She wanted to turn around and hug him, she wanted to breathe the words that were clamoring inside her into his skin. But of course, she couldn’t. And she had just signed up for a week of this torment.
As he picked up her bag and opened the door, she looked back. “Wait, I can’t leave like this. You broke the lock.”
He grinned. “Already taken care of. By the time we come back, Carlos will arrange for someone to move all your stuff to a new apartment.”
“New apartment? Alexander, I can’t afford it and I don’t want your—”
“I knew you would say that. But you’re forgetting that you just landed a new contract for your agency. You’ll get a pay raise—”
“Don’t do this, Alexander. I mean it, stay out of my...”
For an infinitesimal second, the smile slipped from his face, and his jaw clamped down. She reached him and cupped his jaw. If a week was all he was going to give her, she didn’t want to spend it fighting with him. “I know you think I need someone to take care of me. But I don’t, okay? I couldn’t bear it if anyone...repeated or even speculated like that reporter. I—”
He nodded and kissed her into silence in the dimly lit corridor. She laughed as he drew back with a groan. “The sooner I get you on the plane, the sooner I can ravish you all over again.”
His words sent tingles over her skin. Within minutes, they were standing in front of her building. Dawn was just a few minutes away, and it streaked the sky orange. She shivered and pulled the lapels of her thin sweatshirt together and made a face at him.
He pulled her into the warmth of his arms and checked the silver Rolex on his wrist. “Carlos will be here any minute and then we’ll be off.”
She made a face like a petulant child. “I don’t understand why we have to leave so early.”
“This way, we can leave before the wolves are out, before there’s even a chance of anyone—”
She paled at his words and he tugged her even closer, forcing her to look at him. “I’m sorry, I wish there wasn’t any need to skulk around like this, I wish I could... But with things the way they are, I don’t want to risk anything. You understand that, don’t you?”
Olivia nodded and burrowed into him, striving to compose herself, to keep the misery crawling up her throat locked tight. Here she was again, scuttling in the dark with a lover...
Was she being selfish if she wanted an open relationship? One where she could just be herself, one where she could shout to the world that someone as honorable as Alexander wanted to be with her?
What was she doing? Why was she prolonging the moment of utter agony? Was she really stupid enough to hope that something would change in a week? That Alexander would suddenly open up himself to what he felt about her?
Her stomach fell endlessly at the thought of never seeing him again, never touching him.
With every breath in her she wanted to go, she wanted to steal the week with him. But how could she settle for something less than she deserved? And this time, she wasn’t naive, stupid to believe that if she just went along, if she did everything right, maybe, then maybe her love would be returned.
Alexander was never going to change his mind, never going to give things between them a chance.
He had shown her everything she could be, everything she already was and he would walk away without a backward glance. Her stomach became a mass of pain. She wanted to cry, rage at him, at herself.
And as much as she wished, she couldn’t revert back to type, she couldn’t reverse the knowledge that she deserved better.
She couldn’t deceive herself, even for him.
“Alexander.” She clasped the granite jaw with her hands, forcing the words past her throat, her body trembling with pain. Pain at what she was going to do. “I can’t do this, I can’t go with you.”
Olivia’s words were barely a whisper, yet it shook everything within Alexander.
“Look at me,” he said, frustration coursing through him. Why couldn’t she, for once, do as he said without argument?
He thought she would resist but she didn’t. Her face was pale, and a sheen of tears glimmered in her gaze that knocked the breath out of him. “Damn it, Liv.”
“You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”
He looked into her beautiful brown eyes, and the depth of emotion in hers sent a cold chill over his skin. His stomach churned with a viciousness he couldn’t stop. He moved his finger to her mouth, but she pushed it away and dropped a kiss into his palm. Because when had anything stopped Olivia?