скачать книгу бесплатно
Artem narrowed his gaze at her. “So you mentioned.”
Ophelia nodded. She wasn’t sure she could manage to say anything without her voice betraying her. Because the more she tried to convince him that she didn’t want to sleep with him, the more she actually wanted to. Assuming it was possible to want two very contradictory things at the same time.
But apparently he did not want to sleep with her, which was fine. No, not merely fine. It was good. She should be relieved.
Then why did she feel so utterly bereft?
“Now that we’ve established how ardently opposed we both are to having sex with one another—” His gaze flitted ever so briefly to her breasts, or maybe she only imagined it, since her nipples felt sensitive to the point of pain every time he looked at her “—perhaps you should show me your designs.”
Her designs. The very reason she’d come here in the first place. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. “Yes, of course.”
He motioned toward the sleek, dark table in the center of the room. Ophelia opened her portfolio and carefully arranged her sketches, aware of his eyes on her the entire time. She felt every glance down to her core.
He picked up the first of her four large pages of bristol paper. “What do we have here?”
She took a deep breath. This is it. Try not to blow it any more than you already have. “Those are a collection of rings. I call them ballerina diamonds.”
The subtlest of smiles came to his lips. “Ballerina diamonds? Why is that?”
“Each ring has a large center stone. See? That stone represents the dancer. The baguettes surrounding the center diamond are designed to give the appearance of a ballerina’s tutu.” She gestured around her waist, as if she were wearing one of the stiff classical tutus that she once wore onstage.
“I see.” He nodded.
She allowed herself to exhale while he studied her drawings. She hadn’t realized how exposed she would feel watching him go over her designs. These pieces of jewelry were personal to her. Deeply personal. They allowed her to keep a connection to her old self, her former life, in the only way she could.
She wanted him to love them just as much as she did, especially since no one in the design department at Drake Diamonds would even agree to meet with her.
“These are lovely, Miss Rose,” he said. “Quite lovely.”
“Thank you.”
“What do we have here? A tiara? It almost looks familiar.” He picked up the final page, the one she was the most nervous for him to see.
“That’s intentional. It’s a modernized version of the tiara that once held the Drake Diamond.”
He grew very still at the mention of the infamous jewel.
Ophelia continued, “As you know, the original tiara was worn by Natalia Baronova. My collection calls for the stone to be reset in a new tiara that would honor the original one. I think it would draw a great number of people to the store. Don’t you?”
He returned the sketch to the stack of papers and nodded, but Ophelia couldn’t help but notice that his smile had faded.
“Mr. Drake...”
“Call me Artem,” he said. “After all, we did nearly sleep together.”
He winked, and once again Ophelia wished the floor of his lavish penthouse would open up and swallow her whole.
She cleared her throat. “I want to apologize. You’ve been nothing but kind to me, and I jumped to conclusions. It’s just that I was involved with someone at work once before, and it was a mistake. A big mistake. But I shouldn’t have assumed...”
Stop talking.
She was making things worse. But she wanted to be given a chance so badly that she was willing to lay everything on the line.
“Ophelia,” he said, and she loved the way her name sounded rolling off his tongue. Like music. “Stop apologizing. Please.”
She nodded, but she wasn’t quite finished explaining. She wanted him to understand. She needed him to, although she wasn’t sure why. “It’s just that I don’t do that.”
He angled his head. “What, exactly?”
“Relationships.” Heat crawled up her neck and settled in the vicinity of her cheeks. “Sex.”
Artem lifted a brow. “Never?”
“Never,” she said firmly. “I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just not something I do.” Since my diagnosis...
Maybe she should tell him. Maybe she should just spill the beans and let him know she was sick, and that’s why she’d been so adamant about not adopting the kitten. It was why she would never allow herself to sleep with him. Or anyone else. Not that she’d really wanted to...until now. Today. In this room. With him.
She should tell him. Didn’t she have an obligation to be honest with her employer? To tell the truth?
Except then he’d know. He’d know everything, and he wouldn’t look at her anymore the way he was looking at her now. Not like she was something to be fixed. Not like she was someone who was broken. But like she was beautiful.
She needed a man to look at her like that again. Not just any man, she realized with a pang. This man. Artem.
He gazed at her for a long, silent moment, as if weighing her words. When he finally spoke, his tone was measured. Serious. “A woman needs to be adored, Ophelia. She needs to be cherished, worshipped.” His gaze dropped to her mouth, and she forgot how to breathe. “Touched.”
And, oh, God, he was right. She’d never in her life needed so badly to be touched. Her body arched toward him, like a hothouse orchid bending toward the light of the sun. She wrapped her arms around herself, in desperate need of some kind of barrier.
