Chapter Three #2
Four years ago, I knew from just watching her across the room that Tessa Rockson was an exceptional beauty.
Since that time, her beauty has only steeped, grown even more mesmerising, intoxicating in a way that defies description or clinical assessment. She would inhabit every corner of the room even if she stood still.
But she’s not standing still. She’s headed towards me now, thunder and lightning in her eyes.
‘What do you want for dessert?’ I ask idly, as if the answer matters, as if I haven’t already chosen something just to keep her from storming out.
Her head jerks towards me. ‘What do I want?’ Her voice rises, sharp, brittle.
‘I want you to stop circling me like a vulture. I want you to stop turning every work event into some kind of performance. I want you to—God forbid—treat me like a professional instead of a conquest who slipped through your fingers before you’d had seconds. ’
It would be almost disconcerting if I didn’t know she’d wanted seconds too, before Tamara’s text ruined it all.
I lower the tablet, cock a brow. ‘Is this your MO? To explode when you’re cornered?’
‘Is this your MO? To goad when seduction doesn’t work?’
‘If I was seducing you, trust me, princess, you’d know about it.’
Her eyes flash, lips curling into something like disdain. ‘Or maybe you’re losing your touch and taking it out on me. Isn’t that what this is all about?’
I stand slowly, teeth gritted. ‘You want to get into what this is all about? Fine. It’s about you spouting professionalism at me and then spending half the evening flirting with other men.’
She freezes. It’s barely a beat but it’s long enough to see she’s disarmed, shaken. The tip of her tongue darts out to caress her bottom lip and I bite back a groan.
‘I didn’t… I wasn’t…’
My raised eyebrow speaks for itself and uncertainty flickers across her face before she snaps her composure back into place.
I saunter towards her, measured, deliberate, stopping within three feet. The air between us tightens, her perfume coiling around me. I inhale, let myself drown in it for a moment. ‘You wanted a reaction. This is me, reacting.’
‘Like a Neanderthal?’ she snarls.
‘Like a red-blooded male who objects when others encroach on something he wants.’
Her chin lifts. ‘You don’t want me.’
‘Don’t I?’
The words hang between us, raw, undeniable.
She stares, stunned, lips parting as if I’ve stolen her breath. For a dangerous heartbeat, I see the truth in her eyes—the same heat that’s been burning me alive since she walked back into my world.
But then she recovers. ‘I don’t care what you want, Theo.’
‘You should.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ll repeat my earlier observation. Something’s going on here. And if you know anything about me, you’ll know I can’t let it rest. You’re better off clearing the air now, rather than later—when I apply more…persuasive means to extract the information.’
Her breath hitches. ‘That sounds like a threat.’
‘It’s a fair warning.’
‘Fair?’ She lets out a bitter laugh, then spits it out before she can stop herself. ‘That’s rich, coming from you.’
The regret flashes across her face instantly.
I smile, slow, wide. ‘That’s revealingly pointed, baby…’
Memory ticks faster, flashing back at me unbidden.
It’s not what happened between us the morning after, because I’ve relived those visceral fifteen minutes way too many times than I care to admit. Have dissected every angle of it until I had to lock it away or risk being obsessed by what should be just another episode in a Theo Biney saga.
So if it’s not that then…
Save for heated minutes glaring across the room at one another, we didn’t interact at Ashon’s movie premiere last year because she left before I had the chance to speak to her. A discovery that made my back teeth ache from gritting them with unsettling frustration.
I’m confident it’s not that either.
A flash of ludicrous tension clenches my gut.
It can’t be the text message. The one she sent me a couple of months after we parted ways. Or rather after she threw down her harsh verdict and vacated my suite with her nose in the air, earning herself the princess label I use now.
The one I’d barely glanced at and deleted without answering.
Because women lie.
Because Tamara lied.
Because my mother was an expert liar.
Because I wasn’t about to be caught in another net spun from deceit and crocodile tears.
Because I knew better than to trust a single word.
