Текст книги "Sweet the Sin "
Автор книги: Claire Kent
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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
He’d probably killed her father, and now he was asking her for a date.
He wanted to fuck her again, and her body kind of wanted it too.
A surge of rage swept through her, the likes of which she’d never experienced before.
“What is it?” Reese demanded, grabbing Kelly’s arm. “What’s the matter? Did something happen?”
Something had happened. Caleb Marshall had happened. And ten-year-old Kelly’s life had gone into a downward spiral she’d never been able to pull out of.
But she wasn’t helpless. And she wasn’t weak.
Caleb wasn’t as untouchable as he thought, and he wasn’t irresistible either.
So Kelly tapped out her reply.
I guess. As long as we’re not talking about seconds. They’re never as tasty as the first time.
Not seconds. Dessert.
Chapter 3
Caleb Marshall told himself not to be a heartless ass and to make the damn call.
It was already four, which meant it was after ten in Paris. Pretty soon, it would be too late to phone, and he knew he needed to get it over with today.
So he stopped procrastinating, hit send on an email, and reached over for his phone.
He’d known Wes since first grade, but he hadn’t talked to him in more than two years. He hated making calls like this.
“Fuck,” Wes said, answering on the second ring without any semblance of a greeting. “If even you are making a pity call, then I must be in really bad shape.”
Typical.
“Are you?”
“What do you think?”
“I have no idea. But I’m sorry about your mom.” Caleb said the words automatically, since they were the ones he’d called to say. They felt artificial, though, as if they weren’t what needed to be said.
“Yeah. How did you hear?”
“I ran into your dad the other day. What’s the prognosis?”
“Two or three months? They don’t really know. They’ve got nothing left to try.”
“We’ve got a couple of projects in the works, but they won’t be ready for clinical trials until next year.”
“Yeah. There’s nothing to hope for here.”
Caleb didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t like feeling that way. He was tempted to end the conversation quickly, but, if he had a friend in the world, it was Wes.
“Are you coming home any time soon?” he asked at last.
“I’m going to try to get over there in a couple of weeks.”
“Good. Give me a call when you’re in town.”
“Will do. Any new trauma with you?”
“I don’t do trauma.”
“I guess the one was enough for any lifetime.”
A brief cringe shuddered through Caleb at the words.
“It wasn’t a trauma.”
“Yeah, it was. It just lasted more than a year.”
Caleb sat in silence, his whole body tense for a moment before he made himself relax. This was why he hadn’t wanted to make this call, why he hadn’t touched base with Wes for so long.
His friend knew everything—his entire history—even things that didn’t need to be remembered.
Caleb wasn’t that helpless boy anymore. He’d constructed a life to ensure he wasn’t. And he didn’t like to be reminded of who he used to be.
“Well, maybe I can catch you when you’re in town,” he said at last.
“Still the same old Caleb. The minute it turns real, you’re out.” Wes sounded resigned, not annoyed. “But thanks for calling anyway.”
After saying good-bye, Caleb set down the phone and tried to focus again on his email. His father had died in his sixties and his mother a few years ago. There was no one left from childhood now. No one but Wes.
He brushed away the thought—and the memories it evoked—so he could work. He had other things to focus on now anyway.
And a date tonight he was really looking forward to.
Caleb had a long-standing habit of working in the office on Sunday afternoons.
He usually took Saturdays as a break, except for email and the occasional phone call, but by Sunday morning he was itching to get to all the work waiting to be done in the office. So years ago he’d given up on the pretense of a weekend and just started going in.
His staff technically had the weekend off, but a lot of them ended up coming in on Sunday afternoons anyway.
It made things easier for him, so he never tried to stop them.
He’d been in the office for five hours already, since eleven that morning, and he’d completed the project he’d wanted to get done today. He wasn’t meeting Kelly until seven that evening, though, so he’d started to go through some of his email before he’d called Wes.
His inbox was like a bottomless pit. Any time he got even close to clearing it out, it would pile up again in less than an hour. Even with Linda culling through it several times a day, they never seemed to make any progress.
