Enraptured (6 page)

He’d been generous if a little sleazy.

She inwardly shrugged. Perhaps this time she’d give in to
his request that she fuck another woman while he watched. Least it might take
her mind off a certain male for a while.

Yeah, fat chance.

Her cell buzzed. She frowned. Caller ID showed a private
number. And no one who knew her business number rang her incognito.

It had to be Blaine.

She wouldn’t answer.

Oh fuck it.

“Brandy,” she managed.

“Kate. I thought I could leave you alone. I can’t.”

“Blaine, don’t,” she whispered, voice cracking. “Just…don’t.”

For the sake of my weakening resolve.

“I’m coming over.”

“No. I won’t be here. I’m…leaving. You won’t see me again.”

“Kate, no!”

“Goodbye, Blaine.”

“Don’t hang up—”

As she disconnected she couldn’t stop the sudden avalanche
of tears from coming down her face, couldn’t keep all the discordant emotions
from spilling free.

She looked around her apartment. She’d lived a good life
here, but maybe it was time to start fresh…with everything. She would hire some
discreet moving specialist to pack away her possessions and put them into
storage. Then she’d sell this place.

And then?

It didn’t really matter. She’d nurse her bruised heart and
rebuild her life, in just the same way she had after her parents’ breakup.

Her mother’s suicide.

She sucked in a breath, striving not to open the floodgates
to her memories that were so painful she never revisited. But suddenly the
recollection hit her front and center and she was a spectator looking from the
outside in.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Kate stopped at the wire gate that hung crookedly from its
hinges, admirably showcasing the neglect of the front yard. Not to mention the
home and the people within it.

She scuffed her worn sneaker on the cracked sidewalk,
reluctant to enter the house that had long ago stopped being a home.

In the three months since her dad had walked out on them,
her once vivacious mother had become as scarred on the inside as she was on the
outside. A listless, uncaring woman whose inner torment pushed away her only
child who wanted nothing more than to love her.

She sighed, wishing she could simply turn away and leave,
run away from the life that’d somehow befallen her.

Leave? And go where? Back to school where the many
vultures want to pick off what little is left of my dignity?

The only thing she had to savor at school was Jeremy, the
boy two years her senior. He’d been sending her secretive smiles and suggestive
glances for weeks now. Oh she knew he wanted one thing and one thing only—he’d
already been with at least a handful of girls in his class—but the thrill and
flattery of it all outweighed any of the negative.

She was wanted. That counted for more than just about
anything in her life right then.

Another sigh left her lips, a far more wretched sound than
before as she tramped up the short, weed-infested path to the front door. Time
to clean the mess that was undoubtedly inside. Time to cook and play slave in waiting
to her shell of a mother.

She opened the front door with dread infusing her system.

Her eyes widened. Awareness hit her hard. In the tiny
entrance hallway, the gold-framed mirror that’d once hung in pride of place had
been knocked to the floor, big, jagged pieces of glass littering the faded tan
carpet.

“Mother!”

Her breath caught. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
Everything within her knew something was terribly wrong.

She sprinted into the sparse kitchen and dining room combo.
Her eyes jerked left and right. The squeaky clean interior frightened her as
much as the broken mirror in the entryway.

Perhaps more.

“Mother!” she screamed.

The two bedrooms of the house were empty. Shit. Where was
she? She pressed a hand to her mouth. Had her mother left her too?

A dripping tap abruptly snared her attention. The repetitive
sound was loud as a drum in the stifling silence.

The bathroom.

She crashed open its door.

Her mother’s body lay mannequin-still and lifeless in the
tub. Blood-red water overflowed the rim and onto the white-tiled floor. A hand
still clutched the jagged piece of glass she’d used to slit her wrists.

“Mum,” she whispered numbly.

Paris. A city of love and romance.

Brandy could only hope a little of that would rub off on her
and lend her…something. Anything. Because right then she felt little more than
dull apathy.

