Given that her mind was a clean whiteboard at the moment, completely blank of anything but shock, she took a moment to shake herself into a response.
“I wasn’t trying to disappear. I only wanted to discuss the foundation with the people it would most closely affect, so I came here to do it. Why?” She didn’t like how he put her on the defensive. He’d set her out of his life like bottles for the milkman to collect. She didn’t have to answer to him.
At least, she wanted to be that defiant and dismissive, but in reality, her heart was caving in on itself and her entire being was soaking up the effect of being near him again.
“If you didn’t want to stay in London, you should have said.” His arrogant decree was stated with a scowl of impatience.
“Said to who? Lazlo? Nothing against the man, but he’s not my warden and definitely not my bosom chum. He already knows more about my private life than I ever wanted him to. I wasn’t about to report my comings and goings to him.”
“To me.” Aleksy loosened his tie, then drove his fists into his pockets, his agitation making her think for a second—
Clair gave her head a little shake, refusing to read in to it. She had let herself get all tangled up in wanting things from him and was still trying to unravel him from her heart. She didn’t hate him for hurting her, but she didn’t want him to do it again.
Even though she suspected he was doing it again and all he’d had to do was step through a door.
“We’re no longer involved,” she said with as steady a voice as she could muster, reminding herself as much as him. With a flick of her wrist, she prompted him to close the door. When it had clicked firmly and he turned the blinding brilliance of his bronze eyes back on her, she countered it brutally. “You paid me out, in case you didn’t know.”
His jaw hardened. He leaned into the door, chest rising as he absorbed her offense. “I’d promised I would. What else would I do? Renege?”
“You didn’t have to do all that other stuff.” She folded her arms, unable to look directly at him while she relived the sting of being bought off for her sexual favors. She had thought they had shared their bodies with each other freely. Hers had definitely been offered without expectation of compensation.
“I’d promised you that too.”
“Well, I didn’t have to accept it, so I didn’t,” she spat out with rancor, hating how cheap he’d made her feel.
“You still could have told me where you were going,” he bit out. His voice was so censorious it made her stiffen. “You didn’t have to disappear without a word. An email doesn’t take any effort at all.”
Taken aback by that, Clair choked out a laugh. “Oh, didn’t you get my response to yours?”
His eyebrows slammed together. “I didn’t email you.”
Clair only lifted her eyebrows, waiting for the penny to drop.
With a muttered curse, Aleksy pushed his hand through his hair and tried to pace across the tiny space of her office. He only moved two short steps before swinging back to her.
Clair snapped to attention, aching from the tension of holding herself in this state of readiness. Her palms were sweating within the knots of her fists. “Why are you here, Aleksy?” It seemed rather cruel, quite honestly. She’d managed to move on with her life, not well, but she was doing it. This was going to be a setback of epic proportions. There would be fresh tears she didn’t want to shed.
“I’m here to find you.” He said it impatiently, as if she ought to know. “I didn’t know where else to look, so I came here to ask if they had any contact information on you and they told me you were down the hall. I almost had a heart attack.”
Intensity radiated off him, as though he was still keyed up from the discovery.
“There’s such a thing as a telephone. You could have called the office,” she pointed out. Heat rose on her cheeks and she shifted. The room was too small to contain them both. “Why didn’t you put Lazlo on the job? He probably tagged my ear with a GPS when I wasn’t looking.”
“I was worried.” He seemed uncomfortable with the admission, but the words came out of him as though they wouldn’t stay inside. “You can’t just walk away like that, Clair,” he scolded. “I’ve lost people I loved, and that pain doesn’t ever go away. Not knowing where you were or if you were safe was equally as bad.”