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“When I returned from auditing the Mediterranean line five years ago, I caught Tara leaving Dad’s suite.”
Mitch swore. “Not again.”
“Yes, again.” Tara hadn’t been the first of Rand’s lovers to end up in his father’s bed, but she had been the only one Rand had given a damn about.
Had Everett pursued Tara or had Tara done the chasing? Either was a betrayal, but which was the most egregious? Tara’s, Rand decided, because he expected no less from his father.
Rand stood and crossed to the windows to stare out at the blue-green water thirty stories below. “I was sick of his games, sick of him coveting everything and everyone I possessed. I didn’t want to put you or Nadia in the middle. So I left.”
“I was always in the middle, Rand, like a referee in a prize fight. But Tara was fair territory. You’d dumped her. Hell, I even considered asking her out. You have to admit she’s smart and easy on the eyes.”
Every muscle in Rand’s body clenched. He spun and faced his brother with his fists ready. The challenge on Mitch’s face dared him to argue. Rand couldn’t. The moment he’d ended his affair with Tara he’d lost whatever temporary claim he had on her. Having no ties to her had been his choice. And it had been the right decision—the only decision—given the Kincaid history with women.
So why had seeing her with his father sucker punched him? And why did the idea of Tara with Mitch make him want to hit something?
Because she’d claimed she loved you.
And for a split second that night in her bed five years ago when she’d been spinning her fairy tale, Rand had believed her, and he’d wanted the life she’d described. Until he’d remembered who he was. What he was. A bastard who let people down. Just like his old man. He’d remembered what loving Everett Kincaid had done to his mother, and what loving Rand had done to Serita. He’d known he couldn’t risk that with Tara.
And then he had recalled how his mother had told him she loved him minutes before peeling out in his father’s prized ‘69 Jaguar XKE and plowing it into a tree at a hundred miles per hour. He’d remembered that Serita had called him on the phone and said the same words either right before or right after swallowing a bottle of pills. Had she intended those to be her final words?
But the joke had been on him. While he’d been agonizing over whether or not to risk loving Tara and letting her love him, Tara had moved on.
“Chasing Tara would have been a waste of time anyway,” Mitch said, interrupting Rand’s thoughts. “She still had it bad for you.”
“Not so bad if she turned to Dad three weeks after we broke up.”
“Whatever. Being second string to my big brother was a position I was tired of playing. I wasn’t going after your girl.” Mitch’s bitterness came through loud and clear.
“She wasn’t mine and you were never second string. You were the golden child who could do no wrong.”
For a moment Mitch stared silently then he shook his head. “Why do you think Dad pushed you so hard, Rand? It was because he knew I idolized my big brother, and I’d have to raise my game to keep up with the standards you set. And you always aimed for perfection.”
An invisible band tightened around Rand’s chest. Mitch had idolized him and Rand had let him down by walking out and hauling himself to the other side of the country to nurse his wounded ego. “He yanked both our chains.”
Mitch nodded. “Dad was a master manipulator. He had ways of getting what he wanted from each of us. He pushed and goaded you because you thrived on the competition. He was more devious with me because I never let him know when he’d pushed my buttons.”
Rand cursed. How had he missed that?
Because you were too busy butting heads with the ol’ man and too busy blaming him for being such an ass your mother would rather be dead than married to him.
And too busy hating yourself for being just like him. Selfish. Self-absorbed. Unable to love a woman the way she deserved to be loved.
Mitch stood. “It’s against company policy to fraternize with a direct subordinate. Tara was as out of bounds for Dad then as she is for you now. Don’t set us up for a sexual harassment law suit.”
His brother would crack a rib laughing if he knew the price for Tara’s participation was stud service. Rand ignored the rebuke and asked, “Since when did our father play by the rules?”
Mitch’s gaze shifted to the trio of potted trees Tara had positioned in the corner to keep the late afternoon sun’s blinding rays from creating a glare on Rand’s computer screen. “Yeah.”
The tone of that single word sent a prickle of unease creeping up the back of Rand’s neck. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Mitch?”
