Chapter 8 #3
He nodded abruptly, shutting down the image of what Gracie’s future might have been, if only he’d been able to protect her; if only he’d been less selfish. “Have something to eat, Kate. You must be starving.”
She was hungry, but it was a hunger for information, more than food.
Now that he’d started to tell her about his life, she wanted to know more.
She wanted to know everything. Only getting stories out of Roman was like drawing blood from a stone.
He clearly didn’t want to open up about his past. Could she blame him?
She likewise had a tendency to keep things locked up.
Maybe that was part of what connected them?
She reached out for his hand, lacing their fingers together and staring down at the contrast between his large, tanned hand and hers, smaller, fair-skinned.
“Not everyone gets the fairytale, huh?”
“True.”
“But look at what you’ve done, Roman.” Her voice carried insistence. “Look at what you’ve built.”
He didn’t say anything. She squeezed his hand.
“How did you do this?” She used her head to gesture around the penthouse. “How did you go from the life you’ve described—broke and living in trailer parks—to having this kind of money?”
“I knew what I wanted; I went after it.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it.
“What?”
“You just…make it sound easy.”
A frown smudged across his face. “For me, in some ways, it was.”
“What does that mean? Why?”
“I set my sights on success, and I refused to fail.” His nostrils flared as he exhaled.
“Come on. That’s simplistic. Everyone wants to be a success in their chosen field.”
“I told you, I refused to fail.”
She rolled her eyes, kept looking at him, probing him until he expelled a long, impatient breath and kept going.
“I read an article about an investor—one of the first crypto guys—and came to New York so I could meet him. I waited around outside his office and as soon as he stepped out for a meeting, I started to talk. I begged for a chance to work with him—”
“You? Begged?”
“I persuaded him,” Roman said, frustration giving way to a grin that was as cocky as all hell.
“I knew everything about his portfolio, I’d done a risk analysis on it.
He let me travel in the car with him to his meeting, and by the time we arrived, he’d hired me.
I worked for him for six months and made him a fortune in that time.
He gave me some of it, and that was it. I took that money and turned it into ten times what I had. ”
“You’re wired for finance.”
“Yes.” Their eyes met and an electrical charge burst through her. She looked away quickly. “I know what that kind of gift can do to a person.”
She frowned, not understanding. “It’s not a gift we share. My brain isn’t like yours.”
“I mean the starter fund. Money. Let me help you, Kate.”
She forced herself to look back at him.
“Let me give you some money, so you can turn your life around.”
Exasperation flooded her. “That wasn’t a gift, though. It was payment for your work. It was recognition of what you did for him. That’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You’re not coming to bed?” She sounded so shy and demure. Roman felt the tendons in his neck pulse, as fires of temptation licked through his body.
He wanted to.
He wanted to go to bed and make her his, just as he’d promised.
But he knew that succumbing to temptation now would be a disaster, because he was not yet in control.
His body was rioting, a tangle of desperation and hunger, of absolute surrender, and if there was one thing Roman knew for sure, it was he would never surrender himself to another.
“Soon,” he said, softening the tautness of his voice with a smile, though he feared it was equally tight. “I have some emails to catch up on.”
“Oh.” She hid her disappointment quickly, and again he thought about the masks she’d been forced to develop, the way she’d learned to sell a different version of herself. Her veneer was perfect. “Okay. Well, don’t keep me waiting too long…”
Her words hung in the air between them long after she’d hobbled from the room. He’d watched her go with the tightness in his body becoming unbearable, his cells reverberating as though they were being shaken.
He hadn’t been lying. He did have emails to catch up on, but no amount of work could keep him from thinking about the woman lying a few walls away. The way she’d be curled up, breathing softly in sleep, body as soft as rose petals.
After an hour, he gave up on work, gave up on everything and stood, exasperated, stalking towards the lift doors and jabbing his finger into the button.
The doors parted immediately and he stepped in, only realising he’d been holding his breath when they closed again and put some geographical space between himself and Kate.
Once out on the streets, he started to walk.
Long, confident strides cutting over the sidewalk with ease, the darkness of the night enveloping him with its welcome seclusion and anonymity.
He walked as though he had a predator on his tail, as though if he stopped moving he would be swallowed by the earth—or something far more sinister. Connection.