No Perfect Princess (40 page)

Or weep and beg him to stay forever.

“There are days I hate you,” I whispered, “you know that?”

“Yes, ma’am.” As if on cue, there was that damn crooked grin of his again. I wanted to slap it hard off his face—and then lick the red mark I’d leave behind.

I arched a brow. “Okay, first of all, that was a low blow—even in my book. And now, just so we’re clear, I’ve wanted to tell you things about my world for a long time. But dammit, Michael, I’m trying to
protect
you.”

That erased the grin. “
You’re
trying to protect
me
?”

“Yes. It’s a lot of a mess, okay? I’ve dreaded the idea of you getting dragged into all of it—
not
because I don’t trust you, or because you’re leaving, or whatever other jackass reasons you’ve made up.” I twisted my fingers through his. “You’ve come to mean…so much to me, Michael. You probably don’t believe it, but the day you leave is going to be harder than hard. Only for you would I risk the world’s cheesiest line, okay?”

He eyed me warily. “That being…?”

Suck it up. Suck it up. Don’t go all weepy E.T.-why-can’t-you-stay on his ass.
“I—I hope we’ll still be friends after you’re gone.”

Michael groaned. “You’re right. That’s awful.”

“Come
on.
We were before, and I can’t imagine my life without you in it somehow.” A winch twisted in my throat again. Ugh. I’d fought back more tears in the last three months than I’d shed my whole life before. “I’ve never—cared—about someone before, the way I do you. I’m going to miss this. I’m going to miss us.” When he answered my whisper by leaning in closer, I pulled a hand free and pushed at his chest. “Let’s not make it worse now.” Yes, that just happened. This
was
me, turning down a pass from him. “You’ve made your choice, so let’s move on. Let’s talk about the weirdness,”—
understatement gold medal
—“you saw at the office. And I’ll really try to give you as much truth as I can in return.”

The man didn’t miss much, and this moment was no exception. My statement jerked his brows up. “Maybe
you
should tell
me
about the scene at the office, sugar. Sounds like you’re uniquely qualified.” He jabbed his chin. “Go ahead. Take a stab. What were they talking about?”

I took a deep breath. Another. Shoved my hands between my knees now. It was so hard to decide where to start. It was so hard to be doing this, period. I’d been hiding so much of my private life for so long.

“Do you remember the night I spent at your house after Claire and Killian’s wedding?”

His lips turned up, soft and sincere. “Won’t ever forget it.”

“When I came home that morning, I was still hung over—”

“To say the least?”

I shoulder-whacked him. Then went on, “I was also flying pretty high on the memories of what happened with us that night.” Glad I hadn’t let my hand stay, I pushed at the self-satisfied turn of his smirk. “Whoa there, Mr. Modesty. The pretty’s about to get ugly.” Hands between the knees again. Helped to hide the shaking. “When I got home, the alarm wasn’t set. Should’ve panicked, but didn’t. By the time it clicked that something was wrong, it was too late. Trey Stone was sitting at my kitchen island.”

As I’d anticipated, Michael tensed. I waited through the long second it took for him to absorb all of it.

As stupid a move as waiting for a fuse to a bomb to burn down.

“I’m going to kill him.”

“Michael.” The censure sounded like Di. I didn’t regret it. “Calm—”

“I will
kill
that loser mother fucker.”

“—down!
Now
.”

He lurched to his feet. Also not a surprise, given the chest beating he’d clearly gone all-in on now. I’d known he’d go ooga-booga ape man; I just hadn’t pegged to what degree. “Did he hurt you? Did he touch you? So help me God, if he laid one finger on you, I will kill him.”

It was all I could do to keep my ass on the couch. Wouldn’t do for two of us to be tearing up the carpet. “This was exactly why you didn’t know about this sooner. Until I had things taken care of—”

“Taken care of?” He started pacing. Hard. “You don’t ‘take care of’ a rich boy psychopath like Trey Stone, Margaux. People like him refuse to be ‘taken care of’ until they’ve sucked you dry. Have you forgotten everything he put us through last year—and we were a team of
six
people. He still had his cars, his women, and his swagger rep then. God only knows what fuckery he’s up to now—and he’s involved
you
?”

