hadn’t flinched or broken down.
That strength in her had thrown him, making him see her as an adversary. Now all he could think about was how it would feel to put all one’s energy into fighting for someone, for your mother, and lose her to a lack of will to live.
He swallowed, pushing stiff fists into his pockets, knuckles coming up against the string of pearls he should have returned to Melodie by now. He kept thinking she might contact him, but, in her shoes, would he want to talk to him?
If there was a good enough reason, he thought she would.
The beads rubbed mercilessly against his knuckles, the way a certain question kept rolling around in his mind, rubbing and aggravating.
Did no condom mean no birth control?
A lead blanket descended on him each time he recalled his fleeting moment of sobriety, as he had recognized the mistake he was about to make.
He was a man of logic. He didn’t believe in giving in to feelings. He still couldn’t understand how he had, especially with his view of Melodie as dark as it had been. He’d been appalled in those first seconds afterward for so much as touching her.
Yet it had been the most profound sexual experience of his life.
Had it been the same for her? Had their physical attraction been real? Please, Roman, please. His entire body clenched with tension and his breath drew in and held, savoring the memory of skin and musky scents and hot, wet welcome pouring over him like a bath. Behind his closed eyes, another question, the most burning question, glowed brightly.
Was she pregnant?
* * *
Beggars can’t be choosers. It was a truth Melodie had learned to live with the day she’d come home six years ago to discover her father had badgered her mother into a hospital she couldn’t leave.
She’s an embarrassment, he’d said.
He was the embarrassment, Melodie had informed him. Terrible words had followed, ending with her nursing a bruised cheek, a sore scalp and a wrenched shoulder while she’d begged through choked-back tears for permission to see her mother. He’d forced her to stay silent on his abusive behavior if she wanted so much as a phone call.
After striking that deal, Melodie had walked out, going to a friend’s house and never returning. Her privileged life had ended. She’d learned the hard way how to make ends meet, taking whatever job she could find to survive.
Of course, there was one job she had refused to stoop to, but today might be the day she completely swallowed her pride. They’d noticed at her temp office job that she had a flare for organization. They wanted to offer her a permanent position with a politician’s campaign team. Become a handler. A political gofer. Barf.
But the money was significantly better than entry-level clerk wages.
And her mother’s wish to have her ashes sprinkled in the Seine was weighing on her.
So Melodie begrudgingly put on a proper tweed skirt and jacket over a black turtleneck, put her hair in a French roll and closed the door on her new apartment far earlier than necessary so even if she missed her first bus, she wouldn’t be late for her interview.
This was an old building, bordering on disrepair, and it smelled musty, but the price was right and all the locks worked.
As she walked down the stairs, she told herself to be thankful she had anything at all. After a lifetime of watching her mother struggle against negative thoughts and spirals of depression, Melodie had learned not to dwell on regrets or could-have-beens. She accepted her less-than-ideal circumstances philosophically and set goals for a better situation, confident she would get to where she wanted to be eventually. This apartment and taking a job she didn’t want was merely a step in the process.
This was also the last time she started from scratch, she assured herself, grateful her mother hadn’t lived to see her fall on her face this way.
Mom. Pearls. France.
Her hand went to her collar, didn’t find the necklace, and her heart sank into the pit of her stomach.
She tried not to think of France, but Roman crept into her thoughts day and night, taunting her with how horribly she’d misjudged him.
She blamed her sunny ideals. All her life she had wanted to believe deep emotional connections were possible, even though her mother’s yearning for a better love from her father had been futile. And even though, among the loose friendships Melodie had made over the years, she’d seen more heartbreaks than success stories.
Ingrid and Huxley had fed her vision, though. Every once in a while, she came across a couple she wished she could emulate: the people who communicated with a glance and did sweet things for each other, just because.
The only way she’d coped with her barren early years had been by promising herself that real, true love would come to her eventually.
She’d mistaken a sexual reaction for a signal of mental and emotional compatibility where Roman was concerned. Maybe she wasn’t as delicate as her mother had always been, but grief had been taking its toll. A month past her out-of-character encounter with Roman and she could see how susceptible she’d been that day. Ingrid’s joy in her coming nuptials had created impatience for a life partner in Melodie. She’d seen the possibility of a future in a kiss from a superficially attractive man.
