Chapter Ten

 

“She’s working in the computer division in the security section, Dominic.”

“I know,” he said softly.

“That’s why you gave up San Francisco,” Charity said, a small smile in place. He had come to his senses, she thought happily. “You’re going to open your own business here, aren’t you?”

“Like I said…a little sister you want to use duct tape on,” he tipped his wrist over, his head shaking. “Be careful for a few weeks, Charity,” he said firmly, gripping her shoulders and kissing her head. “Take care of her, Nico. I’ll be here and will let you know what’s going on, alright?”

“Why is it taking so long to sell these hotels?” Nico asked with a sigh.

“Because…” Dominic glared at Charity. “Being the innovated socially conscious individual that she is…each one is going to a different buyer. She is also selling them for below market value. Each one has to arrange funding and one of them is a bloody non-profit, which is making it all that much more difficult for the attorney’s to come to an agreement. They are being split on purpose, Nico, and…aggravating as it is, it’s being done with American’s wanting to build a community. I’ll be in touch,” he said, going through the door and leaving them alone.

“I’m sorry, Nico…you had no idea what you were involving yourself with,” Charity tried to move, but the band of arms around her refused to budge.

“Shove it out of your mind, woman, I’m where I want to be with the person I want to be with,” Nico loosened his arms enough for her to smile up at him, her eyes a little watery. “Let’s go home.”

 

 

 

Dominic was stretching early the next morning when she came out of the dorm area. She always ignored the cold and the weather, he thought, taking an easier pace behind her, idly watching the long legs of the curving woman. She could run like a cheetah and if she laid on the power, he knew he was too bulky to hope to keep up with her.

Fortunately, she was unaware that he was there. A very long ponytail of mixed streaks of shimmering red and gold flicked and swayed with her movements. You never knew what color her hair was going to be from one week to the next.

He listened to the constant recriminations wrecking havoc with his conscience. He’d been a fool and an idiot and somehow managed to do them both at once, a rare feat for him. He’d spent more time in the gym in the last seven months than he had most of his life, trying to work her out of his system. Yet every time he closed his eyes, that teasing gleam was there.

He wasn’t entirely sure how to make it right.

She had three piercings in each ear; she had a tattoo of a seagull in flight on the rise of her hip. She could be irreverent and mouthy and constantly moving. Her brain and mouth seemed to go in all directions at once and with little control on either. She wore brilliant colors every day of the year and bopped to music with an ear piece in at least one ear all the time.

Half the time he wasn’t sure if she was thirteen or thirty-three. He had made a mental list of all the things that went against the social status he felt he had carried himself to. She had a dry sense of humor; she was intelligent, diverse and refused to be politically correct.

He stopped and leaned over his knees, head down as he dragged in a long breath. So what the hell was he doing trying to get her back? Not that he ever had her in the first place. But he could have. The arrogant side of him knew she’d been mooning over him since they met. And he stupidly threw it in her face by flaunting Angela around her.

He’d told himself over and over that she was nothing more to him than Charity had been: the daughter of a client. An annoying little sister. He wanted sophisticated and socially mobile. He wanted someone who didn’t annoy people by being honest about her political and social views. He wanted disciplined and elegant.

All of that was not Faith Morrison.

Like Charity, she had involved herself in situations and events that were less than something he would have considered either smart or safe. And he told himself as he stood beneath the steaming shower he could understand the desire to volunteer. To help. He had been involved with the military for six years. Maybe some small part of him believed it wasn’t a place women belonged. Not because they weren’t capable. Simply for safety sake. They always seemed more vulnerable than men.

So then why are you here, he asked himself, guiding his car through the streets to the condo he’d bought on the coast. He now owned the building and stood before it, nodding in silent approval of his decision. He was going to live on the top left and rent the others. Dominic stood for a long time on the third floor, hands clasp in front of him staring into the churning Sound. White caps buckled the surface as rain spattered over the double paned glass of the patio doors.

He was there because the stark pain and betrayal he saw in her eyes the evening she saw him with Angela was etched into a deeper part of him than he imagined possible. He had spent half a year telling himself he wasn’t the least bit interested in a relationship with an undisciplined girl who showed no interest in growing up.

He still wasn’t sure it would work but he knew when she pulled away and vanished, something was suddenly not right. The disciplined part of him repeatedly told himself that she’d drive him to drink in a month.