CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FOUR
M ARI STOPPED DEAD . Or tried to. Because how did you stop yourself from trembling when every cell in your body was shimmering with anxiety? All the time she’d been here he’d not recognised her. He’d barely looked at her. He’d glanced her way and made her feel like something unpleasant stuck to the sole of his shoe. And that was good. That was what had given her the confidence to speak her mind. To tell him exactly what she thought of him.
So what that she’d have to find a new job? She’d manage it. Somewhere. Somehow. And it might be a struggle—no, it would be a struggle—and she might have to take on two jobs to ensure Suzanne’s care, but that option was far preferable to sucking up to this man, being forced to beg for a job.
She wouldn’t beg. She hadn’t begged. She’d honoured Eric’s desire that she meet with Dominico and she had. She’d satisfied everything that was expected of her and she’d survived the experience.
She’d survived and she felt all the stronger for it. Because she’d changed. Twenty years had seen her change. She’d grown. She’d made something of herself.
Dom had changed too. But not in any way that was an improvement. He’d become a horrid, despicable man. So arrogant, exactly as Eric had said. So full of his own importance. So different from the man she’d known all those years ago.
She’d caught his gaze lingering on her breasts. She’d felt that laser focus burn right through the fabric of her jacket. She’d felt her nipples peak and ache. And then she’d cursed herself for bringing his attention back to her breasts again with that stupid comment.
Bosom buddies.
Big mistake.
And yet still she’d been less than five metres from disappearing back into her less than perfect but Dominico Estefan free life. Until he’d called her name.
Her whole name.
She’d put Marianne behind her when she’d left university and started applying for jobs. When she was looking to be taken more seriously. She’d straightened her hair and taught herself how to tame it into professional-looking updos. She’d given up cheesecloth and cotton and colour and bent herself into monochrome Mari. Nobody called her Marianne now.
And twenty years on, here she was, in all her serious accountant get-up, the suit and glasses and sensible court shoes, and still he’d recognised her.
It occurred to her that she could just keep on walking. Open the door. Take the lift down. Get out of his life like he’d once left hers. Let him think that he was wrong because she had no idea what he was talking about.
But something about him knowing was even more delicious. Now there was no need to temper her words, no need to hold back. He knew who she was and now she could unleash what she really thought about him.
She spun on her heel. ‘I’m surprised you even remember.’ Contempt dripped from her voice.
‘Marianne?’ He was on his feet now, making short work of dispensing with the barrier that was his desk, his eyes intent on her face. Searching. Seeking. ‘Is it really you?’
Mari swallowed. His voice until now had been just the same as she remembered. Caramel over granite, with a barrel-load of the gravel of irritation underlying it. Now there was almost an element of wonderment to it. Something that she remembered was a part of him. Something that maybe his arrogance and ruthlessness hadn’t stamped out completely. Not that it helped to soften her attitude towards him.
‘Is it so unlikely?’ Once again, her heart was pounding. It had been bad enough when Dom was sitting behind the desk ignoring her, but now he was standing in front of her a mere metre away, all tall, dark and unbearable.
His features were still compelling, maybe more so with the passage of time. She’d thought his twenty-two-year-old self a man then, but that had been her teenage view. This was the real man before her—a man in his prime. She could feel the heat emanating from his body along with his signature scent that she recognised as uniquely his. It hurtled her back through the decades, to a time when he’d lied and told her that he loved her. She pressed her eyes closed to try to block out the memories, but they kept rushing back. Of picnic lunches in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens, of falling asleep in Dom’s arms after making love, of waking up to his kisses and making love with him all over again.
‘But you,’ he said, looking her over. ‘You became an accountant? You, who was the original earth mother.’
Her flush of courage suddenly felt over-egged. He was too close. He was before her. A full head above her, overwhelming her. He was so close that every cell in her body hummed with his proximity, drawn to him, just like they always had been. Twenty years after his betrayal and abandonment and, curse them, still her cells betrayed her.
‘Somebody has to pay the bills. You’re probably not familiar with that concept.’
‘I pay the bills in my family.’
Her chin hitched. ‘Slightly different circumstances, I’m sure.’
‘Exactly. Which is why I’m wondering why you can afford to throw this job opportunity in.’
‘I’ll manage. I’ll look after myself. I always have.’ Like when he’d abandoned her twenty years ago and she’d had no one to fall back on but herself. There was no way she’d take a job from this man. There was no way she’d ever rely on this man again. She’d well and truly learned her lesson. ‘Goodbye, Dom.’
Where was the invisible butler to let her out? Never mind, the door was at her back. All she had to do was take the handle and let herself out.
‘You can’t just disappear,’ he said. ‘We haven’t seen each other in what, twenty years.’
‘You’re missing the point,’ she breathed. ‘Why would I want to stay with you a moment longer than I already have?’
‘Why?’ he said. ‘Because I took over Cooper Industries? Or because of what happened twenty years ago?’
She didn’t answer and he knew which it was.
‘We were kids, Marianne. Little more than kids. You can’t still be holding a grudge after all this time.’
A grudge? He thought she was harbouring a mere grudge? It was like rubbing salt into wounds he’d just scraped clean of their scars. It was almost as if he looked back on those days with a degree of nostalgia and was looking to reconnect as if they were meeting at a class reunion.
He paused. ‘It wasn’t like it meant anything.’
His words sent shards of glass into her heart. She shook her head. Because no, it meant nothing. Nothing at all.
‘Do you really hate me that much?’
What kind of question was that? Memories overwhelmed her. Of loss. Of betrayal. Of a lover who’d turned his back on her when she was at her most vulnerable.
She untwisted her lips long enough to speak. ‘You have no concept of how much I hate you.’
Dom considered her outburst dispassionately. He was still coming to terms with stumbling across Marianne again—what were the chances when they’d met in Sydney and here they both were, twenty years later, in Melbourne?—but something else occurred to him then. Something else that could provide a convenient solution to his problem.
‘Then I have one question.’ In spite of her professed hatred for him—or rather, because of it—he raised one eyebrow and allowed himself a smile. ‘Are you married?’