The Billionaire's Bridal Bid (9 page)

As it had always been, kissing her was addictive. He wasn’t able to stop. Was barely able to control his need, surging through him like a freight train. But he did control it at least until he felt the last of her resistance drift away.

Her hands plowed into his hair, clung to his shoulders, tugged at his clothes. And then she was pulling him backward, tiny steps toward a doorway at the far end of the room. He let her lead the way. Let her set the pace, because he was still afraid of moving too fast. Of letting loose his passion and overwhelming her.

Their clothing dropped away, his shirt hitting the living-room floor. Her tank top landing on top of it. His shoes toed off by the bedroom door. His jeans nudged down his hips and then off by her eager hands. Her boxers and panties in one quick swipe before he picked her up, wrapping her legs around his waist as he carried her the rest of the way to the bed. And then they were
falling onto a pile of pillows and blankets, in a tangle of arms and heated passion.

He rose onto his elbow, staring down at her. Forcing himself to stop and catch his breath, to rein in his passion while he still held the shreds of his control. He waited there, her body trembling under his touch, her chest arching up to meet his, until her gaze met his. Until she looked at him, clearly and solidly.

He could see in her eyes that she hadn’t yet accepted that this passion between them was bigger than either of them. He’d accepted it long ago. He’d known from that first night that she was meant for him. She’d been barely eighteen to his twenty-one. They’d never even been on a date and he’d known it.

Hell, looking back, he’d known it before he’d even graduated from high school. Kissing her now, breathing in the sweet, heady scent of her, he was struck with a memory from his senior year. It had been fall, the air just turning crisp, the scent of apples heavy in the air. He’d been sitting on the front steps of the school, waiting for Ford and Jonathon. She’d walked out the door and past him all the way to the sidewalk. Then she must have remembered something from inside, because she’d stopped, turned around and headed back up the stairs. She’d spotted him and stopped again. She’d stood there, four steps below him, so they were almost at eye level. Their eyes had met and neither had moved for the longest moment. As if time had literally stood still.

He’d wanted her instantly, but had been too terrified to even speak to her. He didn’t know then what he knew now. But he’d known it when he kissed her that first time in college. He’d tried to forget it. He’d made himself block it out for twelve long years. But he’d always known it. She was his.

His love. His passion. His everything.

Nothing was more important. Not his work. Not FMJ. Not his friendship with Ford and Jonathon. Nothing.

And now, with that knowledge firmly in his brain, he gazed into her eyes as he thrust into her. Over and over. Telling her with his body what he wasn’t yet ready to say again with words.
I love you. I’ll always love you. I’ve always loved you.

She didn’t want to leave the safety of his embrace. And yet that was an illusion, wasn’t it? As protected as she may feel in his arms, when it came to her heart, Matt was the most dangerous man she knew.

Resisting the pull of sleep and the magnetic draw of his presence, she pushed herself from the bed. A pair of jeans and a sweatshirt lay across the chair by her closet, and she quickly tugged them on. Obviously, her boxers and tank top didn’t provide the kind of defenses she’d need.

Sleepily, he raised himself onto his elbows and watched her dress. “Where are you going?”

He looked ridiculously sexy like that, with the sheet tumbled down around his waist and his hair tousled. It would be so easy to climb back into the bed, curl up against his chest and let sleep claim her. They could make love again. She could wake up in his arms. Make him breakfast. And repeat everything the next time. And the next.

But how long could she keep that up? Always shoving aside the doubts that plagued her. Always waiting for the day he lost interest in her.

“I’m sorry, Matt,” she muttered, apologizing as much to herself as to him. “I can’t pretend anymore.”

“Pretend what?”

“Pretend that this isn’t going to end badly for me. Pretend that at some point in a few weeks or maybe months, you’re not going to get bored with me—with this game you’re playing—and you’re going to walk out on me.”

His gaze narrowed, he sat up then, plowing a hand through his hair before looping his arms around his raised knees. “You’re so sure this is going to end.”