“Especially a woman like you,” he whispered, his eyes going dark again.
She swallowed. “A woman like me?”
Sick? Lonely?
“Beautiful,” he whispered, and reached to cup her cheek with his hand.
It was the most innocent of touches, but at that first brush of Artem Drake’s skin against hers, Ophelia knew she was in trouble.
So very much trouble.
Chapter Four (#u480fde13-6669-5c69-acd7-44a4a02c15ad)
It took Dalton less than a minute to confirm what Artem already knew.
“These designs are exceptional.” Dalton bent over the round conference table in the corner of their father’s office—now Artem’s office—to get a closer look at Ophelia’s sketches. “Whose work did you say this was?”
Artem shifted in his chair. “Ophelia Rose.”
Even the simple act of saying her name awakened his senses. He was restless, uncomfortably aroused, while doing nothing but sitting across the table from his brother looking at Ophelia’s sketches. He experienced this nonsensical reaction every time she crossed his mind. It was becoming a problem. A big one.
He’d tried to avoid this scenario. Or any scenario that would put the two of them in a room together again. He really had. After their electrically charged meeting in his suite at the Plaza ten days ago, he’d kept to himself as much as possible. He’d barely stuck his head out of his office, despite the fact that every minute he spent between those wood-paneled walls, it seemed as though his father’s ghost was breathing down his neck. It was less than pleasant, to say the least. It had also been the precise reason he’d chosen to meet Ophelia in his suite to begin with.
He’d needed to get out. Away from the store, away from the portrait of his father that hung behind his desk.
Away from the prying eyes of his brother and the rest of the staff, most notably his secretary, who’d been his dad’s assistant for more than a decade before Artem had “inherited” her.
Not that he’d done anything wrong. Ophelia was an employee. There was no reason whatsoever why he shouldn’t meet with her behind closed doors. Doing so didn’t mean there was anything between them other than a professional relationship. Pure business. He hadn’t crossed any imaginary boundary line.
Yet.
He’d wanted to. God, how he’d wanted to. But he hadn’t, and he wouldn’t. Even if keeping that promise to himself meant that he was chained to his desk from now on. He needed to be able to look at himself in the mirror and know that he hadn’t become the thing he most despised.
His dad.
Of course, there was the matter of the cat. Artem supposed animal adoption wasn’t part of the ordinary course of business. But he could justify that to himself easily enough. Like he’d said, the kitten had been an early Christmas bonus. A little unconventional, perhaps, but not entirely inappropriate.
If he’d tried to deny that he wanted her, he’d have been struck down by a bolt of lightning. Wanting Ophelia didn’t even begin to cover it. He craved her. He needed her. His interest in her went beyond the physical. Beneath her strong exterior, there was a sadness about her that he couldn’t help but identify with. Her melancholy intrigued him, touched a part of him he seldom allowed himself to acknowledge.
Any and all doubt about how badly he needed to touch her had evaporated the moment she’d told him that she didn’t allow herself the pleasure of sexual companionship. Why would she share something so intimate with him? Even more important, why couldn’t he stop thinking about it?
Since their conversation, he’d thought of little else.
Something was holding her back. She’d been hurt somehow, and now she thought she was broken beyond repair. She wasn’t. She was magic. Hope lived in her skin. She just didn’t know it yet. But Artem did. He saw it in the porcelain promise of her graceful limbs. He’d felt it in the way she’d shivered at his touch.
If he’d indeed crossed a forbidden line, it had been the moment he’d reached out and cupped her face. Something electric had passed between them then. There’d been no denying it, which was undoubtedly why she’d promptly gathered her coat and fled.
Artem had made a mistake, but it could have been worse. Far worse. The list of things he’d wanted to do to her in that hotel room while the snow beat against the windows had been endless. He’d exercised more restraint than he’d known he’d possessed. The very idea of a woman like Ophelia remaining untouched was criminal.
Regardless, it wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t. And since he could no longer trust himself to have a simple conversation with Ophelia without burying his hands in her wayward hair and kissing her pink peony mouth until she came apart in his hands, he would just avoid her altogether. It was the best way. The only way.
There was just one flaw with that plan. Ophelia’s jewelry designs were good. Too good to ignore. Drake Diamonds needed her, possibly as much as Artem did.
“Ophelia Rose?” Dalton frowned. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Because she works here,” Artem said. “In Engagements.”
Dalton waved a hand at the sketches of what she’d called her ballerina diamonds. “She can do this, and we’ve got her working in sales?”