She brushed at her arms as a chill settled over her. She was
turning into her mother. A shell with too little life and light left inside.

Except, unlike her mother, at least she still had her looks.

And when those looks fade…?

She gnawed at her bottom lip, her hands interlacing. She’d
worry about that when it happened. For now she was youthful and beautiful and
should be enjoying every moment of it.

Besides, she’d have made her money by then. When her call
girl days were behind her she’d be wealthy in her own right.

She sagged against the luxurious leather seat, taking deep,
calming breaths. This was the life she’d fought hard to attain. This was the
life she’d always wanted. Except people grew and changed, some even discovered
what they’d once wanted badly and finally got was no longer of consequence.

Had that happened to her?

Financial ease. Men adoring her. Independence.

Shouldn’t that be enough?

But something within her
had
changed. She couldn’t
deny it any longer. The incredible wonder she’d experienced from her very first
sexual encounter and then all the ones afterward had faded, though she wanted
only to recall and embrace that heady feeling again.

She closed her eyes, thinking back to the day that’d changed
her whole life and sent her into the call girl profession.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”

Kate paused, hating the tone of condescension in her foster
dad’s voice. Even without seeing him from where he sat behind the horrid floral
couch, she could well imagine the contempt pressed into his haughty face. “Out.”

Was it wrong to hate her foster parents? After all, they’d
taken her in after her mother’s death, clothed and fed her. But the one thing
she craved—love—they’d been unable to give her.

The feeling was mutual.

She snorted. The pair of them barely loved one another, how
did she expect them to embrace her too?

“Not a good idea,” her foster mum chimed in beside her
husband on the couch. “The last thing you need is to have some fella take
advantage of you and knock you up.”

“That’s not going to happen—”

“Leaving you with some bastard child,” he foster mother
continued, “just like what happened to your mother with you.”

Kate strode over to the front of the couch and faced her
revolting foster parents with nothing less than scorn. “I’d rather live my life
the way my mother did, loving someone wholeheartedly, than end my days as a
loveless sack of shit like you two.”

She turned away with them both shouting obscenities. She
didn’t care. She wouldn’t be going back. Not for anything. From now on she’d
make her own way in the world.

Somehow.

The moon was a tiny sliver high in the sky, barely yielding
any light. But never had the night looked more beautiful, dark velvet edged
with untold promise. She all but skipped to the car waiting just down the road
from her house.

And as she climbed into the front seat, she didn’t think
beyond the moment when Jeremy, no longer a school student but an apprentice to
his father’s law firm, dragged her toward him in the driver’s seat and kissed
her like he couldn’t get enough.

Seventeen and never been kissed, Kate responded to him
equally as passionately…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Brandy smiled as the car of the present braked to a stop and
the memory faded.

She’d lost her inhibitions all those years ago. Jeremy had
made the girl a woman. And then, when he’d been about to drive her home and she
explained she had no home to go to any more, he’d inadvertently turned her into
a businesswoman.

He’d given her a hundred-dollar note and planted the seed
that would become her future inside her head.

A valet opened her door. She nodded thanks, her heels clacking
on the pebbled drive of the hotel’s grand portico entrance. Leaving her luggage
in the capable hands of the hotel’s porters, she approached the count who
waited for her beside the huge glass doors.

Though nothing like Blaine, Pierre was nevertheless charming
and good-looking in his own way, with his olive skin and messily styled,
raven-colored hair.

“Thank you for coming,” he said with a wide smile, his
appreciative gaze sliding over her as though he was a bidder at auction eyeing
a fine filly. “I trust you had an enjoyable flight?”

She accepted his outstretched hands with a gracious smile
and murmured, “I did. Your private jet is opulent and beyond comfortable.”

“Good, good.” He brought her in close before one of his arms
snaked around her waist.

She leaned into him, though every instinct screamed at her
to step away. His touch on her was all kinds of wrong.

