Shattered by the CEO (The Payback Affairs #1)(20)
Author: Emilie Rose

But Tara hadn’t been.

Rand snapped his cell phone closed when Nadia didn’t answer, and turned to stare at his closed bedroom door.

Tara Anthony confused him. The evidence didn’t add up.

Would a mercenary tramp take a job far below her salary level and qualifications to stay home and nurse her ailing parent? Tara was too smart to waste her brain in a third-rate small business. From the belated update he’d had her add to her personnel file he knew she must have been bored out of her mind with her previous job.

And yet she’d stuck it out for years.

Would a gold digger stick around for Mitch’s and Nadia’s sakes when he, Rand admitted, had been an ass? He’d be the first to acknowledge that between his anger toward his father and Tara, his frustration over the tension with Mitch and his worry over his sister and KCL, he’d been a lousy boss. His Wayfarer PA would have been horrified by his behavior. And she would have quit. On the first day. But Tara had put up with his bad attitude.

The Tara he’d known before would have retreated when he barked. She would have left him alone when he hurled insults. But his distancing techniques had failed. This new Tara stood her ground.

Five years ago she’d been a pretty face, a good time. Today she had a new strength and insight he couldn’t help but admire. Had her trials with her mother brought about the change?

Had she fooled him with an innocent act five years ago and this backbone of steel was her true character? Or was she fooling him now?

Proof Rand had seen with his own eyes labeled her a gold digger. She’d been coming out of his father’s bedroom late at night and had a fresh hickey on her neck, dammit. The buttons of her shirt had been misaligned, which meant at some point they had been unbuttoned.

Why sleep with his father if not for financial gain? Yes, Tara genuinely seemed to have admired his father. How could any woman be that naive? But surely her feelings couldn’t have run deeper for a man who’d been twice her age? Not unless she’d been looking for a father figure since her father was nowhere to be found.

Her current bargain of shacking up, plus an exorbitant salary, reinforced the money angle. Could she be hedging her bets? Trying to hook a rich husband but filling her coffers in case she failed to snag him?

Did she really intend to use her salary to pay off her mother’s medical bills? Judging by the worn furnishing of the house and her old car and clothing, she certainly wasn’t wasting her money on luxuries.

He shoved a hand through his hair in frustration and paced in front of the window. He didn’t have the answers and not knowing frustrated the hell out of him.

Just like the Rendezvous books, something in this scenario didn’t add up. Something was off-kilter and he couldn’t put his finger on what.

Had he made a mistake? Had he misjudged Tara?

If so, when? Then? Or now?

Since he’d moved in Tara had worked as long and hard as he did—longer actually, because she’d done his laundry and cooked for him, despite his demands that she not. In fact, she’d done everything she could to make him comfortable both here and at the office, and he’d given nothing in return except rude remarks, a hard time and mechanical sex.

Even mechanical sex is good with Tara.

He shut down that thought, ignored the involuntary leap of his pulse and stared at the blackened panes.

She mowed her own grass, for godsakes, and had refused his offers to hire a landscaping crew and a housekeeper. If she were looking for Easy Street, she should have jumped on both offers.

Was it all a ruse to lure him into her snare?

As Rand had told Tara downstairs his father specialized in exploiting weaknesses. Could that be what happened? Had his father swooped in on Tara and taken advantage when she didn’t stand a chance of resisting? It was beginning to look that way.

A naive girl, as Rand had believed Tara to be five years ago, wouldn’t stand a chance against a master manipulator like Everett Kincaid.

Maybe Tara wasn’t a greedy fortune hunter.

Maybe she’d been as much of a victim of his father’s machinations as the rest of them.

Yeah, and maybe she’s taking you for a ride.

Rand’s gut told him to trust the earnestness and the pain he saw in those big, blue eyes. And his gut wasn’t often wrong. But the consequences of misjudging were too high. For him. For KCL. For Tara.

It all boiled down to whether or not he could forgive her for sleeping with the enemy.

And tonight, that answer was no.

One of them had misjudged Everett. The question was, who?And the only way Tara could find out was to get to know Rand on a deeper level than the superficial one he’d offered her five years ago. Even if that meant tracking Rand down and battering in the doors he kept closing in her face.

Rand surfaced in the shallow end of the Olympic-size pool located in the health club on the first floor of KCL. His chest rose and fell rapidly from his exertions. Water plastered his dark hair to his skull and streamed down his body like a lover’s caress. With his eyes still closed he shook his head, slinging water across her legs.

“Why do you hate cruising?”

His eyes flew open then narrowed. He swiped a hand down his face. She’d been in a chair poolside for the past twenty minutes, watching the sole occupant of the pool slice through the water at a punishing pace, but he must not have noticed.

“You’re early.”

