Crap. “I meant I can’t be with you anymore.”

“That isn’t what you meant.”

She moved across the room toward the entrance. She had to get him out of her penthouse before she fell apart in front of him. “I don’t love you and I can’t be with you.”

He grasped her arm as she passed and looked down into her face. “You keep mentioning love. Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

She tried and failed to pull from his grasp. “Stop.”

“I’ve tried.” He placed one big hand on the side of her face. “I can’t.” He lowered his forehead to hers. “These past few days, not knowing if you were okay, have been hell.”

“I’m okay.”

“I’m not.”

His lips touched hers and she sucked in a breath. “Ty. You have to go.”

“Not yet.” His mouth opened over hers and she felt his kiss everywhere. It poured through her, starting fires in her chest and belly. She held as still as possible, careful not to touch him or kiss him back. “I need you,” he whispered.

She raised her hands but dropped them to her sides before she gave in to her desire to touch him one last time. A sob broke from her throat.

He raised his free hand to the other side of her cheek and he held her face as he kissed her, long and deep, and after several long torturous moments, she placed her hands on his arms and tilted her head to the side. She could not stop herself. She could not stop the pounding in her heart or the fiery need racing through her veins, and she gave in.

He groaned deep in his throat, a sound of pleasure and possession. His tongue slid into her mouth, the kiss feeding all the hungry places in her starving heart and soul. All the places that loved him and longed to be with him. When he lifted his head, he looked into her eyes. “Why don’t you start over? Why have you been avoiding me?” His thumbs softly brushed her cheeks. “The truth this time.”

She loved him too much to tell him. “I can’t.”

“You can tell me anything.”

She shook her head. “It’s bad.”

“Have you found someone else?”

“No!”

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he looked relieved. “Then what?”

“It’s best that you don’t know.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

Again she shook her head as tears filled her eyes. “Can’t you just leave it alone? Can’t you just take my word that you’re better off not knowing?” Where was Layla when she needed her? The tough one. The one who could resist interrogation and come up with believable lies.

He folded his arms across his chest, the belligerent hockey player. “I’m not leaving until you spit it out.”

Once she told him, he’d leave. He’d go away. Perhaps angry, but he’d have his answer. “Landon has pictures of us,” she relented.

His arms fell to his sides and one brow rose up his forehead. “Virgil’s son?”

She nodded. “I have to sell him the team or he’s going to send them to the newspapers and put them on billboards, like our PR photo.”

“You’re selling him the team?”

“I have to.”

A fire replaced the relief in his eyes and he said, “Like hell.”

She recognized that fire. She’d seen it on the jumbo tran when he faced an opponent in the corners. “I don’t have a choice.”

He stepped back and took a deep breath through his nose. Pebble threw herself against the glass and he walked to the door and let her in. “You have a choice. I’ll think of something.”

“You can’t solve this, Ty. He’ll do it. He’s not bluffing. He’ll ruin you to get what he wants.”

“He can’t ruin me, Faith.” He pointed to Pebbles jumping up on her back feet. “Settle your ass down.”

The dog stopped barking and sat. Faith would have been impressed if she didn’t have more important things on her mind. “He planned to trade you, but I think I’ve convinced him that you broke up with me. So I don’t believe he’s going to now. Which makes your being here too risky. You have to leave. Sneak out somehow, just in case.”

She expected some sort of gratitude. Instead his gaze narrowed even more. “And you weren’t ever going to tell me any of this?”

Her eyes started to water once more. “No.”

Deadly quiet, he asked, “Why the hell not?”

She thought she’d made it clear. “Because you have a lot of other things to worry about right now.”

“And you thought what? That you should sacrifice yourself and hand over your hockey team?”

She brushed a sudden bead of moisture from beneath her eyes. “I know how important winning the cup is to you.”

“Don’t you think you’re important?”

She stilled and her hands fell to her sides.

“I see that you don’t.” He folded his arms across his chest like he was mad at something. No, not something. At her. “You don’t have a very high opinion of yourself. Or is it me you don’t have a very high opinion of?”

“I have a high opinion of you.” She was confused and shook her head. “Why are you mad at me?”

“Why?” he asked, incredulous. “I’ve been in hell these past few days. I almost punched your assistant because he’d seen you and I hadn’t. I’ve been walking around worried and pissed off and it all could have been avoided.”

Now it was her turn to be incredulous. He’d almost punched poor Jules. “How?”

“You should have told me about this. You should have let me take care of it. This involves me too. Do you honest-to-God believe I’d let you hand over your hockey team to cover my ass?”

She nodded and laid it all out quite reasonably for him. “For five years I let Virgil take care of me. Now it’s my turn to take care of someone.”

He laughed without humor. “You want to take care of me?”

“Yes.”

“If I let you do that, what kind of man does that make me?”

She wasn’t sure what he meant.

He cleared it up for her. “It makes me a pussy.”

“It’s done.” She’d saved his ass and he was worried about being a “pussy”? So much for gratitude. “I signed the letter of intent to sell.”

“If I recall, you signed one before and changed your mind.” He moved toward her. “Do you trust me?”

“To do what?”

“Do you trust me, Faith?”

It seemed very important to him, so she answered, “Yes.”

He shoved his hand in his pants pocket and pulled out his keys. “Then show up for Game Seven tomorrow with your skates.”

“Landon banned me from the skybox.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just show up with your skates, and when we win, come out onto the ice.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Not real sure. I’m still too pissed off to think straight, but no one threatens me or what’s mine and gets away with it.” He shook his head. “Don’t ever make me crazy like you have the past few days.” He kissed her hard, then moved toward the door.

“Yours?” A smile curved her lips. A smile that lit up the dark empty places she’d been living in for the past few days. She hurried after him. “You think I’m yours.”

Вы читаете True Love and Other Disasters
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