“Come.” He drew her inside the huge entrance doors. A
waterfall cascaded over rocks the size of boulders between escalators. Huge
chandeliers glittered from a high-domed ceiling. “Let me show you around before
we get down to business.”

She nodded stiffly before casting him the most enticing expression
she could muster. “Sure.”

Somehow the coming seduction held no appeal. She should
blame Calvin for that. But she knew without a doubt it was Blaine who’d
compromised her enjoyment and passion of being with anyone else. She’d be unable
to help comparing her clients to him. Their touches, their glances. God, their
everything
would all be sadly lacking.

I’m in love with Blaine.

Realization hit and left her reeling. But then a smile lit
her face and she realized she was anything but stricken. Certainty made things
a whole lot easier to deal with. No more indecision. No more being too scared
to face the truth.

She’d tell the count her true feelings and hope he had
enough romance within him to understand.

But then he swept her into a melee of people and noise and
she knew she’d have to leave blurting out her confession until a little later.

Blaine strode through the expansive lobby of the lavish
hotel, his eyes taking in little else but the guests milling around.

His gut clenched with an urgency borne of desperation as he
scanned and disregarded every woman in the vicinity. None had Kate’s glorious
strawberry-blonde hair. None had her gorgeous svelte figure along with an aura,
a presence, that drew the eye.

The sick feeling in the pit of his belly grew and grew.

Fuck.
He was too late. Way too late.

He could picture all too clearly Kate—his Kate—beneath the count,
her eyes closed in ecstasy with her lips plundered and her body strummed as if
it was some well-loved instrument.

His jaw clenched, teeth aching with the effort to restrain
the anger within. Pierre Moretti wasn’t the right man for Kate. Christ, the man
didn’t love her. He had no right to touch her, kiss her and fuck her.

None.

It mattered little to him that Kate’s profession gave the
man every right in the world to touch, kiss and fuck her.

She. Was. His.

He drew in a long, steadying breath. He’d hoped the week she’d
taken off on her own volition would make her see what he knew she felt, if only
she’d admit it.

She loved him as much as he loved her.

But it seemed it’d had the reverse effect. And little
wonder. He’d turned his back on her when she’d needed him most. He’d presumed
the worst of her, believed the sack of shit, Calvin, over her. By doing so he’d
scorned the goodness she carried inside her like a torch, the same goodness
that’d attracted him to her right from the start.

Though few people saw the vulnerability beneath her worldly
outer shell, he’d always seen it. It was even less excuse that he’d thrown her
vulnerability right back in her face. He could only guess that by doing so, her
battered emotions had pushed her right back into the ingrained habits she’d
spent half a lifetime grooming, probably from the day she lost her virginity.

But did she really think those habits would stave off
whatever demons she carried around from her past?

He’d had the rest of her history thoroughly investigated in
the week she’d taken off work…in the week he’d gone out of his mind with
wanting her. At least now everything about her made sense. Aside from the fact
she loved sex, it was little wonder she’d fallen into the role of call girl.

She faced abandonment issues few people could understand.
First her father walking away from his family, and then her mother taking her
own life. On top of it all, she’d had a childhood of bullying to contend with.
Little wonder she didn’t trust easily. Didn’t love easily.

As a call girl, she was in control of the situation…the man.
She was the one who walked away—always. She was the beautiful woman clients
didn’t want to lose, not the other way around.

A flash of red caught his eye, startling him out of his
reverie.

Kate. And her client.

The count, a renowned playboy and party animal, snagged her
close as they stopped at a bank of elevators. Blaine’s heartbeat quickened. The
surroundings dimmed, his focus all on Kate. She looked beautiful, elegant and
sexy. But he knew her well enough to see she hid her true feelings. She was
every bit as wretched as he was right then.

His limbs moved before he’d even formulated a plan.

There was no time for thinking. Only action.

“Kate!”

