Chapter 16 #2
Silence. It throbbed. He stared at Manhattan and saw Kate. He ached. He hurt. No, he bled. His body gushed blood from a thousand invisible wounds that would never heal.
“Tia.” He pressed his palm to the thick glass, closing his eyes, but Kate was there, too, haunting his eyelids. Taunting him with her absence, only Kate would never taunt him. She was too good. Too kind. Glorious, just like Tia had said.
“We only spoke for a few minutes,” she said, slowly, like she really didn’t want to say whatever was coming. “She was flustered to see me. Something she said made me think…”
“Made you think what?” His voice was dark. Angry. Frustrated.
The silence made his whole body tighten.
“Well, she told me she was working. She was trying to explain why she was at the function with the guy who’s bankrolling the whole development.
” Roman closed his eyes on a cascade of bitter, all-encompassing jealousy.
Tia’s voice was gentle when she spoke. “The thing is, I’m pretty sure she’s working as a paid escort, Roh.
” And then, with a heavy sigh that he barely heard over the gushing of blood through his body.
“I’m so sorry. Maybe you were right; I guess it’s over between the two of you. ”
Usually, he chased sleep fruitlessly, but that night, he fought it.
Because every time he drifted off, Kate was there, and now?
She wasn’t alone. It was so easy to imagine her with someone else.
Someone else who’d make her laugh. A faceless man who’d touch her how Roman had, who’d hold her close to his body.
Someone who’d maybe promise her the world and mean it, not stop at wanting her to ‘be safe’, when of course Kate deserved to be happy.
It was such an important difference, and it was a step beyond what Roman could ever offer.
He drank black coffee and worked, but every time he looked at his phone, he imagined calling Kate and some random guy answering.
He imagined whoever it was handing her cash the next morning, and Kate taking it, as though her beautiful body could be bought, and for the first time in his life, a violent spark ignited in his stomach.
He wanted to burn the world down, starting with anyone who’d ever dared look at her, let alone the men who’d thought they could take what they wanted for money.
Was this fault? Had he put this in her mind?
When he’d suggested the NDA and explained the amount he was willing to pay for her silence, she’d been adamant that she didn’t need money, that she’d never have sex for anything materialistic.
Hell, she’d left a pair of earrings that were worth a fortune. So what had changed?
Desperation. He knew the answer to that.
When Kate had been in his apartment, she’d had hope.
She’d hoped her father would be alive, that she’d be able to see him, to meet him, maybe even to become a family with him.
To stay in New York while that happened, to work, to not be alone. She’d had hope, and now she had none.
Roman went to work before five o’clock in the morning, desperate to leave his apartment and the ghost of Kate behind, determined not to think about Kate and the choices she was making, even when that was killing him.
He’d let her go; now he had to suffer the consequences. And so, by the sound of it, did she.
Two and a half months after leaving New York, Kate had finally managed to convince herself she was okay.
She hadn’t heard from Tia again. She hadn’t heard from Roman, and somehow, knowing that he knew where she was and didn’t care was like the unlatching of a lock, or so she told herself.
After all, it was the final nail in the coffin for the ridiculous fantasy she’d been clinging to that maybe he cared for her more than he’d been willing to admit.
That maybe there’d been something real there.
Then again, what would Tia have told him? They’d only spoken briefly; she could hardly remember what she’d said. Her mind had been made fuzzy by the shock of coming face to face, by memories of Roman and their time together.
She dug her fingernails into her palm, furious at herself for thinking about this when she was at work, forcing herself to walk confidently into the foyer of the upscale hotel, towards the bar, where she’d been directed to wait for her date.
New York would be in the first flush of winter by now, perhaps even covered in Snow.
Whereas Sydney was balmy and warm, the subtropical city preparing for Christmas, the warmth giving rise to slinky dresses and morning swims at Bondi.
Kate hadn’t wanted to think about Christmas.
It was her first one without even the dream of finding her father, though.
Without even the idea of having a broader family out there, and she just wanted the day to come and go with as little fuss as possible.
She planned to fill it with at least two books and a margarita.
