Читать книгу Billionaire Bosses Collection - Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 62
ОглавлениеSHE wouldn’t cry.
She wouldn’t!
There was no way she would shed a tear over Sebastian Bloody Savas and his accusatory bullheaded idiocy!
But it didn’t stop Neely’s vision blurring as she hurried up the dock away from the houseboat, Harm bounding alongside, delighted at the sudden unexpected treat. She didn’t know where they were going. It was very nearly dark. She was hungry and tired and she felt as if she’d been punched in the gut.
She’d been tired when she got home, but exhilarated, too. Absolutely thrilled that Roger Carmody had come around to understanding what Sebastian had intended in his designs. He certainly hadn’t bothered to spell it out.
It was there in the soaring interior space and the gently meandering curves of the walks. It was there in the few rough trees he’d sketched in. But to a man like Roger, who liked every leaf drawn on every plant, it was too hazy a concept. And there wasn’t enough focus on the people.
“I don’t want ’em lost,” he’d said to Neely over and over. “They can’t be dwarfed by the damn place or they won’t want to come back.”
And Neely, who thought more like Roger did, but who understood Sebastian better now, had been able to take what he’d drawn and explain. “It’s not going to dwarf them,” she’d said. “It’s going to give them a sense of spaciousness but with plan and direction. It’s going to empower them.”
It had taken a while, but with patience and word pictures, she’d made Roger understand.
“I see,” he’d said at last and nodded. “Yes, I see completely. Why the hell didn’t he say so?” he’d demanded.
“He did,” Neely said. “In his drawings.”
“Took you to explain ’em, though,” Roger had pointed out.
“He’s very good at what he does,” Neely had said absolutely truthfully. “He just figured you’d trust him to get it right.”
“Well, I do. Now,” Roger said. “I trust you and your interpretation.”
It was nice, Neely thought bitterly, that somebody did.
Before she thought anything else though, hard footsteps came pounding up behind her. A hand reached out and grabbed her arm.
“Stop!” And she did because Sebastian hauled her up short. He was as out of breath as she was. His tie was askew and his hair looked as if he’d thrust his fingers through it.
“What?” Neely said coldly.
“I’m sorry.” The words seemed dragged up from the depths of his being.
But Neely just stared at him unspeaking, frankly doubting.
Even if Sebastian was sorry, she seriously doubted that he was sorry about what he ought to be sorry about.
“Look—” he dragged in a breath “—I was wrong. I apologize. I thought—” he stopped abruptly and dropped his hand from her arm, then just stood there staring down at her as he said heavily, “Well, you know what I thought.”
“Yes, I do.”
He raked fingers through his hair again. “You said…before…I never imagined—”
“No,” Neely replied, her voice clipped. “You wouldn’t.” She turned away and began to walk again. She supposed that somewhere inside she was glad he at least acknowledged his mistake. But it still hurt.
In the past few weeks she had come to understand him—maybe not totally, but at least she didn’t dismiss him out of hand anymore. She didn’t assume he was The Iceman, the workaholic, the impersonal distant automaton she’d originally thought he was. She understood now that he was self-contained, that he didn’t give of himself easily, but that he was loyal, dependable, and that he could—and did—love.
But he still apparently didn’t understand—or trust—her at all.
He caught up with her and kept pace. “Forgive me?” It really was a question. It wasn’t a demand. She had to give him that.
She kept walking, but raised a shoulder. “Sure. Fine.”
“Come back and have dinner with me?”
She didn’t reply. She continued up the pavement, but her pace slowed. “Why?” she demanded at last, stopping in her tracks and turning to face him. “So we can pretend that you understand? That you trust me? That everything is hunky-dory?”
A corner of his mouth lifted just a little. “How about because I’m starving, you probably are, too. I’m embarrassed to have misjudged you, and I wish you’d come back so I can say again how sorry I am. So we don’t miss a good meal. And so you can tell me how you convinced Roger of what I couldn’t seem to make him understand?”
Neely shifted from one foot to the other. She gnawed on her bottom lip. It was a far handsomer apology than she’d ever imagined Sebastian Savas would make her. Maybe she, too, had a ways to go in learning about him.
