Being Me

Twenty-eight

Six days after Chris’s departure, and only a few days until the October 1 start of school for Ella, I am climbing my office walls, willing both of them to call me. It’s Thursday and nearly noon, and for the first time all week, I try to truly prepare myself for this breakup with Chris. I even dress in my old clothes, a simple black skirt and red silk blouse. Arranging to have my things moved back to my apartment is inevitable. I’d rather do it now than have Chris return and do it for me.

Feeling more like the kept woman my mother was to an absent man, I am eager to escape the confines of the gallery. Out of worry for Chris’s peace of mind, I do as I have been for days, and report to Jacob before heading to the deli three blocks down the road. Once there, I order an egg salad sandwich and find a back corner table and shove my food aside. I can’t eat. I haven’t been able to eat since Chris left.

The bell on the door chimes and I look up to find Mark and Ava walking into the deli. The way she’s looking at him scorches me from clear across the restaurant. I feel sorry for her husband, trying to compete with Mark. He doesn’t have a chance.

Mark’s gaze lifts and collides with mine. He whispers something to Ava and steps away from her, and for a moment I see a spark of something that looks downright evil on Ava’s face. Whoa—that’s new. I think I’ve sensed this in her, but seeing it is a jolt of reality. She hates me.

Mark joins me without asking, sitting directly across from me at a table more for one than two. “You plan to eat that sandwich or watch it like TV?”

“Ah, now there’s that sense of humor I thought you reserved only for e-mails and text messages.”

He doesn’t laugh. “You look thin.” He shoves the sandwich toward me. “Eat.”

Surprisingly, he’s been quite the doting daddy for a Master who wields a wicked whip, but he’s right in this case. I’ve dropped five pounds I didn’t have to lose, but regardless of his good intentions, I truly am not in the mood to be pushed. “I don’t want to eat and don’t order me around like I’m your submissive. I’m not.”

“Ms. McMillan—”

“Sara,” I snap, on edge, and irritated that I feel like we’ve created a friendship this past week and he still can’t use my name. “Why can’t you call me Sara like you call Amanda, Amanda?”

He gives me one of those unreadable, impossible intense gray stares. “All right then, Sara. I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

He leans in closer. “What can I do?”

“Nothing. Nothing that you haven’t already. I know you convinced Ryan to let me decorate the lobby of the property. It helped. It kept me busy and I do appreciate that.”

“Ryan’s fond of you. We have to milk it for all the business we can.”

“Right.” I give a laugh. “It’s always about money for you, isn’t it?”

“Money is power.”

So Chris once told me. “And we both know how much you like power.”

His brows lift. “Do we?”

“We do,” I assure him.

He leans back in his seat and his lips twitch. “Well, as long as we have that settled.” He pauses, his mouth tightening, and I sense the subject change before it comes. “Have you heard from him?”

“No.” I try to laugh without humor but it comes out as more of a strangled sound. “I guess I didn’t do a very good job of getting through to him like you thought I would.” I rub at the tension in my shoulder. A burning question constantly on my mind presses me to take advantage of having Mark’s rare casual mood and full attention. “Why, Mark?”

“Why what, Sara?”

“Why do you both need that place?”

He appears undaunted by the question. “I told you. It’s different for everyone, and Chris and I are as night and day as it comes. He wants to punish himself. The pain is who he is. It controls him.”

“And you?”

That steely glint I know well appears in his eyes, and I watch the man transform into the Master who is intensely, impossibly provocative, able to seduce a room just by existing. “Nothing controls me but me. I am who I am and I enjoy every moment of it, and so do those who enter my domain. I make sure of it.” I am captivated by his stare, lost in this man who is all power and sexuality, but even more so by the idea of having such confidence and control myself. He seems to sense this or perhaps he can easily read my expression, and he leans in closer, softening his voice to a seductive purr. “I would never put my pleasure, or my pain, for that matter, ahead of your needs, Sara.”

I am sure that his vow is meant to lure me deeper under his spell, but it doesn’t work. It smacks me in the face with possibilities I don’t want to consider and jerks me into defensive mode. I sit back sharply. “He doesn’t do that. Chris doesn’t put himself ahead of me.”

“What do you call what he’s done, Sara?”

“He’s trying to protect me.”

