He was more of an idiot than he’d thought.
How could he have been so stupid? He knew how to treat a woman. Knew how to wine and dine her with the best of them. And yet the only time he’d taken Lacey out, they’d ended up in a strip joint. He hadn’t cooked her dinner or breakfast. Hadn’t done anything besides—and she was dead-on when she’d hurled the accusation at him—fuck her.
But he hadn’t meant to overlook that stuff. He’d been trying to give her more, trying to give her everything she wanted and needed. He’d thought by helping her live out her fantasies—one sexy scenario at a time—that she’d understand. That she’d realize he was willing to do whatever it took to make her happy. By helping her with her work, he’d thought he was being supportive.
But he’d screwed up. She thought the sex was all that mattered to him. He almost laughed at the thought. He wanted her for so many things that it was hard to imagine she’d gotten it so very wrong. Yes, he loved having sex with her—he’d have to be insane not to—but at the same time he just loved being with her.
He loved how her eyes lit up when she was talking about something that mattered to her, loved how they turned dark as a trans-Atlantic storm when she was upset. Truth be told, he loved everything about her, and it bothered him a great deal that she thought he took her for granted. Worse, that she thought he didn’t care about her.
“Lacey, I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job of taking care of you. I—”
“That’s just it: I don’t want you to take care of me. I can take care of myself.”
Warning bells went off in his head, but he ignored them as he tried to feel his way around his lover’s volatile mood. “All right. Then I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that my expectations for this relationship had changed—I should have. But things have been so intense between us—surely you know I care about you.”
“I don’t want you to care about me, and I sure as hell don’t want to care about you. I’m not looking for all this sexual intensity and angst. I just want to have a little fun.”
Her words hit him like an earthquake, shaking him up and bringing up insecurities he’d spent years trying to bury.
What the hell was so fucking wrong with him that no one he loved ever loved him back?
Pushing the question—and the hurt that came with it—to the back of his mind, he said, “So, let me get this straight: You ran away like I had the plague because you don’t want to get serious?”
“No!”
“Then what? Help me out here, Lacey, because I’m pretty damn confused.”
“I want—” She stopped.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t want to get emotionally involved. I don’t want to have to think about anything but having a good time when we’re together. I don’t want to lose control.” There were tears in her eyes, but he was too angry—and too hurt—to pay attention.
“Is that why you write those fantasies and post them on the Internet? So you can stay in control? Or so you can control hundreds—thousands—of men you’ve never even met?”
She froze, her eyes going wide at his words. But he was too far gone to care. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it, sweetheart? You want power, and the only way you think you can get it is by staying in control.”
“How do you know about my blog?” she whispered. “Nobody knows about it.”
“Everybody knows about it. How many hits do you get a day—a hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand, maybe?”
“That’s not what I meant. Nobody’s supposed to know it’s me!”
“Why not?” He advanced on her. “Why isn’t anyone supposed to know what you want? You hide that part of yourself from everyone—even your lovers. Why?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” She was backing up, eyes wide, hand held out in front of her.
“Of course you don’t. You’re much better on the offensive, aren’t you, sweetheart? Telling what you don’t want. Telling what you don’t like. God forbid anyone should look close enough to figure out what it is you really do want. Because you don’t have a clue, do you?”
Lacey bit her lip hard in an effort to keep her tears from falling. It worked, barely, but she didn’t know how long she could keep her emotions in check. Not with Byron stripping her raw, battering away her defenses with each well-placed accusation.
“It’s not like that!”
“Then what is it like? Tell me—because from the second I found out that you were the one writing those fantasies, I wanted to know why. Why would a beautiful woman like you—who could have any man she wants—resort to living vicariously through her fantasies? Why would you choose fake emotions, fake encounters, over real ones?”
He laughed bitterly. “Of course, that’s not exactly what happens, is it? You’re one of those have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too kind of girls, aren’t you? The kind who wants a lover dancing to her tune while she keeps hundreds of other men on a string.”
“That’s not true!”
“Isn’t it?” His lips twisted. “Then tell me, please, what’s it all about?”
Lacey started to answer, but his words were tearing her to ribbons. She wasn’t the way he was accusing her of being. Dangling a bunch of men on a string, watching them dance over her thoughts and desires, even as she gave her body to another man. One she didn’t want to share any part of herself with. One she trusted with her body but not with her emotions.
“You don’t understand.”
“So make me understand.” He raised one brow sardonically. “If you can.”
“How long have you known about the fantasies?”
He shrugged. “Long enough.”
Her stomach twisted and turned. “Have you known all along?”
“Does it matter?”
“No. I don’t know.” She glanced away, refused to look at him. “My whole life, I’ve been a good little girl. Always doing what I’m supposed to, never asking the hard questions except at work, never causing any trouble for anyone. Not my parents, not my friends, not my lover.”
“I don’t know about that—I think you’ve given your lover plenty of trouble.”