Relationships, she decided, could wait until both her finances and her heart were back on their feet. The thought allowed her to feel resilient as she reached the ground floor. She was capable of meeting challenges head-on with equanimity. She would take this job and rebuild her life.
After striding across the lobby, she pushed open the glass door onto the street.
The bluster of a nor’easter yanked it out of her hands.
Actually, it was a man. He filled the space, blocked her exit. He wore a suit and an overcoat. His dark hair glistened with rain. He was clean shaven and green eyed like a dragon. Heart-stoppingly gorgeous.
Roman Killian.
* * *
Melodie was still in Virginia, but had moved to Richmond.
The moment that detail had been reported to Roman, he’d booked a flight. The dry, musty interior of her apartment building, with its ugly red-and-silver wallpaper, closed around him as he stepped into the foyer, forcing her back several steps into the wall of mailboxes. He barely took in his surroundings. He was too busy studying her.
She looked...thin. A stab of worry hit him as he considered what that could mean for an unborn baby. Her face was wan, too, beneath her makeup. She wore a smart suit beneath an open coat, but her eyes swallowed her face. Her pale lips parted with shock. Whatever she held dropped from her grip with a muffled thump.
It was just her purse, but he shot forward in instinctive chivalry.
She snatched it before he could, jerking upright to stare down on him.
It was the oddest moment of juxtaposition. She was the one living in a low-end ZIP code in a modest suburb of the city. He appeared on list of Fortune 500 CEOs as one of the richest men in the world. His suit was tailored, his handkerchief silk.
Yet Melodie stood above him like a well-born lady. Which she was.
He knelt like a peasant. A scab on the complexion of society.
Which he was.
He held her gaze as he rose, shedding any traces of inferiority. Refusing to wear such a label. Not anymore. The struggle to get here had been too long and too hard.
Her eyes grew more blue and deep and shadowed as he straightened to his full height. He found himself resisting the urge to smile as they stood face-to-face. He’d forgotten she was so tall. She met his eyes with only the barest lift of her chin. And she impacted upon him with nothing more than turmoil and silence.
The same fascination accosted him that he’d suffered in France. He was instantly ensnared. If anything, her pull was stronger. Now he knew what it felt like to kiss her and touch her, to possess her and release all of himself into her. The power she had over him was deeply unsettling. Through air coated in layers of old carpet and must, his nostrils sought and found the hint of roses and oranges.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
That sweetly ambling voice of hers made him want to sit back and relax. “We need to talk.”
“I’m busy,” she said flatly, thumbing the face of her phone to check the time. “I have an interview.” She started to move around him, but he held out his hand.
It was enough to stop her. She very pointedly held herself back from accidentally brushing his arm.
Her aversion stung.
“I have to catch a bus,” she said stiffly.
Seeing her in this low-end building, using public transport, gave his conscience another yank. He had another reason for being here besides the possibility of pregnancy. He needed to know for sure. Was she really estranged from her father? Had he really crushed an innocent beneath his heel that day?
“I have your things in my car,” he said, “I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.”
“Mom’s pearls?” Her averted gaze flew to his, round and anxious. “Why didn’t you bring them in?”
“I saw you through the window as I was getting out. I thought—” That she might somehow escape him if he didn’t act fast to catch her here in the foyer. His actions had been pure reflex.
She figured out what he’d almost revealed. “We have nothing to say to each other, Roman,” she said tonelessly. “Just go out and get them. I’d like them back.”
“We do have to talk,” he asserted firmly, watching her for signs of evasion. When she only gave a firm shake of her head, refusing to look at him, he reminded her, “I didn’t use anything that day.”
Her expression blanked before comprehension dawned in a dark flood of color. Her jaw fell open, appalled. “I’m not pregnant!” she cried.
Someone down the hall opened a door and peeked out.
Melodie was scarlet with embarrassed anger. Her dismayed blue eyes glared into his as she folded her arms defensively, mouth pouted in humiliation. “I’m not.”
“Are you sure?” he challenged.