Sometimes he was tempted to just delete his account and tell everyone to contact him by mail or phone. He was in charge here. What could they do? There were plenty of executives who demanded companies adapt to their eccentricities. Maybe refusal to use email would be his.
Even as he stared at the screen right now, at just after four on a Sunday afternoon, three more emails came in, and he felt the familiar tightening at the back of his skull at the thought of all of the email still waiting for him.
When he’d started working for Vendella as a young man, his biggest source of stress had been keeping up with email so no one thought he was lazy or incompetent.
One would think the last twenty years would have made more of a difference.
He was replying to one of the messages Linda had tagged as “priority” when she tapped on his office door and walked in. She was a plain, quiet woman in her fifties. She’d been his assistant for fifteen years, and she was always in the office when he was.
“Here’s the information you wanted on Miss Watson,” she murmured, placing a file in his inbox. “And are you available for a call from Richard Helms?”
Caleb made a face, but nodded his affirmation as he reached for the file Linda had just put together. “Give me fifteen minutes.”
When Linda left his office, he opened the file to find a picture of Kelly, standing with a friend of hers outside of a stone building. She wore jeans and a fitted T-shirt, and her hair was pulled into a long ponytail. She was smiling broadly, as if she’d been laughing.
She looked different in the casual clothes, but she had the same fresh beauty—glowing with a kind of innocence that was impossible to ignore. As if she weren’t jaded and corrupted by experience with the world.
She’d said that appearances could lie, and he knew it was true, but he still felt that pull of attraction and curiosity—as if she were a quest that must be undertaken.
He genuinely hadn’t known if she would agree to a second date with him. He’d believed her when she’d said she didn’t do seconds. He was actually a little disappointed that she’d given in so easily, but another round of sex like the first one they’d had would do a lot to ease that disappointment.
He glanced through the information on her that Linda had collected. Twenty-eight. Adopted by Mel and Irma Watson when she was eleven.
She’d gotten through high school without any honors and then had gone to an expensive art school. She’d started building her business as a pet artist immediately afterward, and nearly everything available online about her was connected to her work.
She’d never been married. Never been arrested. Never done anything particularly noteworthy.
There was no reason why she should be so fascinating to him. But the sex had been really good, and that was reason enough, as far as he was concerned.
Sex had been boring lately. He dated often enough, but never for very long. The women would start to whine or cling or demand he change his habits, which he wasn’t about to do. So he’d send them an expensive gift, and end it with as little mess and drama as possible.
More and more, he was just using women from a high-class escort service, since it was easier and cleaner. But that got old after a while too.
Kelly was the first woman to leave him wanting more in a really long time.
After reading the file, he slid it into his top drawer and tried to focus on work again. He had to talk to Richard Helms, who led Vendella’s marketing division. He was putting up a fight about Caleb’s directive to trim the marketing staff by ten percent, so now Caleb had to deal with the headache.
He didn’t take pleasure in layoffs. They were unfortunate, but necessary in the current environment. Sometimes hard decisions had to be made to protect the company—even if it meant hurting people in the process.
One of the reasons he was sitting where he was now was because he could make the hard decisions without flinching.
Business was business. And taking it personally was always a mistake.
–
Almost three hours later, he was leaving the building, having gotten through the conversation with Helms and two more hours of work besides.
The cute blonde who was temporarily working building security in the lobby smiled at him as he walked by.
He smiled back. They’d had an eye-flirtation going on for a few weeks now, ever since she’d begun the job—filling in for one of the regular staff who was out for surgery. As soon as her temporary position was over, he was definitely planning to give her a good fuck.
He had no doubt she’d be amenable to the idea.
He stopped at the coffee shop next door to grab a coffee and mentally cringed when he saw who was behind the counter.
He never should have screwed that redhead. He’d known she worked just next to his building, so he would likely continue to see her occasionally. They’d had one hot night, and he would have been satisfied with the encounter, but she’d kept coming on to him in the days afterward, until he’d had to be quite rude to get her to back off.
She looked at him now like he was some sort of monster as she coldly handed him his coffee.
