Yet, when he sat beside her smelling all masculine and foreign with his special European blend of aftershave and a take-away espresso in the holder beside him, she couldn’t help remembering how those scents had surrounded her in bed, clinging to the sheets and her skin. Making her close her eyes in dreamy memory of physical satiation.
“I’m lucky she didn’t take you seriously,” she muttered, scoring herself with the memory of that day even though it was something she had spent a lot of time actively forgetting. “But your real motivation is just as awful, so whatever, Demitri.”
“What do you mean?” he asked in a dangerous tone that almost made her look, but she kept her head stubbornly turned away.
“Adara told me how you were looking for ways to dig at her and Theo.” She worked hard to keep her tone flippant, trying to act as if this was merely something annoying rather than devastating. “That you probably would have slept with any employee just to tick them off.” It made her raw inside to say it. She was insulted and sad. Very, very hurt.
“She said that?” His voice hardened with ire, stilling the swirling ache in her heart. “Look at me,” he commanded, making her turn her head with a reflexive jerk. Outrage pulled at his expression. “She said that to you,” he confirmed, looking straight into her eyes with aggressive demand. He was incensed.
Which was disconcerting. A little alarming and even heartening, since he seemed so insulted, but she reminded herself he was no choirboy. He passed along his dates to rock stars, among others.
Mentally willing her pulse to settle, she lifted her chin, trying to appear as unaffected as she wanted to be.
“Are you saying she was wrong?” She tried to sound bored, and hated that silken threads of optimism wound through her. And she braced herself for hard truth if he allowed that, no, Adara hadn’t been wrong. Natalie had been trying to reconcile herself to that reality for weeks, and it still shredded her insides. “You weren’t using me?”
“No. I wasn’t.” His gaze flinched away from hers as he looked forward. “Maybe I can see why she’d think so, but to say something like that... That’s offside, Nat. I’m really angry with her for that.”
She sputtered a laugh of disbelief. “Why? You said something awful and so did she.”
“I didn’t say it to your face. I didn’t mean it,” he shot back, dark fire brimming in his eyes as he looked at her again.
His fury was a stab into an abscess. Revisiting that day hurt so much she could barely stand it, yet his anger on her behalf released a painful pressure she’d been trying to get used to since it didn’t seem as if it would ever go away.
That bleeding of acute pain edged her dangerously close to forgiving him, though. To thinking everything that had transpired had been okay. It hadn’t been.
“Adara wasn’t trying to hurt me,” she muttered. “She was a lot nicer to me than I deserved, considering what I’d done. What we did.” She drew in a long breath that burned. “We never should have...” She flicked her free hand at the interior of the limo, “This shouldn’t be happening, either. There’s no point. Why are you even here?”
* * *
Demitri studied Natalie’s face, not liking to see her so unhappy, mouth pulling down at the corners as she looked away again. He’d been starting to think she wouldn’t show, trying to find her home address on his tablet, when the door had opened and he’d heard her voice calling goodbye to a colleague.
The brooding disinterest that had weighed on him for weeks had lifted like clouds revealing the sun. His blood had burst with a zing of enervation in his veins and his nostrils had sharpened in search of her scent. For a moment he’d seen only her torso and legs, uniform eschewed for a chic pair of knee-high boots, tights, a tweed skirt and a cashmere top, all glimpsed from the open flaps of her long red woolen coat. Lissome thighs. Round, deliciously weighty breasts that he loved to cup and fondle.
Then she’d bent down to look into the car, and her curious frown had flattened to shock followed by complete rejection. No.
Not something he’d heard often in his life.
And now, there’s no point.
He sighed, not having entirely thought this through. He’d simply realized a few days ago that given Theo’s precision schedule for his communication meetings, there was an excellent chance Natalie would be in the Montreal conference rooms today. He was doing a lousy job forgetting about her, and he’d never been one to sit back and ponder when he could be taking action, so...
“Knowing what you thought—well, what I thought you thought—about my reasons for sleeping with you, made me feel...” The unbearable churn of guilt and shame returned full force to grind within his chest. “It made me feel. Period. I don’t normally have a conscience or listen to it, but hurting you has been sitting on mine.”
He let her see his regret.
Her mouth quivered briefly before she pressed her lips flat and looked away.
“Apology accepted, as thin as it is,” she said stiffly.
“I rarely apologize. I can’t be expected to be good at it,” he retorted, stung. This conversation was not alleviating his inner turmoil at all.
“Sorry,” she grumbled, smoothing an eyebrow, then glancing at him, somber and sincere. “I don’t like conflict or bad feelings. I mean it. Apology accepted. You didn’t mean for me to overhear you, didn’t mean what you said. Adara had it wrong. Whatever we had was just...whatever it was.”
“It was good, Natalie,” he told her, reaching across to cover the hand she dropped to the seat between them. “You know that.”
So good he hadn’t been with another woman since. Which was driving him insane. He was not used to going without sex, and every woman he took out, trying to forget Natalie, was such a poor imitation he couldn’t bring himself to do so much as kiss them. He’d come here thinking there must be a way...
Her eyes widened as if she was reading his thoughts. She snatched back her hand.
“Oh, no,” she said firmly. “The position of man-child is already taken in my life, Demitri.”
Perhaps the blow wasn’t undeserved, but it was brutally placed on an open wound Theo had kicked through his psyche. Given the breadth of responsibility he felt like he’d carried all his life, he was stung by how little she thought of him.
“That was cruel,” he told her, not entirely successful at affecting a casual tone.
“Did you honestly think we could just pick up where we left off? Are you forgetting I have a daughter? She’s the reason you broke things off in the first place.”
He clenched his teeth. There was a very convenient emotion called denial that had allowed him to set her daughter on a shelf while he had traveled here from New York. It wasn’t that he wanted to pretend the girl didn’t exist. But every time he tried to imagine how the edges of his life might accept the invasion of her daughter’s, he recalled Adara’s disparagement of his ability to be a family man. If his own sister couldn’t see it in him...
Then Theo’s “act like him” comment would echo in his head.
That one still burned. He would never, ever hurt a child, and that wasn’t really what Theo had been suggesting. No, he’d been tarring Demitri with the man’s selfishness and bent values of pride and superiority over empathy and caring.
The vilification kept rubbing at Demitri’s rawest edges because he couldn’t refute it. He didn’t know if he had anything meaningful to offer a child.
But he wanted Natalie. So he was willing to try, or better yet, stay the hell out of the way so he didn’t cause any emotional scars to the girl.
“I realize she’s your priority,” he said, trying to convey his willingness to accommodate. “But surely there are times when you have an evening free? When she’s with her father?”
Natalie’s eyes grew glossy as she stared at him. Her brow crinkled in a flinch and she looked down, bottom lip pouting out while she twisted her fingers in her lap.
“So that really is what you’re suggesting? Except, rather than sneak around on your family, we should hide from mine.”
“You’re making it sound... No. Look, I can see why single parents don’t want a revolving door of partners paraded in front of their child. If you want me to meet her, fine. I will.” Even though it made him feel like he was offering to lock himself into the Mixed Marital Arts ring with the reigning champion. “I want to see you, Natalie. I’ve quit Makricosta’s. There’s no reason we can’t date.”
“The sex wasn’t that good, Demitri. Find someone else,” she dismissed with a fracture in her tone.
He had to check himself so he didn’t leap out of his own skin.
“Do you need a reminder?” he challenged in a voice that rose with astonishment and dismay.
She shrank into her seat, giving him a helpless look not unlike the one she’d worn that first night when he’d dragged her into his room.