Читать книгу The Dare Collection 2018 - Taryn Leigh Taylor - Страница 16

CHARLIE HAD SEEN all kinds of bad shit in his time. Things he could never scrub from his head no matter how he tried. Nasty old nightmares that came out in the dark sometimes and kept him awake. Of all the things that he liked about leaving his life in Texas behind him for good, cutting down on scenarios that left that kind of dank residue inside of him ranked pretty high.

But he couldn’t remember any of those tonight. Because the look on Maya’s face as she stared back at him, his identity no longer a secret, was the thing that was going to haunt him forever.

He had liked Sebastian well enough before this, but as the man kept braying on, Charlie thought he might actually have to kill him.

St. George this, St. George that—Charlie barely heard him because Maya had gone too still. He watched her gaze darken, stormy and shocked and something much worse. Much too close to betrayed. He watched, frozen himself though he would have denied it, as she swallowed. Visibly.

And when she stood from her bar stool, gathering that soft cloud of pink around her, he could see that her hands were shaking.

The last time his heart had beat this hard he’d had a gun in his face.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said in a perfectly smooth voice. But it wasn’t her voice. Not the one he recognized. “I have to get back.”

She aimed the same smile at him that she threw Sebastian’s way. Blank. Absent.

As if she was already back across the ocean, tucked up in freezing cold Canada. As if nothing had ever happened between them, which was what he should have wanted.

Instead, Charlie felt like he was running for his life when he knew perfectly well he was standing still. Maya was so elegant, so composed, and he hated it. She pivoted around on one of those heels that did things to her legs he wanted to get down on his knees to taste and started for the door.

“Hold that thought,” Charlie growled at Sebastian, finally shutting up the other man midway through a long lecture on the life and times of Daniel St. George, who had somehow found himself in a bar in Houston, Texas, long enough to make Charlie all those years ago. Back when Charlie’s mother had been young and hot instead of beaten down and bitter.

Charlie set off after Maya, not really caring if the entire village and half the Amalfi coast saw him chasing after a woman for the first time ever. All he cared about was that he caught up to her—and he didn’t want to ask himself why that was.

He already knew he wouldn’t like the answer.

He caught up to her out in the hushed hotel lobby, with its piped-in music and designer fragrances. He skirted the over-the-top Christmas trees, the kind of thing that usually put his teeth on edge given how little holiday cheer he’d experienced in his time, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about that now.

“Maya.”

His voice was a command. He didn’t bother to pretend otherwise.

And still, he was surprised when she obeyed.

She turned slowly, as if she wanted to torture him with the perfection of her figure. All those lean, stacked curves, enough to make his mouth water and his hands twitch of their own accord.

But he wasn’t dumb enough to pretend he couldn’t see the fury in her dark eyes when she fixed them on him.

“I have no one to blame but myself,” she said, her voice somehow thick and crisp at once. Not loud enough to disturb the self-conscious fanciness of this lobby but pointed enough to slice him in half. “What handyman lounges around for half an afternoon and a whole long night with a guest? Or answers the door half-naked when he orders room service? Or orders room service in the first place? There were red flags all around that I guess I ignored.”

“I didn’t lie to you.” He sounded much rougher than he should have. But he wasn’t planning to think on that, either. “I never told you I was a handyman. You assumed it all on your own.”

“You let me assume it,” she fired back. But then shook her head, cutting herself off. She even slashed her hand through the air. “It doesn’t matter. You and I both know that you could have told me the truth. You didn’t want to. And it only makes you more of a liar.”

“It’s not a secret,” he growled, and maybe the reason he was so pissed off by this was because there was a part of him that knew she had a point. He’d liked that she didn’t know who he was. Even back in Texas, he hadn’t been anonymous. He’d liked the novelty. But he didn’t like defending that choice. “Everyone in this village knows I own the hotel. You would have known it, too, if you bothered to look. My face is in the brochure sitting on your living room table.”

She let out a laughing sort of sound that contained absolutely no humor. Charlie drew closer to her, his hands at his sides—not in fists, though he was pissed enough, and not on her, either, which was what he really wanted.

