King’s Million-Dollar Secret (12 page)

“Or talk to her?”

“She was through talking,” Rafe assured him, remembering the look in her eyes as she faced him down. He'd seen the pain glittering brightly in tears she hadn't let fall. He'd heard the betrayal in her voice and felt the sharp sting of his own lies catching up with him.

“So that's it?” Sean asked.

“That's it.” Deliberately, Rafe turned his back on the view, ignored his brother and took a seat behind his desk again. Picking up his pen, he stared blindly at the supply sheets.

“Can't believe you're going to let her get away.”

“I didn't
let
her do anything,” Rafe muttered, still not looking up at Sean. “Katie makes her own decisions. And now she has more reason than ever to hate the Kings. Most especially,
me.
”

Blowing out a breath, Sean stood up but didn't leave. “And you're okay with that?”

“Of course I am,” Rafe lied and mentally congratulated himself on just how good he was getting at it. “I always intended to walk away from her, Sean. It just happened a little faster than I'd planned.”

God, that was a lie, too.

“Right.” Sean slapped one hand down on top of the papers, forcing Rafe to look up at him.

“Butt out, Sean,” he ground out.

“Hell no,” his brother said, frustration simmering in the air between them. “You're not usually a stupid guy, Rafe. But this time, you're being an idiot.”

No, he wasn't. Katie didn't want to see him and he couldn't blame her. Besides, it was better this way. If she was mad at him, she wouldn't stay hurt for long. She'd get over it. So would he. He was no good at love and he knew it. Better he hurt her now than destroy her later.

“Thanks for the input.” Rafe peeled Sean's hand off the papers. “Now go away.”

“If you don't go after her,” Sean said quietly, “you'll regret it.”

Rafe already regretted it. Enough that his soul felt as if it was withering and his heart could barely summon the energy to beat.

“I've had regrets before,” he finally said. “Let's remember Leslie.”

“Uh-huh. Speaking of your ex…I hear you hired her husband.”

Rafe sighed. Yes, he had hired John. And he was forced to admit that he might not have if he hadn't met Katie. Being with her had allowed him to face his own past. And the talk with Leslie had been eye-opening enough that he'd been able to reach out to an old friend. Maybe he and John would actually be close again someday.

If they were, that too would be laid at Katie's feet. Her optimism and rosy outlook on life had affected him more than he would have thought possible. Rafe shifted
in his chair. He didn't want to talk about any of this. Hell, he didn't want to talk at all.

“So the question is,” Sean continued, oblivious to the fact that Rafe wanted him gone, “why is it you can make peace with John and Leslie, but you won't go see the woman you're crazy about?”

Several silent, tense seconds passed before Rafe finally asked, “Are you going to leave? Or do I have to?”

“I'll go,” Sean said amiably. “But that won't solve your problem for you.”

“Yeah?” Rafe countered. “What will?”

Sean laughed at him and shook his head as he opened the door. “You already know the answer to that, Rafe. You just don't want to admit it.”

“I
t's really gorgeous, honey,” Emily O'Hara said as she walked through the completely remodeled kitchen. “I love the floor and the counters are just beautiful.”

Katie should have been cooing over her finished kitchen too, but somehow she couldn't muster up the enthusiasm for it. Heck, in the two days since the crew left, she hadn't even made a single batch of cookies in her shiny new stove.

Her gaze swept the remodeled room, trying to see it as Nana was, from the slate gray tiles to the pearlized blue granite counters to the dark blue walls and she felt…nothing. It was all perfect and it meant…nothing.

“All right, sweetie,” her grandmother said, coming up to give her a brief, comforting hug. “You've got the kitchen of your dreams, but you're standing there looking as if you just found out cookies had been banned. Tell me what's wrong.”

The tears that Katie had been holding at bay for days crested again and before she could stop them, one or two trailed down her cheeks. Her heart ached and it felt as though there were a boulder sitting on her chest. She could hardly draw a breath without wheezing. “Oh, Nana,
everything's
wrong.”

“Honey…” The older woman sighed and steered Katie across the room. An ancient, round pedestal table and captain chairs sat before the wide window where sunlight splashed and curtains danced in a soft wind. Emily pushed her granddaughter into one of the chairs, then sat down beside her. “Talk to me.”

Where to start?
Katie wondered. With the fact that she was in love with a man she didn't really know? That she'd allowed herself to get bamboozled by the King family?
Again?
Or should she just admit that she wasn't getting over it this time? That she would
never
get over it? That she couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat, she didn't even want to bake anymore. And that was saying something. She just couldn't bring herself to care about anything but the gaping hole in her own heart.

“It's Rafe,” she said, slumping back into her chair. “He lied to me.”

“I know.”

“What?” Katie blinked at her grandmother and waited for an explanation. But the older woman just sat there in the sunlight, smiling benevolently. “How? What? How?”

