Unbroken Hart (The Hart Family) (2 page)

He didn't even let me tell Damien that she was dead.  Instead, he woke Spencer and Damien up and announced that the stupid whore had killed her slutty ass. 
None of us cried.  She wasn't the type of woman that someone would miss.

I prayed that maybe he was just mad that day and
that he would back off to his normal amount of crazy, but that didn't happen.  The next night he came and gave Damien and me the suicide notes that she'd left us.  He'd read them and took great pleasure in telling us that she'd left us something that would make us feel better.  Just like when he asked me to go wake her up, he was just toying with us. 

I was
so wrapped up in remembering the past that I was surprised when I heard a discreet throat clearing coming from the doorway to my office.

When I raised my head and made eye contact with the girl in the doorway, everythi
ng inside of me shifted.  She was beautiful in the way that women really weren't, at least in LA, anymore.  Fresh, natural and curvaceous, she had the type of body that men coveted and women were envious of.  I drank her in like she was a fine wine.  I noticed everything about her, from her gray pencil skirt that hugged her body beautifully to her sexy as hell stilettos.  I could only see her legs from the knees down, but what I saw was enough to assure me that they were perfection.  That quickly, I forgot about the memories that had been holding me hostage and became entirely focused on her.

My reaction to her was instantaneous, like nothing I'd ever
experienced.  We stared at each other for a moment, silently assessing each other.  Or, she was assessing, and I was envisioning bending her over my desk, lifting her skirt and plunging into her wet heat, riding her hard before turning her over and pounding her on my desk, her ankles beside my ears.  I'd bet every cent that I had in the bank that she'd be magnificent. 

I searched my brain for a reason that she would be standing in my doorway, and I realized she must have been the newest temporary assistant.  Right then, I knew she had to go.  She was dangerous to me, of that there was no doubt, and I couldn't risk spending time with her.

Stepping forward, she spoke.  “Good morning Mr. Hart, I’m Sabrina Tyler.  I’m assistant try out number eight.”

That
threw me off, made me chuckle.  Right out of the gate she let me know that she was aware that the other seven hadn't worked out.  She was clearly different than all of the others that had tried out for the job.  It had been a hellish two weeks since my last assistant, Helen, had moved to our branch in Greece to be with her fiancée.  I was already grumpy and short tempered with the anniversary of my mother's death approaching, but dealing with trying out the assistants made me nuts.  Every one of them had set my teeth on edge.  They were all flighty, flirty or totally intimidated by me.  I didn't see myself as being intimidating, and it made me feel like an asshole that they all behaved as if I was. 

When Sabrina smiled at me, it was like the sun had come out from behind the clouds.  I liked her.  I mean, I really liked her, on sight.  Not just her
amazing body or her beautiful face.  I liked
her
.  She didn't seem intimidated by me at all, and I liked it.

She stepped forward to offer me her hand
for a handshake.  I felt her hand in mine in a completely different way than I'd ever felt someone else's touch before.  Before I could control myself, I beamed at her. I kept expecting her to start behaving like the others, but she never did.  She was perfect, and it scared the ever loving shit out of me.

When
we sat down to discuss things I realized that I was going to have to give her the opportunity to try out for the job.  She came across as being strong and unflappable, but I sensed that there was fragility inside of her as well.  I couldn't in good conscience dismiss her out of hand without reason, so I decided to give her a chance.

Within a week I knew that Sabrina was going to be an
even better assistant than Helen had been.  That was really saying something, because I had felt secure that the things I needed to have done were being taken care of under Helen.  The difference was that Sabrina read me in a different way.  She seemed to understand what I was going to need before I did.  The other difference was that Sabrina was interested in the business as a whole, and she loved what she was doing.  She was bright and dedicated, and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to find anyone who would do the job better.

