Chapter 3
3
Rowan
A tlas’s golden eyes were full of the same lazy amusement I’d always found so maddening, as if he was in on some joke that the rest of the world didn’t know.
It was as irritating now as it had been back then, and it didn’t help that looking at him, all I could see was his expression as the orgasm had taken him, his face drawn tight, the hiss of breath between his teeth.
I’d tried not to meet his gaze, tried to pull myself together, tried to pretend that I’d seen nothing at all. But, naturally, he didn’t believe me. He’d always been able to see right through me, even when I’d been a teenager.
I’d been desperately hoping that after their little interlude, he’d leave, but he hadn’t. Somehow he’d known I was there, though for how long I didn’t want to imagine. When he’d first entered the room? Or was it later? And how had I given myself away? How the hell had he known I was behind the curtain?
But I didn’t want to ask those questions, because the last thing I needed was to discuss my embarrassing lurking behavior, especially when I didn’t have a good enough reason to explain it.
Anyway, it was stupid not to have expected him to pull back the curtain after he’d finished with the blonde, yet I hadn’t. And I thought I’d prepared myself for his physical presence, that watching him from behind the heavy velvet would have been enough to brace myself for the physical impact of his presence.
But I was not prepared nor was I, in fact, braced. Not for him. Close up.
Because Atlas Blackwood was beautiful. Just. Fucking. Beautiful.
His strongly carved features were exactly as I remembered, but with a few more lines around his eyes and mouth that lent him a certain devastating rakishness. Dark, shaggy hair, with gleams of tawny, gold and toffee. Wide shoulders, the black cotton of his T-shirt pulled tight across his hard expanse of his muscular chest. Then there was the extraordinary color of his eyes. Bright gold. Wolf’s eyes. Leopard’s eyes.
Even years ago he’d had a great deal of charisma, but now it was a force of nature. A personal magnetism that held me fast, staring at him with my mouth open like a fish lying stunned in the bottom of a boat.
It was clear he hadn’t been thrilled to find me standing behind the curtain and, well, the feeling was absolutely mutual.
Arguing with him about the folder and him walking me out had been stupid, but I’d found myself falling back into the same old pattern of me needling him, trying to get a rise out of him. Wanting him to go, leave me and Mom alone, because he was just the same as all the rest of the men that Mom had relationships with. He wasn’t different and I would prove it.
I’d been right in the end, and he’d finally left as I knew he would, and I wanted him to leave now, but not for the same reasons I’d had at sixteen.
Now, with my heart beating far too fast and those images of him in my head, I needed to get away before I betrayed how badly watching him with the blonde had affected me. And I didn’t want to do that. Not at all.
He was standing in front of me now, arms folded over his muscular chest, the file I’d given him held in one large, long-fingered hand. There was a hard, unfamiliar glitter in his eyes, as if the years had given him an edge that I’d never been aware of before. Maybe he’d always had that edge. Maybe I’d just never seen it. What I did know was that it made me uncomfortable. Everything about him made me uncomfortable.
I wanted to leave and as quickly as possible, not spend more time in his company arguing about it.
“Fine.” I tried to find him a polite smile. “Let’s go then.”
But he didn’t move, one side of his beautifully carved mouth lifting in a faint, amused smile.
I could feel a blush threaten yet again, so I glanced away. “Come on,” I said, heading past him to the door, hoping I could outrun the heat in my cheeks somehow.
But Atlas was faster, his legs much longer than mine, and he was at the door before me, pulling it open then standing there holding it while he made a courtly ‘you first’ gesture with his free hand.
He wasn’t blocking the exit. There was plenty of room for me to go past him, and as I did, I tried not to breathe. Tried not to be conscious of his tall, powerful body so close to mine, because I couldn’t understand why I wanted to reach out and touch him. See if the cotton of his shirt felt as warm as it looked. Feel if his chest was as hard…
Pull yourself together.
I went past him and as I did so, I caught a whiff of his scent, some intoxicating mix of musk, sex, sunshine and sandalwood. Heady, and rich, catapulting me right back to those two brief years when that scent was everywhere in my house. In my mother’s sheets, and sometimes, when she hugged me, on her skin too.
I ignored the tightening of my own skin as I stepped into the hallway, ignored the clench in my gut as I headed straight towards the stairs without waiting for him to catch up. Not that it mattered when his long-legged stride easily matched my undignified scurry.
“So, are you going to tell me how Cait is?” he asked conversationally.
“I told you. She’s fine.” I didn’t want to get into it with him, the slow descent of my mother into depression. The long days she spent in her bedroom, not wanting to get up, not wanting to shower, not wanting to eat.
She’d told me it had nothing to with Atlas, but I didn’t believe her. Not when her rapid decline happened just after he left.
It wasn’t fair of me to blame him for it, and maybe he wasn’t the exact cause — Mom had always been fragile emotionally — but his departure had certainly contributed to it.
I wasn’t going to let him know that though. He’d given up his right to know what was going on in our lives when he left.
“Yeah, that’s convincing,” he said.
I shrugged as we approached the stairs. “It’s not my job to convince you.”
“You’re angry.”
“Not at all.” I went to take the first step, only for his fingers to close around my upper arm and gently turn me to face him.
I tried not to be aware of how my mouth dried as I looked up into his face, caught and held by the mesmerizing liquid gold of his eyes. “What?” I demanded, with far more irritation than I’d meant to.
The expression on his face was impossible to read. “I know you don’t like me, kid. You made that pretty clear eight years ago. But you have to know I tried to stay in contact with Cait at least. I was worried about her.”
Words sat on my tongue. Angry words. About how I had to skip school more times than I could count so I could keep an eye on Mom. About the cold fear that sat in my gut every day, that sometimes had me creeping into her bedroom and sleeping on the floor just to make sure she didn’t do anything stupid. About the constant money worries and how we were going to pay our bills because her family had disowned her.
About the war I’d had with myself every day, battling the urge to call my grandparents, the Hamiltons, for help, because they were rich. But Mom had refused to have anything to do with them and had made me promise not to have anything to do with them either. ‘We don’t need them, sweetie,’ she’d say, every time I broached the subject. ‘I’ll get better. Just you wait. Can’t fail with you at my side’.
Except she never got better and I couldn’t help but think that I was the one failing over and over again.
“You didn’t need to worry,” I said, wanting to be gone. “Mom’s great and so am I.” I pulled my arm from his grasp. “Can I go now?” I didn’t wait for him to answer the question, I simply turned and went down the stairs, not looking behind me to see if he followed.
“I didn’t love her,” Atlas said from behind me. “But I did care about her.”
I didn’t turn around.
I collect my phone from Mr Handsome, pulled open the door and stepped out into the night.