Chapter 7 #2
She nodded, but there was a heavy feeling in her stomach that she didn’t like. A sense that she’d shown more of herself than she’d intended and he’d seen way beyond it anyway.
“You don’t have to babysit me, you know,” she said, later that day, with Roman working from the dining table and Kate curled up on the sofa, watching a recording of a Broadway musical.
He glanced from her to the television, something shifting on his features. “I like being here.”
With me? The question formed but thankfully she stopped herself from asking it, just in time.
Because to ask it would be to risk him laughing at her, telling her of course that’s not what he meant, and Kate didn’t want to hear the rejection.
They’d already crossed a thousand lines that morning; she had broken so many of her own rules.
“Do you like musicals?” he asked, after several more minutes had elapsed. She glanced over at him.
“I’ve never been in person,” she admitted. “Not to a Broadway show or any show.”
His features didn’t shift.
“We didn’t all grow up like this,” she teased.
“This was not my childhood.” It was straying dangerously close to an area of discussion she could tell he didn’t want to indulge, to an area of discussion that was only acceptable if the NDA covered it. Perhaps even then, he would prefer not to go there?
“My sister was a singer.” The words seemed almost dragged from him.
“She knew all the words to these songs.” He nodded towards the TV, where a whole chorus of performers was belting out a famous song, but there was nostalgia on his face, that suggested he was no longer in the living room of his palatial sky home, but rather, somewhere back in time.
“Does she still sing?”
His eyes shifted to hers, his features taut. Silence hung between them, heavy and all-consuming. “No.”
Kate waited, but he didn’t say anything else. Eventually, she turned her attention back to the musical. But frustration at his reticence was building inside of her. She reached for the remote and turned off the show, then angled her body towards his. “What was your childhood like, then?”
He glanced up at her, from the papers he’d apparently refocused his attention on. But there was something a little practiced about it, something forced, so she wondered if he was pretending interest with his work rather than actually working?
“Shall we go over the paperwork?” he prompted, a tight smile on his lips.
She compressed her own. “Is it some kind of state secret?”
“It’s private.”
“Did you rob a bank for your thirteenth birthday? Is that where all this comes from?”
His eyes bore into hers, his jaw set in an imposing square line. “No.”
She laughed then, a soft sound. “I give up, Roman. You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
She ground her teeth, hating that. Hating that he’d done this before, with so many women. Hating how little she knew about him, and how much she wanted him.
That night, he worked late, one ear trained on Kate’s room, so the second she cried out in fear, he was there, slipping into the sheets beside her and wrapping one arm protectively around her body, pulling her back against him and whispering that she was safe.
Reassuring and promising her, quietening her fears, her nightmares, until the sound of soft breathing filled the apartment.
And for the first time in years, he drifted off to sleep and stayed that way for more than an hour at a time. It was unheard of for Roman. He woke disorientated and confused, the heaviness of his rest an unknown phenomenon for a man who had long ago accepted insomnia in his life.
It was still early; Kate was asleep against him, her body shifting with each rhythmic movement of her breathing, and he lay there, allowing himself to relax into this.
A secret gift to himself—a moment of unguardedness.
A moment of simply existing, and not overthinking.
He drifted off to sleep again, years of exhaustion having taken their toll.
Next time he woke, Kate had turned in the circle of his arms and was watching him. “What are they like?”
He frowned, not following. Her eyes dropped to his shoulder and lingered there. “Who?”
“The women you sleep with.”
She’d asked him this the day before, but conversation had moved on. “I don’t know, Kate.” Frustration made the words clipped. “I couldn’t possibly distil it into a single word.”
“Like Tia?”
He heard a hint of jealousy in her voice and wished he could take it away. Tia was inextricably bound up in him, a forever part of his life, but that was why they’d never slept together. They shared too much; there was too much to risk by messing it up with sex. “Tia is unique.”
Kate’s eyes flashed, but whatever she was feeling, she covered quickly. “I mean…expensive looking. Glamorous. Polished.”
