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She wanted to crawl into his arms and weep. She wanted to beg him to hold her so tight that she didn’t have to acknowledge the painful truth in his words. She wanted so much from a man who could dispassionately arrange his own life to mitigate emotional pain.
“Remember that I said it is one thing to know one’s weaknesses and a whole other thing to actually do something about them?” His smile was all teeth and no real warmth. “I never said you should give them up, Ms. Menon. Only that you shouldn’t let them hurt you.
“Why leave yourself vulnerable to people who have a high chance of hurting you? Why not protect yourself?”
“How would you do it then? Draw boundaries around what they’re allowed to do? Create rules for them to follow? I can’t live like that.” She wanted to walk away from him then because she was angry with him. Angry with herself. “Keeping everyone out, being cold and calculating like you are, loneliness eating away at me. Isolated from both joy and pain, with nothing to show for my life but material success and wealth and mansions,” she practically yelled at him, fury and pain stealing away any rational sense.
She froze, disgusted and astonished with herself in equal measures.
Bracing for him to either cut her down to size or to laugh and tell her he didn’t need her pity because lonely was the last thing he was. She wasn’t even sure it was true. Only an impression she’d formed of him. Mostly full of delusion, maybe.
He simply stood there, without blinking, staring at her, waiting for the storm that was her temper to pass. As if he were one of the tall palm trees that bent and swayed during tornados but never broke.
After what felt like an eternity, he said, “Are you less lonely than I am, Ms. Menon? Truly not hurt by your stepsister’s selfishness, your stepmother’s thoughtlessness? Lie to me all you want, but I thought you weren’t the kind to lie to yourself.”
With that simple, softly spoken question, he made her look at herself. At all her patterns and behaviors. At her dreams and fears.
“You don’t have to take my word as law, Ms. Menon,” he said, when she just looked at him, still hurt and angry.
His voice was full of a gentleness that felt like a lash against her skin.
His gaze did one final sweep of her, from her tear-filled eyes to her trembling mouth. When his eyes met hers, the look of resignation was so absolute that she wanted to beg him to not shut her out. “My obligation to you as your employer doesn’t stretch that far. And beyond the basic courtesy, I don’t have a personal concern in your well-being.
“Believe me, I have enough messed-up people to take care of.”
And just like that, she was reminded, not undeservedly, that she was only his employee. He left before she could offer him an apology.
She’d offered him an apology for an earlier insult and had then immediately committed a new offense against him. But it was only with him that she lost her usually placid temper.
Only him who from the first moment of meeting her had challenged all her own beliefs and made her reexamine everything in her life. And every time he did that, she ended up not liking what she discovered.
CHAPTER EIGHT
COLDANDCALCULATING...
She’d made it clear what she thought of him when she’d told him that a few days ago. It wasn’t as if Vikram didn’t already know that about himself. But it had never bothered him this much before, like a shard of wood stuck under his skin.
She’d also proved that she was no match for him, for all that she boldly bandied words with him. Not when he didn’t temper his words or his personality. He’d hurt her. Especially when she’d sought him out in the first place so she could express her concern at his restlessness.
Damn it, what did the woman want from him? Why did she look at him with those big eyes in which he could clearly read longing and desire and hurt? Why didn’t she stay away?
Because that’s what he was trying his damnedest to do.
He hated this obsession with her, that was slowly but surely spiraling out of control.
It wasn’t as if he could have a fling with her and work her out of his system. For one thing, she worked for him. He absolutely wasn’t going to engage in some torrid affair with an employee and then throw her away like his father had done several times over. For another, she was...no sophisticate who knew the name of the game.
She was the kind of girl around whom epic love stories were written. And he wasn’t a hero on his very best day.
So, the last thing he needed to do was to seek her out.
But ever since Mrs. Sharma had pointed out that Naina had missed the team dinner he’d organized this evening, he hadn’t been able to focus. It was strange enough that she’d deviate from anything he asked of her professionally.
She usually made it a point of retiring to her room long before he returned to their villa and it was already past eleven. Once he found her bedroom empty, there was no stopping him.
He walked out of their villa, already a strange thrill gripping him with each step. Why was it that even a confrontation with the woman held more appeal than a night of hard sex with someone else?
He would be professional if it killed him. He would keep his distance from her even if it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.