I kept my shoulders back and my face calm. I’d dealt with this before; it was just usually some politician or rap star caught with their pants down in the wrong place. And as alluring as the idea was of Michael Pearson with his pants down right now…

Focus.

“You need to take a breath, Pearson. The world doesn’t need saving at the moment.”

He lowered to an ottoman near the window. Braced his hands on his knees. In lethally low punches of sound, he charged, “What the hell did he do to you, Margaux?”

“Not until you’re more calm.”

“I’m not five years old, dammit.”

“And neither am I!
Look
at me, Michael. I’m fine. I don’t need rescuing.”

“The fuck you don’t.” Back up to his feet, stalking the room worse than before. “You already
did
. And I failed you. I failed
you
, Margaux!”

I sprang to my feet. Rushed to where he was and grabbed his hands again. “Listen to me. And
look
at me, dammit! You need to hear my words.” I waited, trying to catch my breath, as he swung his brilliant gaze to mine. “I’ve lived for twenty-seven years, nearly on my own, in a privileged circle of people who don’t always play nice. Contrary to what you believe or the dynamic we share—shared—in the bedroom, I don’t need rescuing. I really want to share some of this with you, but I can’t if you keep freaking out. People are creepy sometimes. Not everything is sweet and gentle and neighborly and kind like up in the land of the apple farms. You have to deal with that fact
right
now if you want to hear the rest of this story, because it’s not for the faint of heart.”

I ran my hands up to his elbows. Yearned to do more, to press myself to him and take away some of the torment that glittered in his eyes. And while I’d hoped my pep talk would bolster him a little, it only made matters worse. He put on a great performance of calm, but only on the surface. I saw right through him. I
felt
right through him. His whole body was poised and ready to pop like a cork in a shaken champagne bottle. His jaw ticked like a high energy dance beat. Yay, a self-contained party in one hot hunk of a package—only the deep jade of his eyes didn’t promise a very festive conclusion to the celebration.

“Shit,” I stammered. “You’re starting to scare me.”

His gaze darkened, intensifying his menacing appearance. “I’m just a little tense.”

“You think?”

“Just keep talking. I’ll be okay. If that piss bucket Trey was in the room right now, it’d be a different story.”

“And now you want me to tell you
more
?”

“I can handle it. I’m just enraged that I wasn’t here to watch over you. And yeah, I
know
you don’t need watching. I heard you, loud and clear.”

His bitter tone was transparent. My speech had hurt him. But he’d needed to hear it, so I wasn’t apologizing.

I sucked in a big breath and went on with the story.

“Trey confronted me with some information—okay, some dirt—about me, from an awful period in my life about two years after graduating college.”
Blinding lightbulb in the brain.
“Wait. Whoa.”

“What?”

“The secret Trey had…well, it’s a mind-blower—and was supposed to have been sealed in the records at Scripps Mercy. I’d been racking my brain trying to figure out how Trey got his paws on those files, especially because he didn’t necessarily have the flow to pay a bunch of people off. But if he and Andrea are,”—I winced and shuddered—“together, then that explains a lot of things.” Knees gone to mush again, I dropped to the couch. “Holy shit.
A lot
of things. He didn’t pay anyone off for the information. He got it straight from the person who originally had the records sealed.”

“Your mother.”

She’s not my mother. Thank fucking God.

I whipped a stare out the window, thoughts spinning wildly. “But why would she do this to me? Does she really hate me that much?”

My senses were a messy web, spiders of hurt and anger crawling everywhere. Andrea Asher, who’d maintained how she’d loved me exactly like a daughter, had sold me out like a gutter-level hooker—to Trey Stone.

Was there any way to even a score like this, short of pulling a trigger? There had to be. And I was damn well going to find it—and implement it. But those thoughts only reinforced my stand. These were dirty waters, not worthy of Michael even dipping his pinkie toe into.

I snapped my gaze back around, drawn by an uncanny sense of his. Sure enough, he was waiting with his I-miss-nothing scrutiny, helping me process all this with his silent, firm strength.

She’d signed my report cards.

Attended my lousy clarinet recitals.

Set up the Hello Kitty humidifier when I had a cold.

She’d been pretending.