“You have her working in sales.” After all, Artem hadn’t had a thing to do with hiring her. “I’d like to move her to the design team, effective immediately. I’ve been going over the numbers. If we can fast-track the production of a new collection, we might be able to reverse some of the financial damage that Dad did when he bought the mine.”
Some. Not all.
If only they had more time...
“Provided it’s a success, of course,” Dalton said. “It’s a risk.”
“That it is.” But what choice did they have? He’d already investigated auctioning off the Drake Diamond. Even if he went through with it, they needed another course of action. A proactive one that would show the world Drake Diamonds wasn’t in any kind of trouble, especially not the sort of trouble they were actually in.
Over the course of the past ten days, while Artem had been actively trying to forget Ophelia, he’d been doing his level best to come up with a way to overcome the mine disaster. It had been an effective distraction. Almost.
Time and again, he’d found himself coming back to Ophelia’s designs, running his hands along those creamy-white pages of cold-press drawing paper. Obviously, given the attraction he felt toward Ophelia, promoting her was the last thing he should do. Right now, he could move about the store and still manage to keep a chaste distance between them. Working closely with her was hardly an ideal option.
Unfortunately, it happened to be the only option.
“Let’s do it,” Dalton said.
In the shadow of his father’s portrait, Artem nodded his agreement.
* * *
Ten days had passed since Ophelia had shown Artem her jewelry designs. Ten excruciating days, during which she’d seen him coming and going, passing her in the hall, scarcely acknowledging her presence. He’d barely even deigned to look at her. On the rare occasion when he did, he’d seemed to see right through her. And morning after morning, he kept showing up on Page Six. A different day, a different woman on his arm. It was a never-ending cycle. The man went through women like water.
Which made it all the more frustrating that every time Ophelia closed her eyes, she heard his voice. And all those bewitching things he’d said to her.
A woman needs to be adored, Ophelia. She needs to be cherished, worshipped.
Touched.
Ophelia had even begun to wonder if maybe he was right. Maybe she did need those things. Maybe the ache she felt every time she found herself in the company of Artem Drake was real. It certainly felt real. Every electrifying spark of arousal had shimmered as real as a blazing blue diamond.
Then she’d remembered the look on Jeremy’s face when she’d told him about her diagnosis—the small, sad shake of his head, the way he couldn’t quite meet her gaze. There’d been no need for him to tell her their affair was over. He’d done so, anyway.
Ophelia had sat quietly on the opposite side of his desk, barely hearing him murmur things like, too much, burden and not ready for this. The gravity of his words hadn’t even registered until later, when she’d left his office.
Because for the duration of Jeremy’s breakup speech, all Ophelia’s concentration had been focused on not looking at the framed poster on the wall behind him—the company’s promotional poster for the Giselle production, featuring Ophelia herself standing en pointe, draped in ethereal white tulle, clutching a lily. She wasn’t sure if it was poetic or cruel that her final role had been the ghost of a woman who’d died of a broken heart.
That was exactly how she’d felt for the past six months. Like a ghost of a woman. Invisible. Untouchable.
But when Artem had said those things to her, when he’d reached out and cupped her face, everything had changed. His touch had somehow summoned her from the grave.
She’d embodied Giselle’s resurrected spirit dancing in the pale light of the moon, without so much as slipping her foot into a ballet shoe. Her body felt more alive than it ever had before. Liquid warmth pooled in her center. Delicious heat danced through every nerve ending in her body, from the top of her head to the tips of her pointed toes. She’d been inflamed. Utterly enchanted. If she’d dared open her mouth to respond, her heart would have leaped up her throat and fallen right at Artem’s debonair feet.
So she’d done the only thing she could do. The smart thing, the right thing. She’d run.
She’d simply turned around and bolted right out the door of his posh Plaza penthouse. She hadn’t even bothered to collect her designs, those intricate colored pencil sketches she’d labored over for months.
She needed to get them back. She would get them back. Just as soon as she could bring herself to face Artem again. As soon as she could forget him. Clearly, he’d forgotten about her.
That’s what you wanted. Remember?
“Miss Rose?”
Ophelia looked up from the glass case where she’d been carefully aligning rows of platinum engagement rings against a swath of Drake-blue satin. Artem’s secretary, the one who’d given her the instructions to meet him at the Plaza a week and a half ago, stood on the other side, hands crossed primly in front of her.
Ophelia swallowed and absolutely forbade herself to fantasize that she was being summoned to the hotel again. “Yes?”
“Mr. Drake has requested a word with you.”
A rebellious flutter skittered up Ophelia’s thighs. She cleared her throat. “Now?”
