“Do you understand me?” she screamed back then, feeling the tears edge into her eyes, the pain blooming in her chest as she ignored the revelations about her lover’s past. “Write the fucking check. And so help me God, you send another man to my home and I’ll have him arrested.”
He was the one staring back in shock then.
“Emily—” He stepped toward her, his gaze becoming wary. “This is getting out of hand.” He rubbed his hand over his face, his expression twisting with indecision then.
“I’ve never asked you for anything,” she said then, forcing the words past her lips, feeling the pain claw at her stomach.
Kell had been married before? He had lost a wife and a child and she hadn’t even known. She hadn’t wanted to know. She had deliberately kept her distance from him, holding him back even as she tempted the passion that was so much a part of him.
“You’ve never asked me for anything,” he agreed. “And maybe that’s been the problem. You don’t seem to need me at all.”
“Oh, I needed you,” she bit out. “When I tried to tell you I didn’t want to stop mountain climbing. That I wanted to train in the mountains again. When I tried to tell you I wanted to join the Navy. I needed you, Dad. You just refused to hear any of it.”
“It was too dangerous.” He shook his head with a sharp jerk. “You weren’t a child anymore. You wouldn’t see there were limits. You were always pushing for more, going higher.”
“Trying to live. Trying to be something other than daddy’s little girl?” she asked mockingly. “Forgive me, Father, maybe I should have just bowed to your wishes, married the first jerk you brought home and had all those grandbabies you wanted. Maybe I should have found a way to screw my life up worse than I did when I tried to compromise with you instead.”
He pushed his fingers through his hair, a grimace contorting his features as he tried to figure out how to deal with her.
“Don’t bother looking for an edge on this one, Senator Stanton,” she told him roughly. “I’ll tell you what. You keep your damned money. When this deal with Fuentes is over, we’ll call it even. And I’ll make damned certain I live my life then, and you can live yours.”
“You don’t mean that.” He caught her arm as she turned away from him to stalk to the door. “Emily. You wouldn’t just walk away from me like that.”
She stared at the portrait of her and her mother. Across from his desk, where he could see it. Where he could remember.
“Unlike you, Father, I don’t need to control everything and everyone in my life,” she said as she turned slowly back to him. “And I don’t want to ever face living solely in the past. I’m not your little girl anymore. I’m your adult child. Your daughter. If you could accept that, maybe you could get a life yourself.”
She pulled her arm from his grip, turned her back on the pain that flared in his eyes, and stalked to the doors. As she pulled one open she stared back at him.
“Don’t interfere with my life again. You won’t like the consequences.”
She stalked out, coming face-to-face with five hardened SEALs, whose expressions—except for one—were blank, watchful. The exception was a dark emerald green, rife with shadows and dark pain, as he watched her closely.
“I have things to do before the party tonight,” she said sharply. “I’ll meet you down here at precisely five o’clock. See if you can’t at least give me the time I need to get ready before we have to have our little blow-up, hmm? Because, honest to God, if I have to deal with another stubborn, intractable SEAL for one more minute, I might shoot one of you with your own gun.”
With that, she brushed past the five men, refusing to look back, refusing to let the tears that filled her eyes fall.
It was her own fault if she had gone to bed with a man she didn’t know. Her own fault if she had allowed her father to have the ammunition he needed to strike back at her.
Her father hated losing a fight with her. He always had. It was one of the reasons she rarely let a confrontation evolve between them, because she was always the one who came away from it hurt.
Sixteen
AT PRECISELY FIVE O’CLOCK, KELL was waiting in the foyer, wearing his dress blues, and watching the stairs with a sense of unreality as Emily descended them.
She was a living flame. Incandescent, radiant. The long emerald gown should have been modest. On her, it was a statement of sensuality. Fragile silk cupped her full breasts before slender straps moved over her shoulders.
The high waist only hinted at her shapely body, but made it seem all the more desirable. Silk smoothed over her stomach and hips, then dropped in a fall of shimmering color to her feet, which were shod in matching heels that added at least three inches to her height.
A shimmering wrap trailed over one shoulder, flowing to the floor behind her as she moved down the stairs as regally as a queen.
Her auburn hair was upswept. Emeralds twinkled in the banked flames and artfully arranged curls, and her makeup gave her face an even more an exotic cast.
He could feel his cock thickening beneath his slacks. His heart raced in his chest.
She was the most beautiful creature alive.
Her blue eyes were shielded by her lashes, refusing to let him glimpse the emotions he knew must be raging inside her.