Emily reached over, patted Katie's hand, then sighed and leaned back in her chair. “I know his real name is Rafe King, if that's what you're talking about.”

“Well, yeah, it is.”

“Do you want tea? We should have some tea.”

“I don't want tea,” Katie said, stopping her grand
mother before the woman could get up. “I want some answers. You know about Rafe? For how long?”

She waved one hand dismissively. “Oh, I knew the minute you introduced us.”

“How?” Katie just stared at her in rapt confusion. “Do you have some kind of inner lie radar that I didn't get?”

“No, and I don't think I'd want it, either. Sometimes lies can be a good thing,” Emily said, her gaze locked on Katie.

“Lying is
not
a good thing. You're the one who taught me that, remember?”

Again, Emily waved a hand, effectively wiping away that little nugget of so-called wisdom. “That was different. You were ten. Now you're an adult and surely you've learned that sometimes a small, harmless lie is far better than a hurtful truth.”

“This lie wasn't harmless,” Katie argued, remembering the sting of betrayal when she'd discovered Rafe's game. “And you still haven't told me how you knew who he was.”

“If you read popular magazines once in a while, you would have known him too,” Nana said with a huff. “There's always one King or another's picture in there. I recognized Rafe from a picture taken at a movie premiere.”

“A premiere.” Katie shook her head and felt her heart drop through the floor. He was used to dating actresses and going to fabulous parties. Oh, he must have gotten such a laugh from the spur-of-the-moment barbecue in her backyard.

Annoyance flickered into anger and soon that hot little bubble of fury was frothing into real rage. “I can't believe it. He must have thought I was an idiot
for not recognizing him.” She paused for a glare at her grandmother. “And why didn't you
tell
me?”

“Because,” Emily said. “You needed your life shaken up a little. Besides, he's a cutie-patootie and you can't hang
all
of the Kings for what one of them did.”

“
Two
of them now,” Katie reminded her.

“All right, yes, Rafe's not looking too good at the moment,” Emily admitted. “But did you give him a chance to explain?”

“Oh, he explained. I was a bet gone wrong.”

“Katie…”

She shook her head and held up both hands. “No, Nana, there's no excuse for what he did. He lied to me and that's it.”

“I lied to you too, sweetie,” her grandmother pointed out in a small voice.

Sighing, Katie said, “Yeah, but you didn't do it to hurt me.”

“No, I didn't. And maybe that wasn't Rafe's intention, either.”

“We'll never know, will we?” Katie muttered, as anger seeped away into the wide black hole she seemed to be carrying around inside her these days.

“You could find out if you'd stop hiding away in your house and go see him.” Emily frowned and looked at her steadily. “Are you really going to become a hermit while he's out having a good time?”

That
caught her attention quickly enough. Rafe was having a good time? Where? And a moment later the more important question—
with who?
—leaped into mind.

“What do you mean?” Katie asked, voice tight.

Her nana sighed again and reached for the morning paper, still folded and unopened on the kitchen table.
“Honestly, Katie, if you paid a little more attention to current events…”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Silently, Emily discarded the news section and went straight to Lifestyles. Thumbing through it, she finally found what she was looking for and folded it back. Then she laid it down in front of Katie and stabbed a grainy black-and-white picture with her manicured nail. “It means, you can find out a lot by keeping up with gossip. Like for example…there.”

Katie looked at the picture and felt the tightening in her chest ratchet up until she couldn't get any air in her lungs. She was light-headed. That had to be the reason her vision was narrowing until all she could see was the picture in the paper. The picture of an unsmiling Rafe in a tuxedo at a charity fundraiser, with a blond sporting boobs twice the size of Katie's clinging to his arm.

“When was—” She broke off as she read the caption under the photo. “Two nights ago.”

“
He's
not curled up in the fetal position like someone else I could mention,” Emily murmured.

“That rat. That
creep.
” Katie slowly rose from her chair, clutching the paper in her fists. Her gaze still locked on the picture, all she could see was Rafe's face, glaring at the camera as if he were wishing the photographer into the darkest bowels of Hell.

“Atta girl,” her grandmother whispered.

“He told me I was
important
to him,” Katie said, fury coloring her voice until it quivered and shook with the force of it. “He must have been lying
again.
If I was so damn important, how is he out with this bimbo?”

“To be fair, we're not sure she's a bimbo,” Nana said.

Katie glared at her. “Whose side are you on?”

“Right.”

“Does he think I'm stupid?” Katie asked, not waiting for an answer. “Did he really believe I wouldn't find out that less than a week after—after—that he'd be dating the rich and pointless again? Does he think I don't read the paper?”

“Well,” Emily pointed out easily, “you don't.”

“I will from now on,” Katie promised, giving the paper a hard shake.

“So, what're you going to do about this?”

