A Matter of Trust (9 page)

Rising quickly, she took several steps forward, her heart pounding. “Michael?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t expect anyone.” Michael faltered to a stop.

Her voice was hoarse with fatigue, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. She wore no make-up and her face was pale, the shadows under her eyes dark and hollow. She had clearly dressed hastily, her khaki suit uncharacteristically rumpled in contrast to her usual impeccable demeanor. Smiling weakly, she reached one hand for the back of the sofa to steady herself.

“You’re shaking,” Sloan’s every instinct demanded that she touch her immediately, but she moved toward her slowly, wanting to comfort her, not startle her. Michael looked as if she was holding on to control by a thread.

Sloan’s stomach churned in near panic. Desperate to assure herself that Michael was not hurt, she asked in a voice tight with anxiety, “Are you all right?”

“What? Oh...yes,” Michael replied as if she had just emerged from a dream and was still uncertain if she was truly awake. Hesitantly, she sat on the leather sofa, clasped her hands in her lap, and stared in confusion around the room.

Sloan went to her side and knelt on the carpet in front of her. Slowly, afraid to disrupt her fragile equilibrium, she took her hand. It took such an effort for her to be calm while her mind screamed with anxiety that a muscle in her neck twitched involuntarily.

Very gently, she asked again, “Are you hurt? Can you tell me what’s happened?”

Michael ran a trembling hand through her hair and fixed on Sloan. Gradually, the confusion in her blue eyes cleared, and she managed a small smile. “I’m so sorry. This isn’t like me. I didn’t get much sleep, and I can’t quite seem to get my bearings this morning. I’m really fine. Thank you for your concern, but I’m quite all right.”

It was a valiant lie, and Sloan respected her for it. But she couldn’t accept it. There were too many possibilities rushing through her mind, not the least of which was that Michael’s husband probably had something to do with her current state. She forced herself not to imagine what might have happened, because the mere thought of anyone harming Michael was physically painful.

“Something happened last night. What was it?”

“I’m afraid I made your job a great deal more difficult,” Michael said ruefully. Her face became almost expressionless, and Sloan sensed that she was drifting away.

“Michael?” she tried again, resting her fingers on her forearm, hoping to bring her back.

“It’s Nicholas. I should have expected—” Abruptly, Michael stood and began to pace agitatedly in front of her desk. She glanced at Sloan, then swept the rest of the room as if seeing it clearly for the first time. “He wants this, you see. I knew he would, but I didn’t appreciate just how much. Not this place—he doesn’t care about that. It’s not this room, this
building
,” she said vehemently. “It’s not anything that you can touch. It’s the ideas, the plans, the hopes and dreams I’ve spent my entire
life
constructing. It’s not me or the money.”

Her voice was hollow, her eyes swimming with pain. “Oh, he
does
want the money—don’t get me wrong—but that’s not the most important thing. He wants what I’ve created, the very best part of me. He doesn’t care if I leave him, as long as
he
takes what I care about most.” Stricken, she stared at Sloan as if just beginning to really understand. “He wants everything I am.”

Sloan clenched her hands in her pockets, trying to ignore the almost irrational fury that pounded in her head.
God, if he touched her...
Very gently, she prompted, “Tell me.”

Michael stopped pacing as abruptly as she had begun, standing in the middle of the room, her expression vague and disoriented again. “I was asleep when he returned last night. It must have been close to midnight.” She shivered. “I didn’t expect him. The light in the hall woke me, and the next thing I knew, he was in the room.” She laughed shakily. “I never realized how
big
he is, until just that moment. He seemed to take up all the space.”

The memory was undiminished by fatigue—clear and razor edged, each image etched in her mind.

“Are you awake?” he’d asked, leaving the lights off and moving about in the faint illumination coming through the windows.

“Yes.” She sat up, holding the sheets to her breasts. “I thought you were still in L.A.”

He dropped his raincoat over a chair and began to undress. “I finished up earlier than I expected, and I’m damned tired of hotel rooms. I want to sleep in my own bed.”

As he’d approached, naked except for his briefs, Michael saw enough of his face in the dim light slanting into the room to read his expression. Her heart sank. She recognized his intent, although she hadn’t seen that look in his eyes for months. She rarely thought about what it signaled until it happened, and she gave it little thought after. It was simply part of their life, part of what had become the routine of their existence together. It was something she neither missed nor desired.

“And I want to sleep with my wife.” There was no tenderness in his voice, only a cold statement of fact.

As he’d reached for the covers, Michael knew with absolute certainty that she could not sleep next to him, let alone have sex with him. She slid from the opposite side of the bed and reached for a robe from a nearby chair. He stared at her across the bed, clearly surprised.

“What are you doing?” he asked sharply.

“I’m going to sleep in the guest room.”

“What?” he demanded, clearly astonished. “Suddenly you’re refusing?”

“I can’t.”

“Why now, all of sudden?” He sounded confused, but there was an edge of anger rising in his tone.

“I meant to tell you when you returned from this trip,” she said quickly. “It wasn’t something I wanted to do on the phone. I want a divorce.”

He stared at her open-mouthed for what seemed like an interminable length of time, his expression frozen. Then his body went rigid, but whether it was anger or shock she could not tell. When he finally found his voice, it was even, controlled, and exceedingly cold.

“And is this open to discussion or is your decision final?”

“I’m certain.”

He nodded once and walked across the room, slipped into his trousers, and pulled a shirt from the closet. She watched him, waiting for something to happen, realizing that she had no idea what he would do. How extraordinary to be witnessing the beginning of the end of their marriage and to discover that her husband was a stranger. Why had she not known that before? How could she have been blind to what had been missing for a decade? They had been sexual but never intimate. Why had it never mattered before now?

