CHAPTER NINE

      RAOUL HAD GROWN up in New York, but he didn’t care for it. Too many dark memories. The climate didn’t help, always socked in with rain or buried in snow or suffocatingly humid with summer heat. The place forced on him a heavy feeling of a weight inside him that he couldn’t shift.

      He was already struggling with that when he paused on his way into a meeting and instructed the receptionist to interrupt him if Sirena called.

      “Ms. Abbott? I thought she’d left the company! How is she?” The woman’s warmth and interest were sincere.

      His blunt “Fine” was rude. And a lie. He’d left the house before he’d seen her this morning, but he knew from the way Sirena had blanched last night that she was not fine. He almost suspected she was injured in a way he hadn’t considered.

      Brooding while he half listened to his engineers develop a workback schedule, he did some math. He hadn’t added everything together since their talk over drinks that night by the pool because he’d been distracted by other revelations, but if it was true she hadn’t dated after that boy in college, she’d had exactly one lover since her first, ill-fated relationship.

      Him.

      ...sex isn’t that mindless for me. I need feelings on both sides.

      The way she’d practically grabbed the voice bubble from the air and gobbled it back indicated pretty clearly that she’d never meant to admit that to him. Which made it disturbingly sincere.

      Of course, I’m given to self-deception, she’d added to cover up, but that only made him grind his teeth, wondering if he was as well. Despite her motives for stealing unfolding into a picture of a woman who hadn’t believed he’d help if she asked, he’d never wavered from believing she’d slept with him to cover up what she’d done.

      He needed to believe it. Anything else was too uncomfortable. He wasn’t a womanizer. He didn’t take advantage of the vulnerable. He didn’t lead women on.

      She hadn’t expected one hookup to be a marriage proposal, she’d said, but had expected to be treated with respect.

      At the time of their affair, he’d been way past respect into genuine liking. Affection. Something deeper he’d never contemplated letting himself feel.

      God, when he thought back to how those twenty-four hours had gone, it was like another lifetime. The sweetness of her, the relief of finally giving in to touching her, the powerful release that had shaken him to the core...

      The doors opening inside him, a sensation like footsteps invading the well-guarded depths of his soul. Even as their damp, half-clothed bodies had been trembling in ecstasy, he’d crashed back to the reality of what they’d just done. Whom he’d done it with. How vulnerable he felt.

      His inner panels had lit up with alarm signals. While Sirena’s plump lips had grazed his throat, he’d been withdrawing, deeply aware of a sense of jeopardy. His father hadn’t killed himself because he’d fallen for his secretary. He’d killed himself because he’d fallen. In love. Deep emotions drove men to desperate acts.

      What he’d felt for Sirena in those loaded minutes of sensual closeness had scared the hell out of him.

      He’d pulled away, said something about the rain having stopped. By the time he’d dropped her at her building and returned to his own, he’d been primed for a reason, any reason, to knock her so far away from him she’d never reach him again.

      And he had.

      ...Even my stepmother didn’t go that far to hurt me.

      Rather than killing himself, he’d destroyed what had been growing between them.

      It was a sickening, horrid vision of himself. He lurched to his feet, needing to escape his own pathetic weakness, but only drew the attention of the room.

      “Problem, sir?” The group stood back to look between him and the Smart Board where the schedule could have been written in Sanskrit for all the sense it made.

      “I have to make a call,” he lied, and strode through the maze of cubicles clattering with keyboard strikes into his office. It contained two desks, one that was a bold, masculine statement and the other a stylish work space that, for a time, had been the first place he glanced. Now it stood as a monument to his colossal overreaction.

      He rubbed his face, hating to feel this tortured, this guilty. The fact remained, she had stolen from him, he reminded himself.

      But he hadn’t lashed out at her for that. She’d angered him, yes, but her real crime had been moving him in the first place. Sirena had dared to penetrate walls nobody else had dared breach.

      Lust isn’t caring.

      No, it wasn’t, but what he felt wasn’t mere lust.

      * * *

      Sirena was grateful that Raoul had left for the office before she rose. Of course, she was also hypocrite enough to miss him despite her chagrin over her revelation last night. There was also envy and disgruntlement that he still worked in one of the many dynamic, ever-changing offices she had loved so much. Who had taken her place? She hated her usurper on principle.

      Chatting with Beatrisa, hearing stories of Raoul’s childhood became a nice distraction from her muddled emotions.

      When he returned unexpectedly at lunch, it was with a surprise: tickets to a matinee. “Musicals aren’t my speed. I’ll stay with Lucy. You ladies have fun.”

      It was an incredible treat, the sort of thing Sirena used to wish for every time they visited New York, but had never found time or funds for. Afterward they had tea and scones in a glitzy