Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) (29 page)

I could see why Hemi had been attracted. More than that—I could see why he’d been bewitched. Because it was more than her looks.

Confidence. Attitude. Presence. Those were the words. If Hemi sucked the air out of a room, Anika did that and more. The two of them together—that was serious wattage. That was blow-a-fuse power.

Anika spoke first, in the end. But then, Hemi could outwait anybody.

“If you’re going to go into half the shops in Newmarket,” she said, “I’m going to hear about it.”

“You could hear about it,” Hemi said, “without turning up. Can’t imagine why you’d make the journey, or go to all the trouble of discovering where I’d booked, either.”

Anika didn’t answer that. She looked instead at me. One quick scan up and down, and I was summed up and dismissed. Her eyes flicked back to Hemi’s. “You’re joking.”

Hemi hadn’t moved. Now, he got even more still, pulling all his power into his body in a way that was truly intimidating to watch.

“Are you going to ask me to sit down?” Anika asked.

“No,” Hemi said.

She smiled, something purely feline. And then she pulled out the chair beside Violet, sank gracefully into it, and said conversationally, “It’s very nearly a crime.”

Hemi sat again himself, but Anika didn’t look at him. She was still looking at me. “How old are you, darling? Nineteen?”

I said, “No,” and left it there. I might not be able to manage scary, but I didn’t have to do cowed.

She glanced at my water glass. “Not old enough to drink, either? Or maybe you think the innocent bit will keep him enraptured.” She leaned forward slightly, compelling me to do the same, a compulsion I resisted even as I felt her hypnotic power trying to draw me in. “It won’t,” she told me, dropping her voice so low, I had to strain to hear it. “He’s trying to tell himself he wants this, that he wants to lose the dark side, that if he could only leave his demons behind, he’d be happy. He can’t, and he won’t. Some demons are too strong to be defeated. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

Hemi said, “You need to leave. Now.”

The tone of his voice would have had anybody else scurrying for the exit. It practically did it to
me.
Anika paid it exactly no attention. Instead, she held a hand across the table to me and turned it over, flexing her palm so the underside of her wrist was fully visible.

Maybe I was supposed to notice the fineness of her bones, or the graceful, tapering length of her fingers. Except that she said, “Do you see the scar?”

I did. A faint white line interrupting the perfect bronze of her skin. She held out the other hand, then, and showed that to me, too. “Do you know how I got these?”

Hemi was on his feet again. “No.”

Anika ignored him. “Ask your fiancé,” she told me. “Ask him what kind of a husband ties his wife so tightly and for so long that he leaves permanent scars. Ask him what else he did to me that night. Ask me why I loved him anyway. Ask yourself why you do, and how he sucked you in. Why he chose you, a woman without a family to look after her, to ask inconvenient questions, to give her somewhere to run. Ask yourself if that’s the life you want.”

All the nausea I’d been spared for the past week was roiling inside me. The blood had left my head, and I felt so faint, all I wanted was to put my head between my knees. And my hands over my ears.

I didn’t do either thing. I said, “I know who Hemi is. I know everything he is.”

“Do you?” she asked. “Do you really? Do you know I came to see him just a couple weeks ago? Do you know that I begged? Did he tell you that?” She must have seen the involuntary widening of my eyes, because she smiled, a tinge of sadness to it, and said, “Thought not. He had me on my knees. His favorite position for a woman, but then, you know that. He made me beg, and then he laughed at me and turfed me out. Deserted me one more time.”

“Shock,” Violet said. “Considering how you treated him.”

I expected Anika to turn on her, to strike like a cobra. Instead, she said, “But then, Vi, all you knew was what Hemi told you. That’s all anybody knew. Nobody was in that apartment but the two of us—unless Hemi issued invitations—and if I was damaged afterwards, if I acted out? I had my reasons. Not all my scars are on the outside. And I
will
show them. If I’ve asked Hemi for help, it’s because he’s owed it to me for years. Before, I had no way of getting it. Now I do. Call it justice.”

I asked, “Are you finished?” My voice, somehow, was ice-cold, even though I was a quaking mess inside.

“I’m finished. I’ve done what I could.” She stood up, looked at me a moment more, and then, before I could react, bent and kissed my cheek. Her perfume, all Oriental topnotes on a musky base, swirling down inside me, overwhelming the light floral scent I wore. “Be careful,” she told me, straightening up again and touching my face, a soft caress.

I was on my feet, too, standing as if pulled by a string. My feet weren’t my own, and my hand wasn’t, either. It was rising as if somebody else were in control of it, drawing back.

It didn’t land. Hemi’s iron fingers closed around my wrist instead, so quickly I didn’t even notice him moving.

Anika said, “My. The kitten has claws. Maybe you’ll last longer than I think. Take my advice, though. Get a very good attorney. I wish I had.”

With that, she turned on one graceful heel and walked away. And every man in the room watched her go.

Hemi

I was shutting down. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t stop it happening, like the hatches slamming closed on a submarine before it dove. Preparing to go underwater, to run silent and deep.

“Well,” Violet said, “that was special. Bitch.”

Hope laughed, nothing but an angry puff of air. Not the reaction I’d been expecting. “Why didn’t you let me hit her?” she asked me. “I was
dying
to hit her.”

When I didn’t answer, she said in a completely different voice, “Pay the check and take me home.”

Vi’s head went up, and so did mine. I stared a Hope for a long second, and she stared straight back at me. Then I lifted a hand for the waiter.

