Chapter Sixteen
NICO SEEMED VERY quiet in the car, Ashley thought as they drove back to the hotel.
It was after midnight, her feet ached and her mind was spinning from a little too much champagne.
She thought the evening had gone well, and she’d certainly chatted up Infinite Innovations but, looking at Nico’s closed expression now, she wondered if he felt the same.
‘I thought tonight went well,’ she ventured, and Nico’s jaw tightened.
‘Oh yes,’ he said tonelessly, his gaze trained straight ahead, his expression completely veiled. ‘Very well.’
‘Nico…’ Ashley wasn’t sure what to say. He looked and sounded as he had the first day she’d met him, all leashed fury and deep bitterness, hidden by a deliberately bland expression.
Was she being paranoid, or had something happened that she didn’t know about?
And, if so, why wasn’t he telling her? ‘Is everything okay?’ she asked, and he bared his teeth in a smile that made unease shiver along her spine and settle in her gut.
‘Oh yes,’ he said again, his voice now silkily lethal. ‘Everything is absolutely fine.’
Ashley stared at him for a moment, trying to work out his mood.
She realised he was acting the way he had the morning after they’d spent the night together—deliberately putting a distance between them, doing his damnedest to be cold and aloof—and it both frustrated and frightened her.
Was she always going to have to dance to his tune, play to his moods?
That wouldn’t be a relationship; that would just be another version of the dysfunction she’d had with her father, trying to please a man who refused to be pleased.
She didn’t want the same with Nico. She wouldn’t play his games, she decided with a surge of certainty. Not this time. Not ever again.
Ashley turned back to the window, staying determinedly silent. Neither of them spoke until after they’d reached the hotel. The blow came as soon as she’d walked into their suite, slipping off her heels with an audible groan.
‘You can change,’ Nico told her matter-of-factly as he shrugged out of his jacket. ‘And then you can go. Let no one say I’m not generous—you can keep the gown and the earrings.’
The tone was cold, even cruel, as if he wanted to hurt her. After all they’d shared together, it felt particularly callous, and Ashley steeled her spine, determined not to beg the way she once might have.
‘You want me to leave?’ she asked slowly. ‘Tonight?’
‘The concierge will call you a cab.’
‘And that’s that?’ she asked, lifting her chin as she stared him down. ‘No explanation?’
‘I don’t think one is necessary.’
‘And you don’t think, after the last few days, you could have the courtesy of at least speaking to me politely instead of kicking me to the kerb?’ Ashley was glad her voice didn’t shake. She was hurt, yes, but she was also angry. Did he really think she deserved to be treated like this?
‘How is giving you a gown and a pair of very expensive diamond earrings kicking you to the kerb?’ Nico challenged in a dangerously quiet voice.
He was, Ashley realised with a sudden lurch, very, very angry.
This wasn’t just about him deciding to end things.
Something else was going on, something he didn’t want to tell her, and already Ashley knew she wasn’t going to guess.
She wasn’t going to play the supplicant just so he could kick her when she was down.
She’d done that too many times before, with her father.
She’d be damned if she’d do it with a man she’d thought she loved.
‘All right,’ she said coolly, and saw surprise flare in his eyes.
So he had been expecting her to beg… ‘I’ll go.
But let me say first that I think, considering everything we’ve shared over the last few days, I deserve more than this kind of callous dismissal.
But, if that’s the kind of jackass you truly are, then I suppose I’ve made a lucky escape.
’ Her voice trembled but she managed to steady it.
‘I’m not going to beg for answers,’ she warned him. ‘I’ve done that too many times before.’
Nico turned round to face her. The moonlight streaming in from the window washed half his face in silver and made it look as if he were wearing a mask. Maybe he’d always been wearing a mask, Ashley thought numbly. Maybe she’d never truly known the man she’d thought she’d been falling in love with.
‘That’s rich, considering you already know the answers,’ Nico snapped.
He took a menacing step toward her. ‘I must say, you can be a very good actress when you choose. I actually believed the fainting routine, and the sprained ankle, and the little mental breakdown. Good Lord, but you played every trick in the book! What was next—a stroke, like your mother?’
Ashley gasped and reeled back from the shocked pain of such a deliberately cruel remark. ‘That was low, even for you,’ she whispered. ‘No matter what stupid conclusions you’ve come to.’
