Chapter 20
KARA
Shawn’s hand fidgeted with the handle of my roller bag while we rode the elevator up to his apartment.
“I thought you’d have a house,” I said. “Some enormous estate in the country.” Maybe even a castle. The Forbes list had highlighted his assets, and besides a sizeable, diverse portfolio of stock, he owned lots of real estate, including an honest-to-God castle somewhere.
The only answer he gave me was his cryptic smile.
The elevator opened to expose a single door, which he unlocked and gestured for me to go inside.
Light flooded the space. The entryway opened to a kitchen on the left and an enormous living area on the right.
The apartment was European and modern, all sharp angles, clean lines, and minimalist design.
“You live here?”
There were no pictures on the walls. In fact, there was nothing except for large moving boxes with German words scribbled on the sides. His office was polished and organized, but this was a disaster.
“I’ve been traveling a lot.”
Since there was nothing else to look at, my gaze went to the floor-to-ceiling window that had a sweeping view of the city. In the distance, his brewery loomed. Smoke drifted from the smokestack, illuminated by the glowing Osterh?gen logo.
“Where’s your furniture?” I asked.
“It stayed with the house I used to have.” He paused. “A few months ago, I decided it was too much room. Alicia and I had bought it thinking we might need the room for—”
I sucked in a breath. “Kids.”
“Yes. I’m closer to the office here.”
“How long were you married?”
“To Alicia? Three years.”
I should have left it alone. It wasn’t my business, and it was guaranteed to create more questions, but I did it anyway. “And no kids?”
He straightened, uncomfortable. “No.”
I pressed my lips together to hold in my regret, but he didn’t see it. He turned, went to the large, stainless-steel fridge, and grabbed two bottles of beer. A bottle opener was extracted from a drawer, the caps were popped off, and he slid a bottle across the counter toward me.
“I suppose I should tell you,” his gaze was fixed on me and his face serious, “I don’t want to have children. We both thought I would change my mind about that, but I didn’t, and that was the reason Alicia and I got divorced.”
I took a sip of the beer to avoid saying anything.
“I know it’s a little late to ask,” he continued, “but are you . . . doing anything to prevent that?”
Since we’d had sex without a condom this afternoon.
“Sorry, no.”
He took a deep breath, and the struggle behind his eyes was fierce. Shawn had enormous wealth and had been ensnared in marriage this way once before. I didn’t want to be cruel, and I didn’t make him wait.
“I suppose I should tell you,” I echoed his words, “I don’t want to have children, either. Which is good, because that’s not possible for me.”
He didn’t appear to understand right away. “You can’t?”
“Nope.” I took another sip of my beer, and for some reason it just came out. “Paul took me to every doctor to prove it.”
His face changed. Not pity, or sympathy, but understanding.
I didn’t have to tell him about the hormone treatments I’d reluctantly agreed to, the months of disappointing looks in Paul’s eyes, and why sex had been so focused on the end result and not the act of love. That was behind me now.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said.
“All right. Are you still naked under that skirt?”
I paused. Once again, he’d put me off-balance. The air in the room was thin and made me swallow thickly. “Maybe.”
“Show me.” It wasn’t a request. He wore the same expression he had in the back of the limo, the one filled with hunger and power.
I set my beer down on the counter lazily. “You don’t have any furniture in here.”
A wicked smile tugged at his lips. “But I do in the bedroom.”
Jason had given me the ‘all clear’ to turn my phone back on, and it was late when it buzzed on the nightstand. Shawn stirred beside me on the bed but didn’t wake. I blinked my bleary eyes at the screen and had to read it again.
Really?
The carpet was plush under my bare feet as I hurried out of the bedroom, far enough out into the living area not to disturb Shawn.
“What do you want, Paul?” I whispered it, but it echoed in the empty space.
“I’ve been calling you for days. Where have you been?”
“None of your damn business,” my temper said. “What do you need?”
“I’ve been worried about you. You seemed okay after the incident in New York, but then you disappeared. No one could reach you, and you weren’t in the office all week. You never take time off—”
“I’m fine.”
He wasn’t listening. “Not even when you’re sick. I know you. Something’s going on.”
Paul thought he knew me? No, not anymore. “What do you want?”
“I have to tell you something about Scott.” His superior attitude, the one he’d kept hidden from me until we were married, seeped into his voice. Almost like he was looking forward to revealing this shocking information.
“I’ve already heard.”
It made me sad. I had liked Scott right up until the gun, and even after, he still didn’t deserve what happened to him.
“So where are you?” he asked, forcing casualness. “With him, Shawn Dunn?”
That was what this phone call was about. His curiosity, his jealousy.
“Why do you care?”
“Have you looked at this guy? He’s got a reputation for sleeping with anything that moves. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
He’d probably gone running to Google the moment Shawn had left the office with me. But his last statement was so absurd I couldn’t process it right away.