“All right,” she said, and started back toward the houseboat. “Come on.”
“Have you got a minute?”
Neely looked up from her sketch book to see Vangie poking her head around the corner of the door. “Oh, hi. Sure. Come on in. How’re things going?”
It was a dangerous question, to be sure, even early on the Tuesday afternoon before the wedding because the big event was now only four days away.
Sebastian had stopped calling it “the wedding that ate Seattle” and had begun calling it “the wedding that ended the world.”
Judging from some of the things he’d reported over the past three days, Neely thought he wasn’t exaggerating much.
Over the weekend Vangie had called him in tears half a dozen times at least.
He’d forbidden her to come by and cry in person. He was still annoyed that she’d managed to track him down in the first place.
“If you have to cry, you can cry on the phone,” he’d told her Saturday morning. Neely had actually heard his end of the conversation, so she knew that much was true.
The rest he reported as it came to pass—one bridesmaid dress was too long, one was too short. One wasn’t silver—“it’s grey,” he’d said with a flash of an exasperated grin. And the other wasn’t the right shade of pink.
“Rose,” Neely had corrected, because she knew all about the color scheme now.
Sebastian had mimed banging his head on the wall. “Don’t worry about it,” he’d advised. “No one will be looking at the bridesmaids, Vange. You’re the bride. They’ll all be looking at you.”
It was an inspired comment as far as Neely could tell. Vangie had rung off. But she’d called back again later. And Sebastian shared the details of those conversations, too.
After the wary, tentative meal they’d shared on Friday evening, he seemed to be making an effort to communicate with her. He’d made her tell him exactly how she’d explained his designs to Roger Carmody, and he’d stared at her in amazement when she’d told him.
“He couldn’t see that?” he’d demanded.
“Not everyone can read your mind,” she’d told him with some asperity.
He’d grinned. “I don’t need everyone to as long as you can.”
It shouldn’t have made her quite as happy as it had. She was asking for it, Neely warned herself. Sebastian might be making an effort, but it was only because she’d made a difference to him at work. It had nothing to do with the rest of their lives.
Except now Vangie came in and shut the door and said, “He’s done it!”
Neely finished the last few strokes to the bit she was working on in her sketchbook and looked up. “Who’s done it? Done what?”
“Sebastian! He’s seeing Daddy.”
Neely felt her breath catch in her throat. “Is he?” she asked cautiously.
Vangie plopped down into the chair opposite Neely’s and nodded eagerly. “This evening.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. He told me. Said they were going out for a drink. I always knew he would,” she confided. “I know he said he wouldn’t, but you can count on him. We always have,” she added simply.
“That’s—” Neely took a shaky breath “—wonderful.” She managed a smile. It felt fake because she was too stunned to muster up a real one. But as she kept it pasted on her mouth, she processed the notion and found that the smile came more easily.
“He’s doing it for you,” Vangie said.
“What?” That brought Neely up short. “What on earth are you talking about? Did he say that?”
“Oh, no. Of course not. But I know you’re the one who talked him into it.”
“I didn’t! I never said a word.”
“Really?” Vangie looked astonished. “I was sure you must have.”
Oh, dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
Because of course Neely realized that she had said something. That day after Vangie had first come to see Seb they had discussed it, and she had told Sebastian he shouldn’t resist trying to speak with his father. He should make the effort, she’d said, because his father, like hers, might have changed.
That would have been bad enough, but she remembered now an exchange they’d had over their tense dinner last Friday night. When she’d been explaining how she’d laid things out for Roger, she’d said, “I can communicate with him. You know that. You should have trusted me.”
Sebastian had said, “I do trust you.” But then he’d had the grace to look guilty and say, “Well, maybe I haven’t always. But I will. I will trust you, Neel’.”
It was, she thought, the first time he’d actually called her anything but “Robson.” It touched her heart, and yet she’d forced herself to look him straight in the eye and challenge him. “Yeah, right. Prove it.”
Now her guilty face must have betrayed her because Vangie gave a little bounce in her chair and said, “I knew it! I was sure you were the reason he came through.”
“What Sebastian did or didn’t do was entirely his own doing,” Neely insisted.