It had been one time, and he’d never claimed to want anything but sex. If she’d imagined something else might happen afterward, then she was just deluded.
He didn’t do relationships. He just didn’t have time. He liked women and he liked sex, but only if things were kept simple.
He couldn’t handle this kind of lingering messiness, some silly girl’s attempt to guilt him into thinking he’d treated her poorly.
He forgot about the redhead as soon as he crossed the street, walking the two blocks to the hotel bar where he’d arranged to meet Kelly.
He arrived a few minutes after seven and glanced around to see if she was there yet.
When there was no sign of her, he went to the bar and ordered a scotch, glancing down the line of stools and idly admiring the long legs of one of the women sitting on the opposite corner. He glanced up, but she wasn’t pretty enough to interest him, so he let his gaze move on.
At a quarter after seven, Caleb was starting to get annoyed. Being a few minutes late for a date was normal. Women seemed to do it on purpose, so they could make an entrance or feign a degree of disinterest. But Caleb was not used to waiting this long for anyone.
She better not have stood him up.
He wasn’t a fool. The sex had been just as good for her as it had been for him. There was no way she was faking her responses to him.
No matter what she said, she would want to get together with him again—just as he wanted her.
If she didn’t show up, then she was playing some sort of game, and women never won when they tried to play games with Caleb.
He was starting to get angry when he saw her enter. She was dressed differently tonight—wearing heels and a short, sexy dress in a striking shade of bronze. Her hair was pulled back in a loose braid that was unexpectedly sexy.
She’d obviously made an effort with her appearance, which confirmed his belief that she wasn’t at all indifferent to him.
She smiled distractedly when she saw him and came over, setting the beaded clutch she held on the bar.
“I was starting to wonder if you were going to come,” he said, feeling a familiar tightening of his groin at the sight of the clear, fair skin of her neck and shoulders, the graceful lines of her arms and legs.
“I wasn’t sure myself,” she admitted. She was having trouble looking him in the eye, which was strange after the direct way she’d acted with him the day before. “I told you I never do this.”
He leaned forward, holding her eyes intentionally, since her flitting gaze was starting to bug him. “So why do this now, then?”
She took an odd little breath and looked him square in the eye. “I don’t really know. Just something to try, I guess.”
His smile broadened. “Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.”
“How did you get my number?” she asked, after the bartender came over and she ordered red wine.
“I remembered your name from the business card, so I just looked you up. Wasn’t that hard.”
“Oh.” Her eyes flickered down and then up again. There was definitely something elusive about her tonight that hadn’t been present just yesterday.
It was almost like she was nervous. Women often were around him, but she hadn’t been nervous at all yesterday.
Maybe in the interim she’d found out who he was.
As if in response to the thought, she said, “Are you planning to tell me your name, or is this supposed to be truly anonymous?”
“You don’t already know it?”
“How would I already know it?” She looked a little calmer and was able to hold his gaze without wavering. “You’re not famous, are you?”
“No. I’m a businessman. But some people know who I am.”
“That’s your arrogance talking. I’m not likely to know or be impressed by a random businessman.” She reached over to skate her fingers over his shirt sleeve, which was propped on the bar. Her eyes focused on her fingers and not on his face. “So, what is your name?”
“Caleb.”
“Ah. It’s nice to meet you, Caleb.”
She smelled of something light and fresh, and her face looked even more sweet and dewy in the artificial light of the bar. Her body was close to his now, tantalizing in all the little moves she made.
Tension hardened in his neck and his groin as he felt arousal deepening. He wanted her again, and he didn’t want to chat endlessly in some pretense of civility in order to get her.
“So what do you think? Have we done the social thing long enough?”
She blinked, her lips parting slightly in lovely confusion. It took a minute for her to understand what he was asking, but her cheeks darkened when she did. “You move fast, don’t you?”
“I think I proved that yesterday.”
“Well, yeah. I was wondering if it would be different tonight.”
“Why would it be? That’s why you’re here, right? Or were you expecting simple sex to turn into some sort of saccharine romance?” His tone had an edge he hadn’t intended. He was suddenly worried that she was expecting more.