“I thought you’d come in to get started on the Rendezvous requisition lists before any of the other employees arrived. I came in to pull them up for you. When I couldn’t find you upstairs, the security guard told me you were down here.”

“I needed a workout.” Rand planted his hands on the tile edge and heaved himself out of the water in a glistening display of rippling muscle.

Tara’s mouth dried and other parts of her moistened even more than the balmy humidity of the indoor pool area mandated. Her gaze fell to the wet, black swim trunks clinging to and clearly outlining his masculinity. A sliver of untanned skin at his waistband made her yearn to reach out and trace the pale line. With her tongue. Once upon a time she’d been welcome to do exactly that.

She blinked and lifted her gaze back to his face. After only three nights of sleeping with him by her side she’d missed him last night. Missed the sound of his breathing and his warm presence beside her beneath the covers. But it was more than just a means to ending the loneliness that had consumed her since she’d lost her mother. She’d missed Rand.

“Why do you hate cruising?” she repeated.

He reached for the towel in the chair beside hers and dragged it over his skin. “Does it matter?”

“It does to me.”

He hesitated and shifted his gaze to the mural of leaping dolphins on the far wall. “When I worked onboard I always had the least desirable accommodations. The ones my father refused to inflict on a crew member. Usually a small interior cabin in the noisiest part of the ship. No porthole. I rarely saw the horizon unless I made a point to walk the decks between shifts.”

“That sounds like solitary confinement.”

“An apt description.”

Pieces of the Rand Kincaid puzzle clicked together and she didn’t like the picture forming. Had she known Everett Kincaid at all? She added another mental tick in the “no” column.

“During our cruise you only returned to the cabin to sleep or change clothes. And you always kept the drapes open.”

His hard gaze returned to hers. “Is there a point to your chatter?”

“I thought you were avoiding being alone with me.”

“I was.”

She winced. “You rearranged the furniture at the office and at home so your desks face the window, and you won’t let me close the blinds in your office even when the afternoon sun glares on your computer screen.”

Now she knew why and her heart squeezed. The plants she’d added to block the late afternoon rays wouldn’t cure this problem.

Rand remained silent. His muscles corded with tension. “We have an early meeting to prepare for.”

She ignored his attempt to derail the conversation. “You’re claustrophobic. Because of Everett. Because of what he did to you.”

“I am not claustrophobic. I ride in elevators every day.”

This man who hated weakness had one of his own—one he refused to acknowledge even to himself.

Even though his body language discouraged sympathy, she couldn’t help but offer it. If anybody ever needed to be held, Rand did. Regardless of his still damp body, she moved forward and wrapped her arms around him.

He stiffened. “Tara—”

She tilted back her head so she could see his face and he could see hers. He needed to know she didn’t think less of him because he wasn’t perfect. “I don’t know what Everett hoped to gain by treating you that way. But it was wrong.”

He dropped the towel in the chair and caught her shoulders. But instead of pushing her away he stared into her eyes for long, silent seconds. His eyes probed hers as if he were trying to see inside her. And then he bent and covered her mouth with his. The kiss wasn’t hard or seductive or even hungry like the ones they’d shared before. This one was gentle, tender and so soft that tears pricked behind her eyelids.

He slowly lifted his head, his lips clinging to hers for precious seconds.

A door opened behind her and a pair of KCL employees entered, breaking whatever connection she and Rand had just made. He lowered his hands and stepped away. “I’ll be upstairs in ten minutes. Order breakfast. We’ll eat together.”

Feeling as if the blinders had been ripped from her eyes, Tara headed upstairs. Rand had good reason to hate his father.

Tara was beginning to hate him, too. Because Everett Kincaid had a cruel side she’d never suspected.

“How are you?” Rand said into his cell phone as he leaned back in his office chair late Tuesday afternoon.“So you do remember how to use a phone. Nice to know. I’m fine. How are you, big brother?”

The sarcasm in Nadia’s voice hit its target. She hadn’t forgiven him for five years of neglect. “Nadia, I couldn’t call.”

“I know you couldn’t call Mitch because he might mention it to Dad, but you could have called me, Rand.”

“I knew Mitch would look out for you.”

“I didn’t want to talk to Mitch. I wanted to talk to you. You could have at least let me know you were okay.”

Despite their six-year age difference Rand and Nadia had been close before he left Miami. She’d never gone to their father with her problems. She’d come to Rand. His refusal to return her calls after he’d abandoned KCL had closed that door. But he’d known breaking that connection was the only way to protect her from their father’s scheming machinations to get back at his oldest son.

He massaged the stiff back of his neck. “I’m worried about you. You’ve been down there a month. Alone.”

“I’m fine, and despite a surplus of my own boring company and my shrink’s too-frequent calls, I’m not suicidal. Yet.”

Alarm blasted through him. He bolted upright. “I’m coming to Dallas.”