Magdalene (21 page)

“What was her name?”

“Inez. She was five years older than me. She
was a competition dancer, lost her partner, grabbed me at a church
dance and gave me a crash course.”

“You were how old?”

“Fourteen.”

“Awww, you caught a little crush.”

He grinned. “Not a
little
one.”

“Is this who you were thinking of at
Ailey?”

“Yes. I competed with her for a couple of
years until she met her husband. That broke my heart. Nineteen,
went on my mission. Twenty, came back. She was divorced with two
kids she couldn’t support by herself, and her ex wasn’t paying
child support.”

“What a loser.”

“Yeah, well... That was when Bethlehem and
Allentown were dying. There wasn’t much work to be had. She never
told me what happened with her husband, but I wanted to marry her
and take care of her and her kids.”

“And...you didn’t have any more prospects
than anybody else.”

He shook his head. “I’d worked in the steel
mills since I was sixteen and didn’t know anything more than
anybody else did. Steel was your ticket to retirement. Then it
wasn’t. Our whole way of life was disintegrating around our ears. I
was watching it happen and had no idea what to do.”

“And so how’d she get out of her
corner?”

“She, um...” Mitch’s mouth tightened and he
looked down at the floor. “She’d taken a lover. Much older.
Married. Rich. I couldn’t compete with that.”

The bottom dropped out of my stomach and my
mind went blank.

“Anyway,” he continued. “She left. Mina
caught my eye. You know the rest.”

“Have you ever tried to get in touch with
her?”
Say no say no say no.

“No. I have no desire to.”

“Did you...” I did not want to know the
answer, but I asked the question anyway. “Did you carry her into
your marriage?”

He looked at me sharply, sober. “Yes. And I
regret that. Mina deserved so much better than that. Better than
me.”

My mouth dropped open. “Mitch!”

“That was another reason I needed to get out
of Pennsylvania, besides getting Mina away. I needed to get away
from memories of Inez. Start fresh with a girl who thought I was
worth something, enough to defy her family over, who believed in
me. I wanted to do my best to live up to her opinion of me, but I
couldn’t do it in that pressure cooker.” He paused. “I would’ve
died young putting food on the table for Inez. Mina made me who I
am.”

“And Mina?” I murmured. “Now?”
Why
did I care? I wanted to fuck the man, not marry him, and any past
women he might bring to bed with us shouldn’t make any difference
to me.

“She was pretty much comatose the last
couple of years before she died, so... We said goodbye three, four
years ago. The last thing she said to me before she slipped away
was that she loved me and she wanted me to find someone who could
match me.”

My heart caught in my throat.

“Aw, Cassandra,” he murmured, shaking out a
handkerchief. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

I batted his hand away. “Stop it. I’m not
crying. I never cry.”

“Okay.”

The rest of the ride was silent, me in the
crook of his arm, half lying against him, my ear just over his
steadily beating heart. Once the cab dropped us off in front of my
townhouse, we strolled across the sidewalk and up the stairs.

As we climbed, I pressed myself into his
body and he seemed to press back. I felt his attention and returned
it, but once in the shadow of my front stoop, I pushed him into the
corner.

His chest rumbled with a chuckle and his
large hand wrapped around my waist to hold me close to him. I
attempted to kiss him because I so wanted to feel his mouth on
mine, his tongue in my mouth, but he turned his head slightly. My
lips met his cheek.

Frustrated, aroused, thoroughly
bewildered—he pulled me to him but refused my kiss?—I closed my
eyes and simply, softly pressed my mouth to his skin, breathing in
the bittersweet musk of good cologne, clean sweat, and male. One
soft kiss, then another.

I opened my mouth and touched my tongue to
his skin...

...and smiled when I realized his breathing
was rough and his heart raced.

“Stay with me tonight,” I whispered when I
pulled away from him only enough to hand him my key.

His sly humor was back and he tossed a grin
at me as he unlocked the door and swung it open. “I think not.”

“Afraid of losing?”

