Sweeter Than Revenge (13 page)

. touch of a smile softened the edges of his mouth. Reaching between them, he held his length and ran it insistently back and forth over the swollen wet lips of her sex. With that same maddening slowness, he inched inside, his fullness stretching and rubbing her. She clamped her legs around his waist and held him tight, with no intentions of ever letting him go in this lifetime.

“Ah, Maria-aaa,” he sighed, staring at her, his eyes half closed.

When he was fully inside her at last, he stopped. Lowering his head, he nibbled at her lips, tasting her, making her crazy. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he whispered. “Did you know that?”

“Yes. This has been the longest couple months of my life.”

Faint frown lines appeared between his heavy eyebrows, as if a puzzling or disturbing idea was just occurring to him. “No,” he said. “I think I’ve been waiting for you since the day I was born.”

Lowering his head, he kissed her again as she began to cry.

With their mouths and bodies fused, her clothes more on than off, their breath and cries mingling in the late morning silence, David made love to her, rocking against her in tiny circles until a pleasure brighter than the center of the sun washed over her.

Maria stirred, coming out of her reverie. Now that she’d taken her treasured memory out and admired it like a wedding dress wrapped in tissue and stored in a hope chest, it was time to fold it up and shut it away.

She would never look at it again.

Trying to raise her leaden head off the down pillow turned out to be an exercise in futility, but she did manage to turn it. Her puffy, bleary, watery eyes focused on her nightstand clock: one-thirteen. Even though she was drained and exhausted, she knew sleep probably wasn’t on the menu for her tonight.

She sighed.

Tomorrow was a big day. The first day of the rest of her life, and all that. Tomorrow, when dawn filtered through her curtains and she climbed out of bed and put her feet on the floor, she would be a different, better person. It was time to grow up, stand on her own two feet and finally forget about David Hunt.

David crept down the upstairs hallway, his movements stilted and slow, as though he were walking for the first time after waking from a years-long coma. The absolute darkness was broken only by the dim light from a tiny painted lamp on the table at the far end of this wing. He felt hollow, devoid of skin, organs or blood, and empty of thoughts, feelings, or even his soul. No one was nearby, and no one could help him. Never in his life had he felt lonelier or more alone.

Moving on autopilot, he headed for his bedroom, where he could nurse his wounds in private once his feelings came back, as they surely would. His muffled footsteps on the runner and the occasional creak of the hardwood floor made the only sounds in the universe, at least until he passed the closed door of Maria’s room. Somehow he knew he would hear the faint, muffled sounds of her crying, and he did. Racking, gulping sobs that could never be completely silenced into a pillow no matter how hard she may try. What a pair they were, he and Maria. She didn’t want to cry, and he didn’t want to hear, and neither of them got their wish.

When he got to his room, which was filled to the nth degree with expensive furniture and antiques that probably belonged in homes on the historical register, he bypassed his enormous canopied bed and went straight to the bureau, on top of which sat his wallet. Reaching for it with trembling hands, he opened it. Credit cards showered over the polished walnut as he fumbled and found what he wanted. Slowly he unfolded the scrap of paper.

After taking several deep breaths that should have evened out his erratic heartbeat and shored up his courage, but didn’t, he forced himself to look at something that kicked him in the guts every time he saw it: the tattered, faded, four-year-old clipping from Jetmagazine’s wedding section. The glorious bride, Maria Johnson Harper, smiled out at him from the picture. A white veil framed her face like a halo. His Maria, now George Harper’s wife—the image of virginal innocence and happiness. Had anyone else besides him ever noticed the strange, wild light in her eyes? Probably not. He’d always chalked it up to wedding day jitters, but now he wasn’t so sure. After his little discussion with Maria just now, he wasn’t so sure about anything in his life. How many times had he stared at this picture before he went to bed, and remembered? A thousand? A million?

It hurt every time, but never quite cured what ailed him.

Parts of his body betrayed him. His insidious heart whispered that maybe she had told him the truth tonight: that she’d loved him and only married George on the rebound. It was an effort not to believe her and to remember that he’d pledged to hate her for all eternity. His foolish sex wanted her and didn’t care if she boiled children alive in her spare time. But his eyes wouldn’t fail him, and that was why he’d always carried the article. So he’d have some protection against her in moments like these, when the nights were long and he wondered what it would be like to forgive her, to get past his anger. The article had one purpose, and one purpose only: to help him remember and not repeat. Ignoring the pain, he stared at the picture and tried to remember even one of the thousands of reasons why he hated Maria Johnson so much.

But for the first time in years…he couldn’t.

The next morning Maria got up at the crack of dawn, dressed and took a cab to work. It would have been easy enough to ask her father if she could borrow one of his other cars—he hardly ever used the Range Rover or even the Mercedes—but she didn’t want to ask him for anything right now. Her pride wouldn’t allow it. Nor did she want to catch a ride to the office with Ellis or David, for the same reason. After work she would take another cab ride to the car dealership and find a used car in her price range, if such an endeavor was even possible. Most likely they’d rob her blind, but she’d die before she took David up on his offer to help her negotiate a sale. If she was going to learn to stand on her own two feet, she may as well start tonight.

It was seven-thirteen and she discovered, to her surprise, that she wasn’t the first person to arrive. Plastering a polite, aloof smile on her mouth, she walked past the various stares and glares of secretaries, account assistants and, well, pretty much everyone here at Happy Acres. Just as she’d predicted, everyone hated her now, and those who’d hated her before now hated her worse. No doubt Shelley had spread the word about Maria’s sudden and undeserved promotion, and tensions that had merely simmered now came bubbling to the surface. Every single person she passed in the hall either glowered, rolled his or her eyes or muttered as she passed.