Katie finally lifted her gaze and looked into her grandmother's eyes. With cold, hard determination she said simply, “I'm going to go dethrone a King.”

 

Rafe couldn't settle.

He felt uncomfortable in his own skin.

Which left him nowhere to run.

Not that he would. Kings didn't run. Kings didn't hide.

But then if that were true, why wasn't he over at Katie's house right now, demanding she listen to him? Grumbling, he stood up, walked to the window of his office and stared out at the view without even seeing it. The ocean could have dried up for all the notice he gave it. There might as well have been empty sand dunes stretching out into eternity out there. He didn't care. It didn't matter. Nothing did.

He'd tried going back to his life, but it was a damned empty one. Hell, he couldn't even go into his hotel suite anymore. The silence was too much to take. So instead, he stayed here. At the office. He'd been sleeping on the damn couch, if you could call it sleep.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Katie, as she had been that last night. Quivering in his arms. Kissing
him breathless. Then finally, staring at him out of hurt-filled eyes. And if he had been able to figure out how to do it, he'd have punched his own face in days ago.

The intercom buzzed and he walked to stab a finger at the button. “Damn it, Janice, I told you I didn't want to be disturbed.”

“Yes, but there's—” she said, then added, “Wait! You can't go in!” just before his office door crashed open.

Katie stood in the doorway, her green eyes flashing at him dangerously. Her hair was a wild tumble of curls around her shoulders. She wore a black skirt, a red button-down shirt that was opened enough that he could see where her silver necklace dipped into the valley of her breasts. And she was wearing those black high heels she'd been wearing their last night together.

Altogether, she looked like a woman dressed for seduction. But with the fury in her eyes, any man she was aimed at might not survive. Rafe was willing to take his chances. And if she did end up putting him down, he couldn't think of a better way to go.

“Sorry,” Janice was saying as she brushed past Katie with a frown. “She got past me and—”

“It's okay, Janice. Close the door on your way out.”

“Yes sir,” she said and, though curiosity was stamped on her face, she did what he asked and left he and Katie alone.

“It's good to see you,” he said, knowing that for the understatement of the century.

“It won't be in a minute,” Katie promised and stalked toward him like an avenging angel on a mission. She dipped one hand into the black purse hanging off her shoulder and came back up with a folded newspaper.

Once she had it, she threw it at him. He caught it instinctively and gave it a quick glance. Ah. Now he
knew what was behind the fresh fury driving her. And weirdly, it gave him a shot of hope that she wasn't lost to him completely since that picture had definitely pissed her off.

“Did you think I wouldn't see it?” she said, her voice little more than a snarl. “Or was it just that you didn't care if I saw it? Game over, bet won, moving on? Was that it?”

“It wasn't a game, Katie,” he said and his tone was as tight as the tension coiled inside him. “I told you that. Or I tried to.”

“And I should believe you,” she said, dropping her purse onto the closest chair and stabbing one finger at the newspaper he tossed to his desk. “Because clearly you missed me so much you had to rush out and drown your sorrows in that blonde double D.”

He grinned at her, even knowing that would only feed the flames of her wrath. Rafe couldn't help himself. Hell, he could hardly believe she was standing here. Even gloriously furious, she was the only woman who could make his heart lift out of the darkness he carried inside him. The only woman who made him want to smile. Who made him want to promise her any damn thing she wanted as long as she never left him again.

He thought briefly about what Cordell had said at the restaurant the other night.
Another King bites the dust.
He'd argued the point then, out of sheer stubbornness and a refusal to see the truth for what it was.

But now that Katie was standing here in front of him, bubbling with a fury that had her green eyes flashing like fireworks, he knew he couldn't deny the facts any longer. Not even to himself. More importantly, he didn't want to.

He was in love for the first time in his life.

And damned if he'd lose her.

“Don't you dare laugh at me,” she warned.

“Not laughing.” Reaching out, he grabbed hold of her shoulders and only tightened his grip when she tried to twist free. “Katie, that blonde is an actress. Under contract to my cousin Jefferson's film company. I had to go to the charity thing anyway and he asked me to escort her to get her some media.”

She wasn't mollified. “And I should believe that
why?
”

“Because she was boring and vapid and I had a terrible time because she wasn't you. And…because I won't lie to you again, Katie.”

Some of the fight went out of her. The rigidity in her shoulders faded enough that he risked easing his grip on her. She didn't step away from him when she had the opportunity and Rafe silently considered that a good sign.

“I miss you,” he said before he could gauge his words and try to predict her reaction.

Her delectable mouth flattened into a grim line. “I'm still furious with you.”

“I get that.” But she was
here
and he was taking that as a good sign. She looked up at him with those gorgeous green eyes and Rafe knew that he had only this one shot. This one chance to redeem himself. To somehow salvage the most important relationship he'd ever known.