Savin' Me (13 page)

As she watched the scene play out, Kat’s
heart splintered. Hoping to relieve the ache in her chest, she
tried to rationalize the situation away. She didn’t want a real
relationship with him anyway. Yeah, she was considering going to
the beach for the weekend, but that was all about sex. Nothing
more. She had no emotional ties to him.

Then why did it hurt like hell to watch him
wrap his arms around someone else?

And why, now that he’d glanced down to the
lower level and caught her staring at him like a brokenhearted
fool, did she have the urgent need to escape as fast as her high
heels would permit?

Even though his arm was still draped around
the blonde’s shoulder, his body shifted toward the stairs and his
gaze locked on to Kats. His message was loud and clear.
I’m
coming down; stay right there.
But she couldn’t talk to him
right now. Not without coming across as a schizophrenic lunatic who
said one thing, but constantly thought and did another.

Okay, she wouldn’t just come across as one,
she was a lunatic.

And she was leaving.

She found Seth standing with a group near the
door. Grabbing his forearm, she rudely broke into the conversation.
“I’m sorry for the interruption, but I just remembered something
else I have to do.” He looked confused, but she sensed Erik closing
in, so she rushed on. “Thanks for the invite, maybe I can come next
week.”

Before Seth had time to respond, she tossed
her empty glass on a side table and bolted for the door. She was
halfway down the block when she heard Erik call her name. She kept
walking, as if she hadn’t heard. As if she didn’t want to stop and
have him explain it away as a simple misunderstanding. As if the
suffocating squeeze in her chest didn’t have her on the verge of
collapsing on the sidewalk.

The tears she’d been holding back for weeks
began to drip onto the front of her blouse. Dammit. Once the dam
broke she wouldn’t be able to stop until she’d cried herself dry.
She swiped a hand across her cheek and willed the tears to stay at
bay until she reached the safety of her apartment.

She trudged up the stairs to her apartment,
opened the door, and slipped inside. Too emotionally exhausted to
care about putting her things away neatly, she dropped her purse on
the floor, kicked off her shoes, and shrugged out of her clothes,
leaving a trail in the hallway as she slogged to her bedroom.

Without bothering to pull back the covers,
she flopped sideways across the bed and slid the floodgates open.
It was a much-needed, past-due cleansing. She grieved the loss of
her job in Charlotte. She wept for the friends she’d left behind.
She ached with the stabbing betrayal of knowing her best friend had
been the cause of it all. She allowed the gasping sobs to carry
away the fear that she’d never be good enough in her parents’ eyes
and the pain of endlessly trying to prove her worth. And she
screamed into her pillow and beat it in frustration for the
unrequited feelings she had for Erik. The stupid, ridiculous
feelings that would never lead to anything but a broken heart.

As the tears slowed to a steady stream, she
pulled the pillow tight to her chest, gripping it like a life
preserver, and succumbed to the heavy emotional exhaustion.

The next conscious thought came as she jerked
awake with a start, uncertain what had awakened her until the next
round of heavy pounding broke out. Someone was trying to beat the
door off its hinges and didn’t seem inclined to quit. She pulled on
her robe and cautiously made her way her way through the living
room to the window overlooking the landing.

The pounding stopped, and she found Erik
standing on her stoop, hands on his hips, looking around. He was
probably trying to figure out where she might be since her car was
parked in the lot. Suddenly, as if hearing her on the other side of
the door, he turned and resumed pounding. “Kat, open the damned
door. I’m not going away until we talk.”

She pulled the clips from her hair and
threaded her fingers through it, futilely trying to tame the wild
mess. She ran a hand over face and felt the puffiness in her cheeks
and around her eyes. She must look like hell, but she knew Erik
meant what he said. He wouldn’t go away, and she couldn’t muster up
enough give-a-damn to care about her looks.

What he expected to find, she didn’t know,
but he couldn’t hide his shock when she opened the door and he got
a good look at her. “Shit.” Before she even blinked, he’d pushed
through the doorway and bundled her in his arms.