Like a moth to the flame, I couldn't stay away from her. 
My brother had been away when Sabrina started working for me, and I missed him terribly because I felt that he would have talked me down from the ledge about her.  Without Damien to remind me why I needed to avoid her, I didn't. 

I got to know her in a different way than I'd ever known anyone before.  I was anxious to peel back her layers, to discover wha
t it was that set her apart from everyone else on earth.  Why was a twenty-four year old woman so mature and focused?  She was calmer and more serene than any of the other assistants who had tried out for the job, and some of them had been twice her age.

A few days after she started, I noticed that
she'd put some personal items on her desk.  I made my way over to her area, anxious to see what meant enough for her to look at every day.  There were two photos on her credenza, and I quickly noted that neither of them included a boyfriend as I breathed a sigh of relief.

The first photo was of Sabrina and a beautiful girl that could only have been her sister because the similarity was apparent.  The sister was beautiful like Sabrina was,
and her smile lit up her entire face.  The second photo was of Sabrina, her sister and their parents.  Again, the resemblance was self-explanatory.  Their mother looked exactly like the girls, just a bit older, the only difference between her and her daughter's being that they had their father's eyes.  All four of them had joyous smiles that lit up their entire faces.  For a moment, I was jealous.  Clearly Sabrina had a loving relationship with her parents, something I knew nothing about.

Right at that moment I heard her enter our work suite.  Turning to her, I smiled and held up the p
hoto I'd been looking at.  "Sorry, I'm being nosy and I had to peek at your pictures.  This is a lovely family photo.  You look just like your parents. Do they live around here?"

It was clear that
I'd said something wrong when her eyes filled with tears.  Shaking her head, she dabbed at her eyes with her fingertips.  I was across the room in a second, putting my hand on her arm in a gesture of comfort as I asked, "Is everything okay?"

Her lower lip quivered for a moment before she got herself back together.  Smiling sadly, she nodded.  "I'm sorry about getting emotional.  My parents were killed just over a year ago in a car accident.  It's still hard
for me to wrap my mind around. It's just my sister and I now.  Fortunately we're extremely close, so that helps."

I was mortified that I'd up
set her.  "I'm so sorry Miss Tyler.  I didn't mean to upset you or make you unhappy."

She shook her head at me, pulling away as she walked to her desk to grab a t
issue.  "It's not your fault, Mr. Hart. You couldn’t have known."

That was true, but it didn't make me feel any better.  I cared about her already, hate
d to see her hurting.  I hoped that she was as close to her sister as she'd said, and I wanted to make sure of that for myself.  Before I could censor myself I said, "First, don't ever call me Mr. Hart again. I'm done calling you Miss Tyler as well.  From now on I'm Dante and you're Sabrina.  Also, I'd like to meet your sister.  Would you be open to letting me take you both out to dinner Friday after work?"

That one sentence changed my entire life. Sabrina went from being just an assistant to truly having meaning in my life.  I finagled ways to spend time with her and made it seem casual.  Concert tickets, movie outings and dinners, I pulled her into my life.  Five weeks after she started as my assistant, I introduced her to my family. 

While I knew that I wasn't the type of guy that she should wind up with, I selfishly monopolized her time so that dating wasn't really an option for her.  I tried to tell myself that we were just friends and that was all that we would ever be.  I knew better than to cross the line, and I didn't intend to, but I couldn't stop myself from spending time with her.

Every day it got harder to be around Sabrina, and every day I found another excuse to spend more time with her instead of less.  Our lives were woven together seamlessly, and interestingly enough, it was almost all of my doing.

I'd even stopped looking for those meaningless exchanges that passed as relationships in my life.  I'd always thought that the girls I spent time with were vapid and ridiculous, and frankl
y, that's why I'd chosen them.

I realized how pathetic of an
excuse for real women the people I'd spent a lifetime choosing were the day the last one I'd been with turned up in my office.  I'm not sure what Tammy was thinking when she'd showed up at my office, but as soon as I saw her and Sabrina in the same room, I was done.  The difference between the two of them was like night and day, and I saw things in a completely new way. 