The long ride down in the lift was a silent affair. Out on the street again, I hailed a taxi and told Vi, “Yours.” My voice sounded rusty, and I realized it was the first thing I’d said in some time.

Vi reached up, took my face in her two hands, and said, “Trust comes hard. Don’t I know it. Trust Hope, mate. You can do it.”

When I didn’t answer, she sighed, turned to Hope, gave her a hug and kiss, and said, “Awesome, that’s all. I want you on my team.”

“You’ve already got me there,” Hope said. “Thanks for everything.”

Vi nodded. “Anytime you want that dress. And I mean
any
time. But I want to watch you wearing it.”

“I want that, too,” Hope said. “I’ll let you know.”

Vi got into her taxi, and as it pulled away, Hope looked at me and said, “That’s enough.”

“Pardon?” Another thing I hadn’t expected to hear.

“Brooding’s one thing. This is something else. I’m starting to get insulted. You’ve got things to tell me, and you need to start.”

I didn’t. I couldn’t. She said, “Right, then. I’m mad. Six months ago—
three
months ago—I’d have stomped off. I’m not doing that tonight. I’m going to stand right here on the sidewalk and let you know that if you think there’s anything you can tell me about your past that’s going to make me believe I don’t know the man I see, you’re wrong. And what’s worse, you’re insulting my perception and my judgment and my commitment and so many other things, I don’t even want to list them, because it’ll just make me madder. So tell me.”

“Anika already did.”

Hope snorted
.
“I know what ‘manipulative’ means. Let me guess. She has many faces. Tonight, I got to see the vulnerable, wounded one, because that woman will do and say whatever she thinks will work. You aren’t just ashamed because of something you did. You’re ashamed because you fell for her, and because you let her twist you around. You feel wrong and sick and dark because she wanted you to lose control over yourself, and as soon as you did, she was the one controlling you. That scared you to death
.
And by the way, you didn’t tell me she’d showed up recently. That’s another thing I’m mad about. So you pick. Start somewhere. Start off by telling me about her showing up, maybe. That’ll be easier.”

I ran a hand over my hair. Every muscle in my body felt stiff. “You’re getting cold. You’re not wearing enough to have this talk here.”

“So have the valet bring your car around, get me nice and warm, and then tell me.”

I did. I started as soon as we pulled out of the SkyCity drive onto Hobson Street. I didn’t put off unpleasant things, and I didn’t duck reality. Not anymore.

“She turned up,” I said. “A couple weeks ago. She did what you saw tonight. She was wounded. Hurting. She did get on her knees, begging me to settle, begging me to give her something. Anything. I didn’t believe her, and I didn’t do it.”

“And you didn’t tell me.” Hope’s voice was matter of fact, not angry.

“I was planning to. Tomorrow morning, maybe, on the drive home. I didn’t want to spoil it. She’s like . . .”

“Poison. Or battery acid. Eating away at all the beautiful things, the sweet things, making you think you can’t trust anything or anybody, including yourself.”

“Yeh.” I felt exhausted, suddenly. “She wants my money. She thinks she has a right.”

“Except that it wasn’t three years.”

“No. It wasn’t. But maybe she thinks she has a right anyway.” There. I’d admitted it, or close.

“Or maybe
you
think she does.” She picked up on it straight away, of course. “Tell me why.”

I was stopped at a red light, and I sat staring at it, not wanting to see Hope’s face. “She always wanted to push it further,” I said reluctantly. “But maybe that’s just my excuse.”

“You make the fewest excuses of any man I’ve ever known. Tell me.”

The light changed, and I drove. “The night she got those scars.” I forced the words out, dragging the memory from its locked box, pushing and shoving it ruthlessly to the surface. “She wanted me to . . .” I stopped, breathed, and said it. “Share her. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but she said it was her fantasy. She pushed for weeks. And finally, I did it. Maybe I thought I’d lose her otherwise. That was how it felt. But I never should have done it. Never.”

“How many guys?” She sounded sick, which was exactly the way I felt.

“Two.” I pulled into the hotel garage, parked, and turned the car off, but I didn’t get out, and neither did Hope. “People she’d met online, she said, but now I wonder if it was more than that. It got . . . out of hand so fast, and I didn’t stop it nearly soon enough. I didn’t know if I should, and I was excited, too. That’s the truth.” The hard truth. The sick truth.

“And what did she say the next day?” Hope asked, which, again, wasn’t the question I’d expected.

“Said it hurt, and it scared her, and it was too much, and she wanted to do it again. Later. When she . . . felt better. She had her wrists bandaged for a week, and every time I saw those bandages . . . seeing those scars tonight . . .” I didn’t go on. I couldn’t.

“And you never did it again.”

“Bloody hell.” I scrubbed my hands over my face as if I could scrub the memory clean. The worst night of my life, when I’d let myself down, and worse. When I’d let my wife down. When I’d done things no man should do. “No, I never did it again. Three weeks later, I heard that I’d got the internship in the States, and from then on, it was all rows, and then I left. When she stopped writing, though, when she didn’t come . . . I thought—of course that happened. Of course she didn’t trust me anymore. Of course she didn’t want me.”

“No. She was wrong.”

“So was I.” I’d never said it. I said it now.

“All right. So were you. And after that, you said you could never lose control again. Because you were terrified of what you’d do.”

I didn’t have to answer that. Hope knew it already.

“Did she tell you to stop?” she asked next. “That night? Did she ask you to make it stop?”