House of Payne: Steele (27 page)

“Neither do I.” Heaven knew she reveled in the knowledge that she was now free of her attacker’s shadow. But she couldn’t deny she was stunned, and strangely humbled, by the lengths to which Steele had gone to make sure the agony of her past no longer crippled her present.

God help her, it made her love this unloving man all the more.

“I’ll do anything to make sure that from this point on, nothing but beauty touches your life,” he went on, and the fierceness in his eyes was almost frightening to see. “All that matters is
you
.”

How could he say that, think that, and still not love her? “I guess I should thank you for freeing me of that monster once and for all.”

“I don’t want thanks. What I want is for you to have everything you should have had from the beginning. You deserve a life that’s lived to the fullest, not wasted away hiding inside yourself.”

“At least I had the guts to admit I was locked up inside myself. But you…” The vision of him blurred as her eyes swam with burning wetness, but she didn’t care if he saw it. This man gave her both everything and nothing, all at the same time, and it tore her to bloody pieces. “You genuinely believe that somehow your so-called perfect woman stole the heart right out of you, and that you’ll never be able to feel anything like that again.”

“She did.”

“She
didn’t
. She broke your heart. That’s all. At the worst time in your life, and she was a soulless, self-centered bitch to do it. But that’s all she did.”

“
That’s all
? Jesus, you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

“And I call bullshit on that as well. I know how awful it was, to go through what you went through. It sucked, it was the most traumatic thing you’ve ever gone through, and it left more scars on you than what can be seen on the outside. But it doesn’t make you a special snowflake. You still have a heart and you still can love just like the rest of us. You’ve just chosen not to because you might get hurt again.”

“Nobody makes the choice to feel so empty inside it’s a goddamn misery to endure.”

“But it’s a misery you can
control
. When you love someone, that emotion is out of your control, so it’s something you’ve decided to shut the door on. Deep down you believe it’s better to be alone than to try again with me, and get that happily ever after.”

“There is no such thing,” he shot back, and his tone was so brutal it was like a punch in the stomach. “With you or anyone else, there are no white picket fences or happily ever afters.”

Just when she thought he couldn’t hurt her worse, he twisted the knife in deeper. “That’s your choice, Steele, don’t you see that? You’re
choosing
to not even try.”

“Bullshit. It’s not a
choice
. You don’t know what it’s like to love someone like I did.”

“I love
you
,” she almost yelled, and as the tears fell at last she thought she saw him flinch again. “You talk about how your ex was special because she was your first love, and your heart couldn’t survive what she did. Well, guess what? You’re
my
first love, but somehow I know I’m going to be strong enough to survive you. I’ve survived worse.”

“Don’t talk like that.” He sounded winded, as if her words had somehow managed to land a devastating blow. “You don’t have to
survive
me. I’m standing right the fuck here, Essie. I’m right here.”

“No, you’re not. You’re still with the perfect Apolline, because whether you admit it or not, there’s a part of you that honestly believes she still has your heart.”

“Wrong. That bitch has no hold on me.”

“Yet here we are, going our separate way because of her.”

“
No
.” His hands shot out to hold onto her shoulders in a vice-like grip, as though he thought she’d disappear in a puff of smoke. “We’re not going our separate ways. Don’t you fucking say that shit, Essie. We’re
not
over.”

“I didn’t know it at the time, but the truth is we never began.” A sob she’d been trying to corral broke free, because hearing herself say those words aloud solidified what was happening. They were horribly, irrevocably done. “But I’ll learn from this, I swear I will. And someday I’ll find someone who’s going to see that I’m worth the risk of being loved. When that happens, I’ll trust him to take care of me, just as I’ll do everything I can to take care of him.”

Those fingers on her shoulders tightened to near-pain. “Listen to me, and listen good, Estella.
I
am the only man you’re ever going to need, because
I
will be the one who will always take care of you. Believe it.”

“I believe I deserve a man who loves me, Steele. That’s not you.”

