More Than A Vow: Vows of Revenge / After Their Vows / Vows Made in Secret. Michelle ReidЧитать онлайн книгу.
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