When he was finally dressed, he walked to the windows that overlooked an expanse of gardens. His profile in the moonlight was sharp enough to have been have carved from stone. Without looking at her, he pronounced, “You can divorce me, if that’s what you want. But don’t think I’m just going to walk away from the company.”

Then he made it abundantly clear to her that he would fight for control of the business, despite the legal agreements they had entered into previously. Throughout his entire discourse, he barely raised his voice as he outlined with cold, calculating precision exactly what he intended to do if she made any attempt to contest him.

Michael had said almost nothing as he spoke, not particularly surprised by what he said, but stunned by the way he said it. He might have been talking to someone of so little consequence to him that he couldn’t bother to be upset. It was almost as if she weren’t human, and she realized that she probably hadn’t been a person to him in a very long time. She was surprised that it didn’t hurt, but it had been years since she had needed him or expected him to be more than a business associate.

Nevertheless, when he finished his ultimatum, she was shaken. Less by what had transpired than by the knowledge that she had spent nearly fifteen years of her life with someone she did not love, and who did not love her. What had begun between them as mutual need had slowly dwindled until they had little more in common than a shared address. She realized how truly alone she had been and wondered why she had never felt it.

She wondered anew as she returned her attention to Sloan. “He didn’t bother to ask if there was someone else—he must have known there wouldn’t be. He
was
kind enough to inform me that I had no worries about any of
his
activities. He had always been careful and had even been tested. For his own safety.”

She fell silent, aware of Sloan’s dangerously dark eyes and rigid calm. Was she uncomfortable about these highly personal revelations? Michael knew she should probably be more conscious about the impression she was giving, but she needed to talk, and for some reason, she felt like Sloan was the only person she could confide in.

“He also informed me he had no intention of leaving the house either. I knew I couldn’t stay there another minute. By the time I packed and found a hotel, it was almost four in the morning. I tried to sleep but couldn’t, and I couldn’t think what else to do, so finally I came here.” She laughed harshly. “This is the only thing I know how to do, I guess.” She walked around behind her desk and slumped into the chair.

When Michael tilted her head back and closed her eyes, Sloan felt her chest constrict so tightly with the desire to comfort her that she couldn’t breathe. She swallowed the urge to smooth the furrows from Michael’s brow with a caress, steadfastly ignoring the buzzing deep in her stomach.
Uh-uh. No way. Do not even think it.

“Let me make you some coffee,” she suggested when she could get the words out without tripping over her runaway hormones. “It’s my turn to get it, I think.”

“God, I sound pathetic. I’m sorry.” Michael shook her head impatiently, rubbing her hands over her face. “Go back to work, Sloan. I’m all right.”

Willing herself to stand still, Sloan gritted her teeth until her jaws ached.. She wanted so badly just to touch her hand.
That’s what
I
need, but probably not what Michael needs.
Desperately, she sought the words that would help ease the terrible pain she saw in Michael’s wounded eyes.

“You’re not pathetic. You’re just hurt. That’s human.”

Michael’s expression softened. “It’s not what you think, Sloan. I’m not mourning my lost marriage. I stopped caring about it, about
him
in that way a long time ago. I’m just so angry with the mess I’ve made of my life and how foolish I was not to have seen it years ago. What’s wrong with me that I could spend all this time in some
charade
and not even know it?”

This time Sloan went to her, finally trusting that she had her own emotions under control. She grasped Michael’s hands lightly, gazing intently into her face, praying that her words would somehow penetrate Michael’s anguish and self-doubt.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” she said adamantly. “You’ve accomplished remarkable things, and you’re not the first person to make a mistake about a relationship...or to spend years discovering it. It took a lot of guts to face him, and tell him, and to walk out of there. Don’t beat yourself up like this.” Her voice was thick with feeling.
God, she has no idea how magnificent she is.

Helpless to stop, Sloan lifted one hand and brushed strands of blond hair from Michael’s cheek. Her hand was trembling; she wasn’t certain why. She stroked a thumb across the bruised shadow on Michael’s cheek, wishing she could soothe the ache from her soul. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she whispered again.

Michael fell into Sloan’s deep violet eyes, wrapped in the soothing sound of her words, not really hearing them but sensing the caring behind them. She had no idea why it felt so good for this woman to touch her hand or stroke her cheek, but she felt comforted somewhere beyond words.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

They were so close, if Sloan dipped her head just a fraction, their lips would meet. She wanted to, more than she had wanted to kiss any woman in longer than she could remember. She wanted to so badly it was a pain in her chest. It was a hunger that went beyond anything she had ever thought to feel again. What stopped her was her own immutable desire to cherish the tenderness in Michael’s eyes.

She stepped back abruptly, more frightened by her own feelings than she could stand. She dropped her hands to her sides, fists so tight her fingers cramped, her throat so thick she wasn’t certain she could speak.

Stumbling back another step on legs that shook, she swallowed painfully and finally managed, “You don’t need to thank me. You’re incredibly brave.” Then she grabbed her jacket, made an excuse about needing to check in with her office, and left hurriedly, leaving Michael to stare after her with an odd sense of loss.

*

When Sloan got to the gym, she wrapped her hands and pounded the heavy punching bag until she couldn’t lift her arms. Exhausted, she finally sagged to the floor, her arms around the gently swaying bag, her sweat-drenched face pressed to the rough canvas cover, holding on to it with all the desperation of a lover betrayed.

All the next day, Sloan tried hard not to acknowledge the sudden rush of need that had ambushed her with Michael. Had it been only simple desire—that she would have understood. Michael Lassiter was a beautiful, vital woman—and wanting her was natural. But the ache of need was an emotion long forgotten, and something better left buried.