His grin faded a little and he said, with a
serious tone I had never heard him use, “I would lose much more
than this game, Cassandra. You have no idea how much I have at
stake.”

I swallowed and looked away. It seemed like
a reproof and I felt ashamed for something I didn’t understand at
all. Then I felt his big hand gently cupping my chin and tilting my
face up to look at him.

“When I kiss you,” he murmured, the pad of
his thumb caressing my cheekbone, “it’ll be on my terms, not
yours.”

Shit
, there he was, the CEO, laying
down the law, giving no quarter.

“I’m used to that,” I snapped, hoping to
slice open a wound somewhere, anywhere, in retaliation, my anger
and...something else...bubbling up to swallow my happiness.

He drew back, surprised, wary. “Oh? How
so?”

“I do what men want me to do; it’s always on
their terms.”

“But you chose your clients and you set the
prices accordingly,” he shot back. “You didn’t do business with
anybody you didn’t want to and you made sure they could and would
comply with your terms.
Who
was in the power position
again?”

I pressed my mouth together, furious that he
refused to be shocked, that he had no compunction about referring
to my prostitution as the business that it was. If he’d been
judgmental in the least, I would have had a weapon to use or at
least an excuse to dump him, but he wasn’t so I didn’t.

“I’m not Gordon, Cassandra,” he went on, and
I felt—
loved
—the anger in his voice, the
passion
.
“I’m not one of your clients. You can’t intimidate me and you can’t
manipulate me. You figured that out half an hour into our first
date, but you’re still trying.”

“Oh, that’s rich. You’re the one who called
it a game.”

His mouth tightened then and his eyes
flashed with the same anger that had cowed a girl never known to
have been cowed. But I was not Clarissa and I liked it. It made him
magnificently human in a way that the hot swivel of his talented
hips on a dance floor did not.

“Then if you want to keep playing this
game
,” he nearly growled, “I suggest you concede this round
and go in now. Alone.”

“Is that a threat?” I breathed, shocked,
unable to believe the turn of the conversation. “Because if it is,
you can take it and shove it up your ass.”

I had the good fortune of a door that would
slam satisfactorily.

In his face.

* * * * *

Your Holy
Man

Mitch clipped down the front steps of
Cassandra’s townhouse and stalked the two blocks to his hotel. He
stopped at the front desk to request his car, then stalked off the
elevator and down the hall to his room.

He never had to bring much, but the fact
that he had clothes for three days that he wouldn’t be spending
with Cassandra ratcheted his temper up a notch. Once in his car, he
squealed out of Manhattan, ZZ Top as loud as he could stand it,
and, once he was on the New Jersey Turnpike, he floored it.

So angry.

Ninety, hundred, hundred and thirty before
he could think about it—

So aroused.

—needing the speed and concentration to take
the edge off.

He couldn’t remember being so angry with
someone he cared about and certainly never with Mina. Mina would
have withered under the force of Mitch’s temper if he’d shown it.
His kids had never given him much reason to get that angry, though
they’d had their moments, particularly once Lisette and Geneviève
started dating.

Trevor— Well, Mitch had no right to
complain. Whatever Trevor did now that Mitch didn’t approve of,
Mitch could only blame himself for not putting his son ahead of his
other responsibilities.

Cassandra, though...

She was like no one he had ever met and he
wanted to make love to her with a passion he didn’t know he had.
Only
now
did he understand why Kenard hadn’t hesitated to
seduce a woman he’d known less than a day.

In that instant, Mitch’s surface sympathy
sunk to soul-deep empathy.

What Cassandra didn’t know, what Mitch
couldn’t afford to let her know, was that she didn’t have to do
much of anything to wage an effective seduction. Tonight she had
pushed him almost further than he could bear—and she had no idea
how close she was to her goal.

Which made him angry.

Angry and painfully aroused—not a
combination he had ever had to suffer before he’d met Cassandra St.
James.

He made the ninety-mile trip in fifty
minutes, a record for him, but it hadn’t helped at all. He hit the
stairs at a run and burst into Trevor’s room.

Where he slept.