“You don’t want to see me get hurt?” I laughed, although it contained no warmth. “Why? You think you’re the only one allowed to do that to me?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“And why do you assume I’d get hurt? Maybe I’m just interested in fucking him.”
I shocked my ex-husband into sweet silence with my flat-out lie, but only for a few seconds.
“Nice. Are you? ‘Fucking’ him, as you so elegantly put it?”
I could see his face. The sneer covering the insane desire to know, eating him from the inside. When I’d asked for the divorce, he’d told me I was making a mistake. He was sure I wouldn’t find someone else, and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t trade up.
Dear God, I had. Paul had almost nothing in common with Shawn after all.
“I’ve gotta go.” I hung up while he was in the middle of some sort of protest and tiptoed back into the bedroom.
Soft moonlight lit the space that was mostly empty other than the large bed and the man asleep on it, the covers pushed down to expose his bare, toned chest.
I slipped under the sheets, grateful to be back with him.
Oh, I was in trouble. How the hell had this happened?
Six months ago, he’d sat beside me at a restaurant, and it had taken a single conversation for me to instantly dislike him.
A week ago, he was the most annoying man I’d ever encountered.
Now, my unexplainable feelings for him had grown into something I hadn’t wanted, but . . . I was tired of fighting.
I’d stolen the Forbes from the hotel and stuffed it in my suitcase, not sure how long this thing between us was going to last. Unsure how long it would be before Shawn got bored and lost interest, and I wanted something of him to keep.
His heavy arm looped over me and pulled me close, molding my body to his.
This was wild. Terrifying. But also kind of wonderful.
One night became two, stretching through the weekend.
My days became Laurel’s, helping her put the finishing touches on the nursery, but the nights were always his.
Those two nights weren’t enough, and I found myself back at his place on Sunday evening. As soon as I was through the front door, he grabbed my hand and led me to one of the spare bedrooms of his penthouse. This morning it had been a storage space of half-unpacked boxes.
Now it was a beautifully decorated home office.
“What happened here?” I asked, my gaze drifting over the sophisticated lighting and sound equipment on the desk, before drifting on to the perfectly styled bookshelves behind it.
“You mentioned you wanted to sit in on some calls this week.”
My breath caught. Incentive had told me to take all the time I needed after what had happened with Scott, but missing work was difficult for me, and hard on my team. I’d let it slip to Shawn that I’d planned to join a few meetings.
He didn’t need to tell me that he’d had this office set up for me. It was part of his plan to seduce me into staying . . . and it totally worked.
It was stunning how quickly we fell into a rhythm, how comfortable it became.
Warnings chimed in my head that this was happening too fast. That we were in a fog of lust, or the honeymoon period, even though we hadn’t even put a label on our whatever we were to each other.
If I wasn’t cautious, I’d lose myself to him.
But I ignored them all.
On Thursday morning, I remained in his bed naked, my cheek pressed against the pillow that smelled like him while he staggered the ends of his necktie to begin knotting it.
“Stop looking at me like that.” A teasing smile darted across his lips.
I pretended to be clueless. “Like what?”
“Like you want me. You’re going to make me late. Again.” He looped the ends together. “What are your plans today?”
I tried to avoid talking about work with him, worried that another job offer or interview request loomed on the horizon. Jason felt confident I could return to Maastricht this weekend if I wanted and was finalizing the plans with my security team.
Every day that passed was another day with no new information about Scott Rhodes’ death. He’d been fine in his holding cell the night before, and dead in the morning from asphyxiation. There were defensive wounds, so it wasn’t self-inflicted, but no other evidence of what had happened.
I pushed the thoughts away and focused on the breathtaking German man before me.
“I have a kickoff meeting at nine.” I also had plans with Laurel but kept that bit to myself. “Why?”
“There’s an event tomorrow night.” He sounded deceptively indifferent.
I smiled. “Someone’s turning the big four-oh. I heard.”
His hands slowed and he grimaced. “Yes. As much as I like you naked, you’ll need something to wear.”
I gathered the sheet around me as I sat up. “You just assume I’m going? Maybe I have other plans.”
“Like your plans of staying with Jason and L?” Victory flashed across his face. “How did that work out for you?”
I tried to look annoyed but failed when a smile leaked out. “You’re kind of a jerk.”
He echoed back the same response from the limo. “Didn’t your sister warn you?” He threaded his hands in my hair and drew me up onto my knees so he could lean down and kiss me. “I’ll have my assistant set up an account somewhere for a dress.”
This time the annoyed look came easily. “No, thank you. I have my own money. That would make me feel like a kept woman.”
His eyes warmed. “I wouldn’t dream of trying to keep you. Except,” he whispered, “maybe all to myself.”