All of his interest would die an instant death if he discovered she was after something serious with him.
She made a choking sound and turned her head away briefly. “You’ve got to be kidding. I thought I made that clear yesterday.”
“Sometimes things change from day to day.”
“Not this.”
“Good.” He reached over to slide his finger down a length of deep gold hair that had escaped her braid.
“No touching during the social time,” she teased lightly, playfully batting his hand away.
He moved his hand back, relaxing into the kind of rivalry they’d enjoyed yesterday in the park. “I thought the social time was over.”
“That was just wishful thinking on your part. I never agreed to that timetable.”
“So what’s your timetable?” He leaned forward so he was hovering over her, using his size to make her feel his presence.
Her breath quickened, so he knew she felt it. “I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, decide quickly—because there’s something about you, something about the untouched look of you, that makes me really want to touch.” The gravelly texture of his voice was genuine. He was intensely aroused now and having trouble not grabbing her and pressing himself against her.
She slowly lifted her hands until they were resting on his shoulders. He took this as an invitation and moved his face so his lips were just a breath away from hers. “So, the social time is over, then?” he murmured.
She was breathing so fast she was almost panting, and he could feel the urgent tension in her body. She was just as turned on as he was. He felt a surge of pleasure at this thought.
Suddenly, she pushed him away. “I’m sorry,” she choked, grabbing her clutch and straightening to her feet. “I can’t do this.”
Caleb froze for a moment, watching her walking away from him, stumbling slightly as she did so.
What the hell? She was leaving him like this? She looked upset, like she was on the verge of tears.
And he’d done absolutely nothing.
When he registered the situation, he experienced a wave of annoyance and frustration. Women didn’t just walk out on him like this—certainly not without explanation.
So he followed her. He would never pressure her into doing anything—that was the refuge of a lesser man—but he would at least get an explanation.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, falling in step with her in the lobby of the hotel.
“I told you. I’m leaving.”
He reached out to grab her arm to keep her from going any farther. “But why? You can’t tell me you don’t want me too.”
“I don’t”—she shook her head roughly—“it’s too complicated,” she continued. “But I don’t want to be here anymore. Please let me go.”
He almost groaned in exasperation and resisted the urge to shake the truth out of her. Instead, he said mildly, “At least let me walk you to your car.”
She gave him a quick look, but then nodded mutely.
They walked down the sidewalk toward her car in silence. The moon shone on her face, and he noticed long strands of hair slipping out of her loose braid.
Despite the murmuring resentment, he was once more aware of his intense attraction for her. His body stirred again as he studied her out of the corner of his eyes. He noticed her supple lips, the trace of nipples through the fabric of her dress, the unconscious swing of her hips.
He waited for her to say something, explain why she’d suddenly broken the way she had—as if something was driving her that he was completely oblivious to. But she never did. She walked in complete silence, and it would feel like a defeat for him to break the silence himself.
Eventually, they made it to her car. He’d taken note of it yesterday. Expensive. Not ostentatious.
“All right,” she said, with an obvious conclusion in her voice. She stood next to the driver’s side door and stared at him impatiently. “Thanks. Sorry the night didn’t turn out the way we thought.”
He pressed his lips together, fighting back annoyance at her stubbornness and at how she was blatantly trying to get rid of him, when it was quite clear that she still wanted him. “Tell me what’s wrong, Kelly.” He paused for her to answer, but she didn’t. “If you need some sort of help, then just tell me.”
She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I don’t want your help. I don’t even know you.” She focused on his face with a strangely tired gaze. “You’re not someone I’d turn to for help.”
She didn’t know him, which meant she didn’t trust him. He didn’t know or trust her either. But he was fascinated, and he was sure now that she was in some sort of trouble, which would explain her strange reactions to him.
Caleb hated not knowing things, especially things that affected him in any way.
Kelly was still staring at him, waiting for him to walk away. As if he would just do what she wanted him to do without question. Finally, she said, “I’m more stubborn than you are, and I don’t have anywhere I need to be tonight. I can wait you out.”
