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He just needed to know that he wasn’t alone.
‘I...think I’ve changed my mind,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I think I might have to go after him after all.’
Annabel didn’t look surprised, only nodding as if she’d expected Glory to do this all along. ‘Of course you do. Well, you helped me get what I wanted. Now let me help you get you what you want.’
So they sat down with the very old laptop of Annabel’s and did a few searches. And eventually uncovered a gossip site full of salacious details of his latest exploits. They were all lies—which she told Annabel, even though she suspected Annabel didn’t believe her—but in the last paragraph she found what she was looking for, mention of a party that was to be held in New York.
She’d had one meeting with Castor’s property manager before she’d decided that living in one of his residences was a mistake, and the apartment in New York had been one of the properties mentioned. She knew where it was.
All she had to do was get there.
‘I’ll pay for your ticket,’ Annabel said, already bringing up the booking website. ‘And don’t even think about arguing, Glory Albright.’
So Glory didn’t, and a couple of days later, she was on the red-eye to JFK. She bought herself a simple dress of red satin that clung to her curves. And over it she put a cloak she’d found in a thrift store, just the way she had that first time.
The party at the Park Avenue penthouse was a nightmare to get into, and she had to let one of his staff know who she was in order to get in, but eventually they let her take the elevator up to the penthouse suite.
It was like the party in Malibu where she’d met him months earlier, thumping music and crowds of people, lots of beautiful women in beautiful dresses and some of them naked. She ignored them all, moving through the crowd unseen, searching for the one man who outshone all of them.
He was nowhere to be found.
Until she finally pushed open the door into a small office and there he was, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over the city skyline.
Her heart clenched at the sight of his tall, familiar figure.
He was alone and he felt alone, and in that moment, she felt it too. They were so similar, her alone in the shadows, him alone in the spotlight.
But it didn’t have to be that way.
‘Castor,’ she murmured.
He went utterly still as if he’d been shot, then he turned around sharply, his face full of shock. ‘Glory?’
She stepped into the room and shut the door, her heart thundering. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she said, then flung off the cloak.
The hollow space in Castor’s chest where his heart should be tolled like a bell.
His little fox was here. Hismikri alepou. And he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.
He’d thought it would be easy not to think of her, and over the couple of weeks he’d thought he’d succeeded. Yet sometimes a glimpse of russet hair or a pair of wide, dark eyes would make his heart race and all his muscles tighten.
Then there were the dreams that left him aroused and aching and wanting more. As if unconsciousness was the only time he could let himself have her.
And as she stood there, so real and lovely with her curls hanging down to her waist and her gorgeous figure outlined to perfection in a red satin dress, he knew all at once he was wrong. That it didn’t matter how many times he told himself to forget her or that he didn’t care about her, she’d somehow found her way into the empty place inside him, the place where his heart should have been.
And he could feel it now, beating hard and fast as he stared at her, a wild rush of adrenaline pumping through him.
She shouldn’t be here, not at one of these parties. It was dangerous.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded, resisting the urge to cross the space between them and drag her into his arms. Because he knew if he did that, he’d never let her go. ‘I thought I told you that—’
‘Give me five minutes,’ she interrupted, her voice very level and very determined. ‘I need to tell you something.’
His jaw was tight, everything ached. The music from the party was shuddering through the walls and he suddenly hated it with everything in him. She’d given him a taste of something more than the life he’d been living for the past twenty years, something better, and now he’d had that taste, going back to his mission was starting to feel more and more impossible.
He didn’t need her here tempting him and weakening his resolve, not when there was still more he had to do.
‘What?’ he growled.