“I have everything under control. You need to make sure this thing between you and Tara doesn’t turn sour. If you piss her off and she leaves before the end of the year—”
“She won’t.” He’d do everything in his power to make sure she didn’t. He hated someone else holding the cards, calling the shots and controlling the outcomes. That wasn’t his style. He liked having the upper hand. But the ridiculous terms of the will had him handcuffed, and for the time being Tara held the key. “At the end of the year KCL will be yours and Nadia’s.”
“What about you?”
For the first time in his life, Rand realized he didn’t have a long-term plan. He hadn’t thought beyond fulfilling his duty and not letting his father screw Nadia and Mitch out of their inheritance. He hadn’t thought beyond beating his father at his own game.
Would there be a place for him at KCL?
Did he want to spend the rest of his life walking in his father’s shoes?
He didn’t have the answers.
“We’ll table that discussion for now. We have work to do. I want Nadia’s replacement chosen by the end of business today.” He tapped the résumés on his desk. “One of these applicants has every quality we’re looking for—if she survives the interview.”
Mitch looked ready to argue, but Rand preempted him by pressing the speaker button. “Tara, please send the first candidate through to the boardroom.”
“Yes, sir.” Her snippy reply told him his apology hadn’t totally placated her. He shouldn’t care. He’d done what he had to do to make sure she knew she wouldn’t fool him this time.
Tara Anthony was a complication he didn’t need. Come hell, high water or hurt feelings he would keep his objectivity. Emotional distance was the key to surviving this year of playing house with a woman determined to land herself a rich husband.
He had plenty of practice with meaningless, no-strings sex. It was the only kind he’d ever allowed himself to have. He never got sucked in to his lovers’ lives. They came together, satisfied each other’s physical needs, then went their separate ways when the chemistry burned out.
This affair wouldn’t be any different. He wouldn’t let it.
“Waiting up for me?”
Rand’s hard voice startled Tara. She pressed a hand over her jolted heart and spun around. He stood in the open door of the dining room—the door she’d kept firmly closed for a year. His narrowed eyes pinned her in place.
“You startled me.” Belatedly she remembered her tears and quickly turned back to her boxes.
“Tara?”
Ignoring the question in his voice, she swiped her face then snatched up the packaging tape and concentrated on stretching a long, sticky strip across the box’s flaps. “I thought you were working late. You said it would take you half the night to go through the information I compiled on each of KCL’s brands’ executives, and you wanted to be familiar with each employee’s history before the cocktail party tomorrow night.”
He’d told—no, ordered—her to eat dinner without him and not to wait up. After the way he’d hurt her feelings and angered her with his nasty remark this morning, she’d been happy to have time alone. She hadn’t even been able to escape him at lunch because he’d insisted she join him, Mitch and Julie, the newly hired director of shared services, for lunch at a South Beach Thai restaurant.
Her plan to regain what she and Rand had once had was on shaky ground because she couldn’t get past his anger and distrust. She’d lost hope this morning after their ugly confrontation, and she needed to regroup and rethink her plan.
Maybe … maybe this new bitter version of Rand wasn’t a man she could love.
Her fingers tightened on the tape dispenser and the serrated edge dug into her flesh. Exhaling, she made a conscious effort to relax her grip before she drew blood.
She could hear the sound of Rand’s footsteps cross the hardwood floor. He stopped just behind her right shoulder. His scent and warmth reached out to her, and she had to fight the urge to turn and lay her head against his chest. Tonight had been hard, like saying goodbye to her mother all over again. But she’d known it would be. That’s why she’d avoided this task so long.
“Why are you packing? You can’t leave. You signed a contract.”
“I’m packing up my mother’s things. It’s something I should have done a long time ago.”
She chanced a peek at him from under her lashes. His green and gold eyes searched her face, then scanned the room, taking in the portable toilet, wheelchair and walker and the bedroom suite from Tara’s old apartment.
When her mother could no longer climb the stairs, Tara had done her best to make her comfortable in this makeshift bedroom. Her mom had gone downhill fast in her last six months. She’d barely left this room except to be wheeled to doctors’ appointments. She’d spent most of her time in Tara’s wicker rocking chair in front of the bay window overlooking the back garden.
