Tarin pushed away so suddenly she found herself stumbling over the couch behind her. Mortified, she stepped away, placing several feet between them. Heat like she’d never felt before scorched her cheeks. She pressed her hand to her lips as she looked at him and then away. She couldn’t force herself this time to put on a professional face. She felt stripped, raw. With barely a thread keeping herself together, she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t have any excuse. That was—”
“Mind-blowing.”
She did a quick head shake, something she used to do when she was a child and wanted to quickly change her reality. It still didn’t work. “Thank you for your help tonight. I think it’s time you left.”
She held the door open. Staring at the wall opposite her, he finally approached. Her body tensed with each step that brought him closer. When he stopped right in front of her she had nowhere to look but at him. Unable to meet his gaze, she locked her eyes on the V of his golf shirt. With each breath he took, his chest expanded, showing her the quiet, broad strength hidden beneath... the strength she so desperately wanted to lean against. Clutching the door with one hand, she clenched the other against her thigh. He reached out and gently touched her chin to raise it. She couldn’t help but suck in a breath as though it was the last one she would ever take. Her eyes closed, refusing to see the disappointment in his. His breath whispered over her face. The heat of his tender scrutiny was a gentle caress, an invisible thread pulling her forward. When she realized she really was leaning toward him, she raised her hand to keep them apart. She drew back, pushing against the wall. With nowhere to go, she finally met the intensity in his eyes.
Shaking, she scrabbled deep to pull out the shield.
“Don’t.”
And with that one simple word she found she didn’t have the strength or the will to resist. Vulnerability flooded through her, something she hadn’t felt in years, ever since she vowed never to cry after disappointing her father again. Silent tremors shook her core.
“I’m going to go. I’m not sure what’s going on here but I don’t think either of us is in a place to deal with it tonight. Get some sleep. You’ll be safe. Someone will be watching all night. I have work to do.”
“I—”
“You’re not alone.”
He pressed his index finger against her lips. And then he replaced it with his lips. The kiss was so soft, so quick but the effect lasted long after he’d left. If he hadn’t closed the door behind him, she wasn’t sure whether that would have happened. How long she stood there after he was gone, she also didn’t know.
Graham’s words echoed in her mind long after but their meaning failed to penetrate her defenses. She’d always been alone. Even Bobbie had only been with her a short period of time. Somehow she’d always known something would separate them. Everything and everyone always left her.
It was the shifting of shadows that finally pulled her back to the present. In truth, she really couldn’t say where she’d gone. No real thoughts coursed through her mind, only emotions that confused her, opening her to a longing she thought she’d shut off long ago. Shivering though the basement was warm, she grabbed her purse. The cell phone she’d thought many times of throwing away was right where it always was. Now she grasped it with trembling fingers. The acid in her stomach kicked into overdrive, eating away at her insides with such intensity it almost doubled her over.
Am I making a mistake? A colossal one?
Everything to do with her father was a gargantuan blunder, one constant line of them. She stared at the device in her hand. One simple press of a button and he would come running. He’d be there. All the mess she found herself in would be taken care of. But there would be a price to pay.
You always run to daddy when things get tough. She was sixteen when she’d had that realization. She’d let him fix a perceived wrong she’d never committed. But he’d made it go away, and in return she’d given up her soul and become his dutiful daughter. She’d finished school at home with a tutor. Whatever she had wanted was one click away, from shopping to movies to gourmet meals. He’d built an in-home theatre but she’d never had any company to watch with her. Never needing anything, if she wanted to shop, the store was brought to the house. If she wanted to watch a new movie, it was brought to the house because he’d built her a room with a full size screen, with ten overstuffed recliners to watch it from. Not that she ever had any company to fill any of the others. And her dad was always too busy to sit and watch a ‘stupid’ movie. If she wanted a gourmet meal from a certain restaurant, the chef was brought to the house. If she wanted friends over, well she really didn’t Bobbie wasn’t allowed to visit her anymore. She hadn’t been allowed any contact with her.
He’d kept her busy with schoolwork, learning the hotel business, being the submissive daughter. She was his hostess at parties held at their mansion and his assistant at meetings conducted in the stately home’s conference room. Their conversations were always the same.
No, you’re not a prisoner, Tarin. I’m trying to teach you how to do well in life.
You know I’m not guilty, right, father?
Doesn’t matter. You won’t ever be put in that position again. You should never get caught, Tarin.
But father I didn’t—
He’d already left. The thought of her being falsely accused of something that could have sent her to jail had she been charged hadn’t been the issue. All that mattered was she’d been caught. Innocence wasn’t the problem. Being blamed was.
Her spirit had withered up and died that day. The girl who had so desperately wanted a father’s love had finally realized he didn’t have it to give. All she would ever get from him was the impression she wasn’t good enough to hug his ankles; only his rare pursed smile and the slightest of nods could ever be her reward.
Then there was the day she tried to tell him what had happened when she’d lost a week of her life. When he ordered her to apologize to her boss for failing to give notice that she was going to be absent, she knew it had been a waste of time. He hadn’t heard a word and hadn’t cared to. If she lost her job that was her problem, he’d done everything he could to make sure she was good at it.
Her boss, Ed, had always enjoyed screwing with her. He’d hated supervising the owner’s daughter. Time and again she’d been accused of mishandled reservations or last-minute cancellations; anything that went wrong had been blamed on her, despite the fact that none of it fit into her job description. So when she’d disappeared for a week, Ed hadn’t fired her because he had been intimidated by her father. But in his formal report, he accused her of nearly losing a significant contract with the annual Southern Giftware Exposition, an event that sold hundreds of rooms and meals as well as their entire conference center. Of course he’d managed to save it, so suspending her was perfectly okay with her father.
She should have been running the place, but in the end it hadn’t mattered that she’d worked sixteen hour days to prove her loyalty and dedication—or that she’d brought in million-dollar contracts. It didn’t matter in the good old boys’ club if her boss frequented strip joints and loved lap dances on his two to three-hour lunch breaks. She had shamed her father.
She had walked away. At the time, she had thought she’d been in hell, but now she realized she’d only been dancing at its edges.
What price would I have to pay this time?
Who would have wanted to abduct Chance? His father? Or hers? Had someone tried to kill her to take her son? Her knees buckled and she dropped like she’d been knocked out. Barely having the reflexes to stop her face from smacking the hardwood floor, she was able to turn at the last minute and take the brunt of it with her shoulder. Her cell phone popped out of her hand, shooting across the floor.
Everything that had happened came crashing back to her; everything since she’d discovered she was pregnant with Chance and since she’d left Stephen slammed into her with the force of a dam bursting. The weight of the world wrapped its mass around her, crushing her. She curled into a tight ball as the tears coursed down her face but no sound escaped her lips.