The Satin Sash (39 page)

Grey sucked in a gust of oxygen, striving for control, for patience, for
anything
but this devastation. He ground out the words:
“I said that will be all.”

When she left in a startled, fumbling hurry, the room fell so silent he could hear his own breathing echo within the walls. It was a spiked, shallow sound, like he’d imagined the breath of a monster lurking in a cave would sound. His were even more terrifying.

His hands shook violently at his sides. The muscles of his face trembled. He leaned his forehead on the window and shoved his hands into his pockets and released a low, frustrated noise instead of the savage wail he wanted to let out.

In his mind, he imagined himself storming into their apartment—
her
apartment—and shaking her, cursing her, having punishing, violent sex with her.

The thought made him feel even more repulsive. More bitter.

For the first time in his life he frankly, wholeheartedly, wished he were dead.

And Grey Richards, with all the wealth he had amassed and a name that would make any foe tremble, stood alone by the window of his penthouse, willing his heart to grow as cold as it was rumored to be.

He’d never thought he’d see the sash again. Or that Louisa Fairchild would deliver it to his hotel room. Or that the red satin strip would be half its normal size.

Heath did not care if it was a millimeter square; holy mother of god, he’d been out of his mind waiting for a sight of red.

He almost knocked Louisa over in his rush to go to her.
Toni.

Heath rapped on her apartment door exactly eighteen minutes later.

Toni wore the same sexy, strapless red dress she’d worn the first moment he’d seen her, and all the words of love and devotion he’d practiced fell out of his lips when the door swung open to reveal her.

“Christ.” He swept her into his arms and twirled her around. “Where do you think you’re going with that?”

“I’m going to seduce you,” she said laughingly as he set her down.

“I’m seduced.” He could not keep his hands to himself, so he had them on her butt, the small of her back, then her breasts. His mouth dragged across her face, desperate to go everywhere at once. “I was waiting like a lovesick fool to hear from you. I was half-convinced I should leave the city, and half-convinced I should take you with me.”

“Kidnapping, you mean?” Her lively green gaze shone like emeralds, but there were still lines under her eyes.

“And Grey?” he asked, sobering.

Her smile faltered, but then appeared once again as she guided him into the living room. “He’ll be here,” she said, shooting him a sidelong glance. “I cooked for you two.”

He grinned. Nobody had cooked for him before. “Ahh, kitten, you don’t have to go through that trouble to please me.” But shit, he was more than pleased. He would be pleased if she just sat there and stared at him; he was so crazy about her.

He plopped down on a couch seat and yanked a stiff cushion from behind his back, then thoughtfully set it across his lap. She’d made dinner. She’d dressed up. And Heath was freaking embarrassed that he was already so eager to fuck.

He’d had this pain for days.

Innocent to his dilemma,Toni stared into his eyes as she lowered herself to take the seat next to his.“I wanted to,” she admitted, reaching out to clasp his hand and link their fingers on the pillow.“I wanted to cook for you. I want to make you and Grey so happy, Heath.”

He was so aroused, he could not suppress the pained sound in his throat as he stroked his hands through the silky tendrils of her hair. “You do, sweetheart, you do.” The satiny mass fell across her bare shoulders in wavy tresses he wanted to wrap around his face and hands and cock, and he could barely think straight when he buried his nose and inhaled its sweetness.

It was all he thought of as he took her lips and kissed her.
Get the fuck over here now.
It was all that kept him from coming when she stroked his erection over his jeans, and it was all that kept him inserting one finger rather than three under her dress and into her weeping cleft.
Get the fuck here now, Grey!

And yet minutes became hours, and Toni’s arousal began to dim with worry. Attempting to salvage her pride, Heath ate Grey’s portion of her meat loaf and potatoes, but while he ate he was quietly hurting for her.

And he was hurting for himself.

Because it was
Heath
that Grey did not want here. It was Heath that Grey would never take.

Toni’s eyes kept straying to the door.

Heath’s eyes kept straying to the door.

Neither spoke.

Well into the small hours of the night, they settled in the couch and she fell asleep in his arms. By then, it was more than clear to Heath.

Grey was not coming.

The office fell into a cadaverous silence when Grey strode across the carpeted floors the next morning. People began whispering as he quietly shut the massive doors of his office behind him. What nobody expected was the appearance of Heath Solis a few minutes later.They knew it was him, and he was everything he was reputed to be. Dark, big, and menacing, he crossed directly to Louisa’s desk. He was not smiling.

“Heath Solis to see Grey.”

He didn’t sit down on the chair Louisa offered, but waited standing, arms crossed, his hip propped on Louisa’s desk as she shakily dialed Grey’s extension. “Mr. Solis requesting to see you.”

Three seconds later, the doors were thrust open to reveal Grey. The men assessed each other, then Heath pushed himself away from Louisa’s desk and strolled into the office behind Grey. Inside, the air crackled with hostility. Heath’s arms lay rigid at his sides, and his knuckles jutted out of his fists.

“She’s miserable.”

If Grey thought he couldn’t feel lower, more contemptible, he had been wrong. He felt the pressure of Heath’s words in his chest, crushing into his heart, and it irked him that he cared. Releasing a tight, broken breath, he turned back to his desk, to the pile of papers he had yet to get to, the million things he wanted to do, one on top of the other, to keep from thinking of her. Of them. Together.

