Entry-Level Mistress (21 page)

“I wasn’t asking you to leave here. You’re talented, Emily. I don’t want you to live my life.”

“What were you asking, then?” I wanted to call the words back because I wasn’t certain I wanted to hear the answer.

“Emily—” He reached for me again, but I backed away and his arms fell to his sides, hands sliding into his pants’ pockets. “I’m just asking for another chance.”

“Chance to do what? Get revenge on my dad?”

It was unfair of me but I needed to hear him say it had nothing to do with my father. It was one thing for me to come to that conclusion on my own. To chalk the whole thing up to my stupidity.

I watched him clench his fists in frustration. The gesture unclenched something inside of me and I wondered about all these weeks since I’d last seen him. Had he gone through a similar emotional upheaval?

Maybe I could forgive him, or at least
should
forgive him. Maybe it was worth the chance.

“The past is the past, Emily. But we, you and me, we make sense in this crazy way.”

I nodded.

His fists unclenched and when he reached for me, I let him. When he touched me, his hands cupping my face, I closed my eyes and luxuriated in his touch, even as it hurt.

The kiss was soft, and at first, tinged with sadness. I wanted to cry and maybe I was crying because when his lips coaxed mine, when fierce desire surged up within me, my cheek was wet against his.

“I missed you.” The words caressed my skin as his lips moved hungrily down the side of my face, my neck.

And I’d missed him. Missed the touch that made me feel alive, made colors more vibrant and all my senses sharp.

I missed letting myself be in love with him. I rose up on my toes, pushing his head to the side gently with mine so that I could lick the bare skin above his collar, breath in the scent of him. His hands curved around my hips, lifted me, and I wrapped myself around him, enjoying the heat of him, the hardness pressed against me.

I wanted this. I wanted him.

He pulled his head back slightly and I looked up at him, dizzy with passion and confused by the pause.

“Are there rules about me coming back to the lodge?”

I shook my head. “But I don’t really want to wait that long.” Despite the people inside the cabin, if we moved just a few feet deeper into the forest …

He laughed. “Neither do I, but I wasn’t really expecting … Unless you have condoms here?”

Condoms. I laughed, too, wanting to cry again. I slid down his body, stood on my own weight. I would have taken a step back as well, except the pressure of his palm on my hip kept me where I was.

“You were right about me,” he said softly, his eyes intense and focused on mine. “I leaked your name because I thought there was no way we could survive that. I was scared of getting hurt again, of being left instead of being the one leaving.”

Oh
. Even as I struggled for breath to slow my racing pulse, to ease the tension of wound-up desire, I unpacked that dense statement with the key of the tragic past. His mother, of course, was the reason he never had a real relationship, the reason the models only stayed at the show loft. But he’d let me in.

“You don’t have to say this.” It didn’t matter if I understood, if I felt at all vindicated by his confession. It didn’t matter because—

“It was supposed to be a game.” He looked at me urgently, begging me to understand. And of course, I did. “You were the last person I should have felt anything for but I was falling in love with you.”

Love. I thought of his expression that night on the beach, the way I’d analyzed the photographs on the internet for hours. And then when I’d gone to confront him in his office. He’d said then it
was
only a game.

“You don’t love me.” His tone was flat, a statement, and yet … I knew he was prodding, wanting me to deny it.

“How I feel doesn’t matter—”

“Yes!” He stepped forward, turned me to face him, and his hands on my arms were a cruel attack on the senses. I wanted to be held up by him, let him embrace me, forget about everything. “Yes it does matter, Emily. Because I love you, in a way that obliterates everything else. If you love me too than all of this hedging is just wasting time.”

He loved me.
He was admitting that he loved me. But did that really change anything?

I took a deep breath and said the words he couldn’t refute. “Except you loved me before you hurt me.”

•  •  •

I watched him leave. Forced him to leave with the promise that I’d consider everything he had said, because I needed to think and I didn’t want to tell him the one thing that would make him refuse to go. Didn’t tell him that I was pregnant, just as I hadn’t told anyone else yet.

But I was twenty-one and I wasn’t certain what I wanted to do about the situation. If anyone had asked me how I felt about terminating a pregnancy just a few months ago, when I was in college, I would have said it’s a viable option if the situation would ruin the mother’s life. Except, I’m the one who ruined everything. Not this … nascent life, which was causing small changes in my body that made denial, at least to myself, impossible anymore. I wasn’t a child and helpless. Yes, there would be sacrifices but …

It was part
him
. Part reminder of something so precious, even if it had hurt. This decision was not purely logical. Because I
did
love him, and I knew he loved me.
In a way that obliterates everything else
.

But even if I did keep it, that didn’t mean I should be with Daniel. And as I had told him, I needed to think, away from him, away from his overwhelming presence and the way it managed to
obliterate
my ability to think. Regardless, if I kept this child, I’d have to tell him.

Eight weeks had passed since that night on the beach in the Hamptons. The one night we hadn’t been safe. I’d have to make my decisions soon.

In the first week of October I was still pregnant. Only now, it wasn’t just my secret. Leanna knew and my mother knew. I still wasn’t talking to my father, and I hadn’t decided what to do about Daniel, even though my mom was adamant that waiting longer wouldn’t make anything easier. And with each day that passed, it was entirely possible that he would feel differently about me.

I knew she was right but I felt everything so intensely. How could such a brief relationship hurt three months after its end? There should be some rule of breakups, that the pain is equal to or lesser than the length of the relationship.

