Bound and Determined (42 page)

But the effort was costing him in control.

“Babe,” he rasped. “You’re killing me here. Can’t hold out much longer.”

“Harder. Need . . . Just a little . . .”

Happy to oblige, Rafe grasped her hips tighter and crushed her down onto him. He took a nipple in his mouth, rolled it around on his tongue—and felt her contract around him.

She cried out, pulsing around him, milking him of every last drop of energy, semen, and, he feared, the ability to want anyone but her.

T
hey’d barely righted their clothes when the limo pulled up curbside. Her days, her nights, her time with Rafe in general, all at an end now.

“Have a good flight,” Kerry murmured, holding back tears boiling behind her eyes.

That beat the heck out of saying,
Have a nice life
. That just seemed too flippant . . . too final.

She looked at him, his cheeks still sporting the remnants of a flush of desire, his mouth as tempting as ever. Biting her lip,
she drank in the sight of him for the last time. She’d miss his quiet strength, his brash ways, his willingness to listen, the way he always helped, even when he didn’t think he did.

He pressed a card into her hand. “This has my office and home numbers, along with my cell number and address. If you need anything, if something goes wrong with Moza or the proceedings . . . or whatever, call me.”

The edges of the card sliced against Kerry’s finger as she grasped it.

“Ah, babe. Don’t look at me like that. I’m trying to do the right thing.” He clutched her shoulders. “I wish I could be a better man for you. I want you happy. In the long run, I just can’t give you what you want. Don’t hate me.” He gave a self-deprecating grunt. “I’m already pretty pissed at myself.”

She filtered her fingers through the soft, inky blackness of his hair. “I think you’re wonderful the way you are. I’ve never been happier than when I’m with you, Rafe.”

He frowned. “This is an anomaly. This isn’t me. Away from here, from you, I’m a snarling, sarcastic workaholic. No one likes being with me. Trust me, you’re better off.”

“Maybe you’re different with me,” hope made her blurt.

At the resignation that crossed Rafe’s features, Kerry wished she’d bitten her tongue instead.

“I can’t afford to gamble your heart on that, babe. You shouldn’t want to, either.”

And he’d go on believing he was incapable of a relationship, even if she told him a hundred times that she loved him just the way he was. He didn’t see himself as successful soul mate material. All the pleading in the world wasn’t going to change his mind—not unless he decided to change it. She knew just how stubborn Rafe could be.

Defeat drooped her shoulders.

“I love you,” she whispered finally. And she couldn’t hold the tears back. “Don’t forget that.”

Eyes squeezed shut with pain and regret, he looked away. “I know. And I don’t know how to love you back the way you deserve to be. I’m sorry.”

And he was too afraid to try, she realized.

Rafe caressed her cheek, brushing away fresh tears, and
shot her a lingering glance that clearly showed all his grief and confusion. Then he turned away and exited the limo—and her life.

Tears fell in earnest then, her stomach twisting with anguish. She’d saved her brother . . . but in the end, she’d lost her heart.

M
ay eighteenth dawned. His thirtieth birthday. Whoop-de-frickin’-doo.

As Rafe ducked out of his posh apartment building on the east side of Central Park in the upper eighties, he swore and dragged on his overcoat. It wasn’t supposed to be fifty degrees this time of year. Had someone forgotten to tell Mother Nature that spring had sprung?

Both elevators in the modern high-rise he called home had been unavailable this morning. The first because it had been broken. The second because one of his stupid neighbors two floors down had passed out in there after an all-night party, leaving behind the pungent odor of vomit.

You’d think that if someone was paying four thousand a month for an apartment, he would be more responsible than a teenager at his first keg party.

Shaking his head, Rafe walked down twenty-four flights of stairs, which made him realize he’d better get his ass back to the gym. He just hadn’t had the energy since leaving . . . Florida last week.

A guy in a charcoal suit juggled his briefcase and glasses—and promptly spilled hot coffee on Rafe’s left shoe—before
walking on. The shoe, now ruined, squeaked when he walked. A biting wind whipping off the East River seeped under his skin. He shivered.

What a hellacious morning.

It was supposed to be eighty-six degrees in Tampa today. He’d looked at three this morning when he’d been unable to sleep. Again.