“I care about you—”

“But not enough to not hurt me. When you love someone, you’ll do anything to make sure you never hurt them. But hurting me is exactly what you’ve done. Not because you’re no longer capable of love. You won’t love me because you don’t think I’m worth the risk.” And it killed her to admit it, all the way to her soul. “I just wish you’d told me that from the very beginning. I wish I’d known you were out of my reach. If I had known you were an impossible dream, I never would have allowed myself to dream of you.”

Pain ripple across his expression and he began to pull her into his arms. “Essie. Sweetness.”

“You need to leave.” She didn’t know where she got the strength to say it, or to pull out of his hold. But that was how her life had always been. Somehow she always found the strength. “Now.”

He studied her for a long moment, a churning force of pent-up energy in a body that was alarmingly still. For a second she thought she might have a problem if he dug in his heels, but all at once he offered an abrupt nod.

“I can see you need your space, so that’s what I’ll give you. But you also need to understand that for the first time in years, I’ve been happy that I managed to stay alive. That’s all because of you. I think I’ve been the same source of happiness for you, and I know I can keep on making you happy. So understand me when I say this straight up—this isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

An outside observer would have thought all was at peace in Essie’s apartment. Cheerful midday sunlight beamed through the window. Mooch slumbered in its mellow spotlight, belly up, paws twitching. Classical music flowed from the laptop left open on the work desk.

An outside observer would have been wrong.

“I should have asked Steele right from the beginning where we were going.” Puffy-eyed and stuffed up from the storms of crying that had plagued her for the past sixteen or so hours, Essie ignored the full glass of Chardonnay that Carla kept trying to pour down her gullet. With her luck, it would only give her a headache instead of dulling the sharp edges of grief and loss that stabbed through her without end.

Amazing, how she could hurt this much without bleeding to death.

“Don’t do that, girlie.” Curled up in one corner of the couch, Carla had already downed a full glass of wine and was working on her second. “Even a war-torn veteran of the dating scene couldn’t have seen this one coming. You were a sitting duck.”

“But you and I talked about this, remember? You told me to ask Steele where he thought we were headed, but I got distracted by his gorgeous eyes and penchant for public sex, and I never asked.” Essie reached for another tissue, saw the mini-mountain of used tissues already in her lap, and grimly forced the tears back. She so hated being a cliché. “I wonder if he ever had public sex or talked dirty to the perfect Apolline. She didn’t even swear, you know, so I’ll bet he didn’t. I’m sure he didn’t want to spoil her perfect ears.”

“Stop.” Carla touched a hand to Essie’s knee, the closest part of her that she could reach. “Don’t torture yourself wondering what she’s like. No matter what you imagine, you’ll be wrong, and you’ll only make yourself more miserable in the process.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible.”

“Trust me on this, honey, it’s possible. Besides, she’s not the problem. Deep down, you know that.”

“Yeah.” Another surge of tears threatened, and she deep-breathed until it passed. “I do know it.”

“I wish I could hate him,” Carla went on, her tone wistful as she stared into her wine. “And I do, for breaking your heart. But I also feel so damn sorry for that schmuck. I mean, Steele’s so fucked up he doesn’t even know his ass from a hole in the ground, and that’s a tragic way to live.”

Essie frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Think about how he was raised, Es. He had no mother to ever show him what love is, which in my opinion is a biggie in any person’s growth and development. Then he got stuck with a whack job of a father who tried to fucking kill him through snakebite or God’s retribution or whatever the hell you want to call it. I’m no expert, but I can imagine that would mess you up when it comes to figuring out what healthy, long-lasting relationships are supposed to be like. On top of all that, the poor guy allows himself to feel loved for the first time in his life once he gets away from his psycho dad, but that love was pulled out from under him by a shallow cow of a wife, who obviously thought everything should be about
her
. No wonder he doesn’t trust love. Dude has no clue that love can be a good thing. How could he? There hasn’t been one healthy love in his life. Not one.”

“He said he
can’t
love, Carla. There’s a difference.”

“No, girlie, he’s capable of it,” Carla said, shaking her head. “He proved that by falling for the cow in the first place. Yeah, sure, the man probably believes he can’t love anymore. But I think he’s just been burned so many times by the people who were supposed to love him, that he can’t make himself trust the process. It’s probably not even a conscious thing. It’s just his way of protecting himself from what he probably sees as a very unhealthy emotion.”

