Embrace My Heart(20)

“I know it, honey. I know it.”

She expelled a puff of breath, blinking rapidly as though she were attempting to swat away the truth. She didn’t want to sit anymore and left the chair only to stumble and claim a spot on the sofa. Deep cold penetrated her bones, causing her entire body to tremble. She looked at Qasim. Disbelief coursed her veins motivated by the knowledge that he knew about her the very last thing she ever wanted him to.



Qasim went to his knees beside the sofa where Vectra sat, but she extended a hand to urge him to keep his distance.

“How? How do you...” She kept her face turned away from him. Tears hadn’t left the cradle of her eyes; they had merely pooled there. She swore that was all they would do. Never again would she cry over the weakness she’d once given freedom to rule her.

“Who told you?” She approved of the strength she heard in her voice.

Qasim toyed with the silken fabric of her flaring skirt. “I had drinks with Oliver a while back.”

Tears fell then out of anguish instead of self-pity. With an enraged cry, Vectra bolted from her place on the sofa.

“Oliver...damn you...” she whispered.

Regretting his honesty, Qasim drew a fist, which he slammed upon the vacated couch. Vectra had moved across the room, appearing to study a waterscape portrait on the wall. He read her profile and surmised that she wasn’t really seeing the artwork.

“In Oliver’s defense, I doubt he remembers saying anything to me.” Qasim sat in the chair, leaning forward and bracing elbows to knees. “We got pretty drunk that night.”

“How’d my name even come up?” Her voice was thick around the sob lodged in her throat.

“We’d finished talking business.” Qasim shrugged, a wry smile defining his lush mouth. “I asked how you were doing. Oliver couldn’t hide his concern, told me he and your father wanted you to stop locking yourself away.” Qasim sighed, massaging his eyes in an attempt to hide the rage stirring there. “He said that in spite of your friends and the gallery, romantic involvement was something you still shied away from. He said he knew it was because of that jackass who ‘touched you’ was the way he put it.”

The eye massage hadn’t helped. Qasim fought to quell rising temper over what Oliver Bauer had confessed to him.

“Once I heard that, I kept the liquor flowing until he told me everything. Your brother’s tolerance level is nowhere near mine.” Qasim studied the life lines in his palm, tracing them with his thumb. “I, um...I wasn’t proud of getting him so sauced, but I had to know. Oliver spent the night at my place. We had breakfast the next morning. He didn’t seem to remember telling me anything.”

“My dad and Olive were the only ones who knew.” Vectra turned away from the painting she’d half studied. “I don’t want anyone’s pity, Qasim.”

He straightened in the chair. “I don’t pity you, Vectra.”

“But you do think I’m too fragile to have a man in my bed.”

“No, I think you’re too fragile to have me in your bed.”

She smiled. “FYI, you’re tempting me more than discouraging me.”

He reclined in the chair, rubbing at his jaw while he regarded her. “Threatening Lew came out of nowhere. You deserve better than to have another guy in your bed that wants to half kill a man every time one looks at you.”

Vectra moved, her steps carrying her within inches of where Qasim relaxed in her favorite chair. She reached out, nails grazing his whisker-shaded jaw before she toyed with the open collar of his shirt.

“Wanting to half kill a man is a lot different than actually following through on it, and if you’re gonna ‘what if’ every aspect of our relationship before we actually have one, then I guess we didn’t really have any business trying to get one started.”

He stood. “Vectra—”

“You can show yourself out.” She treated herself to a few more seconds of caressing the back of her hand across the mink-soft whiskers claiming his very gorgeous face. “The door will lock behind you when you go.” Briefly, she rested her hand flat on his chest and mourned the fact that she wouldn’t get to experience feeling what felt like sheer magnificence bare beneath her fingertips.

“Good night, Qasim.” She moved past him to head into her bedroom, stopping just before she passed through the double doors.

“By the way, the only thing Keith was jealous or possessive of was my money, and he didn’t like it much when I told him he couldn’t have any more of it.” Vectra moved into her room and let the doors close at her back.