Rafe sighed as he stepped into the subway. Damn, he’d seen cleaner public restrooms at gas stations. And why did
everyone
have to talk on the cell phone, rather than pay attention to where they were going?

Once sandwiched on the subway between a model-shaped brunette giving him the eye and some Rasta dude who needed a shower, Rafe settled in for his ride to Midtown.

At least he had the FBI off his back. Alex Moza had notified him that all of the charges against Mark Sullivan had been dropped the previous week. Standard National Bank had paid him promptly. For finding the real culprit, they’d sent him a bonus.

Had he kept it and smiled? Rafe snorted. Nope. He’d gone fucking soft in his old age. He’d sent the excess back with a note indicating that he’d rather see Mark Sullivan reinstated in his job and the enclosed amount applied to his back pay. The bank had readily agreed.

So everyone should be happy now. The Sullivan siblings were together again, Mark had his job and his freedom, even if he was minus a wife, while Rafe had his five million dollars and his bachelorhood intact.

Whoop-de-frickin’-doo.

Why was he so damn miserable?

Maybe he needed to get laid. He hadn’t since . . . Florida.

“Good morning,” said the cool brunette on his left. Her smile held interest.

Rafe glanced. Nice smile, great tits under a tight blue sweater. Legs up to her armpits. A vision many guys could relate to having a wet dream about.

His libido didn’t even make a halfhearted jump.

What the hell was the matter with him? He’d imagined the decade of his thirties would change him, yeah. But not on his first day. He hadn’t expected it to kill his sex drive, either.

Nodding the brunette’s way, Rafe extracted his cell phone and pretended to look at his calendar. He hopped off at Fiftieth and walked the rest of the way.

Along the way, he took a call from Regina and ran a few errands. Still, all too soon Rafe found himself entering a familiar Gramercy Park apartment building. Dragging up two flights of stairs, he arrived in front of the square black door he hadn’t knocked on in several years.

After a perfunctory rap, the jingle of chains and the turn of a deadbolt made Rafe’s stomach knot. If he’d bothered with breakfast, or even a single good meal in the last few days, he might have tossed it all up.

He swallowed the nausea down. Damn it, he was here for a purpose. He’d waited six years for this day. Worked long, tough hours tending bar and doing freelance work after a full day of college classes. Starved until he’d built up his business. Lived in an apartment building that housed more rats than people. Nothing was going to fuck this up, especially not some melancholy he hadn’t been able to shake since . . . Florida.

The door was flung wide, and Rafe found himself staring at his father.

Wearing a blue silk robe belted around his slightly paunching middle, Benton Dawson III stared at Rafe. He knew this expression—the one that told him he was as welcome as a swarm of mosquitoes. Well, today he planned to be just as pesky.

“You.”

Rafe plastered on an acidic smile. “I’m here for a long-overdue father-son visit. I know you’ve missed them.”

Shooting him a resentful glare, his father reluctantly shuffled back, smoothing a hand down his thick graying blond hair. Rafe stepped inside. Yep, it still smelled like a distillery. The hardwood floors were sticky under his loafers. Clothes were strewn across the couch, over the breakfast bar. A nearly empty bottle of gin sat on the coffee table in front of the TV.

He walked to the rectangular bottle and lifted it. “Last night’s party, or just starting early this morning?”

“I don’t have any coffee made yet. Say what you came to say and go.”

“Gosh, I’m feeling the love today, Dad. I’ve missed you, too.”

Benton Dawson III drew himself up and gritted his teeth. “Must you continue in this juvenile method of torture? You really are more like your mother than you know.”

“Well, since she was capable of human feeling and decency, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

His father snorted. “She also came from a worthless peasant family.”

A white-hot tread of anger sizzled through him. “Apparently, she was good enough for you to seduce.”

Red flags of anger appeared on his father’s pale, unshaven cheeks. Blue eyes boiled. If looks could kill . . .

“Well, Alondra certainly wasn’t good enough to birth any offspring I’d want to claim.”

Rafe held in a wince. That one shouldn’t hurt him, but it did. He shoved the feelings aside. “Oh, you are feisty this morning. I haven’t heard that particular nasty insult since I was about sixteen.”