Brandy stiffened, causing her client’s arm to tighten around
her.

Blaine?

No. Impossible.

The elevator doors glided apart. She stepped inside the
carriage with Pierre, determination filling her. Finally alone, she could tell
the man who was supposed to be her client the truth.

Then she heard a much louder and more desperate shout.

“Kate, stop!”

“Someone’s got it bad,” chuckled the count, his arm once
again tightening around her waist. “I wonder who the elusive Kate is?”

Brandy held her breath, fixated by the elevator doors as
they silently began to glide shut. At least, until a pair of hands took hold
and put a halt to the automatic function.

A total sense of unreality swept over her as the doors held,
then re-opened, framing Blaine who stood outside the elevator. Dizziness
assailed her. She shouldn’t be surprised. Deep down, she’d known it was him the
moment he’d called out her name.

A muscle jumped in Blaine’s jaw. “You’re wearing red.”

She swallowed. Managing a nod, she uttered inanely, “Yes, it’s…I’m
so used to the color…”

“Kate, don’t do this,” he said softly, though every atom
inside her body perceived he was hurting.

The count peered down at her, his face perplexed. “Brandy?”

Her attention stayed fixated on Blaine. “I can’t be your
mistress, Blaine.”

What she’d known all along—if she’d only admitted it to herself—struck
her as if a lightning bolt. Blaine was forever or nothing. She couldn’t accept
him any other way.

“That’s not what I want either. Not anymore. I want all of
you, Kate. Not just what you can give me in the bedroom. I want to have a home
with you…a family. Everything.” He smiled a slightly lopsided smile. “After I’d
coerced you into attending the fundraiser, I’d planned to do this whole
romantic proposal thing once we were alone—”

Proposal?

Her breath caught in her throat as hope bloomed and spread. “Wh…what?”

A crowd was beginning to gather outside, watching the
spectacle unfolding.

“I realize now what I should have a long time ago. The most
precious things in life can’t be bought. Baby, your love is priceless.” Blaine
dug into his jacket pocket. He sank onto a knee, an opened jewelry box with a
gorgeous gold ring encrusted with diamonds sitting snug inside. “I want a
lifetime with you, Kate. As my wife. Will you marry me?”

She was speechless. Stunned. She’d got him so wrong! She’d
experienced prejudice as a call girl, and yet she’d been so incredibly
judgmental herself on so many levels. When he’d shown her the harbor-side
mansion, it wasn’t because he’d wanted her there as his mistress. She had no
doubt in her mind right then that he’d planned to reveal it after he’d
proposed.

When he’d told her he was saving the romance for later, he’d
really meant it.

Her voice cracked. “Yes, Blaine. A million times, yes!”

He grinned, his stare adoring and inconceivably damp. “I
love you.”

“I love you too,” she whispered, everything inside her
overflowing with devotion for the man before her. The man she would marry. The
man who’d spent quite some time already on one knee.

He slipped on the beautiful ring. When he straightened, she stepped
away from Pierre and into Blaine’s arms, only half aware of the smattering of
applause and heartfelt sighs outside the elevator.

No more doubts, no more insecurities. She’d love Blaine with
everything she had and then some. She
did
love Blaine with everything
she had. She looked up at him with tenderness filling her from the inside out.
He’d pushed her out of her comfort zone, made her see she wasn’t really living,
just existing on life’s fringes.

Sex couldn’t replicate love, no matter how much she enjoyed
the act.

Blaine tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his eyes
alight with adoration when he bent his head and his mouth slanted across hers,
sealing the deal. She leaned into him, deepening the kiss, not wanting to ever
let him go again.

Someone cleared their throat. Blaine pulled back first,
however reluctantly, and glanced at the count.

The other man shook his head. “And to think I had such grand
plans tonight.”

Blaine tucked her closer. She tilted her head up and smiled
at her future husband, aware this time his possessiveness felt right. Good.