Caleb stared back at her for a minute, until he was forced to admit that she wasn’t going to cave. It didn’t matter. He was flexible. He could work with her infuriating refusal to talk to him.
He could still get the answers he needed. He’d just do so in a different way.
“All right,” he said softly. “I’ll leave. Take care of yourself.”
Kelly blinked, as if he’d surprised her, then she nodded. “You too.”
She wouldn’t move until Caleb had turned around and started walking away from her.
His back to her, Caleb headed toward his building. He felt irrationally angry, at being dismissed by her this way. No one had treated him like that in years.
He had made it almost half a block when he heard her scream.
Whirling around, he immediately assessed the situation. Saw two figures next to Kelly’s car, apparently pulling her out of the driver’s seat.
“Kelly!” he shouted, sprinting back down the block.
It was an automatic response. He hadn’t thought it through and then decided on the best option. He’d just seen danger and reverted into an instinctive crisis mode.
He ran toward her at full speed. Didn’t think. Felt the adrenaline begin coursing through his body as his feet pounded on the sidewalk.
She was struggling with one of the men now, clearly trying to free herself from the attackers.
Caleb shouted again as he approached them, knowing that something as harmless as noise could sometimes scare muggers off. He was close enough now that he was able to see distinct movements, and he saw her clobber one of the men on the jaw. She pulled away and kneed the second man in the groin as he reached out to seize her again.
But she hadn’t gotten far enough away when the first one made another grab for her. Caleb watched as the man brutally slammed Kelly into the side of the car.
And Caleb was washed with waves of rage. White-hot, blinding rage. He had no idea where the violent emotion had come from, except that it was one of his primal instincts that he’d done his best to stamp out.
But he’d never been able to completely erase the raw, primitive side of himself, and it took him over at that moment, as he watched Kelly slump limply to the pavement. He didn’t know her. Didn’t owe her anything.
Yet he was fiercely enraged by seeing her attacked.
As he reached the two men, they were trying to pull her up, and Caleb grabbed one of them and slammed his fist into the man’s face.
The impact from the blow shook him, and Caleb felt a jolt of pain shoot all the way up his arm. The second man knocked Caleb aside before he could turn toward him. Caleb felt the man’s elbow hard on the side of his mouth.
But by this point there were other voices from down the street, as other people saw what was happening. The two men ran away, and Caleb had no choice but to let them, since Kelly somehow—as she was trying to rise—had ended up slumped on his feet.
Giving up on catching the attackers for now, Caleb knelt down beside Kelly, waving away the couple who had started over to help. As he did, his hand moved to his mouth, and he realized that he was bleeding from a cut on his lip.
Kelly was blinking up at him, clearly dazed and in pain, one of her hands blindly groping at his knee.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly, holding her by the shoulder.
“Yeah.” Her voice was choked, and she groaned helplessly as she tried to sit up. One of her hands moved to her head and the other to her stomach as she plainly tried to fight both dizziness and nausea.
“You need a doctor,” Caleb said, his mind working quickly now that the crisis was over.
“No,” she objected weakly. “I’m fine. Just help me up.” She made a few attempts to stand, but wasn’t able to do so yet.
“You are not fine. I’ll take you to the emergency room, and then we’ll have to report the attack. Could you tell what they were trying to do? Mug you? A carjacking?” It hadn’t really looked like either of those, but he wanted to know if she would take the offered suggestions.
“They weren’t muggers or carjackers,” Kelly muttered. Her face was pale, and her eyes were still dazed, but she grabbed for his shoulder in an attempt to rise. “I know who they were.”
“Kelly,” Caleb began urgently, feeling the dull anger return at the knowledge that she was hiding this from him, along with a renewed feeling of powerlessness. “What is going on?”
“It’s my business,” she said, despite her obvious weakness. “Just help me up.”
“I’m not going to let you try to drive yourself away,” Caleb gritted through clenched teeth. In her struggle to rise, her neckline had shifted, and his eyes were drawn once more to the lush crease and shadow at the top of her breasts.
He felt strange about focusing on her cleavage when she was obviously in pain, so he made himself look away.
