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She wouldn’t still lie in silence and try to reach out to them as she once had, just to imagine she could feel their warmth.
Finishing her shower and dressing in a pair of jeans with a soft cotton shirt, she laced the sneakers she’d chosen to wear before entering the attached closet and packing a small leather bag. Just enough clothes for a few days. Anything else and she risked Harvey learning that she wasn’t coming back.
Harvey was up to something and it wasn’t just stealing her money.
She didn’t know what or what it involved, but whatever it was, it hadn’t been working out for him. He’d been confrontational and insulting when she called the night before, and she didn’t expect it would be any different now that she was home. She refused to stay and listen to his ranting when the bottom fell out of whatever plans he had this time, which was no doubt his problem.
Stepping from the bedroom, she paused at the sight of her husband waiting for her.
She hadn’t expected this, she admitted. She’d been certain he wasn’t home when she arrived.
“Hello,” she greeted him as though everything were fine and moved to her dresser. “I need to go to my parents’ for a few days. Dad has a Senate briefing he has to have completed before Monday. I should be back that evening.”
Not if she could help it.
Placing her makeup in the bag along with the small box of jewelry she kept in her dresser, she turned to face Harvey once again.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, as though everything were perfectly normal with her.
Trepidation was beginning to build inside her, though, the certainty that Harvey was far more dangerous than she’d suspected.
“Not really.” He stood at the bottom of her bed, his hazel eyes narrowed and glittering with malice.
That look had the first feeling of fear that she’d ever felt in his presence rising inside her.
“Is your father bothering you again?” Gripping the bag, she left the bedroom, desperate to get out of the house now. She should have never returned to the house, but he was supposed to be gone this weekend. He’d told her he wouldn’t be there before she left, that he had business to take care of out of the country.
And he followed her. Moving behind her from the bedroom, he followed her to the stairs and moved quickly to catch up with her.
Reaching the landing, Alyssa headed for the front door only to have him push her roughly to the side, throwing her against the wall as he blocked the exit.
“What the hell is your problem?” Straightening, Alyssa slid her hand into the pocket of the light jacket she wore and hit the emergency button her father’s chief of staff had programmed on her phone. “Get away from the door, Harvey.”
The sneer that contorted his face wasn’t in the least complimentary to his looks. Though in the past years the once almost pretty features had taken a turn for the worse anyway. Whatever he’d been involved in hadn’t been healthy. Nor had it been sane, evidently.
“Like hell!” he snapped. “Tell me, Wife, why do you think I married your bitch ass, anyway? Do you really think I needed you to protect me from dear old Dad? Do you really think Marion Stanhope would lay a hand on his only heir? Gay or not? He didn’t beat me that weekend. I did that to myself. I knew that pathetically soft heart of yours would feel sorry for me.”
Well, didn’t that just figure? She hadn’t expected it, but she wasn’t really surprised at this point. She should have suspected it, actually.
Panic was beginning to set in now. She could hear someone yelling at her from the phone in her pocket, knew she’d connected with either her father or his chief, Raeg. Someone would be there soon, she assured herself. Once she hit the panic button her father and Raeg would be rushing to
the house.
“I don’t care why you married me, Harvey,” she informed him calmly, despite the fact that she felt anything but calm. “It didn’t matter to me then and it doesn’t matter to me now.”
“Because poor little Alyssa’s heart was already broken.” He seemed to take mocking delight in that. Not that she’d ever told him it had been broken.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she assured him. “Now get away from the door and let me leave. We’ll discuss this at another time.”
They would discuss it never. She’d be damned if she’d ever allow him to so much as be in the same room with her.
The smile that curled his lips was far too confident. Far too knowing.
“You mean I don’t know about Shane Connor and Sebastian De Loren?” he asked softly, the malice in his gaze growing brighter. “But I do know about them, Alyssa. I know about how you fucked both of them. Do you know how long I’ve waited to throw that in your goody-two-shoes face? That I know you were dumped by the De Loren get? That you left Barcelona with a baby and a broken heart?” He laughed at that. “Poor little Alyssa. It was too bad about the kid. I could have said it was mine. How I would have loved that.”
As he crowed over whatever triumph he felt he had over her, Alyssa slid her hand from the pocket of her jacket, the phone gripped in it to allow everything he said to be heard by Raeg. She was certain it was Raeg. His voice had a particular timbre when he was pissed.
“Let me leave, Harvey,” she repeated, despite the pain she felt at the accusations. Not because he wanted to hurt her. Because remembering had the power to hurt her that much more. “You don’t want to try to make me stay.”