“And how does that protection feel? Because you aren’t eating and you aren’t sleeping. If that is how he protects you, he’s failed.”

“Like you failed Rebecca.”

He shocks me by visibly flinching, proving again that he is not without a weakness where Rebecca is concerned. “She wanted what I don’t have to give, what I never promised.”

“Which is what?”

“The façade of love. The same poison that leaves your sandwich sitting here uneaten. Think about what this fairy tale of love you’ve created is doing to you. When you’re ready to get rid of that spiteful emotion, I’ll show you how.” He pushes to his feet. “We have the open house tonight at the property. We leave at six forty-five. I’m driving.”

It’s me who flinches as he walks away.

I’m pleased to score a large late afternoon sale, but it delays Mark and me from departing the gallery at the time planned, and we arrive at the open house with only forty-five minutes left before it ends. At the front door of the thirty-floor high-rise on the oceanfront, Mark maneuvers the Jag under the front door overhang and two valets open our doors. When Mark rounds the vehicle to join me, his hand settles a bit too possessively on my back.

The lobby is crowded, warmed by a gas fireplace framed in stone, and furnished with clusters of rich brown leather chairs and several paintings I personally selected. People mill around everywhere, drinks in hand. Mark and I make our way through the visitors, mingling and prospecting for new sales. Ryan finds us quickly, looking stunning in a striking red silk tie that contrasts with his pin-striped suit as dark as his neatly groomed raven hair.

He takes my hand and kisses it. “You look lovely, Sara.” He leans in near my ear. “Far better than any of the many masterpieces here tonight.”

My cheeks heat with the compliment I don’t deserve, considering the expensive dresses and suits being elegantly worn by the guests. “I should have changed.”

“Nonsense,” he says. “You look marvelous. Why don’t we head upstairs to the demo unit? There are a number of guests there you can impress with your knowledge of art.”

Inside the twentieth-floor apartment, I spend the next half hour happily chatting with guests and I try to lose myself in the thrill of discussing the art I’ve chosen for the project. It’s a difficult task, since the Chris Merit cityscape I purchased from a local resident for my blank wall is a constant reminder of him.

When the crowd clears I find myself alone, seduced into deep thought by the dimly lit elegant space and soft music humming in the background. I find myself dreading the empty apartment awaiting me. “It’s a wrap,” Ryan announces, and I turn to find both him and Mark walking toward me. “The lobby is clear and we’ve locked up here.”

Leaning against the mahogany railing spanning the middle of the ceiling-to-floor window, I feel a charge in the air—the sensation of being prey to not one lion, but two, as they each stop beside me, sandwiching me between them.

“The night was a success, Ms. McMillan,” Mark says in praise. “You’ve proven to be quite the asset.”

Even the caged animal I have become these past few days, more now than ever, hungers for this man’s compliments, and I tell myself it’s about my job and nothing more. “I’ve tried.” My voice comes out shaky and affected, and I can feel how losing Chris has made me revert backward, angry at how easily I still fall prey to a need for approval from men like Mark and Michael.

Ryan brushes my hair over my shoulder, and despite the gentleness of the touch, it’s too intimate, and I tense, jerking my gaze to his. “Poor Sara,” he murmurs. “You have such pain in your eyes.”

“I’m . . . I’m fine.”

“No,” Ryan insists gently. “You’re not. I’ve watched you bleeding emotionally all week.”

“You have to let him go.”

Mark proves his ease at stirring my defenses one again, and I turn to him, finding him closer than I’d thought. My thigh brushes his and I feel it like a second jolt. “No,” I choke out. “I can’t.” I back up and Ryan’s hands go to my waist. I’m that caged animal again, a deer caught by two predators.

Mark claims the space I’d created and his legs press to mine. “You can’t or you won’t?”

The urge to bolt is stilled when Ryan leans in, his chin nuzzling my hair as he whispers, “He let go. You have to, too.”

I’m shaken by how right he might be, and how wrong I burn for him to be. “It’s too soon.” It’s too soon.

Mark’s hands settle on my shoulders, branding me. “I refuse to watch you hurt like this one more day. Let go, Ms. McMillan.”

He leans in, his head slowly lowering, the punishingly sensual line of his mouth nearing mine. “Think about it,” he urges softly. “To feel nothing but pleasure. To expect nothing more.”