I knew that I was rude when I told Tammy to get out, but I hadn't cared.  I didn't want her anywhere near Sabrina, didn't want Rina tainted by women
like Tammy.  I decided then and there that I needed a break from the type of girls that I'd been having sex with for years, but somehow instead of just taking a break, I'd stopped having sex altogether. 

Damien and Spencer hardly knew what to do with me.  My lack of sexual
activity stunned them.  If I'm honest, it stunned me too.   I had a very high sex drive and I enjoyed fucking.  Always had, always would.  But for months I'd not found anyone attractive enough to bother expending the effort.  The only woman I saw, the only one I was attracted to, was Sabrina Tyler.  For her, I got hard instantly and often.  If she knew that I went home every night and jerked off thinking about her, she'd be stunned.

Sabrina had been acting differently for a few weeks and it was really getting to me. She wasn't turning up for our morning workouts, she was busy a lot of the time and she was losing weight to beat the band.  I was worried, even though she hadn't done or said anything that made me think that she was on drugs or ill or anything like that.  Still, whatever she was doing, she wasn't talking to me about it, and it bothered me. The final straw had come
Sunday night when she didn't turn up to family dinner at my house.  She'd told me at the end of last week that she might not be able to make the dinner, but I'd hoped she would be there anyway.  When Brooke told me she was out with some guy, I almost stroked out.  No one had ever gotten under my skin before, but suddenly, I was jealous.  Really jealous, something huge that took over my whole body. 

I'd decided that I was going to talk to her about what was going on with her. 
I needed to know what the hell was going on.  I'd gone to work that morning ready to talk to her about what was going on, but she was late, and that was unusual.  It was also cause for alarm, because for over a year she'd never been late, but now she was late for the second time in as many weeks.  It was very unusual behavior for Sabrina, and it worried me. I wasn't sure why I felt threatened, even a bit scared, but I did.

The minutes ticked by with no signs of her.  I waited, and then waited some more, but still she hadn't arrived.  The first time she'd been late had only been a fifteen minute delay.  This was far longer.  I tried to call her, but got no response.  What if she was hurt? What if she needed something and there was no one there to take care of her?

I waited as long as I could, but the anxiety got the better of me and I decided that I was going to her house to check on her.  I'd just entered the parking garage when my cell phone rang.  I was beyond relieved that it was Sabrina, but pissed off because she wasn't acting like herself. 

The rest of the morning didn't pass the way that I had hoped.  Sabrina had finally explained what was going on with her, but the answer didn't make me feel any better.  If anything, it made me feel worse.  She was dancing the tango every night with some guy, spending all of her free time with him instead of me.

The next night, Sabrina and I went to a concert.  Over burgers before the show, she'd let it slip that she had feelings for some guy.  She claimed that it wasn't the dancer, but she wouldn't tell me who it was so I had no clue.  I'd known that eventually Sabrina would wind up with somebody, but nothing prepared me for the desolation of knowing that I was really going to lose her.  She'd never really been mine to begin with, and her dating was inevitable.  She was beautiful, bright, kind and smart.  Any man would love to have her, and it was my cross to bear that someday soon, some lucky guy would.

My week passed agonizingly slow
.  I felt like she was pushing me away.  Or maybe she was just getting a life that didn’t involve me.  In either case, it made me anxious and upset.  I missed her, even though she was right there at work each day.  For the first time I seriously considered that I was really losing her.

She'd invited me to her dancing competition, and the entire family, minus Spencer and Aunt Sandra, had shown up to watch her dance.  When she came to the floor, I lost my fucking mind.  Her sexy body was revealed far more than usual, and it pissed me off that other people were looking at her.  My knee jerk reaction pretty much exploded from me before I could stop it.  "Jesus fucking Christ, is she fucking kidding with that outfit?"