Curled up on Rand’s bed, Dani drifted into consciousness unwillingly, feeling the ache of loneliness settle over her like the cold sea. She’d done the right thing. Of course she’d done the right thing. Rand had turned her inside out last night, and his last little game had been his masterstroke. He’d wanted to break her with that when she was vulnerable, weak.
He’d damn near succeeded.
Now she was alone, of course. Rand had risen at four o’clock to take a shower, withdrawing from her body like a shadow banished by daylight. She’d lain there, still and silent until he’d left. The tears that she’d then allowed to fall had exhausted her, and she’d slept solidly until now.
She listened to the soft whirr of the heat blowing through the vents, modulated to the perfect temperature by the hour, she suspected, and stretched beneath the heavy, soft blankets. Enjoy it, she ordered herself. It’s the last time you’ll feel it.
A well of pain opened up inside her, making it difficult to breathe. Thoughts crashed over her, too many to process, so she blinked open her eyes to peer into the dim room, forcing herself to focus on the distant sounds of traffic far below this penthouse suite, the way she’d always focused on the thrumming rush of Boston traffic, her sole companion as she’d walked the city night after night, job to job, con to con. The way she’d focused even longer ago, on the thin shaft of light beneath a locked door, the sound of voices raised in argument while she was trapped in silence. That had been her first experience with the long game. She’d learned the hard way that pain didn’t always end when you wanted it to, and that patience was a game in itself.
And so she waited for this morning’s pain to ease, the dull ache of Rand’s departure, the hollow wound that his voice had left behind, the bitter disappointment she felt in herself, even though she knew this was the right thing, the smart thing. The only thing she could have done. Looking out at the world from within the circle of Rand’s arms—especially for just a little while—was the surest path to heartbreak that she could possibly imagine. She’d only end up alone and broken somewhere down the road, miserable for everything she had for the briefest of moments, and everything she’d subsequently lost.
Dani’s sigh seemed dredged up from her toes as she forced herself to sit upright on the bed, looking around the palatial room, seeing the ruin of her lingerie on the floor, the scattered pillows. So, this was what the morning after looked like in a penthouse suite. Not so different from any other bedroom, she supposed. Only this bedroom had held the man who’d gathered her close while she’d let all her darkest memories rush out into the open light. This apartment had held the man who’d allowed himself to be bound, to give her control when all she could remember was having control stripped away from her.
Her lips twisted into a smile. Even if he did cheat.
She pulled the blankets tightly around herself again, swearing that it would just be a few seconds, a few minutes more. Drawing in a shaky breath, she tried to focus on what her day held—a day without Rand. A life without Rand. But all she could see were his eyes as he’d told her that he loved her. Loved her. Who said that to someone like her, someone who spent her every waking moment working the grift? Who did that?
But Rand had done it. And she’d been working the grift long enough to know that he’d been serious. From his fucked-up, high-and-mighty, lofty position on a pedestal of wealth and privilege he’d looked down at her and honest-to-God had asked her to stay with him. Her. Not as a whore, not as a toy, but just as…herself.
Dani sucked in another shaky breath. This wasn’t helping. In fact, real anguish was spreading through her now, running cold and hot, her skin on fire, her hands clammy, her heart and lungs seeming to be in a dead heat as to which would collapse first. Her mind was a jumble of conflicting thoughts, angry and powerful and hopeful and desperate and—
“Ah, fuck it,” she muttered to herself. “I don’t have all goddamned day.”
Rand’s gaze tracked the flash of light from his desk console, indicating a message from Ms. Pearson. They’d dispensed with phones and intercoms the moment he’d taken over Winston Securities, and the woman had adapted well, adopting a terse shorthand to alert him to appointment arrivals, deliveries. Only now his heart stilled as he saw the message on the flat, embedded screen, his throat immediately going tight.
Palm D’Or del. Michaels. Says expected?
He didn’t miss the censure in Pearson’s text, and he allowed himself a small smile. The woman prided herself on knowing his every movement, at least within these walls. She didn’t take well to surprises. Generally, he didn’t either.