Ryan’s thumbs stroke my waist. “To stop hurting,” he adds.

The heat of Mark’s breath teasing my cheek, the spicy, powerful scent of him overwhelms me, and for just a moment I am weak enough to want what these two men offer me. Chris doesn’t want me. He has all but kicked me out of what he’d called my home. Stay until the Rebecca thing is over. Just thinking about it slices through my very soul.

“Just let go,” Mark murmurs, his fingers settling on my cheek at the same time Ryan slides his hand to my stomach. Warmth spreads through me and then transforms, twisting and turning inside me, spiraling into the acid depths of darkness, to a place I remember too well. A place Michael took me two years before.

“No!” I shove against Mark. “No. No. No.”

“Ms.—”

“No, Mark. Let me go.” Ryan’s hands slide from my body and a bit of relief washes over me, but Mark is still touching me, somehow holding my arms. “Let go!”

They both step away from me as if burned, and I dart from between them in a rush of adrenaline. I all but run to the exit stairwell and start down the stairs. Ten floors down, I regret the walk, but I keep moving, despising what Mark and Ryan have stirred inside me. How they’ve tried to steal what hope I have left for Chris and me. How I was almost weak enough to let them convince me I could do no better than submitting to their control.

Reaching the bottom of the stairwell, on shaky legs, I draw a calming breath and exit, promising myself I will not lose it until I’m alone, when I know I am already a volcanic mess, burning alive from the inside out.

I manage well enough until I step onto the automatic door sensor and Mark appears beside me. “Sara—”

“Leave me alone, Mark.”

“I’ll take you to your car.”

“No. I don’t need a ride.”

“I was trying to help,” he says defensively as we step outside. “I can help.”

The instant I see the valet area is clear of people, I whirl on him. “What happened up there shouldn’t have happened.” Anger radiates from deep in my soul, lacing my words. “It can’t happen again. Ever.” Urgent to get away from him, I turn to my right and stop dead in my tracks to find Chris standing there.

“Chris,” I gasp, my gaze hungrily drinking in the sight of him in all his leather and denim glory. His presence is a sweet relief, filling empty spaces, allowing me to breathe again.

He glares over my shoulder at Mark. “What just happened that can’t happen again?”

“You’re ripping her to shreds, Chris,” he replies with unmistakable contempt.

Chris’s green eyes sharpen and he takes a threatening step around me and toward Mark. I jump in front of him, pressing my hands to his chest to stop his progress. Touching him is heaven. “No. Don’t.”

His lashes lower, his eyes resting on my face. “What happened, Sara?”

Mark answers before I can. “What happened is that she’s melting away to nothing over you, asshole.”

Chris’s head lifts, the fury deep in his eyes as he fixes them on Mark again. “We both know what this is about and I suggest you don’t go there.”

“You suggest,” Mark repeats with disdain. “You’re good at suggesting what you can’t do yourself.”

Chris starts for him again and I wrap my arms around him. “No. Please.”

The two men stare at each other, Chris’s chest heaving under my hand. “Walk away, Mark,” Chris warns. “Walk away now before I don’t let you.”

“Mark, please,” I plead over my shoulder.

He hesitates. “If you need me, Sara, you know how to find me.” I hear his footsteps and Chris remains stiff, on edge, until I assume Mark is gone.

Chris’s attention slides to me for an instant, his fingers untangling my arms from around him, banding my wrist as he starts walking, all but dragging me toward the Harley parked near the door. “Chris—”

“Don’t talk, Sara. Not now. Not when I’m this pissed.” He stops at the bike and shoves a leather jacket my size at me. I stare down at it. He bought me a jacket? “Put it on, Sara.”

“I’m wearing a skirt. I can’t ride the bike.”

“Get on, or I’ll rip the damn thing to put you on this bike.”

I put the jacket on. He shoves a helmet at me. “And this.”

The instant I place it on my head, he tugs me forward and I yank my skirt up, sliding my leg over the bike. Chris shackles my wrists and pulls them around him. I begin to panic. I’ve never been on a bike. What if I fall off?

He revs the engine, rolls backward, and then in a roar of escalation we are on the highway, the cold ocean air blistering my bare legs. Chris speeds up and I bury my face against him. We travel the twisting roads, and he speeds up, faster and faster still. He won’t slow down. He won’t stop. He’s going to kill us.