Not Just the Boss's Plaything(65)

Just as she had always intended to leave him, eventually. Lest she forget her own plans. Her promises.

Victory, she chanted quietly in her own head. This is a victory. I'll go    home the winner at the end, and do exactly as I planned to do two   weeks  ago.

But she wasn't sure she believed her own cheering squad.

The staff brought out plates of tuna tartare to start, and Dru took a    bite, sighing with pleasure at the burst of flavor, the excruciatingly    fresh taste. She took a sip of her wine. She smiled when Cayo ended his    call and ignored the way he looked at her, so dark and brooding.

"It's fantastic," she told him. "You should have some."

"Are you working tonight, Dru?" His tone was cold, brusque. It lanced    into her, as no doubt he intended it to do. "I thought we agreed that    business ended at half five today. When I want you to perform in your    role as perfect assistant, capable of any measure of small talk under    any and all circumstances, I will let you know."

"Or don't have any," she said blandly. "More for me."

His mouth moved into a hard kind of curve, too intense to be a smile.

More courses appeared before them. Parrotfish stuffed with crab.    Mahi-mahi in a sweet coconut curry. A platter of grilled shrimp and    scallops, and another of artfully arranged sushi. The table was bright    with all the colors, and the food looked almost too pretty to eat.    Almost.

"Tell me something about you," he said when their plates were full, and    there had been no sound for some time save the clink of silver against    china and the ever-present crash of the ocean against the shore.    "Something I don't know." He shook his head impatiently when she opened    her mouth. "I don't mean anything on your CV, which you trot out by   rote  and which I know is stellar or I wouldn't have hired you."                       
       
           



       

Dru put down her fork and regarded him calmly for a moment, while that    same alarm inside her shrieked anew. There was no reason he should want    to "know something" about her. She needed to change the subject,    redirect his attention. He had enough weapons to use against her as it    was. Why add to his arsenal?

"What is it you want to know?" she asked, warily. She picked up her    wine, pressed the glass to her lips and then decided she already felt    too unbalanced. There was no need to throw alcohol in the mix and make    it that much worse. "Is this when we discuss our lists of past lovers?    Mine is shorter than yours. Obviously."

His dark amber eyes gleamed, as if he appreciated her attempt to focus    the conversation back on him, and what was, she was all too aware, an    impressive and lengthy list indeed. But he didn't take the bait. He  only   smiled slightly, and speared a plump shrimp on the sharp tines of  his   fork.

"You personally witnessed the ignoble end of my family, such as it was,"    he said, his voice as low as his gaze was intent, and something about    it shivered through her, making her ache for him in a different way.    "What of yours? You never speak of them. I assume you did not spring    full-grown from an office-supply warehouse, brandishing one of those    gray suits of yours like a weapon."

The expression on his face said he wasn't entirely sure about that. Dru    cleared her throat and recognized that she was stalling. She couldn't    seem to help it. There had been a time when she would have been  thrilled   to encourage his interest in her-any interest at all. But not  now. Not   when she had a much greater sense of how hard it was going  to be to   leave him already. What would it be like if he really knew  all of her?   How would she survive losing him then?

"Did you encourage personal chatter about the office all these years and    I missed it?" she asked lightly. He inclined his head, awarding her   the  point, but he still waited expectantly. He was still not distracted    from his question. Damn him. She set her wine back on the  glass-topped   table, feeling jerky and uneven. Unduly defensive. "We  lived in   Shropshire, in a village outside Shrewsbury, until my father  died.   Dominic and I were barely five years old." She saw his brows  knit   together and nodded. "Twins, yes. We moved around a good bit  after that.   In the end, it was a relief to go to university and stay  in one place   for a few years."

"Why did you move around so much?" he asked. If she didn't know better,    she would think he was fascinated. That he really wanted to know the    answer. And maybe that was why she told him-because, despite  everything,   she wanted to believe that he could want that, and that  trumped even   her heightened sense of self-preservation. To say nothing  of her sense,   full stop.

"My mum had a lot of boyfriends," she said, which was more than she    usually told anyone. It was amazing how easy it was to strip all those    hard, dark years of the fear and the tears and simply cram it all into    one little sentence that barely hinted at either. "Some became    stepfathers."

She had no intention of telling him anything further. But when she dared    meet his gaze again, he was looking back at her the way he always  did.   Dark eyes in that warrior's face, brooding and intent. As if she  was a   mystery he wanted to puzzle out. And would.

"My mother also remarried, I suppose you could say," he said then, in    that dry way of his that hinted at a dark humor she'd never imagined he    could possess. Or had thought she'd only imagined lurked in him on  that   one night in Cadiz. She would miss it. She could tell. "But as  she is   now a bride of Christ we are not meant to complain."

Dru couldn't help but smile, and his eyes warmed in return, and she knew    then that she was going to tell him things she'd never breathed to    another soul. Because she still wanted him to know her, despite how    temporary this was. Despite the very real fear that it would give him    too much power over her. She wanted to imagine, when he was on to his    next assistant, ensconced on one of his yachts with his next blonde    supermodel, that he would remember her, too. And when he did-if he    did-she wanted this to have mattered. And that meant sharing parts of    herself she'd never let anyone else see.                       
       
           



       

"They were always violent." She was surprised how little her voice    shook, and how easy it was to look at him and forget what she'd been    through. How safe he made her feel, simply by not looking away. As if    that simple act shared the burden of it, somehow. "To Mum, and then    increasingly to Dominic. I was quite good at not being seen."

"I believe you," he said, an undercurrent in his voice. "You still are."

"But then I got older," she said. She was far too captivated by the way    he watched her, as if he was supporting her that simply, that    completely, to respond to the strange thing he said. She filed it away.    "And they started to notice me more." She swallowed, then shook her   head  slightly, as if to shake away the memories. His gaze darkened.    Hardened. "There was one named Harold who was the worst. Always trying    to get me alone. Always quick to stick his hands where he shouldn't.  But   when I told Mum she slapped my face and called me a liar and a  whore."   Dru shrugged, almost as if that memory didn't still sting.  Almost as  if  she was so tough it hardly registered, when the truth  was, she'd  never  said that out loud before. Not like that. "So when I  could, I  left. The  last time I saw her I was nineteen."

The only other person she'd shared her dark history with was Dominic,    and they'd always used their own shorthand-never quite mentioning the    facts of what had happened so much as the effects. She'd never told any    of her mates at university, or even the small handful of boyfriends    she'd had back when she'd still had time for a social life. It had    seemed so private, and so terribly shameful, and her mates had all been    about having a laugh, not dredging up the horrors of Dru's childhood.    She'd enjoyed them precisely because they weren't the sort for  intimate   confidences or bared souls. It meant hers were safe.