Essie was quiet for a while before nodding. “That… actually makes a lot of sense.”

“That’s why I said it.”

“But either way, it amounts to the same thing. He doesn’t love me, and he never will.” God, how that hurt to say it out loud, even now. The tears tried to make a comeback, and it took most of her remaining strength to fight them off. “You know what I wish?”

“That you’d never met him?”

That thought hurt even more than never being loved by him, and she couldn’t help but shudder. “I wish I was a better person.”

Carla’s head snapped up. “What the hell? You’re an amazing person, Essie, the strongest person I know. Don’t let this damaged dude’s rejection make you think there’s something wrong with
you
, because there’s not.”

Oh God, she adored Carla, so, so much. “It’s just that I think a better person would be able to love Steele so much that it wouldn’t matter. But I know myself too well. I
want
to be loved, Carla. I really do.”

“Honey.” Carla’s voice broke as she reached out again, her eyes filling with tears. “You deserve to be loved. Please, please believe that. A thousand times over, you deserve to be loved.”

It was pathetic, how much she needed to hear that. “While I want to believe I could love Steele enough for the both of us, knowing that he didn’t see me as someone worth the risk of opening up his heart to would slowly crush the life out of me. It would take months, maybe even years, but it would destroy me, so… I can’t.” Balling up her mini mountain of tissues, she pushed off the couch and threw them away in the bin under the sink. As she did, a grim wave of resolve flowed through her to not shed another precious tear that felt like it had been wrung from her very soul. “I was destroyed once. You know that. It took almost a decade to crawl my way back to life. I can’t allow myself to be destroyed again. No matter how much I might miss Steele, no matter how much I want to drop everything and go to him right this very minute, I won’t allow myself to settle for an empty life of never being loved.”

“I won’t let you.” The tears quavering in Carla’s usually strong voice almost broke Essie in two. “If you show even a hint of weakening, I’ll bar the door against you, because I know you deserve a man who knows you were made to be worshipped. If Steele’s hopelessly fucked-up past has twisted him up too much in the head to not know that, then he’s not the man for you.”

“Since you feel that strongly about it, would you mind hiding my phone from me?” With a tragic parody of her smile, Essie plucked her phone off the counter where it was charging and crossed to Carla to hand it over before collapsing back onto the couch. “I turned it off last night after Steele kept calling and I kept, you know… almost answering. Obviously I have no self-control when it comes to him. I’m weaker than a dieter at a free chocolate festival.”

Carla hit the button and began thumbing the screen. “Wow. Sixteen calls and half a dozen text messages. Wanna hear them?”

“No. Wait, yes. No, wait. No. Maybe.”

“Yeah, I should definitely keep this for the time being. Though there’s also a text from Scout about coming in Thursday morning before the House opens. She wants you to block out what you’re having your models do, along the other designers’ models. Says here they want to give models plenty of time to change backstage while still keeping the show interesting, since it’s going to be filmed live. Sounds complicated.”

“Complicated?” The word squeaked out as the reality of the situation landed on her with all the subtlety of a pile of bricks. “Try impossible. Do you know what this means?”

“What?”

“I’m going to have to see Steele again.” A wave of misery and dread crashed over her at the thought, and the anguish that had her throat in a chokehold almost made her forget her resolution to not cry another tear. “I think I’d rather meet the Devil face-to-face. What am I going to do?”

“You’re going to get through it,” Carla said grimly, though her eyes remained wet. “You’ll get through it because that’s how you are. It’s who you are. Nothing’s defeated you so far. Neither will this.”

Essie wasn’t so sure about that, but she clung to that thought for the next day and a half, if only to avoid the worst of the panic attacks. She threw herself into finishing up her already-finished designs, making sure the House Of Payne logo was in everything she created, sometimes cleverly hidden as part of the overall scheme, sometimes an overt smack in the face.

But throughout it all, the looming shadow of seeing Steele again haunted her. By the time Thursday morning rolled around, she was almost shaking with dread. She did her best to put on a brave face, reminded herself yet again that she was stronger than she knew, and headed for House Of Payne.

