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“He damn sure took it,” she says, pointing at the chair next to her. “Sit.”
I ignore the order, stopping in front of her, my hands on my hips. “He didn’t need that money,” I repeat. “He took it because he could make you pay him. Because he hates you that much. He’s now got stock. He came here to destroy us.”
“And you really think that if he would have come without the payday, he would have had another motive?”
“He’s here to take over,” I say because it sounds better than his promise that his return would be to “finish us off.”
“Better him than someone else,” she shocks me by saying. “At least then I’ll die with this place in the hands of someone who’s blood, someone who will make it thrive. We don’t know what is going on, but we know it’s bad. This is my legacy. I don’t want it to end in jail.”
“Gigi—”
She holds up a hand. “He’s brilliant. He’ll save your father’s legacy along with mine. Go. Work. Get him what he needs. This is what we both wanted. Eric here, finding out what’s wrong. We got it. Now he’s here.”
“For the wrong reasons,” I say.
She purses her lips. “We’ll see. He wanted to be a part of this family from the day he met his father. We didn’t make him feel like he belonged. And understandably after that, he needed a reason other than that need to be here now. Money, and even revenge, serve that purpose. Now go. Keep an ear to what’s happening.”
I could fight with her, but that achieves nothing obviously and I really do feel a need to be back upstairs, but she’s dismissed my stepfather in all of this. “Your son—”
“Jeff will suck it up and deal with it, just like you. Go.”
I give up, at least for now. I turn and head for the door. “Harper?”
I turn to face her. “Yes?”
“I love you, honey, and you’ve been there for me this past year, but when I tell you to do something, you do it. This is still your job. We both know I gave you instructions where Eric was concerned and you ignored me.””
She’s right. I did. I didn’t want him back here this way for reasons I’d point out, but she won’t listen. I nod and exit the office, a million emotions clawing at me, but I show none. Emotions areused against you in this place. My need to protect my mother and even my father’s legacy is why I’m still here. That need is an emotion. It’s trouble, like Eric, and I can’t seem to walk away from that combination.
Eager to be in my own space, where I can privately melt down and then stand back up and fight, I hurry up the stairs. The doorway to my office is like sweet relief. I enter my office and I’ve made it all of two steps when I hear. “Hello, princess.”
I whirl around to find Eric in the doorway and he doesn’t stay there. He shuts the door and strides toward me, the look in his eyes as predatory as the jaguar on his arm, and like all prey, I’m thrust into a moment where I must make a decision to stand and fight or run. And I am prey. His prey, and before I can make a move, he’s standing in front of me, that earthy male scent of him seducing me.
“We’re not done yet,” he says. “Just in case you hadn’t figured that out by now.”
Chapter sixteen
Harper
Ihave about thirty seconds to process Eric’s declaration that we’re not done before he pulls me close, all that sinewy muscle absorbing my body, that powerful edge that is this man, owning me, and he owns me all too easily. I try to resist. I know I’m the enemy to him. My hand settles on his chest but I’m not sure if it’s to touch him or push him away.
“Eric,” I whisper, and I feel the charge radiating between us, the heat, the ten shades of lust that come from deep, dark places for him and for me; they just exist, because he exists.
He tangles his fingers in my hair, and lowers his mouth to mine. “We are definitely not done yet,” he repeats, the words almost guttural and then his lips are on my lips, his tongue stroking long and deep, stealing my breath and driving away everything but how he tastes, how he feels; that’s how easily I’m lost and found in this man. It doesn’t matter that he could very well be the one to destroy us. Not in this moment, not when he’s kissing me, not when I get that one last taste of him I’ve wished for these past hours, but it’s not a kiss that he allows me to drown in, it’s not even a kiss that lets me swim in the moment.
He tears his mouth from mine, his lips a warm breath from another kiss that I hunger for in ways I didn’t know any man could make me hunger. “I’m here now,” he declares. “Just like you wanted.”
His touch, his taste, his very existence in this room is burning me alive, but so is the hate between him and this family,hisfamily. “This isn’t how I wanted you.”
One of his hands slides up between my shoulder blades, molding me close. The other caresses up my waist, cupping my breast, sending a wave of sensations through my body. “How did you want me, Harper?”
My lashes lower and I pant out a breath. How did I want him? Too many ways. So many ways. “Impossible ways,” I say, trying to tear away from his grip, but he pulls me back to him, that damn earthy scent of him driving me insane, consuming me the way he’s threatening to consume me. The way he already has in some ways for six long years.
“Let go,” I growl. “Let gonow.”
“What impossible ways?”
“Without the hate. You can’t be here and not hate.”
