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Blowing out a breath, she got her new clothes out of the packaging. Sitting in the bathroom wouldn’t solve anything. It was time to face the music and wrap this up once and for all.
* * *
Five minutes later she walked back into the suite, feeling a lot more steady with the new jeans and T-shirt and fresh underwear on. He’d donned his T-shirt and discarded the overshirt, but even covered, his pecs looked impressive as they flexed against the soft cotton while he levered himself off the couch.
She noticed the divorce papers on the coffee table in front of him. He must have had them couriered over. Relief was mixed with a strange emptiness at the thought that he’d already signed them. Which was, of course, ridiculous.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she said, polite and distant, even though her body was already humming with awareness. Clearly that would never change.
‘Really?’
He still sounded surly. Maybe she should have come out a bit sooner.
She didn’t dignify the question with an answer. Crossing the room to the coffee pot on the sideboard, she poured herself a cup to buy some time. Even after half an hour of prepping she didn’t know what to say to him.
The tense silence stretched between them as she took a quick gulp of the hot liquid and winced. ‘I see you still like your coffee strong enough to Tarmac a road,’ she commented.
The unbidden memory made her fingers tremble. She turned to find him watching her.
‘I don’t know what you want from me, Dane. I’ve said I’m sorry for what my father did, for what happened. Obviously our break-up...’ She paused, clarified. ‘The way our break-up happened was regrettable. But I want to end this amicably. I can’t stay in New York any longer.’
Because, however tempting it would be to indulge herself, let her body dictate her next move, she never wanted to be a slave to her libido again.
‘That’s why you came here? To end this amicably?’
It was a leading question. And, while it hadn’t been the reason she’d boarded the plane yesterday morning at Heathrow, she felt an odd tightening in her chest at the thought of what they’d shared the day before and through the night. Stupid as it was, her heart skipped a beat.
Had she been kidding herself all along? Despite the implications for Carmichael’s, she could have done this whole process by proxy. It would have been simpler...more efficient. But as soon as Bill had mentioned Dane’s name to her she’d been bound and determined to do it in person. And she suspected her reasons were much more complex than the ones she’d admitted to herself.
How much had her coming here really had to do with the threat to Carmichael’s? And how much to do with that grief-stricken girl who had mourned the loss of him as much as she had mourned the loss of their baby?
He had been the catalyst—the one who’d shown her she was more, could be more than her father had ever given her credit for. And, despite the shocks to her system in the last hours, she would always be grateful to have discovered that he hadn’t abandoned her the way her father had wanted her to believe.
Placing the coffee mug back on the counter, she faced him fully. ‘Honestly? I think I needed to see you again. And, as difficult as this has been—I’m sure for both of us—I’m glad I did.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes.’ Why did he still sound so annoyed?
‘Nice speech. I guess that’s my cue to sign these?’ He scooped the divorce papers up from the table. ‘And then get out of your way?’
‘I suppose...’ she said, feeling oddly ambivalent about the papers, her pulse beginning to hammer at her collarbone.
He didn’t just sound surly now. He sounded furious. And he wasn’t making much of an effort to hide it.
‘Tough, because that’s not gonna happen.’ He ripped the papers in two, then in two again, the tearing sound echoing around the room. Then he flung the pieces at her feet.
‘Why did you do that?’ She bent to pick them up, her heart hammering so hard now she thought it might burst.
Grasping her arm, he hauled her upright. ‘Because I’m not as dumb as you think I am. I know what your phoney divorce papers are really for. To stop me claiming the fifty-five per cent of your old man’s company he left to your husband in his will.’
‘But...’ Her knees dissolved. The blow was made all the more devastating by the look of total disgust on his face.
‘You didn’t come here to end a damn thing amicably. You came here to play me.’
‘That’s not true.’
But even as she said it she could feel the guilt starting to strangle her. Because when she’d come here that was exactly what she’d intended to do.