“You know what? I’ve already had this conversation,” she said, with another one of those laughs that weren’t laughs. And this time when she shook her head, it was very clearly at him. Not at herself. “I’m not having it again.”

“The fact that you made an assumption about me is not my problem,” he heard himself saying, like he was arguing the point.

Maya made a sniffing sound, dismissive and rude. “Okay.”

And she didn’t wait for him to react to that. She turned around again, setting off at a much faster clip than before.

Charlie’s jaw hurt, and he realized he was gritting his teeth like he wanted to break them all off. And his hands had stopped pretending to be civilized, curled into fists he knew were useless in this. Unless he wanted to punch himself in the face.

He didn’t understand what was happening inside him, because he hadn’t lied. Not directly. He’d let her think what she wanted to think—how was that on him?

His heart was kicking at him again, but he ignored it. And he should have let her walk right off into whatever temper tantrum she wanted to have, because that wasn’t on him, either.

But no matter how self-righteous he felt about it, there he was following after Maya like he wasn’t in control of his own feet. Like he was a puppet on a string and she’d yanked him close so he could fall into line behind her.

His worst nightmare, basically. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

She made it across the lobby, then pushed out through the doors into the dark December night.

And Charlie was right there, following behind her like he couldn’t bear to let her out of his sight.

What the hell was happening to him?

Outside, the village was brightly lit and deserted this time of year. Anyone who wanted to experience the holidays in coastal Italian splendor was tucked up inside somewhere, enjoying the more sedate pace in the area’s otherwise well-trafficked tourist areas. It was as if he and Maya were the only people left in the world—not an image that helped him get a hold of himself.

He didn’t know how to feel the things that moved around inside him. He would much rather feel her instead.

“Is this what you do every time you’re pissed off about something?” He fired the words at her, his voice louder than the sound her heels made against the stones of the ancient square, and all of it echoing back at him in case he’d missed the part where he was being a dick. “At some point you’re going to have to stop running away from the things you don’t like, Maya. Don’t you think?”

She whirled on him then, and he didn’t realize until he saw the sheer, undiluted fury on her face that he’d expected her to be crying. Upset, anyway. Not like she wanted to rip him apart with her own two hands.

“I’m not running away from anything. And I told you I don’t want to repeat this conversation.”

“Babe. I don’t know what you think is happening here, but we haven’t had this conversation before.”

She made that scornful noise that wasn’t a laugh again, and Charlie liked it even less out here where there were no witnesses but the manic Christmas lights. And he couldn’t pretend she wasn’t doing it at him.

“You might not have had this conversation, but I have. Let me jump right over the gaslighting and get to the good stuff.”

“Gaslighting?”

But she ignored that. “I’m not going to stand here and take responsibility for your deceitful behavior. That’s on you. You knew what I thought, you chose to let me keep thinking it and the only thing I can assume is that you took some sick pleasure in imagining I thought you might lose a job you didn’t even have.”

This time when she laughed it was a hard, brittle sound that seemed to crack through the cold air. Or maybe that was just his rib cage, shattering into pieces. To spite him.

“The difference between you and me, Charlie, is that I haven’t lied to you about anything. I’m a wide-open book. Canceled wedding. Cheating fiancé. Best friend who it turns out probably wasn’t much of a friend at all. And this trip to Italy that was supposed to be my honeymoon. I’m not hiding anything from you.” Maya shook her head, her cloud of curls dancing slightly with the movement. “You can’t say the same.”

“We’ve fucked a few times,” he gritted out. “What makes you think you deserve to know my life story?”

And he couldn’t have said why the disappointed look she aimed at him then made that shattering sensation in his chest that much worse.

“It’s not about what I deserve. It’s about what you choose to tell someone in the course of getting to know them, even a little.” She lifted a perfectly rounded shoulder, then dropped it again, and Charlie felt it like a punch. “I don’t understand how people can have as much sex as we have and share absolutely no intimate details about themselves, so really, I should thank you. You’ve taught me something.”

He felt like he was ripping wide-open, and he panicked. There was no other word for it. If he could have shoved the pieces of himself back into place, he would have. But he didn’t have the slightest idea where to start—or any idea how she’d done this to him in the first place—so he scowled at her instead.