“She was handicapped?”
“She was dying. Lung cancer. Too many years of smoking.”
His impenetrable mask softened a little. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. But it’s time to move on. She wouldn’t want me to keep this stuff when it could benefit someone else. It would have been cheaper to rent the medical equipment instead of buying it, but renting seemed like …” Her throat closed, burned. She stopped, swallowed, inhaled and then tried again. “Renting seemed like admitting it would only be a matter of time before I had to turn it back in. I wasn’t ready … to give up.”
He studied her long and hard, then glanced at the door and rocked on the balls of his feet as if he wanted to leave. Instead he sank back on his heels, shoved his hands in his pockets and inhaled deeply. “You never mentioned her illness when we were together.”
“She hadn’t been diagnosed then. That came … after … us.” One moment Tara had been wallowing in heartache and woe-is-me, and the next her world had turned upside down.
Rand had been working overseas when she’d received the news, and with the ugly way he’d ended things, calling him hadn’t been an option.
Forget it. There is no us. We have no future. I won’t marry you or father your children. It was sex, Tara. Nothing more.
She’d had no one to turn to except the doctors, whose faces and prognoses had been grim. Panic had set in. She’d been so afraid of losing her mother and of the misery, surgeries and chemo her mother had ahead of her. The day after Tara had found out, she’d broken down in her office at KCL. Everett had whisked her to Kincaid Manor, where she’d poured out her fears.
And then Tara had failed her mother by refusing the one lifeline they’d been offered. Shame scalded her cheeks and weighted her shoulders.
She pushed back the pain and checked her watch. After ten. “I didn’t realize it was so late. Have you eaten? I could fix something.”
“I ate. Did you?” He indicated the boxes stacked in the corner with a nod. “Looks like you’ve been at this for a while.”
“I … no, I haven’t eaten. I … couldn’t.”
“You have to eat, Tara.”
Her stomach seconded his opinion by growling loudly. “I’ll grab something later. I’m almost finished.”
She lifted another empty box from the floor to the mattress.
Rand laid his warm palm over the back of her hand, stilling her movements. “Take a break.”
Her pulse did a quickstep, but despite her body’s involuntary reaction, the idea of being intimate with him after what he’d said earlier today about sharing her with Mitch repelled her. As she suspected he’d intended his comment to.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I, um … don’t need you tonight. So you can … go to bed. Good night.”
His gaze held hers for a long moment. “Despite six months working in a ship’s galley, I’m not a whiz in the kitchen. But I won’t poison you. I’ll scramble some eggs and make toast.”
Why was he being nice after being so hateful this morning? She couldn’t understand him. She bent her head and flicked a fingernail on the box flap. “You don’t have to cook for me.”
“Tara.” He waited until she looked at him. His jaw shifted as if he were grinding his teeth. “You won’t be any good to me tomorrow if you don’t fuel up tonight.”
She snapped her shoulders back. So much for believing his compassion was altruistic. “I’ll manage.”
“Is that how you lost the weight? By starving yourself? Get your butt in the kitchen,” he ordered, then yanked the box from her hand.
She held her ground. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I don’t want you to be a liability.”
“You don’t want me period.” She grimaced and bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to let that slip. So much for holding onto her pride.
He caught her chin with his fingers before she could duck again. “I don’t want to want you. That’s a whole different story. Now get in there and sit down. I’ll help you pack after you eat. Two of us will knock it out faster than one.”
Emotion squeezed her chest and stung her eyes at this unexpected glimpse of the man she’d fallen for five years ago. Rand had always claimed to be hard-hearted and self-serving, but she’d seen past the facade to the man he’d tried so hard to hide. He might be a ruthless businessman, but no matter how many times he denied it, Rand Kincaid cared about others.
She studied his face. His lips were so close, his eyes so intense. He’d been a gentle and unselfish lover who’d coaxed her past her shyness and taught her about pleasure, about her own body. A less generous man wouldn’t have bothered. She wanted to cradle his stubble-shadowed jaw and hurl herself in his arms.
