“I’m a free woman,” she mumbles feebly, continuing to back up. “We’re just having fun.”
It takes everything and more to keep my cool. “This”—I wave a hand between our distant bodies—“this isn’t much fun, Lainey.”
“You’re . . . you’re my boss.”
That cool is lost. “No.” I stalk forward and grab her arms, shaking her in my hold. “Fuck, no, Lainey.” Her eyes widen, shocked. “Stop it. Just stop with the boss bullshit. We got past that when you confessed how much you hate men.”
She tries to wrestle me off, her loose hair whipping her face from the effort. Begrudgingly, I release her, though I have no intention of letting her leave. “Don’t promise me you won’t hurt me, Tyler. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I don’t ever make promises I can’t keep.”
“It wouldn’t matter, anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t promise you the same.”
She may as well have shoved a dagger in my fucking heart. “And you’re not willing to try? You’re happy jumping from man to man, building them up and smiling when you kick them down?”
She lifts her chin in an act of complete faked determination. “I’m in the safest place for me to be, and I won’t let you pull me out of it.”
What complete bullshit. She’s already let me pull her out to a degree. And now she’s backtracking. Again. “Who are you trying to fool, Lainey? Me? Or you?”
She turns and bolts. Oh, no. No fucking way. “Lainey.” I run after her, only just making it to my front door before she does. I slam into the wood, spinning around and pressing my back into it. “No,” I pant, shaking my head adamantly. “You are not leaving this apartment.”
“You can’t stop me.”
Wrong. “I fucking can.”
“Why?” she shouts. “Why would you force me to stay when I want to leave?”
“Because you don’t really want to fucking leave,” I roar. “Stop forcing your heart into complying with what your fucked-up mind is telling it.”
She inhales sharply, and I keep a keen eye out for another slap to the face. But it doesn’t come. Neither does her insistence that I’m talking shit. What comes instead are tears, her eyes brimming until they overflow and roll down her cheeks.
For the first time in my existence, I know what to do with an emotional woman. I step into her and throw my arms around her shaking body, cuddling her with an affectionate force I didn’t know I was capable of. And when her arms come up and cling to me tightly, I know beyond question that she’s with me in this. She doesn’t want to leave. She wants me, craves me, just as much as I do her. She’s just finding it much harder to admit and accept than I am, and that’s a monumental achievement on Lainey’s part, since I never once considered allowing myself to be swallowed up by a woman. I never dreamed a member of the fairer sex would have me so tied up in knots. I never thought I’d find myself in a situation like this—fighting to keep hold of a woman. Especially a woman intent on convincing the world that she doesn’t want to be held on to. Now she’s caved, albeit silently, I need to do what I can to make sure she doesn’t regret it.
“I was married, too,” I tell her, diving to the deepest depths of my history and pulling the shit from my past in an attempt to comfort her. To show her she’s not alone.
She’s out of my arms in a heartbeat, looking up at me with surprised eyes. “What?”
I smile at her shock. “A long time ago. She left me.”
Her surprised eyes widen more. “She left you?”
I nod, knowing how crazy it sounds, even if that makes me an egotistical wanker. But it’s the truth. I wasn’t as successful back then, though working my nuts off with Sal to launch Christianson Walker. All of my money was going into setting up the firm, and I didn’t have the spare cash to lavish my materialistic ex-wife, nor the balls to do what I knew was right. Our marriage was a sham. “My dad was dying,” I begin to explain. “He was desperate for me to have what he had with Mum, and he wanted to see me settle down before he lost his battle. I wanted to make him happy.” I shrug, not at all comfortable with talking about that part of my life. The memories aren’t pleasant. Neither is the sharp shot of renewed hot resentment toward my ex. “So I did what I thought was right and married Annabella. Then as soon as his will was read, she filed for divorce and got her hands on a huge chunk of my inheritance, too.”
Lainey flinches, and I nod my agreement. It was hell, and just thinking back to the state the whole nasty affair had my mother in makes me quake with rage. I swear, if I ever see Annabella again, I’ll have to hold myself back from spitting on the bitch. “I know how it feels to be kicked when you’re down, Lainey.”
“So you also know what it feels like to want to protect yourself,” she counters quietly.
I can’t argue with that. But I pulled myself back and quickly concluded that my ex-wife did me a favor, even if she was a heartless bitch while doing it. I didn’t really love her, but knowing a woman could be so fucking callous certainly set the standard for my love life from there. “I do,” I answer simply, if only to enforce how much alike we are. Yet while I’ve been happy with my lifestyle, content to keep my mind and my money, I know Lainey isn’t as content. She’s full to the brim with bitterness and resentment. She’s fighting the notion of finding someone she can trust again, and that just makes me all the more determined to prove she can trust me. Not all men are arseholes. Not every man will hurt her. It seems ridiculous that I, the player of all players, am prepared to show her that. But I am. If there was one thing I saw in the years I had my dad in my life, it was his respect for my mum. He adored her. Yes, he worked long hours, but it was never to hide from his wife. It was always to provide everything she’d need. And what I learned through Annabella is that not all women deserve that level of respect mixed with devotion. This complicated, broken woman? She craves a similar kind of devotion. She told me so herself. And I want her badly enough to face my own fears of being shat on again. I need to see where this could take us.
I pick her up and carry her into the kitchen, placing her on the worktop and nestling myself between her spread thighs. Then I wipe under her eyes before skating my palm onto the side on her neck, under her hair.
She looks at me, and I can see the desperation in her wild blue eyes—the need for hope. I want to be the one to give her that hope. “I don’t romance women, Lainey. Not unless I want something in return.” I smile a little, encouraging a tiny one from her. “And I certainly don’t cook for them in my home.”
“You didn’t cook.”
“Trivial issue,” I reply flippantly on a roll of my eyes. “It’s the thought that counts.”
“Okay,” she relents, her smile soft.
“You’ve made me lose my line.”
“You don’t romance women,” she reminds me quickly, almost eagerly. She wants to hear this, and she should relish in it, because I can’t quite believe what I’m going to say.
I move my hands to her shoulders and rest my palms there, looking at her seriously. “I also don’t pursue women. They don’t stick in my mind, nor do they make my stomach twist when I see them. They don’t make me lose my breath or stammer over my words. They don’t make me wish for round two before round one is over. They don’t make me want to tie them to my bed so they can’t leave. And they definitely don’t make my heart ping.” I squeeze her shoulders hard, reinforcing the next and final line. “But you do.”