And he didn’t know how his hands made it to her shoulders. Not to punish her. To touch her, because he had to touch her. He thought he might die if he didn’t touch her, and that was one more thing he didn’t want or understand or need.

But touching her just made it worse, because he wasn’t inside her.

“I don’t share the details of my life with anyone.” The words sounded like they came from far away. He was only dimly aware he’d said them. “That’s not personal, Maya. That’s who I am.”

“There’s a difference between reticence and lying. Guess which side you fall on.”

“I never actually told you a lie.”

“What’s funny is that I understand why that’s the hill you want to die on.” She shifted then, tipping her face into his. He wanted to grip her harder, drag her closer—but he didn’t. There was too much knowledge in her dark gaze. “Keep ranting on about a technicality and you won’t have to have the discussion about why. Because why is the scary part. Why might actually force you to be intimate with someone for five seconds of your adult life. And of course we can’t have that.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“You’re right. I don’t. And whose fault is that?”

He didn’t understand why all those shattered pieces of him seemed to rattle around inside him, slicing him into shreds. And he definitely didn’t understand why he was just...standing here. Letting this happen.

Why he’d chased her out here to keep letting her get under his skin.

She wasn’t wrong. He had no interest in that why.

But here he was, opening up his mouth and talking anyway. When he used to pride himself on his ability to say as little as possible.

“I already told you more than most people know,” he said, the words torn from a place inside him he hadn’t known was there. “My mother met Daniel St. George in a bar in Houston during the brief window of time she wasn’t propping up bars out in the dirt, which is where she raised me. One night, that was all it took, and here I am. Not that the rich asshole stuck around to help or, you know, say hello. All these years later, I had fancy lawyers up in my face, offering me a hotel in Italy and the means to run it. Are you satisfied now? You already had most of that information. Are we going to pretend that you’re actually upset that I’m not a broke loser moonlighting as a janitor?”

Her lips twisted into something that bore no resemblance at all to her beautiful smile, which landed on him like one more gut punch.

“Right. Now I’m mercenary as well as stupid and overstepping.”

He made a sound that could only be described as a growl. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

Maya didn’t growl. But the look on her face made him feel as if she had.

“News flash, Charlie. I don’t know what I want from you, either. I don’t know what I want at all. I never pretended otherwise. And therein lies the difference between you and me.” She leaned in. “I’m not pretending.”

“Maya...”

But there was a ringing, then. He scowled, looking around for the sudden noise, but it was nowhere to be found. Not until he remembered that he carried his own set of obnoxious alarms around with him now.

It was his phone. Making that irritating sound it made when it was trying to connect with a video call. Something Charlie—who had been using shitty burner phones for most of his adult life as a matter of course, because he’d always preferred to be untraceable—found horrifying.

“Better get that,” Maya said quietly. “I’m sure it’s much more important than a boring conversation with a woman you fucked a few times and don’t plan to bother with.”

She stepped back then, and he had a choice. He could either keep a hold of her, grabbing for her in a panic, or he could man up and let her go.

He let his hands drop. His fucking phone kept ringing.

And she looked at him like she had already disappeared back to wherever she’d come from to ruin his life in the first place.

“Maya,” he said again, hardly recognizing his own voice.

“Keep taking comfort in the fact you never actually lied to me directly,” Maya suggested in that soft, devastating way of hers. “I’m sure that if you think about it long enough, you’ll find a way to make it true. Liars always do.”

And he had to take that, like a kick in the face, as she wrapped that ridiculously soft, pink thing around her again and set off.

Like she was the one cutting this thing off, the way he should have done after that afternoon in the shed. The way he had done, always, before she turned up at the bottom of his property and turned his supposedly brand-new, much-better life upside down.

His phone stopped ringing. Charlie muttered out a curse, still watching as Maya walked away from him, her hips swaying like they were keeping time with the heart attack he kept having.

But in the next moment, the wailing from his phone started up again.

He yanked the damned thing out of his pocket and scowled at the screen, still not sure how he’d ended up toting one of these things around when he’d been perfectly happy with ancient flip phones whose only purpose was a quick call. And then, because he knew they would be relentless until he answered, he hit the button to accept the call.