That Wednesday, late in the morning, I walked down the path to the studio. I’d been sleeping in a lot the last few weeks, and according to my mother and the doctor that was normal. But as normal as it might be, it made me feel guilty that I was wasting this time when I could work on my art with no limitations. After all, when I left here in three months, I would be on my own: no job, no home, and of course, pregnant.

I stopped still at the threshold of the studio, staring at the open door and the familiar silhouette within. Not only was Daniel the last person I expected to see, but also he was in my studio, mid-week, when no one except the housekeeping staff should be there.

Which was probably how he had gotten in. Of course.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. He turned to me and my eyes stung. I blinked quickly.
No. I would not cry.

I scanned the room, searching for incriminating evidence, as if some symbol of my insidious feelings for him were stamped upon everything I touched. An open sketchbook in the corner gave me a sudden jolt when the dark slashes of ink reminded me of my fanciful attempts for a logo for Daniel’s new venture. Our affair had been less than two months in length. A span of time even a high schooler would consider short.

“I love you.”

My gaze snapped back to him.

Those three words. They’d been in my dreams ever since he’d first said them. As he’d said, they seemed to obliterate everything else. Almost everything. I wanted to scream and cry at the same time.

In all my youthful fantasies those words had held power, could transform everything. But now here Daniel was, looking heartbreakingly handsome and saying them again. Those three words changed nothing.

“So what?” I demanded, a cool anger at the injustice of it all filling my voice. “So you can come stalk me? Isn’t that what that model from the Ukraine did to you? I heard you had her thrown out of the club. Maybe I should have you thrown out.”

But I wasn’t certain why I was so angry, why I couldn’t accept that he clearly still wanted a relationship with me, and that since I admittedly loved him, and was carrying
our
child, it would make the most sense to be with him.

Except the past was still the past—one we didn’t talk about. And I didn’t want to be with a man as ruthless as my father.

“Emily.” Just my name, but he was walking toward me. So I stepped back, toward the open door, the outside. Where I could run. “Emily.”

The way he said my name that second time, it sounded the way he had said, “I love you.” It sounded the way my heart ached in the dark of the night. It felt tantalizingly right. Maybe I
didn’t
have to run. Maybe I
could
simply tell him I loved him too. That I hadn’t stopped loving him. That he was in every fiber of me all the time, influenced everything I did.

After all, he was here. Again. And he didn’t have any other reason to be. Maybe something
had
changed.

I couldn’t step back anymore anyway because suddenly he was around me. Holding me, breathing me in. Touching me. His hand on my belly in a way that stopped me cold.

No. Nononono. How did he know?

“Why are you here?” I forced the words out again, colder this time. He seemed to sense my shift in mood but his arms tightened around me, as if he could hold me captive.

“Because I want to be there for you.”

I pushed out of his arms and turned, furious, desperate. The guilty, wary expression on his face confirmed my fear. “You’re here because you
think
I’m pregnant. Who the hell told you that? Leanna?”

“No, your father.”

I stopped again, stunned. “Why would he do that? Why would he say that to you?”

“Emily, aren’t you?”

But I couldn’t get past what he had said.

“You spoke with my father?” And Daniel was still alive? My father hadn’t killed him? Daniel hadn’t trapped him into committing another crime?

“He came to see me. He didn’t think I should have to go through what your mother put him through. Not knowing you. I want to know our child.”

I struggled against the darkness that clouded my mind and my soul. Against the realization that my father had betrayed me again. Against the impossibility of my father and Daniel having a peaceful conversation. But most of all—

“You’re here because you think I’m having your baby,” I said, my chest aching. “I understand now. Well, that’s not a good enough reason to be together. In fact, it’s a horrible reason!”

“What is a good enough reason?”

If he was asking that question then there wasn’t a reason good enough. I couldn’t trust him. I needed to send him away, to deny anything that might tie us together.

“You’re having my child,” he said finally. Exactly the wrong thing to say. Everything was ruined. Instead of having space to figure this out on my own, he was here, crowding my thought, making all of the choices just about the mistake we made that night on the beach. How could my future end up resting on that one fateful moment?

“What do you want from me?” I demanded.

“I want another chance.”

No.

“Daniel—”

But it was his turn to stop me.

“Wait, Emily. We’ve spent the whole time we’ve known each other avoiding talking about the past.”

What?
Now
he brought up the past? I didn’t know I could be so angry.

“Exactly!” I raged, and I saw him flinch. “Now you’re asking me to spend my future with you. I’m saying no because we have the past standing between us. It was there from the beginning and then, when maybe we could have put it behind us, I dragged it back in.”

Silence met my impassioned speech and I searched his thoughtful expression for some sign that he understood.

“Okay,” he said finally. “You’re right. So let’s talk about it.”

I sucked in my breath. I felt strange, so light inside, abuzz with the possibility that he might actually understand.

Stared at him. Went from despair to hope in a nanosecond.

He was daring me. I felt it. And the moment was ridiculously powerful, like those midnight moments of creative brilliance just before I turned them into art. I could jump in, seize it, and if we worked it out everything could be wonderful. But what if we did this, talked about the past, and all that love wasn’t strong enough?

“I blamed your father for betraying my father,” he started, his eyes intent upon me as if he knew exactly what I was thinking, “for driving him to suicide and for guiding my mother toward an early death.”

I didn’t want to say no to him again. I wasn’t strong enough to say no. No woman should have to be. I just wanted to be loved, for him to look at me that way always.