The Billionaire's Virgin(29)

She couldn’t pretend she didn’t know what the feeling flooding through her was this time. It was relief. Relief that he was here. “No.” The word sounded thin in the heavy silence of the hallway.

“What the fuck are doing in my apartment, Lorenzo?” Xavier demanded.

“Your apartment?” Lorenzo sounded icy and sarcastic. “Not with Dad’s name all over the property title it isn’t.”

Xavier’s eyes narrowed into thin, blue slits, his hands curling into fists. He took another aggressive step forward, forcing the other man to take a step back. “Like I said, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Mia had no idea what was happening between the two men or why Xavier was suddenly so angry—no, not just angry, he was furious. Why? Who was Lorenzo?

She studied them, noting the resemblance between them. Was Lorenzo his brother? If so, why were the two of them so hostile to each other, because there was no denying that fact. Xavier was bristling, while there was nothing but contempt in his brother’s eyes.

“You were seeing Dad about the ranch, weren’t you?” Lorenzo folded his arms as if to brace himself against any attack Xavier was going to launch at him.

“Yeah, and?” Xavier lifted his chin, the look on his face insolent. “You got something to say about it?”

“Of course I’ve got something to say about it. It’s not yours, you bastard.”

Xavier gave him a cocky, arrogant grin. “Tell that to Dad. He just signed it over to me, asshole.”

Lorenzo’s expression hardened, and Mia suspected he was battling the urge to punch his brother in the face. “He wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, actually, he did.” Xavier took yet another aggressive step, forcing Lorenzo back again. “I got him the contract he wanted and so he gave me the ranch. You got a problem with that, you take it up with him.”

For a second the atmosphere in the hallway flooded with violence, the electricity of it crackling around the two men, sending goose bumps over her skin and making her shoulders tighten. The urge to run and hide under the bed was almost overwhelming, yet curiosity wouldn’t let her. She wanted to see what was going to happen.

“Come on,” Xavier murmured, his eyes glittering. “Take a swing, brother. I dare you.”

The tension around Lorenzo’s tall figure gathered tight and Mia felt herself begin to move. But not away toward the bedroom. Instead she found herself walking quickly toward them and she didn’t know quite why, not when her instinct was to run from violence.

All she knew was that she didn’t want Lorenzo to take that swing.

But she’d only got halfway there before Lorenzo gave a short, hard laugh. “I wouldn’t sully myself.” He stepped back from his brother and sidestepped him, moving toward the elevators. “Don’t kid yourself that this is over.”

Xavier turned, watching as the other man stepped into the elevator, the tension abruptly dropping from him. “Take a chill pill, dickhead. And while you’re at it, you might want to book a room at the hospital to get that stick up your ass removed.”

Lorenzo didn’t reply, the doors closing on him instead.

There was a brief silence and then Xavier turned around, his gaze roving over her as if he was checking she was all there. Then he closed the distance between them, moving in that fast, fluid way that had her heart climbing up into her throat.

But not like it had felt when it was Lorenzo in the hallway. No, this was quite different and yet, somehow, no less disturbing.

She forced herself to stay where she was, because running from him was ridiculous. He hadn’t hurt her and she thought that maybe he wouldn’t.

Careful. You can’t trust anyone, remember?

Oh yeah, she remembered. But he’d had plenty of opportunity to do whatever he wanted with her and he hadn’t. He’d given her a bath, wrapped her up in a robe, and put her into bed. Then he’d left her breakfast. She didn’t have a lot of experience with kind men or with kind people in general, but she thought those probably weren’t the actions of someone who was out to hurt her.

“Are you okay?” He came to a stop in front of her, that sharp gaze of his checking her over yet again. “Did he scare you?”

“No.” No way she was going to admit that. “He just took me by surprise.”

But she had a feeling he’d seen through the lie anyway. “I bet. Prick. Look, he’s an asshole, but he wouldn’t hurt you. Probably not anyway.”

“Is he your brother?”

Xavier’s mouth twisted. “Resemblance that obvious, huh?”

“That and he mentioned your father.”