Yet Lucas stood at the large bay window in his living room watching Sydney step out of the town car like some voyeur.
If he possessed even an ounce of common sense, he would return to the office, chalk this up to a moment of lunacy, and forget it happened …
He remained at the window.
Aiden's words haunted him as Sydney waved at James and climbed the front steps to the brownstone. "She might if you told her the truth. If you told her about why you've set this whole Machiavellian scheme in motion. But if you don't at least give her the benefit of the doubt, you're going to lose her."
He'd never had a woman who was solely his. His mother hadn't been his or his father's. She'd belonged to any man with a pretty face or deep enough pockets to keep her in the expensive clothes and jewels she adored. The women Lucas had been with had been expedient and expendable-by choice. Not until Sydney had he experienced this … this nagging persistence to possess, to smash down any wall she erected that kept him on the outside when he wanted in.
At the end of the year, he would walk away, but during the next eleven months … he wanted in.
"What are you doing home?"
Her surprised question brought him around, and the customary burn of desire flared to life. To not want her was like ordering his breath to freeze in his lungs. From the moment he'd bent over her hand at the auction and looked up into her lovely hazel eyes, lust for her had set up residence inside him and refused to be evicted.
"How did your lunch go?" he asked, sidestepping the question.
She sighed, untying the sash at her waist and removing her coat. As she crossed the room to toss the clothing over the back of the sofa, he dropped his attention to her ass in the slim-fitting black skirt. He bit back a groan. And made a mental note to buy one of those ass-hugging skirts in every color of the rainbow and in between.
"It was … interesting." She emitted another weary sigh and dragged a hand through her curls. "Between my mother calling me on the carpet for my hair, eating habits, and choice in husband, I ordered a salad I didn't get to eat. A salad that looked delicious, by the way."
Fury stirred in his gut, poked to flames by Sydney's abridged recounting of her conversation with her mother.
"Why didn't you get to eat it?" he asked, surprised by how calm he sounded.
"Because I walked out." She huffed out a strained chuckle. "I walked out," she repeated as if in disbelief. He took a step toward her, her name on his lips, but she shot up a hand, halting him. "No, I walked out," she said for the third time, stronger, firmer. "But not before telling her I would no longer put up with her criticism and digs at my expense. Granted, most of them are not malicious. But I think the indifference behind them is somehow worse. As if the inventorying of my imperfections is so common, so natural, it doesn't require spitefulness."
"Sweetheart," he murmured, eliminating the distance between them until her palm pressed into his chest.
"I love her," Sydney whispered, her fingers curling into his shirt. "For so many years, I tried to be perfect-the perfect daughter, perfect hostess, perfect socialite-but I always failed. I just wanted them to love me, accept me, for me."
"Sydney." He brushed a knuckle down the golden softness of her cheek. "They do. Maybe they're unable to show it, but they do." Part of him rebelled at the idea of defending her parents, but this wasn't about them; it was about Sydney. And to erase her pain, he would lie to Jesus Christ Himself.
"I was afraid," she admitted softly. "Does that make me a coward? At twenty-five years old, I was afraid to tell my own mother to back off."
"No, that doesn't make you a coward," he assured her, cupping her jaw and rubbing his thumb along the satiny skin.
"But," she continued as if he hadn't spoken, "I was more afraid to be silent. It's like something rose in me and warned me that if I didn't speak this time, I wouldn't do it again. That if not then, I would have been silenced for good. And that I couldn't bear."
Gently pushing her arm aside, he shifted, bringing them chest to chest, thigh to thigh. He cradled her face, grazed a kiss over her lips once. Twice. And once more. "I'm proud of you, sweetheart. What you did today … it took courage, not cowardice." He drew in a deep breath, stepped back, and dropped his arms to his sides. "Will you let me show you something?"
…
Sydney focused on Lucas's broad shoulders and how his thick, black waves brushed the collar of his shirt as she followed him through the house and down the stairs to the brownstone's garden level and into his study. Her lips tingled from his barely there kisses, the tender caresses so different from their usual raw, wild meeting of mouths. She lifted her fingers and pressed the tips to her skin. As he rounded his desk and glanced up at her, she dropped her hand as if caught doing something wrong-or incredibly telling.
He stared at her, that enigmatic gaze touching on her mouth before he beckoned her closer. Once she reached the massive pierce of furniture he worked at nightly, he opened a drawer and withdrew a manila folder. Without a word, he extended it toward her. Curious, she accepted and flipped it open. On top lay an old newspaper article, yellowed around the edges and wrinkled as if it'd been handled many times before. She scanned the headline: BOSTON-BASED FINANCIAL EMPIRE CLOSES ITS DOORS. BANKRUPT. The clipping, dated fifteen years earlier, contained a grainy picture of a building and a handsome man with dark hair and piercing eyes of an indeterminate color in the black-and-white image. Beneath it, the caption read, "Robert Ellison, CEO and co-owner of the Dighton Group." She frowned. The name seemed familiar, but it didn't ring any bells.
The article behind the first snatched the air from her lungs. An obituary. For a Jessica Ellison. Another picture. This time of a breathtaking woman whose features bore a hint of familiarity. Again dated fifteen years ago. No cause of death was listed.
And the last clipping, the blaring headline compounded the ache building behind her sternum. FORMER BOSTON EXEC COMMITS SUICIDE IN HIS HOME.
"Your father?" she rasped, her brain finally recognizing Robert Ellison. The man standing several feet in front of her shared the same sharp, angular bone structure. The mouth had been firmer, not as curved, and the black hair shorter, but the shape of his eyes, the arrogant slashes of eyebrows … those had been the same as Lucas's.
He nodded, the motion abrupt.
Lowering to the chair flanking his desk, she flipped back to the original newspaper article and began reading. Twenty minutes later, she'd read all three pieces and perused the other items in the file. Pictures of both the man and the woman-Robert and Jessica Ellison-with a small boy. More clippings about Jessica from society pages. A death certificate for Robert-GSW to the head. As an avid fan of CSI and Grey's Anatomy, she understood the term. Gunshot wound. Legal name change documentation for Brandon Ellison to Lucas Oliver.
Oh, God.
She lifted her head, met his implacable stare. None of what she'd read was common knowledge. After first meeting him, she'd scoured the internet for information about Lucas Oliver. And his father's identity and suicide, his mother, her death, his real name-oh, God, his real name-hadn't popped up in any of the results. What … ? Why … ?
"Why are you showing this to me?" she breathed, barely able to shove the question past her constricted vocal cords.
He smiled, the gesture humorless. "I was reminded earlier today of risks. And with your mother, you took the biggest of all. Rejection. If you can, then so can I." He dipped his head toward the folder. "That's me in all my ugly, naked truth. It's why I came to Boston. It's why I am."
Yet the articles were half the story. They told about his parents' tragedy and deaths. The photos captured moments forever frozen in time. The documentation revealed impersonal, recorded facts. But they didn't tell his story.
She set the folder on the top of the desk. "Tell me," she whispered.
He remained standing, propping a shoulder against the window frame, his bright eyes remote and diamond hard, his full lips firmed into a grim line. His big body resembled a statue, rigid and unmoving.
"My parents were never what you would call happily married. My father doted on my mother, loved her to distraction-maybe obsession. But she didn't love him the same way. He was older than her by over ten years, and soon she didn't want to stay at home with an old man, as I heard her put it many times during their arguments. She cheated-it was her favorite pastime besides shopping. And my father's was turning a blind eye to her blatant infidelities. Until there was one betrayal he couldn't ignore."