Tonight proved the man she remembered, the one she’d loved, was still in there. Somewhere. All she had to do was draw him out.
Her waning hopes rebounded. All wasn’t lost. And to borrow another of Tara’s famous last words, tomorrow was another day.
And this time she wasn’t giving up without a fight.
Five
“Could you hold me? Just for a minute?”
Tara’s quiet question turned the dining room colder than a ship’s freezer. Rand’s muscles froze and his brain screamed, No. Hell no. Don’t fall for her tricks.
But over the past hour of packing her mother’s belongings she’d confused the hell out of him. Had she really been fighting to hide her tears and quivering bottom lip from him, or had she been giving the performance of a lifetime, letting him see just enough bogus pain to suck him in? Because her quiet, solitary grief had been so convincing she’d almost choked him up.
If she was really hurting and not acting, then a simple hug wasn’t too much to ask. From anyone other than him.
But he owed her. She’d busted her butt at the office, doing more work in three days than most assistants could accomplish in three weeks. She hadn’t complained once about the staggering workload involved in getting him up-to-date on the company, the twelve-hour days or the lack of breaks. She’d simply had snacks and drinks sent up from the cafeteria.
He flexed his fingers, knowing what he needed to do, what he ought to do, and dreading it. He opened his arms. Tara fell against him. The soft thud of her body hit him like a freight train. He reluctantly encircled her with his arms. Reminding himself this could be an act to lure him into her trap, he tried hard to stay detached, tried to ignore her scent, her softness, her heat.
But indifference was nearly impossible when he could feel her breaths hitching, could feel the tension in her rigid body as she fought to maintain control. Or faked it.
Warmth seeped through his shirt. Tears. The dampness spread across his chest and her body trembled against his.
He didn’t do crying women.
This was exactly the kind of emotionally charged situation he avoided with his lovers. Normally he’d have been long gone by now. Watching Tara hug a sweater or a book or some other trinket to her chest and then carefully sort each item into boxes had brought back memories he’d rather not revisit. Memories of the Kincaid staff packing away his mother’s possessions after her death.
Rand had wanted to keep his mother’s favorite scarf, the one that smelled like her. His father had ripped it from Rand’s hands with a terse, “What are you, a pansy-boy? Go to your room.”
All Rand had wanted was a tangible memory of his mother. Hell, he’d been fourteen and drowning in the guilt of not being able to keep her from driving. Rand had known his mother was drunk and angry with his father about another woman. He’d known because she’d always ranted to Rand when his father screwed around.
Confidant wasn’t a good role for a kid, and Rand blamed his selfish, immoral ass of a father for putting him in that unenviable position. But Rand hadn’t argued. He’d been terrified his father would find out his role in not preventing his mother’s death and kick him out.
By the time Rand had been allowed out of his room every trace of his mother had been removed from the house. Not even Nadia had been allowed to keep any of their mother’s things.
He stuffed down the memories and sat on the mattress of the mechanical hospital-style bed, pulling Tara between his thighs. Every effort had been made to turn this room into a comfortable bedroom, but not even Tara’s old headboard bolted to the wall could make this anything less than it was. An invalid’s room.
He recognized the furniture from his affair with Tara, and memories flooded him. Memories of hot sex and of the playful bondage games involving that headboard. Memories that made him granite hard.
He shifted, hoping Tara would pull it together and break up the snuggle party. “You okay?”
She nodded and sniffed. And moved closer. Close enough that her hair tickled his chin and her scent filled his lungs. Close enough that her breasts pressed his chest and her mound nudged his inner thigh. Her heat burned him. And turned him on.
He moved to ease the pressure against his growing erection by leaning back on the pillows propped against the headboard and stretching out his leg. But Tara crawled into the bed with him and settled beside him. Her hips and legs aligned with his, and she rested her cheek on his chest. She wiggled even closer, reminding him she’d always been the cuddly type.
She was the only lover he’d ever lingered with, but in limited doses. More was risky.
So was this.
He wanted up. And out. Of this room. Of this house. Of this state.
