She held his gaze and forced a lackadaisical smile even though her nerves stretched as tightly as piano wires.
“I’m not asking for forever. Just twelve months. You’re not so irresistible that every woman wants to marry you, Rand. You and I both know this job is going to take long hours and involve a lot of overnight travel. I already have no social life—and therefore no sex life. Whatever else may have been lacking between us, the sex was always good.”
Raw, urgent hunger exploded in his eyes and his chest expanded on a swiftly drawn breath. Her heart missed a beat.
He remembered their passion.
And that subtle reaction gave her hope and the grit to press on. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “When do we start?”
What man in his right mind would refuse sex with a beautiful woman he desired?He would.
“I can’t give you what you want.” Rand forced the words through a locked jaw.
Tara lifted a hand and tucked a golden curl behind her ear. Rand clenched his fingers on the memory of how soft her hair had been against his skin and tangled around his hands and wrists. While part of him mourned the long, loose curls, he had to admit the way the chin-length style bared her neck and shoulders was sexy as hell. Professional, but just tousled enough that a man knew she wouldn’t mind him messing her up.
“Sex?” Her lips stretched in a tight smile.
“Love.” He almost couldn’t say the word. He didn’t do love. Would never do love.
He was, according to his family, a carbon copy of his father. He’d learned the hard way not to allow himself the luxury of the destructive sentiment.
He’d seen how loving his unfaithful father had destroyed his mother and driven her to take her own life. And Rand had repeated the pattern when he’d broken up with his high school girlfriend before going away to college because he’d wanted to experience all the campus—meaning the female students—had to offer.
He was a selfish bastard, and because of that Serita had swallowed a bunch of pills that night after he’d left her. She’d been luckier than his mother. Someone had found her and called 911 before it was too late. Serita had survived loving a callous Kincaid.
“Ah. This is about what I said that night.” Tara ducked her head, but not fast enough to conceal her pink cheeks. And then she lifted her chin and met his gaze. Her eyes were such an intense cobalt-blue that when they’d first met he’d believed them to be colored contacts. He’d been wrong. “I goofed, okay? If you’d hung around long enough for me to apologize and explain that I was lost in the moment—”
“Lost in the moment? You said you loved me, that you wanted to marry me and have my children. You practically named them.”
The minute she’d said those words he’d bolted—to protect her from the curse of loving a Kincaid. And he’d worried about her for three solid weeks before returning to find her sneaking out of his father’s suite after midnight.
Tara Anthony had played him for a fool and he’d fallen for her innocent act. Never again.
Her color darkened and her gaze bounced away again. “Um, yeah. Sorry about that. But you’re…really good in bed.”
Once more looking directly at him she added, “We can live here or at your condo. Either place is about the same distance from the office.”
Every cell inside him balked. “I’m not playing house with you.”
“Then I guess this discussion is over. I’ll show you out.”
Dammit.
Rand snagged her arm when she walked past him, and awareness shot through him on contact with her warm, satiny skin. The electricity between them had been there from the first time he’d shaken her hand on the day she’d signed in as his father’s PA. He’d ignored the attraction between them—or tried to—for seven torturous months before saying to hell with it.
It had taken him a month to get Tara to go out with him and another one to get her into bed. Had she been playing him against his father the entire time?
“I no longer own the condo. I live in California.”
Her eyebrows lifted and what appeared to be genuine surprise filled her eyes. “I didn’t know you’d moved.”
That reminded him of her earlier comment. He’d ignored it before because he thought she was lying. “How could you not know I’d left the company? My departure from KCL had to have caused an upheaval, and my father must have hit the ceiling when I accepted a job with his West Coast competitor less than twenty-four hours after leaving KCL.”
“I didn’t know because I never returned to the office after…that night.”
“The morning I caught you leaving my father’s bedroom.”
Thick lashes descended to shield her eyes. She stubbed a toe into the carpet. “Yes.”
The same day he’d told his father to go screw himself because he was through screwing his oldest son. Those were the last words he’d spoken to Everett Kincaid.
“Why did you leave? My father wouldn’t marry you, either?”
Her teeth clicked audibly. She jerked her arm free. “To borrow your words, that offer was never on the table. You need to leave, Rand.”
He wanted nothing more than to walk out that door and never look back. Her demands were absurd. Was he going to meet them?
Searching for another option, he stared into the eyes he’d once thought guileless—man, he’d been an idiot—and came up empty. For Mitch’s and Nadia’s sakes he had no choice. Not one his conscience would let him live with. He wouldn’t abandon his brother and sister again.