This was exactly what she’d wanted since
seeing him in the gazebo a week and a half ago. With her head
resting against the solid wall of his chest and his arms wrapped
tightly around her, it would be so easy to sink into him, absorb
his heat and the essence of who he was, and let the rest of the
world melt away.

But she took a step back, pushed beyond the
embarrassment of her behavior, and looked him in the eye. His eyes
glistened with emotion, and the tenderness softening his features
made her stomach lurch while her breath caught in her throat.

He cupped her cheek in his palm and bent his
knees so they were eye to eye. “I feel like an ass for being
presumptuous, but in case I’m the reason you’re upset, I want to
explain. The girl you saw me hugging is Jolene, an intern. She’s
leaving for Fort Bliss, Texas, tomorrow to get married. Her fiancé
is being deported, and they want to get married before he leaves.”
When she didn’t answer, he looked at her imploring. “Say
something.”

She wanted to say, “Damn you for being so
charming.” But instead, she took another step back and crossed her
arms over her waist. “Thanks for the explanation, but you didn’t
owe me one.” Shrugging as if his concern meant nothing and trying
to convince both of them he wasn’t the reason for her meltdown, she
said, “I’ve had a lot going on, and I finally just lost it.”

***

Erik studied Kat’s defeated expression as
well as her makeup and tear-stained face. Seeing her in this much
distress caused him to ache all the way down to his soul. He didn’t
understand what she meant by “a lot going on,” but decided to get
some answers. All of their previous visits together had been about
work, or him trying to seduce her. It was time they had a good
old-fashioned conversation.

He shut the door, then took her hand and led
her to the sofa. Not wanting any space between them, he shook his
head and pulled her to him when she made a move to sit next to him.
“Sit on my lap,” he said, patting his thigh. “Let me hold you.”

She surprised him by curling up in his lap
and acquiescing to his cradling without any argument. He pushed his
fingers through her tangled hair, gently brushing it away from her
face while her eyes fluttered closed and her breathing grew slow
and steady.

In direct proportion to her relaxing against
him, the fortress walls he’d spent years building around his heart
began to crack and become alarmingly unstable. The only person he’d
ever loved had been Lindsey, and he’d sworn to never let anyone
that close again. But now, as he sat holding Kat, he realized he
was powerless to stop the rising tide.

She shifted and tucked her head into the
crook of his neck, then began stroking his chest with the palm of
her hand. Her warm breath against his neck and the soft, intimate
caress of her hand caused his libido to rev, his breathing to grow
shallow, and his cock to stir.

He’d told her the other night he wanted her
with a ferociousness he’d never before felt. And while that was
still true, astonishingly enough, he wanted something else even
more. He wanted her to talk to him. He wanted to get to know her
and find out what had happened since the night they met in
Charlotte.

“Baby, talk to me,” he said, brushing his
fingers along her cheek. “Tell me what happened with your job. How
you ended up here. And why you’re so unhappy.”

Kat took a deep, shuddering breath. “You
don’t want to know much, do you?”

He chuckled, then sighed in defeat. All this
talk would do was get him in deeper and deeper, but tonight he
didn’t care. “Actually,” he said, “I want to know everything.”

She groaned in protest and said, “I don’t
feel like talking,” then set to work destroying that desire in him,
as well. She licked, then nibbled a path along the exposed skin of
his neck, sending a shiver down his spine. His muscles tensed and
he was damned tempted to agree that talking could wait.

But this was important… and how bass-ackwards
was this? She was doing the seducing, and he wanted to talk. “I’m
really enjoying what you’re doing... really enjoying it. But I want
you to talk to me. Help me understand why you’re so upset.”

She sighed and slumped in his arms. “You’re
turning me down?”

He smiled and stroked her cheek. “No, baby,
just postponing. Now talk.”

“Fine.” She huffed and scooted around, making
herself more comfortable. “You know the part about the lost
promotion.”

He nodded. “Yeah, but start from the
beginning and tell me everything.”