“Not you.” His face turned pale, and she realized in an instant how he must have interpreted her words. “I mean, not now. You’re my only lover now, but a couple years ago, there was this guy . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Ah yes. The ubiquitous other guy. The one the good guys always have to pay for.” He took a step closer to her, but this time it was about comfort instead of control. Still, she shrugged him off. She’d never get through this if he was touching her—she might not even get through it with him across the room.
“Anyway, he was smart, successful, everyone loved him. My friends, my parents, everyone.”
Something flickered in Byron’s eyes and his jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything. She stared at him for a minute, waiting, but when he continued to regard her in silence, she continued. “Curtis was a real charmer—and very sexually magnetic. Like you.”
His eyebrows rose at her description of him, but he didn’t interrupt.
“But he was different in private. Meaner. More controlling. He kept up a great face outside, but the second we were alone, it was his way, no exceptions. I didn’t even get the highway option, and believe me, after a few months, I would have begged for it.
“At first I told myself it was no big deal. He never really hurt me—just little pinches, some hair pulling when I put up a fuss. Everyone else loved him, so I figured it was my fault. Especially when he kept telling me that it was. But then—” She paused, worked up the nerve to look at Byron. He was so rigid he might be confused for a statue, if he wasn’t wearing clothes. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear about this.”
“Yes, I do.”
She stared at him for long seconds, at his rigidly working jaw and clenched fists. “Anyway, same old story. He started to bitch about my job, my friends, everything. He didn’t want me to go out without him. A
nd at the same time he worked on my self-esteem, convinced me that I was nothing without him. For a long time, I believed him. Then my dad died and my mom needed me. Curtis didn’t want me to go, didn’t want me to attend my own father’s funeral. Can you imagine? For the first time in a long time, I didn’t care. I just walked out. And with every step I took away from him, I remembered who I was. Remembered what I wanted from my life.”
She shrugged. “I’ve spent the last eighteen months trying to figure out who I am.”
“And have you succeeded?”
“I thought I had. And then I met you, and my head got all messed up again. I don’t want to lose myself again. If I give in to you, I don’t think I’ll ever make it back.”
“What about being involved with me makes you think that you’ll lose yourself?”
“You’re so strong, so in control all the time. You want to rule me, and I don’t want to be ruled. Not now. Not ever again.”
“Lacey, that’s absurd. I have never tried to rule you.”
“You do it in bed all the time, but that never really bothered me. Today, though, you did it.”
He stared at her blankly. “What does that mean? When?”
“On the street. With Derek. You dragged me away like I was a dog; threw me in your truck like I was something you owned.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Don’t tell me my feelings are ridiculous!” He looked like he wanted to argue some more, but she walked to her front door and opened it. “I want you to leave now.”
“You don’t mean that.” He reached for her, but she evaded him.
“I do mean it.”
“Lacey.”
“Go, Byron.”
He stared at her for long seconds, but then finally turned and left—like she’d known he would all along.
Chapter Twenty-two
Byron slammed into his apartment, fury and anger twisting inside him as he headed straight for the refrigerator and a cold beer.
What the hell just happened? he wondered as he popped the top of the bottle and drank half the beer in one swallow. How the fuck had they gone from making love in the shower this morning to that debacle of a scene in Lacey’s apartment? More important, what the hell was he going to do about it?
She’d asked him to leave her apartment like he was some kind of animal—some kind of monster. Like he couldn’t be trusted around her, or something. What had he done that was so bad? he wondered for what had to be the fiftieth time.
He’d tried to replay in his head the scene that had happened down the street from his workshop, but most of it was a red haze. He remembered seeing that bastard shaking Lacey, remembered getting in the middle of the two of them, remembered pulling her away, but much of the rest—right up until he’d ripped Lacey’s panties down her legs and thrust inside her—was blurry.
Had he hurt her somehow, in the midst of all that fury? Done something to scare her? Except she hadn’t seemed scared; she’d seemed as irritated and unsettled as he had been. And up until a half hour ago, he would have sworn that she had given as good as she’d gotten.
Control? He downed the rest of the beer and then reached for a second one. She thought he wanted to control her, thought he would control her. What a fucking crock that was. She’d obviously underestimated him—and herself. There was nothing he would change about her, nothing he wanted to control. And then to find out she was comparing him—unfavorably—to that jackass she’d been with before? He couldn’t ever remember being more pissed off.
When she’d been telling him about the guy, he’d wanted nothing better than to find him and rip his fucking head off. To teach him some manners. To explain in words of one syllable that there was a right way and a wrong way to treat a lady, and that his way had been way fucking wrong. The idea of Lacey at the mercy of some prick infuriated him. The idea that he’d ripped apart her self-esteem like a fucking Weedwhacker, until she didn’t know where to turn, was even worse. Guys like that didn’t deserve the fucking title.
And she thought he was like this guy. Like fucking Curtis, with his little dick and his fucked-up power plays? How was that possible?
A little of the hurt he’d been doing his damnedest to suppress leaked through at the thought. Maybe he shouldn’t take it personally, maybe he should try harder to see it from her point of view, but it was difficult when she’d compared him to a guy who was the antithesis of everything he respected.