“You won’t get anything more than sex from me. No gifts. No rings. No promises. And definitely no children.”
Her breath hitched and her eyes rounded when she realized he’d accepted her terms. She blinked and swallowed and then dampened her lips with the pink tip of her tongue.
Hunger for her taste instantly consumed him.
Damn the desire. Damn her for making him want her.
Five years ago she’d made him forget every hard lesson he’d learned. She’d tempted him to break his vow to remain single and unattached.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
Tara Anthony couldn’t be trusted, and he was and always would be his father’s son. A chip off the old block. A selfish jerk to the core. A man incapable of fidelity.
One who could hurt a woman without a second thought.
A smile wobbled on her mouth. “If you’re paying me fifteen thousand dollars a month, then I won’t need anything else from you.”
He ripped his gaze from her damp lips. “Two weeks. I have to fly home and wrap up loose ends. I’ll be back on the sixteenth and our year will begin.”
And he hoped like hell he didn’t live to regret it.
Two
“D on’t waste my time.”
At the sound of his brother’s voice Rand set his laptop case on his father’s desk and turned toward the door. Mitch had followed him into the large office.Rand had expected his brother to be glad he’d shown up not ready to pick a fight on Rand’s first day on the job. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t set up shop here if you’re not going to stay the full year. If we’re going to lose KCL, then let’s make a quick, clean break and get on with our lives. Nadia is going to be miserable stuck in Dallas with nothing to do for twelve months. Don’t put her through that if you’re going to blow this.”
Nadia’s portion of the will required her to penthouse-sit and remain unemployed for a year. His sister would go crazy without something to keep her distracted from the memories that haunted her of the husband and child she’d lost.
Just one more reason to curse his old man, the sadistic snake.
“Mitch, I resigned from a job I enjoyed and put my condo on the market. I’m not going to quit. I’m here for the full three-hundred and sixty-five. If we lose KCL, it won’t be because I failed to do my part.”
Mitch’s disbelief was plain on his face. “Why come back now?”
“Because this time he isn’t going to win.”
His brother didn’t look convinced.
Rand shoved a hand into his pants pocket, withdrew his pocket-knife key chain and flicked it open. The blade flashed silver in the light as he pressed it to his fingertip. With the emotions churning through him he barely felt the prick.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Mitch demanded.
Red oozed from the cut. “You want me to sign in blood?”
“We’re not kids anymore, Rand. Blood vows don’t cut it. This is business. A multibillion-dollar business in case you’ve forgotten.”
Clearly he wasn’t going to erase five years of silence with their old childhood ritual. “I haven’t forgotten.”
Rand looked around for a tissue and saw nothing usable in his father’s Spartan corner office. He dropped his knife with a clatter on the desk and put pressure on the tiny wound with his thumb.
Movement drew his attention to the doorway. Tara, in a pale yellow dress with her gleaming hair scraped back tightly against her skull, stood in the opening. The severe style wasn’t unattractive, not with her bone structure, but he missed her golden curls. He shut down that port of thought. Her hair was no concern of his.
Tara’s blue gaze traveled from his open knife to the small amount of blood on his fingers, then met his. “I’ll find the first-aid kit.”
Mitch’s gaze tracked her retreat before returning to Rand. “Is she the reason you left?”
“I’m sure Dad spewed his own version of why I quit.”
“He said nothing. That’s why I’m asking you.”
Rand tried to mask his surprise. His father had loved to gloat. “I left because he took our competition too far.”
“How so?”
He stonewalled his brother with a look. Sleeping with KCL employees had always been frowned upon. Rand had known better, and to this day he didn’t know why he hadn’t been able to resist Tara’s alluring trap. Since he hadn’t been her supervisor, and therefore wouldn’t technically be breaking any rules, he’d chosen to ignore company policy.
“What exactly do you want, Mitch? Guarantees? Fine. I guarantee you I’ll see this through to the end.”
“Why should I believe you? You walked away five years ago without a word. One day you were here. The next you were gone and completely incommunicado. Hell, I didn’t even know if you were alive until your name surfaced on the letterhead of our competition.” Mitch’s eyes narrowed.
“Rumor had it you’d run away with Tara.”
Apparently the rumor mill hadn’t known Tara was two-timing him with his father. “You should know better than to listen to rumors.”
“C’mon, Rand. You and Tara disappeared on the same day.”
Tara’s gasp drew Rand’s attention to the door. Her wide-eyed expression indicated she’d overheard. She searched his face as if seeking confirmation of Mitch’s statement.
So she hadn’t been lying. About that. She really hadn’t known he’d left KCL.