“They’re women I’ve met through the course of my life,” he said, with a shrug. “My businesses, my investments.”
“So, yes then.”
Exasperation had him grinding his jaw. “I don’t have a type.”
“I bet if I saw a photo roll, I’d disagree.”
“Why does it matter?”
“I’m just curious.”
Yes, so was Roman. Curious about Kate. Her life.
Her past. Her future. Her dreams. And most of all, about the way the air between them hummed with electricity, so he wanted to kiss her and see if their chemistry would be as heavenly as he suspected.
But he could tell she wasn’t going to let this go without some sort of answer.
“The first girl I slept with lived a few doors down. We were both seventeen, and it had been a long, hot summer. We’d gone swimming most days, in a creek near where we lived at the time.
We walked home together—I still remember the buzzing of mosquitos and the humming of crickets.
I was leaving the next day, and I knew that if I didn’t kiss her that night, I’d never get another chance. ”
Kate’s eyes were huge in her face. “Roman Hayes, you’re a romantic.” A smile was playing on her lips, and she pressed a finger to his chest, half-accusingly.
“I was a hormonal teenager,” he corrected, surprising himself with a gruff laugh. “And we’d been swimming together every day,” he reminded Kate. “That’s a lot of time for a seventeen-year-old boy to be looking at a gorgeous woman in skimpy bathers.”
She rolled her eyes. “Say what you like, I can tell. You’re a romantic. I like it.”
“She was not polished or expensive, but she made me laugh.”
Kate’s lips parted in surprise, her eyes probing his, making him feel strangely vulnerable. He hadn’t revealed anything huge about himself, but he felt as though he’d stripped away a layer, shown her something he probably shouldn’t have.
“I can’t imagine you laughing.”
He grimaced. “It was a long time ago.”
She nodded slowly, thoughtfully, her delicate lips tugging to the side as her eyes probed his. Eventually, she spoke. “It was my eighteenth birthday. I went out to celebrate my freedom from foster care.”
“On your own?”
Her eyes didn’t meet his. “Yep.”
He curled his fingers into his palm in a futile attempt to curtail the sympathy that swelled in his chest, the ache to protect her.
Why hadn’t anyone done that before now? Why hadn’t anyone looked after Kate as she deserved?
Like you looked after Grace, a darkness inside of him shouted, reminding him of his own failures.
But Kate wasn’t aware of the battle raging inside of him, the accusations from the past that always dogged him.
She cleared her throat and continued, “I drank too much and went home with some guy I met at the bar. I don’t even remember his name,” she admitted, her features showing something like remorse.
“I don’t remember if there were crickets humming,” she added.
“And there was definitely nothing romantic about it.”
The protective pang exploded through him now.
Roman Hayes lived and died by many rules—black and white.
Sleeping with a woman who’d had too much to drink was a line he would never cross.
He wanted to reach into her past and erase all of the assholes who’d used her, who’d taken what they wanted without waiting to see what she needed from them.
He wanted to run his hands through the waters of her life and leave only the good, but it wasn’t possible.
He lifted a hand to Kate’s cheek, touching her lightly. The bruising had faded. For the first time since they met, he could see her without immediately being reminded of the violent nature of that encounter.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, wondering that he hadn’t really consciously thought that before. There were so many other things he noticed about Kate—her grace, her poise, her contradictory vulnerability and strength—but she was incredibly lovely to look at as well.
“See? Romantic.”
He laughed then. “Believe me, my thoughts right now are not remotely romantic.”
“No?”
“No, Kate.” He leaned forward and brushed a kiss against the base of her ear, stifling a groan for how badly he wanted to stay right there.
“Sign the damned contract. I want to make you mine.” And he did, badly.
He couldn’t erase the assholes from her past, but he could show her a different kind of future, a different kind of relationship.
Pragmatic and safe, sure, but so much better than one-night stands with men who weren’t worthy.
He stalked away from her while he still could, because it was becoming harder and harder to put distance between himself and this intoxicating woman and Roman Hayes knew, without a single hint of doubt, that control was vital—for both of their sakes.