“Sure. Of course. Whatever you say,” Vangie agreed, all smiles. She stood up, beaming, and when Neely stood, too, Sebastian’s sister threw her arms around her. “Thank you. Thank you so much!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Neely protested.
Vangie just shrugged happily. “You’ll come to the rehearsal dinner with Seb, won’t you?”
“I—”
“Of course you will.” Vangie overrode any objections before she could even make them.
Truth be told, Neely didn’t want to object. She wanted to go to the wedding. And anyway, Vangie was looking very much like a steamroller en route to getting exactly what she wanted. Besides if, when he discovered the invitation, Sebastian decreed that she shouldn’t go, well, she wouldn’t.
But she dared to hope he would want her there.
“Of course it’s what I want,” Vangie said airily. “And what the bride wants, the bride gets.” Waggling her fingers in farewell, she sailed out of the office.
And Neely stood watching her, wondering if she should be worrying or rejoicing that Sebastian had, against all odds, taken her advice.
He didn’t say a word about seeing his father that evening.
They had a late-afternoon meeting with Danny and Frank and the rest of the project leaders for Blake-Carmody, to make sure that everyone was on the same timetable and all the pieces were in place.
While they were all together, Sebastian told them about her meeting with Roger and Steve on Friday. He congratulated her publically for having so successfully promoted the entire design package. His smile was as warm as she’d ever seen it at work. She tried not to think about the way he looked at her when he wanted her. It wasn’t the best means of keeping her mind on the job.
She acknowledged everyone’s congratulations and good wishes as they were leaving the room. She hung back, thinking he might say something to her then. But Danny stopped him with a question, and she couldn’t really just stand there obtrusively and wait.
So she went back to her own office and rang Max as she had promised she would. Sebastian could come and tell her, she decided. He knew where her office was.
Max answered the phone on the first ring. He was home, but not in a walking cast, and not especially good with his crutches. He was going crazy, he told her. But not entirely because he couldn’t get out. Mostly because of who was in his house with him.
“Your mother is driving me nuts,” he complained now.
“Is she.” Neely didn’t make a question. She was staying out of the Max and Lara drama. She’d been doubtful when Lara had insisted on picking Max up at the hospital and taking him home. But no one else had volunteered.
So Lara stepped in. Or rather, showed up.
What happened after that wasn’t precisely clear. She may have told Max a few of the home truths she’d threatened to tell him if she could ever get him tied down. He wasn’t precisely tied down, but he was on crutches and that seemed to suffice.
Whatever had happened after that, they were still speaking—or yelling—and that was fine with Neely. She had problems enough of her own. The biggest one never came to say he was going out with his father at all. But when she drifted past his office at a little after five, it was to find the door shut and the lights off.
“He already left,” Gladys told her.
“Did he say where he was going?”
The older woman shook her head. “He was total Iceman.” She cocked her head. “I really thought he was getting over that.”
“Not…entirely,” Neely said. Under some circumstances she suspected he could be very much The Iceman still.
But he’d made the effort. He’d contacted his father. They were meeting for a drink. She smiled and crossed her fingers. Please God, let it be all right.
She went straight home, wanting to be there when he arrived. Lara called and invited her to come have a meal with her and Max.
“You can referee,” her mother said.
“Thank you, no.” Neely was adamant about that. She stripped off her work clothes and pulled out a pair of jeans. “I have other things to do.”
“I thought you wanted your father and me to get together.”
“I never said that!” Next thing you knew she’d be being blamed for everything in the world. “I simply said I was coming to work out here so I could meet him. I never said you had to take up with him again.”
“I wouldn’t call what we’re doing ‘taking up with,’” Lara said tartly.
“What would you call it?”
“Discussing.”
“Arguing,” she heard Max correct loudly in the background.
“Going over past history,” Lara went on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“Throwing plates,” Max’s voice echoed through the phone. He didn’t sound too upset, almost…amused.
“You didn’t!” Neely said, aghast.
“Only one,” Lara said guilelessly. “And not at him. Sure you won’t come for a meal?”
“Quite sure, thanks.”
Though it might have been entertaining to watch her parents coming to terms with each other—or not—after all these years, Neely wasn’t leaving. She even resisted taking Harm for his usual nightly run, instead sticking close to home, where she could see Sebastian’s car the minute he pulled in.
