“She cheated on you while you were fighting?” Who the hell did that? Outrage rose in her gut. He’d been risking his life.
“Well, it wasn’t like she knew how to get hold of me,” he said with a soft laugh, as though the incident was amusing. “My whereabouts were classified and I would go months sometimes without talking to her. She was lonely and she turned to someone else.”
“You didn’t.” Eric Vail wouldn’t cheat on his wife.
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re not that guy.”
“No, sweetheart. I’m not that guy. I was faithful to my wife. I’m friendly with her now. She’s married again and has a couple of kids.”
“How can you still talk to her?” She wouldn’t talk to her ex for anything.
“Because we were friends before we were anything else. I’ve learned life is far too short to hold grudges. It’s too short to not forgive yourself.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Didn’t I? There are two sides to every story. I didn’t come home when I said I would. Once I forgave myself for making the mistake, I found it was quite easy to forgive her for doing the same. I left the service after one too many bullets hit me and I found something I really loved.”
“Cooking.”
“Yeah. It’s funny because I wouldn’t have found it if May hadn’t left me and I hadn’t been forced to move back to my folks’ place after I got home. My mom was crazy about cooking shows and she challenged me to try it. I indulged her, and a few months later, I was at a cooking school with all these tiny young people. They were infants. Most of them thought I was the janitor the first day. Or maybe security. I thought a lot about my sister while I was there. She was older than me and she loved to bake. She was always making cookies.”
He said it with a sad smile that made her wonder. “Is she a chef, too?”
“She died when I was sixteen. Leukemia. I took that cooking challenge from my mother because I knew she missed my sister and wanted a child of hers in the kitchen with her again. Even if it was only for a day. I cook with my mom any time I’m home, and let me tell you I might be the pro, but I’m her sous chef, too. She rules that kitchen with an iron will any chef would be proud of. If I hadn’t gone into the Navy, hadn’t gotten married and divorced, I wouldn’t have been sitting with her that day. I wouldn’t have laughed and said it looked easy. I wouldn’t have found my passion. Those things that seemed like mistakes led me to something I love. So I forgave myself and moved on.”
How hard had it been for him to go from soldier to chef? From married to single and happy? He seemed so happy, she’d imagined he never faced a single moment of pain. That was arrogant of her. He was a man, and every single man born had been through pain. She needed to stop thinking of him in terms of how gorgeous he was and see past that.
The trouble was everything she learned about the man made him that much more dangerous.
He was stronger than she was. She couldn’t forgive her ex. She simply couldn’t. The wound felt so fresh. Perhaps after she’d started her own career and moved on, she could forget about the pain he’d dealt her. She wasn’t sure she would ever take that risk again. But maybe she could be friends with Eric. Real friends.
They were stuck together for six weeks. She glanced back down at the contract. Part of the contract stated plainly that both parties agreed to touching and displays of affection. She hadn’t marked that out. She’d agreed to allowing him to touch her if it felt right and good to both parties.
She reached out and put her hand over his. “I’m sorry to hear about your sister.”
He flipped his hand over, lacing their fingers together. His big palm swallowed and warmed hers. “I miss her. You would have liked her.”
Oh, she already liked one of the Vail siblings way too much. His hand wrapped around hers, their fingers all tangled. She liked that too much as well. It felt…right. “I’m sure I would. I don’t have any siblings. I always wondered what it would be like to have a sister.”
He started talking about his family and she couldn’t help but watch the way his face lit up. He always seemed so serious, but there was a mirth, a mischievousness that she hadn’t seen in him before. He told her how he and his sister would fish in the pond behind their house, how she’d had to bait his hook because he couldn’t stand touching the worms.
Deena hadn’t had that childhood connection. Her mother had moved a lot. She’d gone to five different elementary schools and two junior highs. They’d settled in a suburb for her high school tenure, but she never quite quit expecting to have to up and leave.
She loved her friends, but had she been this honest with them? As Eric talked she realized she hadn’t told anyone her story. She talked about innocuous things, about the superficial. She listened. Oh, she was a great listener. She would listen to anyone, with the singular exception of the one man who mattered. She’d withheld that from him the same way she withheld herself from everyone.
She was still the new kid in school, unsure of her place and therefore hiding behind superficiality.
“It must have been nice to grow up in one place. Do your parents still live there?” Now that he was talking, she was curious. This was why she hadn’t asked. She’d known she would be interested, that learning about Eric Vail would be a slippery slope. But he seemed so happy that she couldn’t draw back.
And she had kind of signed a contract stating she might just maybe have sex with him. If they both wanted to. If it came up. Which it probably wouldn’t.
He picked up the pen and signed his name before looking up at her again. He smiled, a look of satisfaction on his face. “Come here. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but I believe I mentioned that there are no chairs for you here.”
She was supposed to sit in his lap. She’d signed a contract to obey him and part of that was sitting in his lap. All last night she’d thought about how good it had felt to curl up on his lap and not worry about anything.
He held out a hand and she had to make a decision. The night before it had been easy. She’d been warm from the spanking, her whole body relaxed and oddly sated. Now she realized she had to make the conscious choice to submit to this man, to give over to his will. A scary prospect because she didn’t always make good choices.
But this one was already made. She’d made it when she signed the contract.
Deena got up out of her chair and moved to her new Dom. He wouldn’t be hers for long, and that could be the thing that saved her. This relationship had an end date, a clear and precise one. Six weeks. They would only be together for a month and a half. There was some safety in that. She might be able to get Eric Vail out of her system in six weeks, and then she would be free to move on with her life without regretting him.
She sank onto his lap, his arms going around her. He was so big that it wasn’t hard to get comfortable sitting on his lap. It also wasn’t hard to feel that he liked her there. The hard line of his erection jutted against her thigh, but his arms wound around her and he didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that he had a massive boner. He simply leaned back and started talking again.
“My mom and dad moved into town a few years back. They couldn’t keep up so much land. They got a ton of money for it and they’ve been traveling ever since. They went to Iceland this year. Why would anyone go to Iceland?”
“It’s beautiful,” she said. She’d seen it in a movie and it had been stunning. She was a girl who’d rarely been out of Texas. The idea of going somewhere so far away was like a dream to her. For so long, making rent had been her main goal. She’d never even thought about seeing the world. Now she wondered if that might be possible for her. Someday. “They probably wanted to see the northern lights.”
“I think that was one of the items on their itinerary,” he said, but now he was so close to her that he practically whispered the words in her ear, making her shudder, and not in distaste. “I’m sure I’ll get to see pictures the next time I go home.”
Being so close to Eric felt right. His arms were strong and warm around her, and it would be so easy to think for a moment that she was safe.
That would be a mistake.
“Deena, tell me why you went to Taggart today.”
Shit. How the hell did he know about that? Maybe he didn’t actually know anything. Maybe he was fishing. Rumors abounded at Top. The menu might change nightly, but the gossip was a mainstay. “I had to take him his lunch. He wasn’t in the conference room. He’s a weird guy.”
Brazen her way through. It was the only thing to do. Act like nothing was wrong and it wasn’t. She’d learned that a long time ago. As long as she had a smile on her face, people thought there was nothing going on under the surface and she never had to answer those uncomfortable questions.
“Did you read that part in the contract where you’re not supposed to lie to me?” His voice was every bit as quiet as it had been a few moments before, but it had gone an icy cold that sent a chill along her spine. And the slightest bit of heat through her pussy.