When the fuck was this nightmare going to end? When the hell was somebody going to see him for who he was instead of what they expected to see? His whole fucking life his father had told him he was a failure, that he wasn’t good enough, that he’d never measure up. He’d worked his ass off to prove to the old man that he was wrong, had nearly worked himself into an early grave.
And when he’d explained to his dad—the doctor—about his stress levels and insomnia and everything else that went hand in hand with the life, the guy had called him a pussy. Told him he needed to toughen the fuck up.
Like thirty-two years with that man wouldn’t toughen up a fucking marshmallow.
Eventually, he’d told his father to screw off and had moved down here. Had started a new life for himself. Had thought he was doing pretty damn good—right up until Lacey had coldcocked him with her accusations. Suddenly, he was right back where he’d started, trying to prove himself to someone who had no desire to see him succeed.
And for what? Her approval? Her body? Her love? Setting his beer down with a resounding thud, he crossed to the balcony. Stripped off his wet clothes and pulled on a pair of ratty old jeans. Threw open the door and stepped outside.
The rain had stopped and the picturesque courtyard with its fountain and bouquets of flowers and wrought-iron benches was back to its normal tranquillity.
He let his eyes wander to Lacey’s apartment. There was a light on in her bedroom, and if he looked hard enough, he was almost certain he could see her silhouette against her curtains. But that made him feel too much like the perverted bastard she’d accused him of being—not to mention took him right back to where they’d been a week ago—so he forced himself to look away.
He was so goddamned tired of living down to someone else’s expectations of him, so tired of trying to prove himself to people who expected him to fail. Expected him to be an asshole. Expected him to be unlovable.
And isn’t this just a fucking righteous pity party? he asked himself with a snarl as he went back in to get his beer. Absolutely pathetic to be sitting here, waiting for a woman who thought he was a complete and total loser.
His anger didn’t stop him from grabbing his beer and heading back to the balcony, any more than it kept him from willing Lacey to come out. To look for him as he was looking for her. But her balcony remained quiet, the only movement in the courtyard that of the owl who made his home in the big tree near the gate.
He didn’t know how long he sat out on the balcony, watching, waiting for Lacey to come out. When he was about to give up, to go back into his apartment and say to hell with women, her bedroom light flickered out. Great; so she was going to get a good night’s sleep while he was torturing himself with everything he’d done wrong. Wasn’t that just—
A scream pierced the air—one high-pitched, terrified shriek that had his blood pumping and his adrenaline soaring. He recognized it instinctively as Lacey’s, though he’d never heard her yell like that before, as if she had just found a very big, very hairy, fanged monster in her closet.
Or a sex trader.
The thought had his blood running cold, and he wasted precious seconds trying to see what was happening inside her apartment. But it was pitch-black and he couldn’t see a damn thing. By the time it registered that Lacey always—always—had a small light burning, he was already moving toward the door.
He took the stairs three at a time, his heart pounding with a fear he had never felt before in his thirty-four years. If he didn’t get to her in time, if those bastards took her, he might nev
er find her. She could end up like—
He cut himself off in midthought, pushing himself to run harder, faster. But by the time he got to Lacey’s apartment, it was empty, the door gaping wide open in accusation.
Acting on instinct alone, he raced down the stairs, hitting the ground running as he jumped from the landing halfway down the flight of steps. But again he was too late; by the time he got to the small parking lot behind the building, he saw a flash of red hair as Lacey was loaded into a black SUV.
“Hey!” He ran screaming across the pavement, barely noticing the heat of the asphalt on his bare feet as he tried desperately to reach her in time, knowing even as he ran flat-out that he didn’t have a chance.
The SUV careened out of the lot and sped down Burgundy. His keys were in his apartment, so he ran after it for five blocks, memorizing the license plate when he was close and then just trying to keep the vehicle in sight as it got farther and farther from him. It made a screeching right onto Canal Street, and though by that time he knew it was hopeless, he kept running, praying for a miracle. For something, anything to stop them.
But when he made it to the corner of Canal, which was bustling on the busy Friday night, the SUV had blended into the hundreds of other SUVs on the street, and Lacey was gone.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He stopped dead, bracing his hands on his knees as he dragged air into his starving lungs. Panic was a living, breathing animal inside him, raking him with razor-sharp claws as he tried desperately to think. To figure out what to do.
He reached for his cell phone, only to realize he didn’t have it with him. He didn’t have anything—no shirt, no shoes, no wallet, no phone. Nothing. Jesus Christ, Lacey was totally screwed.
There were people on the street, and he asked to borrow a cell phone, but they all looked at him like he was crazy and gave him a wide berth. Not that he blamed them—he probably looked as homicidal as he felt.
Crossing Burgundy at a jog, he swept into the Ritz-Carlton on the corner and made a beeline for the courtesy phone. A security guard tried to intercept him, but he shrugged him off as he dialed 911.