And yet here she stands, looking at me like I’d just burned her alive.
‘The text you sent me,’ I say, the realisation slotting in with a grim click. ‘That’s what this is about?’
Tessa stiffens, every muscle in her body coiling as if bracing for impact. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes, you do.’ I step closer, refusing to let her dodge, the air between us heating with every inch I steal. ‘You sent me something after that night. You’ve been holding it against me ever since.’
Her eyes flash with fury and something darker swimming beneath, the mask she wears cracking just enough for me to glimpse the storm inside her. ‘You don’t remember the message?’
‘It was vague. Deliberately, I expect. So, no.’ I don’t soften my reply. ‘I deleted it.’
The words hang like the echo of a gunshot.
I watch the breath leave her in a shudder, shoulders drawing taut, her mouth twisting as though I’ve struck her clean across the face. Her fingers twitch at her side, then curl into fists.
She looks away, jaw tight, then back again, eyes blazing with a pain I don’t understand and an accusation I don’t know how to answer.
‘You want to know what it said?’ Her voice is low, trembling, but sharp enough to cut me open. ‘It said, I need to see you. Please call me back.’
The silence that follows is deafening, like the whole world has pressed pause.
I drag a hand across my jaw, frowning, refusing to let the crack widening in my chest show. ‘Right. So it was one of those texts.’
Her eyes narrow, incredulous. ‘One of those texts?’
‘You’re not the first woman to want me back. Or to want more from me after a night together,’ I say, shrugging, knowing I sound arrogant because it’s easier than admitting how her hurt just landed like shrapnel under my ribs when I shouldn’t be affected. At all.
Outrage floods her cheeks, her fists curling tighter.
She looks incandescent, part rage, part anguish, all fire aimed at me. I tell myself it’s pride, ego, the usual feminine theatrics. But the burn in my chest tells me I’m missing something vital. Something that matters more than either of us wants to admit.
So, I press just a little bit harder. ‘Why did you send it, Tessa?’
Her voice cracks and she can’t quite contain the fury trembling in her words. ‘You’ve lost the right to know anything at all.’
She storms past me, her skirt brushing my thigh like a whip. A moment later the door to her suite slams behind her.
I stand there in the echo with every instinct screaming that I’ve just been handed half a truth and thrown away the other half.
And for the first time in years, a cold weight settles low in my gut. The one that arrives with the feeling that my vaunted control is slipping.
The kind that used to come after one of my mother’s betrayals made the tabloids, when I’d stand beside my father and pretend the whispers didn’t touch me.
It’s the same hollow ache, sickeningly familiar, twisting through my ribs.
The sting of words I can’t take back. The certainty that once again we—father, mother, son—have turned something delicately fragile into something irreparably fractured.
I drag a hand down my face, stopping myself before I follow the thought to where it’s headed. Because admitting what this feels like, what she makes me feel. Out of control and…and…
No! That would mean acknowledging there’s a name for the thing clawing at my chest.
And I’m not ready to do that.
Might thankfully never be.
But not admitting one thing doesn’t mean another evaporates.
I drop back onto the sofa, jaw tight, tablet forgotten on the table as the memory bullies its way through.
The text. That text that had said something and nothing. I’d wiped it from my phone after one cursory glance.
Because it’d reeked entirely of Tamara’s playbook and I’d already had more than enough of her bullshit.
Tamara had made sure of that, burning the very last dregs of benefit-of-the-doubt I’d held on to despite my mother’s every whim and faithless endeavour, into irredeemable ashes.
Her father had dangled one of the greatest architectural commissions of the decade in front of me—a palace-slash-museum in their desert kingdom, designed to rival the Louvre, a project that would have carved my name into history.
Tamara had sought to seal the deal by luring me with the promise of paternity, a falsehood she’d also sold to her own father.
She’d lied about being pregnant, full of tears and hysteria, then had demanded a marriage to legitimise it all. And I had almost believed her. Almost stepped into the trap that would’ve given me her father’s contract but cost me my soul.
Almost.