He tapped out his response, then straightened, his eyes on the door. He’d reset his internal control ruthlessly the moment he’d exited the front door of his penthouse, knowing that the security cameras watched him dispassionately. He’d wanted no record of Dani’s effect on him. Not in his digital archives, not in the eyes of the men and women he’d passed in traffic, not in the smile of the doorman to the building or of Ms. Pearson. He’d succeeded.
Because he always succeeded.
But now Dani was here, and the careful mantle of his control threatened to slip. What is her game, now? he wondered. Did she need to verify that his financial support for her brother would continue? Did she want to apologize? To gloat?
His conjectures scattered as Ms. Pearson clicked open the door, entering his domain with a carefully practiced smile but eyes that were hard upon him. “Miss Michaels,” she said crisply, stepping aside to allow Dani to move forward. “Your next appointment will be arriving here any minute. Should I…”
Rand flicked a glance at Dani, then refocused on his administrative assistant, who’d known him long enough to read him precisely, if her lifted brows were any indication. “Thank you, Ms. Pearson.”
She departed with the same efficient grace with which she’d entered, and he turned his full attention to the woman left standing in the room. Dani stared back at him, clutching a wrapped package almost exactly the size of the one she’d brought to his office a month ago. Had it really been so long? When she didn’t say anything, his heart kicked up a notch, adrenaline beginning to course through him. “Did I order another painting?”
She looked at him, startled, then glanced down at the package in her hands. “Oh.” Her smile was rueful. “Blank canvas. Just needed the business.”
“Then to what do I owe the pleasure?”
His words came out more clipped than he intended, and Dani looked up, a flush coloring her cheeks. She was dressed respectably—dress and heels, her hair around her shoulders, the faintest veneer of makeup completing her armor, along with the shield of the fake delivery package. But her stance was rigid, her poise on the brink of destruction.
“I wanted to…,” she began, but the words were too soft, too frail, and she seemed to know it. She straightened her shoulders and tried again. “You said I could think about it, about your prop—your suggestion from last night. This morning. In your apartment.”
He smiled coolly. “I recall.”
She pressed her lips together, as her gaze searched his face and found no encouragement in his eyes. She continued on, gripping the paper-wrapped square tightly in her hands. “I want it, too,” she said. “If the offer stands.”
Rand sat back in his chair, still giving her no quarter, even though his heart had started to pound. “What precisely do you want?”
“You. Us. A—” She broke off, shaking her head, and Rand sensed her retreat. But Dani didn’t step back. She looked past him to the windowed expanse that showed a cityscape bathed in cold winter sunshine, brilliant and fierce. “A relationship,” she said, her gaze whipping back to him as Rand stood. She redoubled her grip on the package in her hand as he came around his desk and approached her, her chest rising and falling too quickly, her eyes too bright.
“And that means?”
Something seemed to snap inside of Dani. “That means a relationship,” she said, the words sharp as she finally released all of the pent-up energy she was holding inside. “I want to share your life, Rand. For as long as you will have me. I want to wake up next to you in the morning and lay down with you at night. I want to go anywhere with you, do anything. It doesn’t matter what. It never did matter. As long as you are there, that’s where I want to be.”
He leaned closer to her, needing to know the answer to this next question more than anything he’d needed in a very long time. “Why?”
“Goddammit.” She shuddered out a long breath, squeezing her eyes shut in an apparent effort to focus. “Why are you making this so difficult? I…” She paused again, as if trying to make her mouth form unfamiliar words. “I love you, Rand.” She said the words as if they were a battleground confession. “I know I can’t have you forever. I know I shouldn’t even have you for a little while. But I want you so goddamned much that it’s opened a hole up inside me that I’m never going to be able to fill, whether you leave me today or leave me sixty years from now. So, please,” she said, clutching the painting, staring at him. “If the offer still stands, I want it. I want you.”