Since it took her forever to walk back to her office in Outer Mongolia, this was a big problem. Maybe she should ask David about starting a shuttle service to get her there faster, or maybe a mileage allowance if she strapped on a pedometer and kept track of all the walking she did around here. Lovely as the fantasy was, she decided against it because she needed to keep her communications with him to a minimum if she wanted to get him out of her system once and for all.

He’d never loved her.

Oh, sure, she’d pricked his pride a little by marrying someone else. No man wanted to come in second place, after all, but that was just his ego and testosterone talking. At the most basic level, though, in his heart, he didn’t love her. Wanted her, yes. Cared about her a little? Possibly. But lovedher? Uh-uh. Not even at the height of their affair. Never had, never would.

She got it. But that didn’t make the pain any easier.

Every time she saw him, that invisible dagger in her heart sank a little more deeply into her chest. The best thing for her to do, therefore, was to avoid him. At home it was easy enough if she just stayed in her room and avoided the common areas in the enormous house. It shouldn’t be hard to do here at work, either, except for working together on Anastasia’s campaign. She now regretted her little manipulation yesterday. She’d wanted to one-up David and to do something more exciting than make copies and file all day. But the price to pay for her machinations was that she’d be in closer contact with David and that price, she now saw, was too high. Avoiding David was her only option if she wanted to save herself from getting hurt any worse than she already had. A massive breakdown of some sort was in her immediate future if she didn’t somehow get hold of her broken heart and put some distance between them.

As she got closer to her office, she slowed down, feeling vaguely disoriented. Something looked different, but for several beats she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Finally it dawned on her that the remaining clutter had been cleared away since yesterday. The cleaning she’d planned to do no longer needed to be done. All the boxes, bins and junk were gone, and her little office looked sparkling clean and neat. The effect was stunning, as if the EPA had come in, cleaned up a landfill and left Central Park in its place.

Who did this? Had David ordered the cleanup? Her spirits lifted half an inch at the possibility, but then she reminded herself that he still would never love her, and they plummeted again. David would never go to this trouble for her. Most likely her father had the janitor move some things out. Whatever. At least she no longer had to work in a dump.

Not that she’d actually been working.

Yes, she might as well face the ugly truth, she thought as she put away her things and booted up her laptop. Her first day on the job hadn’t exactly been stellar. Or good. Or even…passable. As a matter of fact, she’d hardly done any work. Her conscience, long dormant where work was concerned, pulsed to life and reproached her. Okay, fine. She’d done no work other than meeting with Anastasia, and she’d paid for yesterday’s casual attitude with her precious Jaguar. But today was a new day, and she was going to put her heart into the job lest her father decide to repossess any more of her belongings.

Taking the stack of files that had been gathering dust on the corner of her desk, she headed off to file them, realizing only belatedly that she didn’t know where the file room was. Kwasi would know, and luckily she knew where hisoffice was. She braved more death glares as she walked through the main hall. And nearly ran into Shelley as she turned a corner.

“Sorry,” Maria said, backing up quickly, clutching the files to her chest.

“I’ll bet.”

Huffing, Shelley started to move away, but Maria put a hand on her arm and stopped her. “Can I talk to you for a minute? I want to make a proposal.”

Shelley snorted. “Yeah, right. Like I want to hear anything you’ve got to say.” She edged around Maria.

“I can help you get Kwasi to notice you,” Maria said to her back.

Shelley froze, as if the floor had grown hands that’d reached up and grabbed her ankles. She shot one disbelieving look over her shoulder. “Whatdid you say?”

“You heard me.”

Maria watched while Shelley struggled with her lust for Kwasi and her hostility toward Maria. Lust won. Snatching Maria’s arm, she pulled her into the nearest empty conference room and slammed the door behind them.

“You better talk fast, sister,” she barked.

“It’s simple,” Maria told her. “I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine. I’ll help you with a—” she gestured vaguely at Shelley’s 1980s glasses, bushy eyebrows, yellow dress and tired hair “—makeover, and you help me with Anastasia Buckingham. Perfect, huh?”

“Oh hellno,” Shelley cried. “You think I’m gonna do all your work for you? Paint your fence for you, Tom Sawyer? Well, you can forget it.”

“No, no,” Maria said quickly. “I’lldo the work. I want to learn, and I want to get it right. I just need someone to point me in the right direction.”

Shelley quieted down, her unwilling interest shining in her dark eyes. “What kind of makeover?”

Maria knew she’d won, but tried to keep the glee from her voice and face. “Well, first of all, you need to throw out—no, burn—all your yellow clothes.”

“Hey!”

“No more yellow, or the deal’s off. Yellow’s not your color. Yellow’s not anyone’s color. I want to see you in some red. Okay?”

Shelley pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. “What else?”

“We need to do something about the unibrow.”

Shelley’s nostrils flared and said unibrow flattened over her nose, making her look like Cro-Magnon woman. “Forget it!” she shrieked. “I don’t have to stick around here and be insulted.”

Maria grabbed her arm to keep her from flouncing out. “And I’ll teach you the most important thing.”

She could almost see Shelley’s ears prick up. “What’s that?”

“Body language.”

That did it. She’d just made Shelley an offer she couldn’t refuse, and they both knew it. Confident now, Maria grinned and held her hand out. “Deal?”

Shelley smiled back and they shook. “Deal.”

After a quick discussion about logistics—they agreed to meet after work—she and Shelley parted ways, and Maria headed back down the hall, looking for Kwasi. He was in his office, staring at his monitor with trancelike zombie eyes, his fingers flying over the keyboard like a hummingbird’s wings.

“Hi, Kwasi,” she said with a light knock on his open door.

He started with surprise and jumped to his feet, snapping out of whatever altered state he’d been in. When he realized who’d interrupted him, his face paled as if he’d looked up to see Vlad the Impaler coming his way with a sharpened pike.