A sob formed out of the nausea in my gut. I refused to let it take form. I refused to waste a second of my sadness on that woman. My fist clenched as I vowed it myself, over and over and over.

“Hey.”

I jerked my head up again. Wound my hand into his once more. Needing it this time. “Hey.”

“You all right?”

I nodded fast. Concentrated on the beautiful power of his fingers. “I want to tell you the rest.”

He pressed his grip tighter. “Then I want to hear it.” Well, that was fine and dandy. Pushing the words out my lips? Another story. “Need a bookmark?” he asked. “You said something about being out of college a few years…?”

“Right,” I said, nodding again. “Right. I don’t know if you remember or not, but I dated a professional baseball player for a while. Doug Simcox.”

“From the Yankees?” He jolted a little. “Sure, I remember him. Who doesn’t? Never cared about his personal shit, though. I was deep into school back in those days. I had no clue about the gossip lines or the entertainment shows until Andrea hired me.”

I actually grinned for a split second. “Unreal. I’ve actually found one of the three people on the planet who has no idea about DougMar.”

“
DougMar
?” His eyes sprang wide. “Oh, say it wasn’t so.”

“It was so.”

“Agghhh.”

“Right? Anyway, fast forward by a year, to the day Doug broke it off with me.”

“He didn’t pull the hoke move and just text, did he?”

My grin sprang into a laugh. “No. He was a little classier than that—but it was still pretty ugly. It was all over the tabloids and social media within hours, and I was devastated. I was so worried about my social standing back then, trying to figure out what they all wanted me to be, and hounding Doug to fit into the same mold. I think he’d just had enough.”

Michael chuffed. “Sounds like he was just a pussy.”

I spurted. “Is that so?”

His upper lip curled.
So sexy.
“Yeah, that’s so. Why didn’t he just put his foot down with you and work it out?”

There were so many variables to filling in
that
blank, I didn’t start. Doug was part of my past—and, though a meaningful part, wasn’t worth talking about right now. “That’s a lot of shit, for a different day. The DL is this: I did something desperate to try to get Doug back. In a nutshell, I was young and foolish and crying out for attention. Lots of therapy and years of maturity, and I can finally say that.”

Naturally, I’d started twisting the hell out of my pinkie ring. Hawkeyes Pearson zeroed right in on that again and moved in, lifting one hand to the side of my face. I leaned into his touch for a tiny moment. How could I resist? His hold was so warm, so calming.
Safe.
I was safe once more.

God, I was going to miss this. Miss him.

“Tell me what you did to yourself, Margaux.”

I couldn’t deny his request any more than my own breath. He’d made it okay to do so. “I took a bunch of pills my mother—Andrea—had in her medicine cabinet. She’d had a nose job. Or maybe it was her boobs?”

“Irrelevant.”

“True.”

“So what was the shit?”

“Vicodin. I took… a lot. I don’t really remember how many. It certainly doesn’t matter at this point. I just wanted to escape it all, you know? Anyway, I was an idiot.”

Michael inhaled hard. Exhaled with twice the intensity. “But an idiot who survived.”

“Thanks to Andre.” I nodded at his widened eyes. “Oh, yes. He’d just started working for me, and looked for me in the house when I was more than fashionably late to the car. He found me lying on my bed in my favorite black Zac Posen gown, beyond revival. He called nine-one-one and followed the ambulance to the hospital. Held my hand while they pumped my stomach in the ER.” I shrugged. “The rest, as they say, is history.”

His face hadn’t given up its frown. “
Andre
was there for it all? But…where was Andrea?”

“Barbados. Handling a client. She handled
me
via phone calls to the office—and of course, to me directly at the hospital too. She wanted to be sure my words dovetailed with the press releases.” I smoothed a hand over the fist he’d curled. “In her mind, that
was
good mothering, Michael. Andrea was never the apple pie and Independence Day parade type. She handled the spin for me; made sure the world saw my crisis as only exhaustion. They even floated the story that
I’d
broken it off with Doug, that it was his insane schedule that put me in the hospital.”

I watched him battle to let the fury go. After a minute, he looked up, piercing me with every gold and green facet of his gaze. He brushed strands of hair back from my face, the tiny pieces that always seemed to get in my eyes, before tucking them behind my ear.