“How much?” Rand had always known when he had won, but he needed more this time. He took the painting away from Dani and dropped it to the floor, returning immediately to claim her hands. They were icy cold in his grasp, and trembling. “How much do you love me, Dani?” he asked, and she immediately glanced away, her broken laughter equal parts embarrassment and defeat. But it still wasn’t enough. “I’m serious,” he said, touching the tip of his finger to her chin to lift it up, forcing her to look at him again. “How much do you love me?”
“More than I ever wanted to,” she said, and it was there, again, the absolute surrender, laying her bare to him. “More than I thought I could love anything or anyone, more than I ever expected.”
“Enough to let me love you back? To really open up your heart, and let me come inside?”
She blinked at him, the denial plain on her face, the fear—but something more as well. Something impossibly perfect. Something like hope. As if after a lifetime of crashing into the walls of pain and struggle and loss, she suddenly thought that someone might possibly be there to catch her when she fell.
The moment their lips touched, Dani seemed to lose the last bit of her strength, clinging to him with a sob as he wrapped her in his arms, her fingers twisting into the lapels of his suit, pulling him closer as if she could crawl inside his skin and surround his very heart. And he wanted that, too, more than anything, deepening the kiss until it was impossible to tell where one of them stopped and the other one started, impossible to know where one story ended and the next one began.
At length, she pulled away from him, staring up with wide, disbelieving eyes. He got the impression that he was going to have to get used to that look from her, but it was a challenge he was more than willing to meet.
“You love me?” she asked, and the question could have come from a lost and lonely little girl, staring up from a pit of bleak despair. It could have come from a streetwise teenager who’d convinced herself that she knew better, but still couldn’t help but hope that maybe this time it would be different. This time, it would be real. And it could have come from the vibrant, beautiful woman in his arms, only now beginning to realize that everything that had come before didn’t have to destroy all that would come later, if she’d only give it a chance.
“I love you,” Rand whispered. “I think I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.”
Dani closed her eyes for a long moment, absorbing Rand’s words like a physical blow. And they were every bit of that and more. She couldn’t stop shaking, but when she looked up again, Rand was still there. Strong and solid and sure—and, impossibly, hers. “No guarantees, I understand that,” she found herself saying, even as Rand leaned forward and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “I know I can be hard to get along with, I know I’m rough, obnoxious. I know—”
He stole her next words with his mouth on her lips, and she tasted salt and heat and possibility, the combination threatening to start another flow of tears, even though she’d thought she’d cried herself out already a dozen times this morning. But Rand needed to understand that she knew the score. She understood the game. When he broke away, she was ready, forcing the words out in one long rush, each one slicing away another shred of her heart. “You can walk away at any time, and I’ll be okay, really. This is for as long as we want it, as long as you want it, and—”
“Shut up, Dani.” He leaned forward and kissed her again, dropping his hands to put his arms around her. Naturally, as easily as if she’d been doing it for years, she found her arms around him as well, the simple touch of his lips chasing away all her words, all her thoughts, until there was nothing but the two of them, standing together, with tomorrow and the next day and the next waiting for them to see what life would bring.
The sudden sob that broke free from her was unexpected, and she pulled back, mortified, her hands going to her face to press away the tears she’d sworn she wouldn’t shed in front of him.
“Dani.” Rand’s voice at once grounded her and sent her spinning again, but she managed a wobbly smile.
“I’m okay,” she said unnecessarily. “I’m okay.”
He made no sign of moving. “Who are you trying to convince of that?”
She knuckled her eyes and rubbed her face harder, drawing in a breath that felt raw and ragged in her chest. Steadier now, she finally glanced up at Rand, only to see him staring back at her, his expression so intense that it nearly stole her breath all over again.
“You love me,” she found herself saying once again, her eyes searching his, seeing the impossible truth of it in his face, his smile, his every gorgeous angle and curve, from the top of his perfectly styled hair to the tips of his designer shoes. “How in the world did I ever manage that, Rand Sterling Winston IV?”
His smile was quite possibly the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, both a challenge and a promise, twisting her own words and giving them back to her like a gift—a gift she’d never thought she’d be offered, let alone be able to accept. A gift that gave a nod to their beginning, but set the stage for all that was yet to be.
“Score one for the con,” he said.