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Chapter 11

“Just take me home.” Her demand was curt and to the point.

“Nikki, baby,” Max began, reaching out to touch her. He had to touch his baby, had to bring her to his body and make her forgive him...make her understand.

“I was falling in love with you, goddamn it, and it was all just some kinda—” Nikki paused in her quiet anger, her voice little above a whisper, her face scrunched in anger and tears running down her face. “Some kinda game.” She said the final word as though it were a curse word.

“God, no, baby! It wasn’t a game. Look, I know it wasn’t right, I should have told you who I was. I—”

“I don’t give a shit about your name, Maxwell Hardaway...as much as it pisses me off that you didn’t feel as though you could tell me that very important information...I get it. I get who your family is, and how you wanted distance from it.” Her words had filled him with hope until she continued.

“I respect that you made your own way and didn’t use your family name. All of that I get!” she continued, her voice beginning to rise as she faced him.

“What I don’t get is how...why you felt you had the right to dig into my past like that. Why not just ask me. Unlike you, I had—have nothing to hide.” She turned from him and wrapped her arms around her waist, the position defensive, angry...hurt.

He couldn’t let her think that. He reached out and spun her around, forcing her to look at him.

“It wasn’t like that, baby, please. I knew from the moment I first met you, the moment you walked into that elevator that I was sprung like an addict,” he said, laughing harshly. “I didn’t know how...what to do. I had never felt like that, had such a strong reaction like that, so immediately, for a woman. The more I saw glimpses of you around the office, I knew I had to learn more. I wanted some sort of...” He paused, running his hand through his hair, spiking it over his head, thinking of the right word. “Leverage...” he finished, finding the word inadequate the moment he said it.

He had known it was the wrong word when her dark complexion lost all color and appeared ashen.

Her mouth firmed and a small tic formed in the corner of her pretty, full lips.

Priding himself on his strong gut instincts, he shut his mouth, even though he had to fight to do it.

Her chest was still heaving, the tears drying on her pretty chocolate-colored skin. Her pain was his pain. But he knew she wouldn’t want to hear that.

He felt the mist in his eyes turn to real tears, tears he’d never shed in his life for a woman, as he saw the response to the evidence of what he’d done to her, how he’d betrayed her. He knew there was nothing that would convince her that he’d had no intention of using the information for any other purpose but in his stupid, egomaniacal male way of finding out as much about her as he could.

Leverage.

The word hung between them in the silence, heavy and thick.

“I am not an acquisition in some kind of merger, Max. I am a woman. I was your woman.... Now take me home.”

He stared at her, feeling like his heart was being ripped from his chest. Slowly he nodded his head and watched, his body and mind numb, as she slowly turned away and, with her head high, went into the bedroom to dress.