“Right,” she snarled. “I suppose you’re going to use the same old threat on me to get me to comply.”
“No.” He’d made a promise to himself not to use that particular weapon ever again. It was distasteful and not needed.
“Then there isn’t any way you can make me do what—”
“How convenient that I am the boss and you are the employee.”
She stared at him, her eyes as frosted as the North Sea.
“You are fired, Princesse.” He smiled once more, a charming, cutting smile. “Fired.”
Chapter 13
Had this bed always been this hard?
Lise stared at the darkened ceiling.
She’d always hated this stupid ceiling light. The thing was monstrous. Glass encased with some kind of cold metal. It looked like a gargoyle perched, ready to land on her. What had her father’s decorator been thinking? It was impossible to see all the details of the stupid light. Not because there was so little moonlight in her bedroom, but because the water in her eyes kept blurring her sight.
A trickle of tears slid down her face and neck, adding to the damp spot on her pillow.
She was fired.
Any woman would cry when that happened, right?
Brushing her hands across her cheeks, she pressed her palms on her eyelids, trying to push everything back. The memories, the emotions, the realizations.
The tears paid no attention and kept coming.
She should be in a righteous rage, not weeping like a brokenhearted girl.
After…after…well, after. She’d ripped out of his office like a wounded animal. She should have stayed and made a last stand. But the only thing she’d been able to think about was escape and retreat. All she could fathom in her blinded mind was getting away from his body and his words until she found something to latch on to.
A remnant of pride, perhaps.
The residue of intelligence.
Or maybe, hopefully, the remaining piece of her heart.
This ugly, cold house of hers had been a needed bolthole. A place away from him to gather something. Anything. A place she could hide in until—
Until he demanded she come home.
He hadn’t come to get her. Hadn’t wanted to retrieve her.
What a silly, silly woman she was. To think of that. To hope for that. To weep for that.
The pillow would be sopping wet for months at the rate she was going. A sodden gulp was the only response to her vague thought.
The hours had passed. She’d sat on the bumpy couch her father had assured her was the best money could buy as the afternoon sun had set. She’d stared at the ugly landscape the decorator had insisted fit with the room until the clock had told her it was time for bed. Long past time. She’d been idiotic enough to choose a silk nightgown instead of the comfort of flannel just in case. Just in case.
No demand to return. No contact. No need for her.
What had been monumental to her meant nothing to him. That was the reality of the situation.
The tears appeared to be falling a bit faster. Her palms were wet now.
A very foolish woman indeed.
She’d told him the truth. Even though the confession scared her. Because she no longer wanted to lie to him. She’d given him her body. Even though the surrender scared her. Because she needed him. She’d given him so much more. Even though she hadn’t realized it until it was too late.
She loved him.
Lise surprised herself when an outright sob escaped her.
Vico Mattare had won everything. Every battle and every war between them. He’d won her company, her hand, her baby. Yet he’d done far worse. He’d won her unwanted heart, her unneeded soul. He’d breached the walls of her defenses without her awareness and with his careless indifference.
Not until she’d watched his face as he thrust into her, watched as his firm mouth twisted in ecstasy and his eyes glazed with need had she understood what was really happening to her.
She loved him.
Joy had bloomed in her spirit as he spilled himself inside her.
The joy had blossomed and built. Bewildering her.
When it was over, when she’d come back to earth, when she’d recovered enough of her brain to have a thought instead of merely sensation, the joy had turned sharply into fear. Love wasn’t something she knew much about. Not the deep, soul-drenching love wrapping and winding around her heart for Vico. This love wasn’t the safe, passive affection she’d held for Robert. This wasn’t the giddy, girly friendship she had with Tracy and Suz. And it certainly didn’t resemble the obligatory love she felt for her mother.
This love she felt for Vico was stark and sudden. Scary.
What have I done?
Her eyelashes fluttered on the skin of her palms, smearing the tears.
The first words she’d said to him were not thoughts or beliefs or any kind of rational expression. They’d been the deep upwelling of her spirit, afraid for her survival, afraid of what he had the power to do to her.