“Of course I am. But I’m stunned that you’ve tracked me down to ask. I assumed you’d been careless on purpose. When it comes to ruining a woman’s life, leaving her with an unplanned pregnancy is about as effective as it gets.”
That bludgeoned hard enough to knock him back a step.
“I wouldn’t do that.” He was deeply offended she would think him capable of such a coldhearted form of revenge. When she only lifted disinterested brows, he insisted, “I wouldn’t. I know too well what it’s like to be an unplanned baby. I’m here to take care of my child if I have one. Do I?”
* * *
“No,” Melodie insisted, forcing herself to meet his gaze even though it was very hard. She was telling the truth, but she didn’t want to see his sincerity or have empathy and understand him. She only wanted to put him and her grave error behind her.
But his being here, asking the question, affected her. She’d been relieved when things had cycled along as normal. Of course she’d been relieved. Yet a small part of her had suffered a wistful moment. A baby would have been a disaster, but it would have been family. Real family. The kind she could love.
Holding out a hand, she said, “Can you just give me my mother’s necklace?”
“There’s definitely no baby.”
“Definitely.”
He absorbed that with barely a twitch of his stoic expression before he jerked his head and held the door for her.
Dear Lord, he was handsome with those long, clean-shaven cheeks set off by his turned up collar, his mouth pursed in dismay, his short thick hair tossing in the bluster of wind that grabbed at them.
The fierce breeze yanked her bound hair and shot up her skirt to bite at her skin. She clenched her teeth and beelined for the limo at the curb.
He opened the back door himself. “What’s the address of where you’re going?”
“Don’t do me any favors, Roman. I’ll just take the necklace and go.”
“You’re refusing my help out of spite?”
“I’m protecting what’s left of my self-respect.” Her knees knocked as the blustering cold penetrated mercilessly. Teeth chattering, she held out her hand. “Pearls?”
“They’re right there. Get in. I have more to say.”
“To quote you, I don’t care.”
With an air of arrogant patience, he closed another button on his coat and set his back to the wind, adopting a stance of willingness to wait for the spring thaw.
“You won’t just hand them to me. You’re determined to make me miss my job interview. Look around. Getting me fired did nothing to my father,” she charged.
“I know that I misjudged you,” he snapped back. “But your father and brother are on the attack against me. That’s not up for dispute. It’s reality. And it’s not common knowledge that you’ve lived apart from them all these years. Given the way things looked in the funeral photos, it was an easy mistake to make.”
“I know,” she said with the same impatience. She could understand and almost forgive that part. She had plenty of unexpressed anger of her own toward her father and brother. “And I have no problem believing they stole from you.”
His brows went up a smidgen. “Not many would take my word for it.”
“Anton isn’t capable of writing his own email, let alone launching a high-tech start-up. I’ve always wondered how he managed it.” She smiled bitterly. “And I have a lot of experience with how low they can sink.”
His gaze sharpened and she dropped her own, shielding herself, unprepared to let him delve into all the anguish and fury roiling inside her.
“So get in.”
“No.”
“For God’s sake, why not?”
“Because I don’t trust you!”
His head went back and his expression grew carved and stoic. “I’m not going to touch you. I didn’t mean to sleep with you that day.”
“Oh, that’s funny,” she choked, trying to end that topic before it went any further. She was mortified he’d brought it up.
“It’s the truth,” he shot back, his energy like a living thing that whipped and raced on the tail of the wind, lashing her with its force. He was tense. Very tense as he confronted her, as if he was willing her to believe him. It was weirdly fascinating.
She tore her gaze away, not wanting to get caught up in trying to decipher the truth from his lies. Not wanting to hear excuses and let down her guard. He’d already gotten past her defenses too easily, setting her back so she was as naked and defenseless as she’d been that day. It wasn’t him she mistrusted, but herself.
She ought to be able to shut him out the way she had with her father and Anton. Roman meant nothing to her. Less than nothing. As bitter as she was toward her father and half brother, she went days, weeks even, without thinking of them, but no such luck with Roman. He was top of her mind every day, ambushing her with memories of kisses and caresses and wrenching pleasure.
She swallowed, not wanting the recollections to surface now.