This wasn’t part of their agreement. He couldn’t trust her.
The hardening flesh beneath his fly reminded him he couldn’t trust himself, either.
“It’s like sa-saying goo-goodbye again,” she whispered brokenly before he could turn his thoughts into action and peel her off. “It’s just so … ha-hard.” The raw pain in her voice sounded genuine.
But then he’d been taken in by Tara’s lies before.
Rand awkwardly patted her back, but said nothing. He didn’t want to encourage any tearful reminiscences.
Tara’s little gasping breaths eventually slowed and the fist on his chest relaxed. The tension eased from her body on a long sigh and she sank like a dead weight on his left shoulder.
Had she fallen asleep?
Oh, hell. Why hadn’t he run the minute she’d turned those big blue wounded eyes on him?
Why hadn’t he gone to bed earlier when she’d told him to instead of insisting she eat?
His arm tingled with pins and needles and started going numb. He stared at the dining room ceiling, at the chandelier hanging on a shortened chain above the bed.
He should wake her or at the very least dump her on her pink sheets and leave her.
But he remained immobile. He’d give her a few more minutes. If she was exhausted, it was because he’d worked her flat out this week. Once she rested she’d have more control over her messy emotions and be less likely to have another meltdown.
If the meltdown was real.
She might be looking for a rich guy to make her future easier, but the contradictions between gold digger, hard worker and a woman who grieved for her mother nagged him like a puzzle with a missing piece.
Minutes ticked past. He didn’t know how many because he couldn’t see his watch and there were no clocks in the room. His lids grew heavy. He rested his chin on her crown and let the flowery scent of her shampoo fill his nostrils with every breath. She still used the same brand. It pissed him off that he recognized it.
Getting caught up in a woman’s Hallmark moments screwed with his detachment.
But he owed Tara tonight. Just tonight. For going above and beyond the call of duty. For giving KCL a year of her life. If she continued at the pace she’d been working, she’d be a bargain—even at the outlandish salary he was paying her.
But he had to make damn sure he didn’t make a fool of himself over her again.
“It’s 5:00 a.m. Why are you up?” Rand growled from the kitchen entry Thursday morning.
Startled, Tara looked up from the newspaper. “Good morning. If you’re determined to get an early start every day, then I might as well join you. We can carpool and conserve gas.”
Judging by his scowl that was the last thing he wanted to hear from her. “You won’t get overtime for going in early.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t ask for it. I made huevos rancheros. Is that still your favorite?”
Not that they’d ever had breakfast together. Rand had never hung around long enough. But he’d mentioned it once. Funny how she’d remembered, but back then she’d hung on his every word.
His jaw shifted. “I told you, no playing house.”
Was he cranky because they’d spent half the night in her mother’s bed? When a bad dream had jolted Tara awake shortly after three she’d been shocked to find herself in Rand’s arms. He’d released her, risen without a word and gone upstairs as if he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.
“It’s just breakfast, Rand. Eat and drink your coffee and then we can go. I’ll fill you in on the arrangements for tonight’s cocktail and dinner party on the way to the office.”
“I’ll take breakfast to go. You can fill me in later—when you come in at nine.”
“I haven’t come in later than eight one single day this week and you know it.” She couldn’t help pointing out that fact. “But have it your way. The resealable containers are in the cabinet to the left of the dishwasher, and the disposable forks are in the bottom drawer.”
After filling a travel mug with coffee and packing the huevos rancheros, he paused by the table and scowled down at her. “If you think this sharing-and-morning-coffee routine is what I want, you’re mistaken. You’re better off sticking to the sex. At least I enjoyed that.”
The old Tara would have let that comment pass, but the new Tara was turning over a new leaf. She was stronger and bolder now. Strong and bold enough to fight for what she wanted, and last night only reinforced her belief that Rand Kincaid was the man she wanted.
“But you didn’t enjoy it. Why is that?”
His chin snapped up. “Because I couldn’t help wondering if you’d cried out my father’s name when you came the way you did mine.”
She flinched at the unexpected lash of pain. “How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t sleep with Everett.”