Suddenly she was glad his marks were hidden under her cuff bracelets. She was glad he had not seen that she still wore them, even though he probably knew, deep down, that she did. She had kept her vow, not because he deserved it, but because she couldn’t be the one to break it, couldn’t sever her ties to him, for she feared that he would sever her from his life as well. But then, hadn’t he already done that?
Her eyes blurred remembering, and all of a sudden, her heart felt heavy.
Andrew.
How many women had he been with these past three years?
She was so angry at him, but had underestimated how she would react seeing him again. The attraction was so strong, it took effort to sit across from him. She’d never been so separated before while riding in such close quarters.
The distance hurt. His presence hurt.
The car pulled over at the Fairchild Hotel. It belonged to his family and was one of the dozens of businesses he owned. She would be swept back into his life, but the glamour of living with a Fairchild had lost all of its glitz for her. Andrew wasn’t the perfect man, not her prince who’d rescued her. He’d rescued her, all right. But he’d just taken her from one hell to another.
The motor shut down, and Whitney suddenly panicked, tugging at her cuff bracelets, loathing with sudden intensity the marks that lay hidden beneath. “I can’t do this. Please, Andrew, let me go. Let me kiss you here and we’ll get it over with.”
The door opened, and he didn’t hesitate. He stepped out and held out his hand for her. “We said forever, Whitney,” he said softly, something dark and pained in his eyes.
An ache spread through her, too.
Andrew was a man used to getting his way, and the only way to make him let her go was to make him stop wanting her, and it was going to hurt them both.
Especially when he was all she’d ever wanted.
Chapter Two
As they entered Andrew’s luxurious five-bedroom apartment on the top floor of the Fairchild, Whitney’s memories of her time here fell on her like bombs.
She’d lived in this very home with Andrew for almost two years, and then alone for two more, waiting for him, until she couldn’t bear to wait any longer and had no choice but to move out a year ago. Despair opened in her chest as the familiar scent of maple wood furniture invaded her nostrils.
She watched as Andrew pressed the access code on the Creston keypad, and all at once, several lamps flared to life across both the living and dining rooms. “Did you stay here like I asked you to, Whitney?”
He cocked his head in question, and Whitney remained stubbornly silent. When he’d left to “work” in the Middle East, he’d offered her the use of his home, his chauffer, his maids. He’d left her with checkbooks, credit cards. Everything except what she most needed. Him.
He strode down the hall to the master bedroom, and when he returned, his jaw was clamped, for obviously he’d noticed that her things were gone. “I see.”
He took off his jacket, and the sight of his muscles rippling under the fabric of his white cotton shirt almost undid her. Her voice was laced with anger and frustration. “What do you want, Andrew?”
He unknotted his tie and pulled it loose, and she burned in her skin at the sight of his biceps flexing under his shirt. Their bodies were calling out to one another, silently, powerfully. She could feel his pull, tugging at her with magnetic force. “Show me your wrists, Whitney,” he said, as he set his tie aside.
She backed away when he suddenly advanced, her chest heaving. He looked delicious in that shirt. Delicious. Oh, God. Why did he want to see her wrists?
“Show me yours first,” she countered, sure that he’d removed them, as callously as he had left her behind.
Without preamble, he tossed his cuff links aside and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Whitney’s breath stalled, her gaze snagging on the Celtic marks wrapped around his wrists, her name perfectly delineated on his tanned skin. WHITNEY. A strange, swooping euphoria surged within her when she realized he still wore her mark.
He closed the distance between them. “Now, you. Show me.”
His thick, textured voice did a number on her as he encircled her wrists with long, gentle fingers. Her breasts pricked when he removed her cuff bracelets, first one, then the other.
Helpless not to stare, she caught his expression the very moment he viewed his name on her flesh, and her heart stopped beating. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and then he slammed his eyes shut and he just held her wrists in each of his hands for the longest moment.
Her legs liquefied as rising need rushed through her bloodstream. It took every effort in her body to fight it, to stay on her own two feet without collapsing.
“Well well well,” he murmured, his eyes opening.
He set the butterflies loose in her stomach with that look alone as he lifted each of her hands in his, then linked their fingers, aligning the marks.
“What do we have here . . . ?” he continued, his palms huge and almost engulfing hers, his eyes engulfing her.
Her throat closed as memories threatened to consume her. Days and nights, holding hands like this, marveling about their bond, their ownership. “It means nothing,” she lied thickly.
His eyes were tender, not angry. “It means you’re still mine.”
“We were young, Andrew.”
“Why can’t we move on, then, tell me, Whitney? Why are we still wearing these . . . if they meant nothing?” He raised one of her hands to his lips, and the moist lap of his tongue across her wrist shot ripples of awareness across her being. His eyes smoldered as he watched her reaction, and her entire body began to vibrate.
Her cheeks flared with the heat that spread across her skin like wildfire. “You’re gone for years. Years. I don’t hear from you and then you expect me to jump when you come back. What, beyond death, could’ve taken so long?”
An awful silence stretched between them. The frustration and fear of hundreds and hundreds of endless nights and drawn-out days, the pain of waiting and crying and feeling alone while reliving her dark past with barely a future to look forward to, came crashing down on Whitney in an explosion of pain, and then she did something she needed to.
She slapped him.
*****
Andrew remained deathly still, gazing down at her with a throbbing jaw. Whitney. He took in the silken waves of her red hair, the rapid heaving of her chest, her wide, tear-filled eyes, dark emerald green in color, filled with those gold flecks he wanted to count.