Naked.

With a girl.

Who screamed.

“Dad, shit!” Trevor croaked, startled out of
a sound slumber and shooting to his knees, snatching his
bedclothes. The girl started to cry as she scrambled around Trevor.
She bolted into the bathroom and slammed the door.

“You brought a girl into my house?” Mitch
growled.

“That’s a
surprise
?” He was tangled
in the sheet and he struggled to get his feet on the floor without
falling on his face.

“You couldn’t even have the decency to get a
hotel room?”

“Sleazy!” he yelled. “You were supposed to
be in New York! Until Monday!”

Mitch ignored that. “Outside.”

Trevor halted in his efforts, stared at
Mitch, his mouth hanging open. “Are you
kidding
me?”

“No, I am not. Get dressed and get
outside.”

Trevor’s face darkened. “No, Dad. I’m done.
You dragged me out of bed three times last week, and twice the week
before. I’m
tired
, Dad. Get it? I’m sleeping in class and
Decker’s pissed as hell at me because I can’t do my job and as we
all know, not doing your job in a steel mill gets you
killed
.”

The boy gritted his teeth. Held his ground.
Somewhere in the back of Mitch’s lust-drugged mind he could respect
that.

Now Mitch could add jealousy to the
poisonous stew roiling within him. His son felt free to— But
Mitch
couldn’t—

“What am I supposed to say? Oh, I’m sorry.
My dad wants to sleep with his girlfriend, but he won’t, so he gets
me up to play soccer in the middle of the night to run it off? Fuck
that. I’m done. Find another way to deal with it because this is
your problem and I’m not going to let you make it my problem. Oh,
hey, here’s an idea—jack off like the rest of us weak mortals.”

Trevor finally got untangled and out of bed,
his sheet wrapped around his waist, and stumbled toward the
bathroom. “Scarlett!” He pounded on the door. “Baby, lemme in.
Please?”

Mitch stood watching this, his fists
clenching, seeing only the deep hurt on Cassandra’s face, the door
she had slammed in
his
face.

He didn’t know what to do.

Too much.

Out of control.

He knew he was, and he had no idea how to
get back in control.

He was too old for this.

Trevor cast him an angry glance over his
shoulder. “
Okay!
You can
go
now! And turn off the
light and close the door on your way out.”

As angry as Mitch was, he couldn’t think,
couldn’t do anything but what his son had said, so he turned on his
heel and walked out. It was petty, he knew it was, but he didn’t
turn off the light or close the door, and felt even worse when he
heard the curse and the slam of the door behind him.

Mitch stalked down the hallway to his
bedroom, locked his door, then threw himself on the bed and ripped
his fly open.

* * * * *

Baby I Love
U!

January 18, 2011

I didn’t have any problem Tuesday morning
acting as if nothing were different in my life, because it wasn’t.
All was well in the world.

As usual.

Except...

There was a dullness to my day, and that
irritated me.

Hollander had it coming and I didn’t regret
it, even though it meant the end to our budding little romance. It
would take another two months to finish separating the old J.I.
operation from Hollander Steelworks, and I could do it through my
minions. I would never have to see or speak to him again.

Ah, well. I’d had more intriguing men than
he. There were plenty more.

“Cassie, you okay? You seem a little— I
don’t know. Down in the mouth.”

I flashed a bright smile at Susan, who
smiled back and went about her business. An hour later I got a
phone call that took me to California, where I waged war on a board
of directors who wanted to block the brash reorganization plan
their new CEO had begun. The CEO—all of twenty-eight—was an
arrogant shit, especially for someone so young, but he wasn’t so
arrogant that he wouldn’t call for help when he needed it.

It took me almost three days to beat the old
bastards into submission, with a level of rudeness and cruelty
surpassing any I had ever displayed, and probably would never need
to again once details of this meeting worked its way across the
country.

At the end of business Thursday, once I had
finished my work and cleared the conference room of its collection
of aging socialites, I busied myself packing my laptop and wondered
what kind of wine one served at a pity party.

“Cassie.”