“Morning. Right on time, as usual.” Looking only a little sleepy-eyed, Scout greeted her as Essie pushed through the door. Ethan Echols, or Echo, had been stationed right outside, and had greeted her with a silent nod and a polite gesture to go on through. This had her tensing up even more, and with the butterflies in her stomach mutating into acid-spewing monsters, she scanned the lobby for a scarred, familiar face. Relief and disappointment warred with each other when her scan turned up Dorian Havlik by the rear entrance, Payne and the redheaded videographer in the gallery that had now been thoroughly cleared to make way for a well-lit catwalk, and a man she didn’t recognize but had that at-ease stance that gave him away as a member of the security team.

Her eyes lifted up to the second floor balcony and saw that it was empty, then nearly jumped a foot when she heard movement behind her. Olivier was strolling through the door with Dizzy Izz trailing after him like a black cloud. But still…no Steele.

Was this a good thing, or a bad thing?

Good, she decided, turning her attention to Payne as he called them over. It had to be a good thing. Steele had obviously gotten the hint that they were done and was doing the right thing by removing himself from her world. It was the courteous thing to do. Even thoughtful.

She’d be damned if she’d admit it hurt all the way to the center of her cracked heart that he hadn’t even put up a token fight for her. Not that it would have done any good, but still… it hurt, how easily he gave up on her.

Then again, he hadn’t loved her.

Easy to walk away when there was no love.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Payne said once they were all gathered, so into what he was doing that he skipped right over any formal greeting. “We’re going in alphabetical order as to which designer is seen first. Dizzy, that means you’re up first, and I want men’s and women’s daily wear to come out—”

“At the same time?” Dizzy Izz made a scandalized noise that would have irritated Essie on a normal day. The mood she was in now made it nearly impossible to keep herself from knocking the other woman’s head from her shoulders. “This is not how a true fashion show is done.”

“It’s how
my
fashion show is done. Now—”

“Dizzy Izz understands that this is Payne’s show, of course. But surely the great Payne would want his show to look just like what one would see in Paris or—”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” Essie heard the words come out of her mouth as if she was having an out-of-body experience. But when silence rang around the room, she couldn’t say she had any regrets. “Don’t you see that the man doesn’t want his show to be like everyone else’s? If the House was all about producing cookie-cutter shit, then we wouldn’t even be going through this contest in the first place. So please just your yap and let the man finish a fucking sentence. I’ve got a lot to do today, and standing around listening to you tell someone how they should run their own damn business isn’t one of them.”

Olivier did the impossible and laughed. It was rusty and lasted less than a second, but it was definitely a laugh. “Forget what I said the other day,” he drawled, half-bowing to Essie. “I don’t prefer you mute, after all.”

“So, alphabetical order,” Scout resumed while Payne looked like he wanted to just walk the hell out and never return to the headache of dealing with designers. “Dizzy Izz, Olivier and Essie Santiago, in that order. You’ll showcase your lines from daily wear, which you’ve all decided to do, to activewear, to children’s wear, which two of you have chosen to do, to outerwear, to accessories, which will be Olivier’s gig. Now, about how much time we’d like for you to spend on each outfit reveal…”

Essie tried to focus on the information, but it was hard. The urgency to get out of there, to get away from the place where she’d first met the man who’d changed the course of her life—who had shown her how to freaking
live
—was eating her alive. When Scout handed out the schedule of events for the next two days before bringing the meeting to an end, Essie was the first to head for the exit. It wasn’t cool to break into a run, so she kept that need under wraps. She did, however, power-walk like a champ toward the door and breathed a sigh of relief when she made it out into the blistering morning sun.

Score. She’d made her escape without a single hassle. Now she could breathe again.

“Excuse me. Essie?”

Shit.

“I’m parked right over there.” She glanced back over her shoulder while continuing to walk, gesturing to the car she’d made sure was within the line of sight of the House’s security. “No need to walk me to my car. I’m fine.”

“It’s standard procedure.” The man she hadn’t recognized emerged from the shadow of the doorway and gave a nod to Echo as he passed, receiving a silent nod in response. Essie kept the man in sight as she continued toward her car, her inner defenses locked in place as she took him in.