At the bar, she ordered a soda water. This was work, not pleasure, and she didn’t drink while she was working, particularly not with a new client.
With someone she had dated a few times, through the agency, she might relax enough to have a glass of champagne.
But Roman’s words were always in her ears, the promise he’d extracted that she’d take care of herself a warning she couldn’t unhear.
Old habits died hard, and though Kate was earning better than she ever had in her life, she was still frugal.
She had gradually pieced together a stunning wardrobe by thrifting dresses and buying carefully off eBay, and tonight, she’d chosen a black silk dress, cut on the bias with fine spaghetti straps, and a pair of espadrilles.
She’d curled her hair loosely and wore it half up, in a claw clip, and her nails were neat and natural.
She sipped her drink, then replaced it on the coaster, reading the hotel’s advertising, before flipping it over and reading the reverse.
A moment’s lapse; the smallest slip in concentration.
That was all it took. She couldn’t have said which she was aware of first: his shadow, extending over her, cast by the dull overhead lights, or the faintest hint of his fragrance, just a suggestion in the air, but enough to overpower her senses and drag her memory kicking and screaming back to New York, to nights spent curled up against him, breathing him in.
She turned, willing herself to be wrong, and came face to face with Roman Hayes, and every fragile hope she held of being over him burst in her chest, shattering into a million shards of glass over which she would need to walk.
Not just tonight, but for the rest of her life.
“So, it’s true,” he said, banal enough, sophisticated, but there was a glitter in his eyes that was pure fury.
Inside she was trembling like a leaf, caught in a storm, but it wasn’t contained to inside, she realised. As she lifted a hand to her glass, she saw that her fingers were shaking in the same way and she dropped them to her lap and clasped them there instead.
“What are you doing here?” Surely it was a dream. An illusion. Or maybe, a dastardly little voice dared to hope, he’s realised what you meant to him? Maybe this time he wants to ask you to stay forever?
But she was working and that mattered to her. This job had the power to change her life; she couldn’t lose it. She glanced past him, watching the door.
“Waiting for someone?” He moved to signal the barman, effortlessly calling his attention, and ordering two glasses of high-end champagne.
“I’m fine,” she demurred, when the opposite was the case.
He probed her with his gaze, eyes staring at her, then through her. She shivered. Two and a half months ago, she would have said she could read him like a book, but now? She had no idea what he was thinking.
“Tia told you,” she surmised. Of course Tia had. They were like siblings, and running into Kate was hardly the kind of thing the other woman would brush under the carpet.
“Yes.”
“So?” Their champagnes arrived and despite herself, Kate sipped hers quickly, closing her eyes as the bubble danced in her mouth.
“So,” he spoke slowly, watching her, leaning close enough that his knee brushed hers and she trembled for a whole new reason. “I want to know why you’ll take money from half of Sydney’s elite in exchange for that gorgeous body, but you wouldn’t take money from me.”
She stared at him, completely non-comprehending at first. Her lips parted, her mouth gaped, and then, she understood what was in his eyes, what emotions he was trying to wrangle.
Anger. Desperate, aching anger. The kind of anger that could destroy a man like Roman, because he’d been on the receiving end of it so often as a child.
She reached out instinctively, her hand curling around his arm, but he jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”
She startled, shocked by the force of his judgement, by the cruelty of it.
By the way it seemed to slice her in two.
His statement kept splitting apart inside of her, forming new shards that burst through her, pain lancing her skin, her organs, making it impossible to breathe.
She reached for the bar, needing it for support.
Fuck that, actually. She needed the champagne.
She drank it like water, waiting for the hit of something, anything, to soothe her frazzled nerves but nothing helped.
She blinked at him, and blanched at the anger—hatred? —in his expression.
“Why would you do this?”
She shook her head, needing to deny it, hating him thinking this of her.
“You told me you were a survivor, but I stupidly didn’t think this was your style.”
She clamped her jaw together, her heart twisting and breaking. Tell him the truth. But some vestige of pride, of angry independence, held her quiet. This was none of his damned business, anyway. Never mind that he was wrong. “I can’t do this now. I’m waiting for someone.”
“That would be me.”