But he didn’t come.
And didn’t come.
Six-thirty turned into seven and seven into eight, and still he didn’t appear. At first she worried, but then she told herself not to be silly. Sebastian’s not appearing immediately was actually a good thing.
Certainly one drink together would have been enough for him and his father to have discussed Philip’s appearance at Vangie’s wedding if things were tense. But if they weren’t—if father and son had actually hit it off—then one drink could have led to more than one. It could have led to dinner.
Which was probably exactly what it had done, Neely realized when it turned nine and still Sebastian hadn’t appeared.
They’d probably decided to have dinner together catching up, and right this very minute they could be chatting over cups of coffee doing some long-delayed father-son bonding.
Maybe Sebastian had even taken his father over to his penthouse so Philip could spend the evening with the entire family.
All of his brothers and sisters had arrived in Seattle for the wedding. The last of the brothers, a university student called Milos, had come in yesterday afternoon. They’d all been eager to spend time with him. She smiled, thinking how wonderful it would be if his father got to be there with all of them, too.
She wished she could be there to witness it. Unlike her own parents’ reunion, she doubted anyone at Sebastian’s place would be throwing plates. They were all on their best behavior for the wedding, and judging from what she’d seen of Vangie this afternoon, Sebastian’s sister simply wouldn’t allow it.
She took a shower a little past ten and came back downstairs eagerly, hoping that he would be home. But only the kittens and Harm were there to greet her. She paced. She prowled. And finally, in desperation, she got down the violin and began to play. And the music, as it always did, settled her, calmed her, reinforced her belief that all would be well.
And when the door finally opened at very nearly midnight, she set it down abruptly and spun around to smile at him when he came in.
He looked like hell.
Actually she didn’t suppose he looked a lot different than he looked to most people most days. Stony, silent, serious, supremely self-contained—that was Sebastian ordinarily. That was Sebastian now.
But lately, as Gladys had noticed, the ordinary Iceman Sebastian had thawed a bit. Not just at home, but at work, he’d smiled more. He’d relaxed. He’d been more talkative. He’d even laughed.
Not tonight.
“What happened?”
He stared at her blankly. “Nothing.” His voice was toneless. He shut the door, came into the living room, shrugged off his jacket and sat down. He didn’t look her way. One of the kittens started playing with his shoelace. He looked down at it, expression remote. Almost on auto-pilot he reached down and plucked it off, setting it on the back of the sofa.
No chiding it. No smiling. Nothing.
“Seb,” she said urgently. “What happened? You saw your father…” she ventured.
There was the faintest stiffening in his demeanor. “Did I?” he said. His tone was conversational, light. But in it she heard the opposite.
“You didn’t?”
He gave a quick almost imperceptible shake of his head. “No.” He got up and went into the kitchen and with quick almost jerky movements, he poured himself a glass of water and drank it.
Neely watched his Adam’s apple work as he swallowed. Tried to read his face. There were lines of strain, a little white bracketing his mouth. When he set the glass down, he shut his eyes, flattened his palms against the countertop and bent his head, dragging in a long harsh breath.
“Seb,” she began again. “Tell me—”
He opened his eyes. They were dark, unfathomable. “Tell you what? There’s nothing to say.” Again that light, almost dismissive tone. A tone that said, it doesn’t matter, when his entire being screamed the opposite.
What was she going to do? Was she just going to stand there and let him get away with it? Was she going to pretend to believe his words because he expected her to.
“Yes, there is,” she said. “There’s plenty to say.”
And she came around the bar so that there was no longer a barrier between them. She walked straight up to him, and saw him, for once, retreat a step so that his back was against the cabinet.
He put his hands out as if to ward her off, but she kept coming until she was toe-to-toe with him, until her eyes were on a level with his chin and close enough that her lashes could brush against it.
“Neel’.” Her name was a warning, a protest. “You don’t want—”
“Yes,” she said, “I do.” And she was conscious even as she said the words that the vow was there within their meaning.
She put her arms around him, wrapping him tight and felt the hard strength of him when his own arms came around her. He buried his face into her hair, drew in a harsh breath and held it even as he held her. She felt a shudder run through him.