The two faces he had never seen before a year ago—and now saw entirely too often—stared back at him from his phone.

“Aloha, bitch,” came a loud, booming voice that belonged to his half brother Jason Kaoki, from far off on an island in the Pacific somewhere. “Did someone lock you in a crypt, brother?”

“I’m outside,” Charlie bit off, already moving back toward the hotel and stepping into the lobby of the grand hotel.

As he moved toward a more private area, he could see Jason on his screen with no shirt, his too-long dark hair scraped back wet, suggesting he’d been surfing the way he claimed he liked to do every morning. There were palm trees dancing around in the sun behind him and ocean in the distance. The other half of his screen was a whole lot colder. A cavernous stone room, empty and stark, that reminded him of a spacious prison. And his other half brother, who was actually called Thor. Thor Ragnarsson, who ran their late father’s luxury sex hotel up in Iceland, which made Charlie feel frostbitten just thinking about it.

This was his first winter after a lifetime in Texas and he found it much too chilly, here on the coast of Italy where everyone assured him the weather was mild. Or maybe he was the chill, frostbitten down into his bones by a woman who hadn’t looked back when she’d walked away from him.

“Better now?” Charlie asked, sitting down by a fireplace in a part of the lobby that had been made to look like a comfortable sitting room. Or the kind of library that would normally have made him feel itchy, because he was a man who did things. Sitting around reading made him antsy. But tonight, all Charlie cared about was that no one else was there. “This isn’t our usual time for a call. Is there a hotel emergency somewhere? That I need to care about?”

His tone made it clear he couldn’t imagine what “a hotel emergency” would have to do with him, unless it was his hotel.

“Are you wearing a suit, brother?” Jason’s voice was taunting, his wide grin wicked. “Look at that. Spend long enough in Italy and a man turns into a baller. Can’t even help it. And after claiming the funeral was the only time he’d ever put one on.”

“I was at a monthly meeting of local businessmen,” Charlie bit out. “I guess I am one. Why are you talking about my clothes? You want to come over here and braid my hair? Brother?”

Jason let out one of his booming laughs that had likely served him well during his short career playing pro football. But Charlie kept his eyes on Thor, who was blond and blue-eyed like Charlie, but there was no dirty in Thor’s Scandinavian blond. And his Viking blue eyes were glacial.

More glacial by the second, in fact.

“If we can return to matters of business,” Thor said in that icy way of his, “it appears that our half sister has fulfilled the terms of the will.”

Their heavily tattooed half sister, who Daniel St. George had messed with from beyond the grave. Bold, take-no-prisoners Angelique Masterson from New York City, with her dyed black hair and bright blue eyes. Unmistakably a result of yet another run-of-the-mill affair, and yet the only one required to jump through hoops to get her inheritance.

“You’re going to have to remind me what that means,” Charlie said now, making his drawl a little heavier than necessary. “And also why I should care.”

“It means she hooked herself the big fish,” Jason replied. He lounged back in whatever chair he was sitting in, looking lazy and amused.

“Correct.” Thor still sounded icy, Charlie thought, but maybe there was a hint of something like a smile lurking around the older man’s mouth. Maybe. “She achieved her objective. The hotel property in the kingdom of Sadat is now officially hers. And so, too, will our dearly departed father’s estate present her with her quarter.”

“Why does this require an emergency call in the middle of the night?” Charlie asked. “This feels like it could be an email. One I could ignore, because I have shit to do.”

Jason laughed at that. Thor only arched an eyebrow.

“I assure you, I have no intention of wasting your precious time, Charlie. Our next call is set for Friday, as usual. Angelique will be on it. That is the purpose of this call. To prepare you.”

“I don’t need preparation,” Jason said, as if it was all a big joke. But then, that was the way he said everything. And given the way he was holding off developers who wanted to turn the island he’d inherited into yet another strip mall—singlehandedly, from all the reports Charlie was required to listen to every week as part of the thousands of things he’d signed at the will reading—he used it to hide behind. Charlie could relate.

But he didn’t want to relate to these men who were family by blood, but who he’d met exactly once.