“She made her choice.”

He shuffled the papers on his desk, then rearranged the pens by color. Blacks, blues, reds. “Heath, I’ve got Parsons in Atlanta, but he’s an imbecile with the zoning commission. I need to know your plans.”

Heath gaped at him, then shoved his arms up high.“Toni needs you, and you sit there and talk to me about Parsons?”

“She made her choice!” he snapped.
She made her choice, and she chose
you
. My baby chose
you
.

“I can’t fucking replace you. I can’t fucking make up for your half, and you can’t fucking make up for mine. She adores you.What is it that you can’t stand—that she loves me, too? That I want to belong to someone, to her?”

He only half listened; his brain was pounding. His temples throbbed and he knew, without a doubt, if Heath did not leave, he was going to lose it. He was on the verge of smashing someone’s head into the window, a hair away from turning back into his ancestral ape and roaring out with pain. He wanted him for breakfast. He wanted his
blood
.

Searching for the last vestiges of control, he looked Heath directly in the eye and said, “If you ever mention her again—”

“What?” Covering the distance to his desk, Heath dug into his jeans pocket and slammed his palm into Grey’s chest. “Where’s your half ?” Grey’s eyes burned at the sight of red. “Did you tear it up, throw it away?” Heath nabbed Grey’s wrist and forced the sash into his palm, anger making his teeth show. “We waited all. Fucking. Night for you!”

Trancelike, Grey ran three fingertips across the cool fabric, then dropped his face and buried his nose deep inside. Oh,
fuck
. Her scent clung to the satin like perfume, and he wanted to suffocate in it. He wanted to hear her, see her, touch her. In that instant, while the fruity scent of her feathered across his straining lungs and the sight and texture of the sash made him long to burn in hell rather than stand this, Grey could not summon any anger. Not for Heath. Not for her. It just hurt. Like nothing in his life had ever hurt before.

“What did you do with yours, Grey?” Heath tightly pressed.

It struck him then that the sash was different. Shorter.The edges tattered on one end. One
cut
end.The bile rose up in his throat, his stomach churning with acid. In his mind, he fit the puzzle together. In his mind, he calculated one plus two and added the three and the four and a thousand other inconsequential inconveniences that alone did not matter but together made a whole.

Setting his face into a stoic mask, he lifted the phone receiver, his voice surprisingly mellow considering the storm brewing inside him. “Miss Fairchild, can I see you for a moment?”

He did not address her as Miss Fairchild often, so naturally when Louisa peered through the doors and stepped inside, her eyes were wide and guilty, and she was pale as a sheet. Oh, she knew. She fucking
knew
.

Grey signaled at a chair. “Sit down, please.”

She sat.

Anticipating a show, Heath accommodated himself in the nearby sitting area, leaning forward as though not to miss a word. Grey stepped around the desk and came forward, letting the sash flutter to her lap.

“You’ve seen that before?”

Head bent low, Louisa Fairchild wrapped her arms around herself as Grey began to circle her.

“You took it to Heath.” He paused behind her, leaning closer. “What I want to know”—he enunciated each word carefully into her ear—“is where my half is?”

“I-in the glove compartment. In my car.”

“Your car.” He straightened, disarmed by her quick admission. “Good.Very good. Bring it.”

Neither Heath nor Grey communicated during the time it took her to fetch the sash. Heath sat motionless on the couch, while Grey remained rooted to the spot, bloodthirsty for the sight of that red silk, silent, burning, hoping, wishing.

When Louisa reappeared, she handed the sash over with trembling hands. Grey clasped it in his fist, and his heart exploded at the feel of it, his breath tearing out of him in a hiss of bliss and ecstasy.

“I didn’t mean any harm,” she burst out in pale- faced anxiety, taking a step forward in appeal, “but Toni was being so unreasonable. You can do so much better. I don’t think anyone, much less you, should settle for those odd terms!”

“That would be my business,” he stated. “And Toni’s. And Heath’s.”

“But I just wanted you to notice there are other women who would have you. Just you. I wanted . . . I just wanted a
chance
.”

His smile did not reach his eyes. “You know what I want?” he asked placidly, running his knuckles over his desk as he circled his way around it. “Your resignation. On my desk. Tomorrow morning.”

She sucked in a great deal of air, then gripped the back of the chair as she jerked her head up and down in a nod.

Grey pinned her with an admonishing look. “I don’t think you’re a very good friend, Louisa.”

Flushing bright crimson, she stumbled back a step, eager to leave.“I’m not,” she choked, wiping at her eyes before she stormed outside.

As Grey watched her leave, his train of thought barreled forward.

Was he judging himself through the eyes of such people, people like Louisa, because he was different, his girl was different, their relationship was different? What was he afraid of that he would let go of the two people he cared most about in his life, the two people he needed?

She had made it rain for him.

Toni had made it rain, and Grey wanted to crash and burn his plane into the ocean, surround himself with the peace and tumult of her water.

He wanted to break every rule with her, make her every wish come true. He wanted to take the world by storm with Heath and her.This was not a decision for his mind, but his heart.