She kissed his neck, his jaw, ran her hands up the solid breadth of his back, and pressed herself even closer, needing the connection, knowing that Sebastian needed it, too.
She didn’t know how long they stood there just holding each other in silent communion. And then slowly she become aware of another need—his and hers—a need that had been building for as long as they had been aware of each other.
It was a need she’d rejected, a desire she’d denied—because she hadn’t dared believe that anything would come of it.
She’d been afraid to risk. But she had challenged Sebastian to risk. She had been adamant in her insistence that it was worth it. And she knew he had taken that risk tonight, whatever the outcome had been.
And she dared to believe he’d done it for her.
It seemed only fair—only right—to take a risk of her own.
Now she lifted her face to press her lips along his jawline, to find his mouth, to taste his lips with hers.
His fingers curled against her waist. “Neel’—” The warning was there again in his tone.
“Shh,” she said. “It’s all right.”
He drew back to look down at her, his eyes alight with yearning and yet in them she saw still a hint of caution. “Is it?” he asked her. His hands spanned her waist, held her so that their bodies barely brushed. His mouth tightened. His face was taut. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“Yes,” she whispered going up on her toes to brush her lips once more against his, touching them with the tip of her tongue. “Yes, it is.”
He believed her then. Took her at her word. Trusted that she knew what she was doing.
She did.
It was a risk. Loving was always a risk. Until Sebastian she hadn’t dared.
But she couldn’t ask him for a risk she wasn’t willing to take.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He stiffened, looked down into her eyes. “You don’t. You can’t.” His tone wasn’t dismissive any longer. It was as intense as hers.
“Too late.” Neely smiled and once more pressed her mouth to his.
“Neel’,” Seb protested as she once more wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. But his heart wasn’t in it.
Whose would be?
What man in possession of all the proper instincts could possibly be noble enough to walk away from such an offer—such a woman.
He’d craved her, it seemed, forever. Even when he’d believed she was Max’s lover, he’d wanted her. And since he had discovered she wasn’t, the wanting had, if anything, grown stronger. Learning that she was Max’s daughter might have tempered it a bit, given him a scruple or two that he wouldn’t have had otherwise —but even that had not been enough to turn away from her.
He wanted her. Desperately. Intensely. With every fiber of his being. And he’d give her this one last chance to come to her senses, and if she didn’t, she was his.
She didn’t.
On the contrary, she was practically climbing inside his shirt. And Seb almost laughed. “Not here,” he murmured. “We’re going to do this right.”
So saying, he reached down and scooped her up into his arms, then carried her straight down the hall and up the stairs.
“Seb!” She flailed in his arms for a moment, but when he hung on doggedly, she stopped and laughed, shaking her head. “You’ll have a heart attack carrying me up the stairs.”
“I won’t,” Seb assured her—and proved it by making it to the top without even breathing hard. “Whose room?”
“Yours,” she said without hesitation.
He raised a quizzical brow.
“There’re photos of Max and my mother on my dresser. This isn’t any business of theirs.”
There were no photos on Seb’s dresser at all. The room was as austere as his life. It made him a little self-conscious, actually, to let her see it.
He’d never had a woman in his bedroom before. Whenever he’d shared physical intimacies with a woman, it had always been elsewhere, always impersonal. Not especially intimate at all.
With Neely everything was personal, everything was intimate. She wasn’t like any other woman he’d ever known. She terrified him. She mesmerized him. She drew him into that intimate world as no one and nothing in his life had ever been able to.
He carried her in and laid her gently on the bed, then turned and pushed the door shut so the dog and cats wouldn’t be scandalized. Neely gave him a look of complete understanding, then smiled at him and held out her arms to him.
Seb came down into them. Nothing had ever before felt so right in his life.
He was a good lover. Women he’d been to bed with said so. He took his time, he learned what they liked, gauged their responses, gave them what they wanted. He took his pleasure, too. It was enjoyable. It was first intense and then, in the aftermath, relaxing. It was a shared experience of physical release.
With Neely it was something else entirely.