“Meanwhile, I still don’t care,” he said gruffly. “Two sisters. Twelve sisters. Or just the one. Makes no difference to me.”

“Noted.” Thor actually rolled his eyes, which Charlie thought was revolutionary. Normally he didn’t crack at all. Charlie figured it was that purple-haired professor he refused to talk about. “I, personally, prefer to know what I’m walking into. Call it a personal fetish.”

“Says the man with the sex hotel,” Jason said, with another laugh.

But all Charlie could think about was Maya, calling him a liar. Calling him out, ripping him to shreds and walking away.

Again.

“Is that it?” he asked, not bothering to pull out his own lazy drawl and pretend nothing got to him tonight. “I’m actually in the middle of something.”

He would have hung up already, but they’d all signed those damned papers. He was forced to be a part of what the lawyers had called “the St. George family.” Charlie knew better than to get carried away at the sound of that word. The only family he’d ever had was his mother and stepfather. His mother was all smiles when she wanted something and a raging bitch every other minute of the day. She’d never treated him like he was anything but a burden. His stepfather had groomed him to be a weapon and had knocked him on his ass when he didn’t act as ordered, when ordered. And while his half brothers and half sister hadn’t exactly achieved those levels on anything so far, it wasn’t like he trusted them.

Do you trust anyone? a voice inside him asked. Do you have the slightest idea how to trust anyone?

It sounded far too much like Maya for his taste.

“Mahalo, assholes,” Jason said cheerily, as always. “I have a wave to catch.”

And he disconnected with his middle finger.

Charlie went to hang up, too, but something in the way Thor was studying him stopped him. “What?”

“Are you well?” the glacial Icelander asked.

Coolly, the way he did everything.

Charlie frowned. “Why does that feel like a loaded question?”

“You look different,” Thor replied. “Less...aggressively relaxed than usual.”

“I’m going to make ‘aggressively relaxed’ my new band name.” Charlie forced a smile, but it didn’t feel right. Nor did it appear to impress Thor. “I told you I was in the middle of something.”

“If I could offer you some brotherly advice,” Thor said, a rueful expression on his face, suggesting he knew exactly how ridiculous that sounded.

“Is that a thing we do now? Because that’s a hard pass on my end. I’m fine.”

“Yes, of course.” Now Thor looked amused. “I have also been as fine as you look. And all I will say is this. A little something I’ve been considering. It is always possible that our father’s manipulation was not to control us with these hotels and these lives he set out for us in his will. It is always possible that the aim was to free us from our other lives instead.”

“This sounds like the raving of someone who finally got himself a girlfriend,” Charlie bit out. “Getting it on the regular must have fried your brain, Thor. So let me remind you. Our dear, departed father never did a goddamn thing to free anybody. He was a piece of shit. Where I come from, the kind of piece of shit he is would end up dead after he betrayed the wrong person. But it’s always different for rich assholes, isn’t it?”

“In the spirit of all the families I’ve ever known, you certainly don’t have to take this advice. I’m just sharing it.”

“Family isn’t a word I like all that much.”

This time, there was no mistaking the way the other man’s mouth curved, just like there was no mistaking the perfect awareness that sprang between them. They were brothers by blood, called family by the world, but that only made the word more meaningless. It had nothing to do with what Charlie had called his family back home. Those ties of obligation like claws, sinking in deep.

He’d never been to Iceland, but if he had to guess, he’d say his newfound older brother had some experience with those same claws and the damage they did.

“I understand,” Thor said. “Enjoy your evening.”

But when Charlie finally hung up, he felt...shaken. He didn’t understand what was going on. When had he turned into this easily shook fool, who cared what a piece of ass said to him? Who let some stranger who happened to share half of his blood get in his head?

He needed to shut this down. All of this.

But when he found himself out in the village again, out in the dark and the cold and running up those stairs like a maniac, all he could see was Maya.

And it occurred to him that despite everything he had no idea who he was if he wasn’t pretending...something. Wearing a mask. Smiling when he was murderous. Laughing when he wanted to punch a wall.

Pretending he felt nothing when the truth was, he felt too much.

What would happen if he stopped?