‘You lied to me,’ Nico growled. ‘You lied to me time and time again. You never forgot anything, did you? Have you been laughing behind my back this whole time? Snickering with the Boxall woman that I’ve bought your pathetic little act hook, line, and sinker?’
‘With Ruth?’ Ashley demanded, shaking her head. She took a step back as he loomed over her, colour slashing his cheeks, his eyes like burning coals. ‘Do you really believe that?’ she demanded. ‘After everything…?’
Nico took another menacing step towards her. ‘Tell me,’ he invited in a dangerously pleasant voice, ‘Who gave you that initial seed money to offer to inventors? Those millions—where did they come from?’
For a second, Ashley could only stare. This self-righteous fury, this cold dismissal of everything they’d been to each other…was it all about money?
She folded her arms and met his cold stare. ‘Where do you think it came from, Nico?’
‘I know it came from your father. Something you chose not to divulge. Have you been in touch with him this whole time?’
‘And if I was?’ She shook her head slowly.
‘You could have asked me, you know,’ she told him.
‘We could have had a normal, rational, adult conversation, instead of firing all these accusations at me.’ Realisation trickled coldly through her.
‘But I guess that was beyond you, wasn’t it? You wanted it to be beyond you.’
‘Don’t make this about me,’ he warned, and she let out a high, broken laugh.
‘But it is about you. Because if you are seriously breaking things off with me because of how my company was funded…’
She shook her head helplessly. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me that’s not just an excuse,’ she demanded.
‘Tell me you’re not afraid of what you’re feeling for me and…
what I’m feeling for you…and you didn’t grasp at the first thing that gave you a way out of all that.
What a relief it must have been,’ she exclaimed brokenly, ‘To retreat to your ivory tower of self-righteous fury! What a comfortable place that is for you to be, all by yourself.’
‘That is not,’ Nico told her through gritted teeth, ‘What is happening here.’
‘It’s exactly what’s happening here,’ Ashley snapped.
‘And what is not happening is me begging you to understand and believe me again.’ She slashed her hand through the air.
‘I’m done with all that. And,’ she added, yanking the earrings out of her ears, ‘I’m done with you.
I’d say when you can have a mature conversation that isn’t motivated by your paranoia, come talk to me, but on second thoughts, don’t. ’
Tears stung her eyes, and she forced herself to blink them back. ‘I thought I was falling in love with you,’ she choked as she flung the earrings at him. ‘I guess I was wrong, because a man I loved wouldn’t treat me like this, and I sure as hell wouldn’t let him.’
And with that, not trusting herself to keep her composure, Ashley strode from the room. Nico didn’t follow her as she yanked out a bag and started packing clothes—her clothes, not the outfits he’d bought for her. She wouldn’t take a penny from him, she vowed. Not a single one.
A man I loved wouldn’t treat me like this, and I sure as hell wouldn’t let him.
The words echoed through Nico, making him start to soften with doubt and regret.
Then he reminded himself that, no matter what she said now, Ashley had lied to him, or had at least been sparing with the truth.
Even if she hadn’t been, it was better this way.
He was better off on his own. Love was for fools and saps, and he was neither. No longer.
He heard her moving round in the bedroom, and as she came out he turned to face the window, his back to her. He wasn’t interested in saying goodbye. And he didn’t trust himself not to break.
She drew a breath and he tensed, waiting for her to fire a parting shot. Or was he hoping she’d ask to stay, beg to explain? Was that even what he wanted?
But, in the end, she didn’t say anything. Her breath hitched and then the next sound he heard was the closing of the door.
Nico closed his eyes and bowed his head. He was alone, which was what he wanted, but already he felt an emptiness sweeping through him. If this was victory, it sure as hell didn’t feel like it.
Two weeks later, Nico was back in New York, working harder than he ever had in his life, all in an attempt to shut out the memories of Ashley—and, worse, the regrets. He’d second-guessed his actions too many times, wondering if he’d been too harsh, her own words coming back at him like a taunt.
A man I loved wouldn’t treat me like this, and I sure as hell wouldn’t let him.
And how, Nico had wondered more than once, would a man treat a woman he loved?
Because he’d convinced himself he’d been falling in love with Ashley, and it was proving harder than he’d hoped to convince himself that he hadn’t.
Two weeks on, he wished he could forget, even as he steadfastly refused to.