“Maybe I should remind you more often.”

Damn, why was it always the same with his father? Ugly, unkind, sarcastic. And he’d even started it today. Behavior like that would garner him a soft lecture that would make him feel about three inches tall if he were still with . . . well, in Florida.

Dad grunted. “No one in that family ever amounted to anything.”

Not even you
. Rafe heard the unspoken words loud and clear.

“Why are you convinced I’m just the last in a long line of bad seeds, huh?”

“Do you want me to start listing the reasons? We’d be here all damned day.”

“Humor me.”

His father eased down onto the couch with a superior glance. “You were born defying me. For some reason foreign to logic, you turned down a perfectly good opportunity to go to Harvard.”

“Last I heard, Columbia wasn’t a school for slackers. They gave me a great scholarship. It was close to my apartment.
What does it matter that I didn’t attend your alma mater if I’m so worthless, anyway?”

“Just the principle.” He sniffed. “And if it weren’t for a few good graces and pulled strings, you could have spent all your college years and more in prison.”

Rafe sat on a bar stool across the room and steepled his hands. “I never claimed that my CIA stunt in college was smart. It wasn’t. I learned from it. But you never forgave me.”

“Because you spend all day tinkering with those damned computers. You’ll never get a real job.”

“That is my real job!” He rose to his feet with a sigh. “Did you know that I’m thirty today?”

His father stilled, saying nothing.

“And with the job I finished last week, I’ve made over five million dollars in the last six years. All on my own.”

The older man’s expression turned hostile. “What do you want, a pat on the back?”

Maybe. He’d wanted a reaction. Something. All along, Rafe had imagined that he’d wanted to throw his success into the face of his father, who’d lost most of the multimillion-dollar fortune he’d inherited.

With anger rattling his composure and regret twisting his gut, Rafe realized that what he’d wanted was for his father to be proud of him. Just once.

He stared at his father with hot, dry eyes, feeling his throat tighten. “How about happy birthday and congratulations? Could we not try being civil for once?”

Were those words actually coming out of his mouth?

Contempt curled his father’s lip. “You don’t know how to be civil to anyone unless they’re giving you money or a piece of ass.”

A perfect retort danced on the tip of his tongue, sharp and cutting. Rafe stilled it. Slicing into his father, waiting for him to strike back, seeing who would draw first blood—it all seemed pointless suddenly. This ongoing war wasn’t changing anything, just entrenching resentment on both sides. Why hadn’t they ever just . . . talked?

“You know, you’re so busy telling me what’s wrong with my life and not looking at yours. You say Mom wasn’t good
enough for you. At least she parented. At least she tried. You only blamed her for your entire life going wrong. No one forced you to take her to bed. They only asked you to live up to your responsibility once you did.”

“That’s enough!”

“It’s the truth. Then you threw yourself a thirty-year pity party. You curled up in a bottle and stopped living and pissed away most of your old-money fortune. To an outsider, I know whose life would look more fucked up.” Rafe figured that little comment was going to send his father into the stratosphere, but he couldn’t seem to stop talking. “Are you even capable of caring about anyone but yourself?”

“What’s the point?” His brow furrowed with disdain. “Who needs someone else’s approval or affection?”

One look at his father’s mocking expression told Rafe that his father believed he had no need for him—for anyone. Nothing he ever did or said to his father would change anything, unless Benton Dawson III wanted to climb down from his high horse. Any attempt to please the man would only end in misery.

God, wouldn’t he have saved himself years of hurt if he’d only seen it sooner? Rafe shook his head, sadness and anger winding through him for what would never be.

“Most people need someone,” Rafe said softly.

His father scoffed. “Other people don’t change who you are or what you make of your life.”

Didn’t they? Rafe remembered the happiest times of his life as those few months when just he and his mother had lived together. He’d also been happy . . . in Florida. Last week, he’d been making a choice to aid someone for a greater cause, to improve an innocent man’s life, help get a family back on track. Granted, he’d been heartily compensated for his time and effort. But Rafe suddenly realized he’d come out the winner, too. He’d done something he’d been proud of, all because of the warmth and encouragement of one woman.