She swatted away the hand that had been on her shoulder, the one he was using to prevent her from rising. She stumbled to her feet, and Caleb had no choice but to put a supporting arm around her waist, since she almost collapsed back to the ground.
Kelly smothered a groan and closed her eyes. She held his arm to keep her balance and put her free hand on her belly. Soon, she’d have a heavy bruise under one eye and a substantial knot on the side of her head.
“Where are my keys?” she mumbled, pulling away from him and trying again to stand on her own.
Caleb couldn’t believe how foolish she was acting. “Kelly,” he said roughly, then cleared his throat to restore his voice to normal. “I’m not going to let you drive. You likely have a concussion.”
Now there were tears leaking out of her pained eyes. “I have to go. He’ll find me again.”
Caleb filed that away with the other information he’d gotten from her thus far. Obviously she was running from someone. That would be helpful to know when he began to check into her background more deeply.
She was taking deep breaths and trying to steady herself, and her cheeks and lips were sickeningly white.
Part of Caleb—a part that he’d almost forgotten existed—wanted to take care of her. And the rest of him recognized a good opportunity when he saw one. So his whole self was speaking when he offered, “Come with me, then. Let me help you. I’ll take you somewhere safe where you can recover.”
“No, Caleb,” she objected in a quavering voice. “I don’t want you involved. I don’t even know you.” She sucked in an urgent breath, moved her hand back to her stomach, and turned away from him.
Caleb felt a little queasy himself when he asked, “Are you going to be sick?”
“No,” she replied, swallowing the word. “I’m okay.”
She definitely wasn’t okay. Caleb narrowed his eyes. “I’ll take you to the emergency room, or you can come with me and let me help you. Those are your only two options.” He wasn’t used to people not doing what he said, and he didn’t like it at all.
“Can’t go to emergency room,” she gasped. “He’ll find me.”
Caleb’s brow furrowed as he watched her. She was definitely concussed, and there was something else going on here.
“Come with me, Kelly. You have no reason to trust me, but you have no reason to think I’ll harm you either.”
“No.” She put both hands flat on her car for support.
“Kelly,” he urged, putting an arm around her waist again, since he was afraid she was going to fall down.
Finally, she slumped against him. And, since she didn’t argue anymore, he took that as her agreement. “My car is a couple of blocks away,” he said gently. “In the garage of my building.”
Kelly tottered beside him for half a block before her knees began to buckle. So, seeing no other available means of getting her to his car, Caleb swung her up into his arms and carried her the rest of the way.
He didn’t like it. It made him feel strange—as if the gesture were too clichéd, too heroic, too something. It didn’t suit him at all. The same way he’d felt making the call to Wes earlier that day.
But Kelly couldn’t walk anymore, and he had to get her to his car somehow. So he tried not to think too much about it.
Her body was soft and substantial in his arms. She was basically a dead weight—not trying to support herself or present a pretty picture. It made him feel uncomfortable. His chest felt too heavy and too tight all at once.
But his mind was whirling. There was a mystery here. So many unanswered questions.
After getting her into his car, he drove to his house outside of the city, since that would be less visible than his downtown apartment. Kelly was in and out of consciousness, but Caleb kept trying to keep her awake.
When he was stopped at a light, he glanced over and saw that her eyes were closed. So he picked up his phone and texted out a brief message to a guy he used to investigate things he didn’t want listed on the Vendella company books.
Find out more information about Kelly Watson. Focus on men she’s been in relationships with.
Kelly’s eyes were still closed when he put his phone back down and accelerated as the light turned green.
His mind was whirling with questions and possibilities.
He didn’t fully trust Kelly. He didn’t fully trust anyone. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
She obviously needed his help, and he liked that. But he needed to know her story in order to do anything about it.
When there were things he didn’t know, his world would start to spin out of control. And when things were out of control, he would have to resort to methods that were distasteful, unpleasant, in order to gain the upper hand.
He preferred not to have to do so.
He would if he had to, though. It was the reason he was sitting here now. He was willing to do what other men couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
And he never let weaker qualities like guilt or fear or morality get in his way.
