"You only wanted me to hurt them. What does it matter?"
"Why did you come to work with me?" He enunciated each word so carefully he thought his mind would burst with the concentration it took.
Callie dropped her head. When she spoke he was hard-pressed to hear her.
"Irene wanted me to spy on you."
"Spy? On me?" Josh let loose a laugh that echoed hollowly through the room. "So you were behind the Flinders information leak. Well, isn't that just kismet. All along I thought you were mine and there you were, betraying me to the very scum that made my mother's life a living hell."
Callie flinched at the harshness of his words but he couldn't feel any sympathy for the emotional blow he'd struck her.
"Josh, this anger you bear toward him-it's eating you up inside. It's taking away everything decent, everything your mother raised you to be, and replacing it with something cruel and vindictive. Have you ever actually read those letters?" She flung a hand at the charred envelopes on the hearth.
"I read them once. That was enough."
"Then you really don't understand and you never will. I had to get rid of them before they consumed everything that I love in you."
"Love?" He felt as if something vile had crawled into his mouth as he said the word. "You're trying to tell me that you love me?"
"I do!" she cried, her hands now clenched together in front of her. "I tried not to. Lord knows, it was the last thing I expected or wanted. I couldn't have been with you the way we have if I didn't love you. Josh, you're the first man I've made love with."
"Don't lie to me. You were no shrinking virgin when I took you."
"No, I wasn't, but I'm telling you the truth. I made some choices about sex when I was young-choices that had nothing to do with emotion. On the streets a girl can get to the stage where she'll do almost anything for a meal and shelter in the middle of a freezing winter night, especially when she hasn't eaten in a week. I'm not proud of what I did, but the fact remains I did what I had to do to survive. But after that last time I swore to myself that I'd rather die than let anyone touch me like that again-unless I loved him and trusted him, like I love and trust you. Josh, I never knew sex could be anything more. I never knew lovemaking could be like it is with you."
There was a painful thread of truth in her voice that made Josh step back and take stock. She obviously believed she loved him, which left only one more thing.
"If that's true, then you now have to make a choice, don't you?"
"Choice?" Confusion rippled over her features.
"Stand by me or stick with the Palmers."
"I … "
Her hesitation told him all he needed to know. Josh snorted in disgust. "I thought so. You still choose them, don't you?"
Callie didn't speak.
"Get out," he said, his voice near feral with resentment. "Get out of my house, get out of my life. I don't want you. Get out now!"
He tried to find some satisfaction in how swiftly she left the room and flew up the stairs. In minutes she was back down, fully dressed and carrying her overnight bag and handbag.
"Josh," she implored from the doorway, "please rethink this. Promise me you'll read the letters again. Really read them this time. Talk to me when you've calmed down, when you can see reason."
"Oh, I see reason just fine. You know, you might not be a Palmer by birth, but you're no different from them at all. You're still cut from the same rotten cloth."
The resounding echo of the front door slamming behind her told him he'd made his mark, and yet, in the lingering stench of burned promises all he could feel was an emptiness that cut to his spirit and left him bleeding inside.
Love. What did she know about love? If she loved him, she'd stand by him, not try to undermine what he'd planned since he was eighteen years old.
He knelt and picked up the remains of her destruction and thanked his lucky stars that he'd missed her presence in the bed and awakened. If he hadn't, she'd have destroyed everything.
A couple of the letters were charred beyond redemption but others had escaped the damage of the flames and the extinguisher. He returned those to the box and carefully replaced it on the bookcase. There was still enough damning evidence to do what he wanted, and he would do it. He'd see this thing through to its bitter end.
Callie entered her office in the Palmer Enterprises tower and fought back the emptiness that threatened to swamp her. She should be relieved that she still had a job to come back to. A job she'd secured by spying on Josh and subsequently ensuring Palmers' financial viability in the marketplace.
Reluctance now dogged her every step. In the past, she couldn't wait to start each day at Irene's side. Everything had brought her a measure of satisfaction and a sense of knowing she'd completed a job well done. But it was as if she operated in shades of grey. There was no colour in her life, no joy.
From the time she'd called a taxi on her mobile phone, from the top of Josh's driveway, until the second she'd walked back into Irene's business suite she'd been encased in ice. It was only as she'd opened her handbag and seen that she still had Josh's notes inside that some sense of life had permeated the frozen shell around her. That life had brought pain. Unbearable, searing pain.
She'd fisted the sheets of paper into a knot and cast them in her wastepaper bin. They'd sat there all day, a constant reminder of a man so hell-bent on revenge that he was incapable of listening to reason. The hands on her office clock had edged their way to 6:00 p.m. when she finally gave in. If she could give the Palmers one more strength, one more piece of armour in this battle between Josh and them, she'd darn well do it.
She smoothed out the sheets and took them straight through to Irene, who was still at her desk.
"I believe you might find these of some use."
"What are they?" Irene took the creased papers and set them in front of her, adjusting her reading glasses on the tip of her nose. She scanned them for a few minutes then looked up over the lenses. "Callie, you realise what these are, don't you?"
"Yes, I do. They were the last thing I worked on before … " she faltered.
She couldn't say the words without her throat closing up as if it had suddenly swollen on the lies she'd been forced to live in this desperate tussle between two families.
Irene removed her glasses and pinned Callie under her impenetrable grey stare. "I know this whole situation with Tremont asked a great deal more of you than we anticipated. You can't let it get to you, you know. If you're going to succeed in this world, you have to do what's right-and in this case you definitely did what is right."
Callie bit her lip. What was right for the Palmers, perhaps-but deep down she knew she hadn't succeeded. She hadn't managed to burn all the evidence Josh had against his father. He could still use it to publicly humiliate Bruce and ruin his appointment to Guildara before it happened, even if Palmers was now going to be in a stronger financial position with the Flinders contract secure, and now this one within its grasp.
Drawing on the example of the woman in front of her, Callie reassumed the mantle of icy suspension that had seen her survive the night.
"Thank you, Irene. Now, if that's all today, I think I'll head home."
Irene nodded her dismissal. On her drive home, Callie honed that icy calm into steel-plated armour. With any luck it would see her through the rest of her life because she knew to the soles of her feet that she would never allow herself to be so vulnerable ever again. It simply hurt too much. It was better to stay on the path she'd chosen. To be the best at her job she could be. To take comfort in casual friendships and leave life at that.
Maybe she'd get a cat, she thought. Something that could subsist beside her without expecting more than she was prepared to give, and without giving more than she could accept. But even as she dwelled on that thought, she knew she wouldn't. There was only one thing missing in her life-Josh-and without him she couldn't bear to accept any other substitute.
It was two weeks until Christmas and the joyful hymns and carols pumping through the building's elevators' sound system were already driving Callie nuts. She ascended to the executive floor and stepped out with relief, the assault in her eardrums and her psyche over. It was hard enough watching the world go by in a fever of excitement over a festival she normally avoided without it impinging on her workspace as well.