Reading Online Novel

Not Just the Boss's Plaything(49)



Reading that email early this morning in London and seeing her years    with Cayo for the sham they really were had landed the killing blow. It    was the final straw. And part of her wanted simply to sink like a  stone   now, deep into the embrace of the Adriatic, and be done with all  of   this. Just let it all go. Hadn't Dominic done the same, at the end  of   the day? Why shouldn't she? What was she holding on to, anyway?

But Cayo would think it was all about him, wouldn't he? She knew he would. And she couldn't allow that. She simply couldn't.

She kicked, hard, and shot back up to the surface and the sun, pulling    in a ragged breath as her gaze focused on Cayo. He still sat there,    noticeably irritated, as if it was no matter to him whether she sank or    swam, only that she was disrupting his afternoon.

Somehow, that was galvanizing.

She would not go under again, she understood then, as she stared up at    him, at this man to whom she'd sacrificed herself, day in and day out,    thanks to her own rich fantasy life. She would not break, not for  Cayo,   not for anything.

How could she? She was already broken.

And there was a strength in that, she thought, wiping the water from her    face and pretending she didn't feel a heat beneath her eyes that    indicated it was not entirely the sea she was scrubbing away.

I promise you, Dominic, she thought fiercely, her own little prayer, I    will walk away from this man at long last and I will take you to Bora    Bora the way you always wanted. I'll give you to the wind and the water    the way I swore I would. And then we'll both be free.

So she swallowed back the bitter words she would have liked to throw out    to make herself feel better about just how much of a fool she'd been    and swam over to the side of the boat. She reached up to grip the edge    of it. Cayo shifted, moving that taut, tense body of his even closer.  He   was more furious than she'd ever seen him. She could feel it as  easily   as she felt the sun far above, the sea all around.

"Fine," she said, tilting her head to look up at him as if none of that bothered her in the least. "I'll get in the boat."                       
       
           



       

"I know you will," he agreed silkily. Furiously, she thought. "But while    I have you here, Miss Bennett, let's talk terms, shall we?"

Dru let go of the gunwale with one hand and used it to slick her hair    back from her face. The twist she'd carefully created this morning in    London was long gone now, and she imagined that the dark mass of her    hair hung about her like seaweed. Happily, she was certain that Cayo    would deeply disapprove of it. That little kick of pleasure allowed her    to simply raise her brows at him and wait. As if none of this hurt  her.   As if he didn't hurt her at all.

"I imagine that this entire display was a calculated effort to get me to    recognize that you are, in fact, a person," he said in that    insufferable way of his, so very patronizing, that Dru would not have    been at all surprised if it had left marks.

"How good of you to ignore almost everything I actually said," she murmured in a similar tone, even as she eyed him warily.

"I will double your salary," he told her as if he hadn't heard her.

Dru was forced to calculate how very much money it was that he was    offering her, and wonder, for the briefest treacherous second, if it was    truly necessary to escape him... But of course it was. She could stay    with him, or she could have her self-respect, whatever was left of  it.   She couldn't have both. Today had certainly proved that.

There were so many things she wanted to say, but the way he looked at    her made Dru suspect that if she said any of them, he would leave her in    the water. She knew exactly how ruthless he could be. So she only  held   on to the side of the small motorboat, bobbing gently along with  it in   the rise and fall of the waves, and watched him.

"I'm cold," she said crisply, because there were minefields in every    other thing she might have thought to say. "Are you going to help me    into the boat?"

There was a brief, intense sort of moment, and then he leaned over, slid    his hands beneath her arms, and hoisted her up and out of the water  as   if she weighed no more than a child. Water sluiced from her wet   clothes  as her feet came down against the slippery bottom of the small   boat, and  she was suddenly aware of too many things. The sodden fabric   of her  skirt, ten times heavier than it should have been, wrapped  much  too  tightly around her hips and thighs. The slick wetness of her  blouse  as  it flattened against her skin in the sea breeze. The heavy  tangle  of her  wet hair, tumbling this way and that in a disastrous  mess. All  of which  made her feel much too cold, and, oddly, something  very much  like  vulnerable.

But then she looked up, and the air seemed to empty out of her lungs.    And she did not have to see his eyes to know that he was staring at the    way her soaking-wet clothes molded to her curves, and, a quick glance    down confirmed, left nothing at all to the imagination. Her blouse had    been a soft gray when dry, but wet it was nearly translucent, and  showed   off the bright magenta bra she'd worn beneath.

Dru couldn't process the kaleidoscope of emotion that shifted through    her then: chagrin, embarrassment, that horrible vulnerability, those    underwater sobs threatening to spill out once again. She looked    longingly at the sea once more, and if she hadn't been so cold she might    well have tossed herself right back into it.

"Don't even think about it," he gritted out, and then several things happened simultaneously.

The boat lurched forward, no doubt in response to some signal of Cayo's,    and Dru would have toppled against him had he not grabbed her around    the waist and deposited her on the pristine white cushions next to  him.   She had the impression of his strength and heat, and there was  that   wild, desperate surge of desire inside of her that made her hate  herself   anew, and then she was sitting beside him as the boat headed  toward  the  boarding deck of the great yacht, wet skirt itchy and awful  against  her  and her hair flying madly in the wind.

Cayo did not speak again until they were safely back on board, and one    of his silent and expressionless crew members had draped a very warm,    very large towel over her shoulders. She aimed a grateful smile at the    head steward as she wrapped the soft towel tight around her, and then    felt very much like the poster child for Les Misérables when she    directed her attention back toward her former employer. Pathetic and    bedraggled whilst Cayo, naturally, gazed down at her like some kind of    untouchable Spanish god, all of his dangerous beauty gleaming in the    last of the day's sun.                       
       
           



       

The crew members disappeared as if they could see the coming storm    closing in on them. If she had had any sense at all, she would have done    the same. Instead she stood there and waited, her back straight as a    ruler and her expression, she hoped, as serene as possible when she  was   still so wet and wrecked. Cayo slid his sunglasses down his  haughty   blade of a nose and regarded her with a glint in those dark  gold eyes   that should have cowed her at fifty paces-and he was much  closer than   that.

"I'm sure you know precisely where there are extra clothes on this    yacht," he said quietly. She didn't trust that tone. It suggested great    horrors lurking beneath it. "I suggest you avail yourself of them.  Then   come find me. We will behave like civilized, professional people.  We   will discuss the terms of your continued employment in more  detail. And   we will pretend that the rest of this day never happened."

Dru forced a smile. She told herself she was entirely uncowed.

"I was cold and wanted to get out of the water," she said. "I'm still    quitting." She shrugged at his incredulous expression. "I can either    tell you what you want to hear and then disappear at the first available    opportunity, or I can be honest about it and hope you'll let me leave    with some dignity. Your choice."