“Fine. I worked for R&A for ten years,
starting as an intern in college, and was up for the next VP
opening. Simultaneously, Mark Samuelson, a client I’d been dating
for about six months, had a new product ready to launch. Mark’s
biggest competitor beat him to it by launching a similar product a
month earlier. I’d just broken off the relationship with Mark and
because of the timing of that breakup and false information he
received, he accused me of leaking information to his
competitor.”

She swiped her hands across her forehead,
like she had a headache coming on. He considered telling her she
didn’t have to continue, but he wanted to know what happened. In
addition to wanting to understand her, he also believed talking it
out might help her.

“Of course, I hadn’t leaked the information.
And because I hadn’t, he couldn’t produce the necessary proof. The
R&A board cleared me and allowed me to keep my job. But because
the whole incident had become such a scandal, they couldn’t move me
into an upper management position. They felt it would make the
clients nervous, and they gave the job to my best friend,
Angie.”

She stiffened in his arms and her face
reddened. Reluctantly, he let her go as she scooted off his lap and
onto the sofa beside him. She grabbed a pillow and tucked it close
to her chest before continuing. “Angie started acting differently
around me. At first, I chalked it up to her being busy with the
additional workload. Then one night, while having dinner with my
grandfather, all the pieces of what happened fell into place.”

Erik wanted to continue touching her, to try
to soothe her pain, but didn’t want to risk her not finishing the
story. He angled himself so he could drape his arm along the back
of the couch and gently played with a strand of her hair.

“While Granddad and I were eating, Angie and
another woman came into the restaurant. The woman looked familiar,
and I spent the rest of our dinner rattling my brain, trying to
figure out who she was. That night as I lay in bed, tossing and
turning, it came to me.”

Erik cleared his throat and put the brakes on
thinking of the various ways he could have made use of her tossing
and turning.

“The woman was Mark’s sister-in-law. I knew
right then what happened, but I wasn’t willing to make
unsubstantiated accusations. I didn’t have the ability, or the
heart, to find the proof on my own, so I hired a private
investigator.”

She paused and glanced at him. The tears
glistening in her eyes were like powerful sledgehammers, assaulting
his fortress walls.

“The investigator confirmed my suspicions and
produced the proof I needed. Angie met Celia, Mark’s sister-in-law,
at the athletic club. Celia was lonely because of how much time her
husband spent at work, so the two became fast friends.

Because her husband is not only Mark’s
brother, but a co-owner of the business, Celia knew about the new
product launch. Angie gained her friendship and trust and then,
while Celia was crying on her shoulder, Angie took notes and
learned all she could about the new product.”

“This Angie’s a real piece of work, isn’t
she?”

“Yeah, she is.” Kat smiled sadly. “Anyway,
Angie knew things weren’t great with me and Mark, and she urged me
to break things off with him. I guess she wasn’t as worried about
my emotional health as I thought. Her only concern was timing it
perfectly, so that I’d end up looking like the bad guy. She took
her information to the competitor.” She gave him a sardonic look.
“For a nominal fee, of course. Made sure everyone knew I had
knowledge of the new product and then dropped hints to Mark that
I’d sold him out.”

“Shit.” Not the most intelligent comment, but
it was the best Erik could manage in the heat of the moment. He
wanted to strangle Angie and could only imagine how Kat felt.

“In the end, Angie was fired and I proved my
innocence. But too much had happened. I wasn’t ever going to get
another chance at a promotion there. My non-compete kept me from
getting another marketing job within a two hundred and fifty mile
radius of Charlotte, which eliminated all of the agencies in
Atlanta and most of the ones in North and South Carolina, as well
as Tennessee and Virginia. Riverside isn’t outside of the
boundaries, but they didn’t feel threatened by a small agency like
SMG. I think they were relieved to see me go.” She shrugged. “So
here I am. Sorry you asked?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Not at all.
I’m damned sorry for all that happened to you, but I’m really glad
you’re here.” He ignored the flash in her eyes, uncertain if it was
panic or interest, and sifted through the strands of hair lying
across her shoulder. “Do you like working in advertising?”