With Neely it wasn’t just about getting her naked, it was about learning the texture of her skin. It was about lifting her shirt and stroking his fingers across her abdomen, thinking he’d never felt anything as soft. It was about tugging that shirt over her head and then cupping his hands around her breasts in their lacy bra and molding them, then with his thumbs bringing her nipples to a peak. It was about bending his head and pressing kisses along the edge of her bra, drawing a line there with his tongue, reveling in the sound of the sharp intake of her breath.
He drew her up so he could release the clasp of her bra and then he stripped it off. Holding the silken mounds in his palms, he pressed kisses to the tips, nuzzled them, savoring the taste, the texture, the soft sounds she made in response.
“My turn,” she said, and made quick work of the buttons of his dress shirt. She fumbled with the cuff links—“trust you to make it difficult,” she muttered—but she got them in the end. Then she dragged his shirt off him and slid her hands up, cool palms against hot flesh, making him shudder.
He reached up and grasped her hands and put them back on his chest. All the while he was kissing her, nibbling her jawline, tasting her ear, then slipping his fingers beneath her waistband, unfastening her jeans, brushing his hand against her, making her tremble.
“Seb!”
“Mmm.” He smiled and eased her jeans down, doing his best to maintain his usual careful control, to make her happy, to see to her needs.
But Neely wouldn’t just lie back and let him have his way with her. She had his belt undone, his zip down. Then she scrambled around to pry his shoes and socks off.
“What’re you—?”
“You can’t make love in your shoes and socks!”
“Can’t I?” He laughed.
But she shook her head quite seriously. “No. I want all of you.”
He thought she meant she wanted to see all of him—and that was fair enough—he didn’t mind being naked with her. She had all that wonderful skin to rub against, to feast on, and to press against his.
But it wasn’t just his body she wanted naked.
She gave herself to him—opened her body and her arms and her heart and her soul as she drew him down into the most wonderful warmth he’d ever felt—and as she moved beneath him, he lost all control, all ability to hold back, to give and take on his own terms.
He surged into her as she wrapped herself around him, meeting him thrust for thrust, heartbeat for heartbeat, cry for cry.
And when he shattered, as she did, too, he knew that Neely Robson had got more of him than anyone else ever had.
She got everything he had to give.
That, Neely decided, was the difference between sex and love.
The first was only about the body. The last had no limits. It involved the body, of course. But it was far more than simply taking physical pleasure with another person. It was becoming a part of that person—and of letting them become a part of you.
Scary. Risky. Absolutely wonderful.
And as she lay there savoring the weight of the man she loved as he rested on top of her, she felt a pricking of tears for all the people who were afraid to risk—and for those who risked and lost.
She understood a bit better now the edgy exchanges her parents were having. They had risked. They had loved—and lost. And now they were together for the moment—and very likely terrified of it happening again.
Would they risk? She didn’t know.
But she knew she was glad she had. Glad she loved Sebastian. Glad she’d dared to say so and to show him.
Now she ran her fingers lightly over his back, traced the ridge of his spine, then curved her hand against the back of his neck and brushed her fingers against his hairline, learning him physically, loving him totally.
He made a soft sound against her ear, shifted slightly. “’M I too heavy?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Never.”
He turned his head and she could see the curve of his smile in the moonlight that spilled through the window. “I think I am,” he said, and effortlessly rolled them over so that now she lay atop him, though still wrapped in his arms.
“Seb?” She lifted her head to look down at him. Their eyes were bare inches apart. “Will you…tell me…what happened?”
His jaw tightened, and she thought that, if he had stayed on top, he would have pulled away and tried to leave her. But now she stayed right where she was. She leaned forward and lay her cheek next to his.
“Vangie said you were going out for a drink with your father,” she prompted.
She didn’t think he was going to reply. But then, after what seemed like an eternity, Sebastian said, “Was going.” He shifted as if he would have shrugged his shoulders. “He never came.”
Once again she heard the tone of light indifference, the one he always used when it was safer and smarter not to acknowledge that it mattered, not to admit the pain.
Neely lifted her gaze and met his again. “His loss,” she said.
Sebastian snorted.
But Neely wouldn’t dismiss it. “He’s a fool,” she said as she kissed him again, loving him for the man he’d become without a father’s love. “He doesn’t deserve you.”
It was only the truth.