“Yes.” The bright gaze made her feel exposed and vulnerable. To distract herself, she began collecting his clothes and tossing each item to him. “Last time, at least, I had innocence and gullibility on my side. At least I could tell myself that I was young and stupid and didn’t know any better. But I can’t pretend anymore.”

“What are you saying, Claire?” He ignored his jeans as they landed with a heavy thud at the foot of the bed. Even across the distance of the living room, she felt the force of his gaze on her like a touch. “You’re not even going to give us a shot?”

“There is no us, though, is there?” She found one shoe but couldn’t find the other. “What do we really have between us other than this powerful sexual pull?” Her heart thudded in her chest as she paused a second, clutching his shoe in her hands as she waited for an answer. And she hated that seed of hope that had taken root in her chest. That tiny part of her that wanted him to tell her that he really did love her. That the years that separated them were really just a misunderstanding. But when a heartbeat passed and then another, she finally spoke. “Great sex alone won’t hack it. I can’t just ignore all the other things between us. I can’t pretend it’s okay that you only want to take me to bed. That’s not enough for me anymore.” A burst of bitter laughter escaped as
she heard herself say that aloud. “It never should have been enough in first place.”

His jaw was tense, his gaze narrowed and shuttered, utterly unreadable. “And that’s all it was for you? Just sex?”

“That was never all it was for me.” She felt tears prickling at the back of her eyes. Turning her back to him, she scanned the floor. Dammit, where was that shoe? She pressed her finger to her temple. “But obviously it was only sex for you.”

“Obviously.”

She scrubbed away her tears. Placing the shoe on the ground near the foot of the bed, she began rifling through the pile of blankets that had been kicked to the floor. “And if we get involved again, you’re just going to end up breaking my heart all over again.”

“Breaking your heart? How did
I
break your heart?” She heard him throw off the sheet and rise from the bed, but she didn’t let herself look at him while he pulled on his clothes. “You left me.”

“I know. Yeah, sure, I left you, but—”

“There’s no ‘but’ about it.” He practically barked the words. “You. Left. Me. When it comes to breaking hearts, I didn’t do squat. You walked away. And you made damn sure I wouldn’t want to follow you when you did.”

“Right.” Her voice was bitter. “But when I left you, I didn’t think it was forever.”

“So you thought you’d be able to skewer me emotionally. Ride off with Mitch on the back of his motorcycle and come crawling back to me when you were done playing with some other guy?”

For a second she just stared at him, barely able to decipher his words. “Mitch?” And then she remembered.
The lie she’d told him when she’d left. The guy she’d invented to convince Matt she was serious about leaving. Just a name she’d thrown out from her mother’s past. “No. There was no Mitch.” She sat down on the floor with a thud, the search for the missing shoe abandoned, her arms full of blankets. “There was never anyone else.”

“You said,” he enunciated clearly, “you were leaving for another guy. For someone more fun. More adventurous. If you didn’t go to New York with him, then where did you go?”

“How have you not figured that out?”

“Indulge me.”

“I came home. I came back to Palo Verde.” Back to the mess both their families had created. To the sister who needed her help, but resented it. To the grandparents who turned their backs on both of them. To a town ready to think the worst of her. And none of that had been as hard as watching from a distance as he moved on with his life as if she’d never been in it.

She looked up at him now, waiting for him to say something. His lips were pressed into a thin line, his expression grim.

“You were so desperate to get away from me, you had to invent reasons to leave.”

“No. I was inventing reasons to make sure you didn’t follow me.” Suddenly, she realized she was shivering. She pulled one of the blankets around her shoulders and stood up. “That was back when I thought you actually cared enough to follow me. Back before I realized the truth. That guy I loved in college, he didn’t really exist. He was just someone who said all the right things to get me into bed.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“I don’t know what I believe now. But then? Yeah.” She nodded, meeting his gaze head-on. “I really believed it then. Everything you did after I left only proved to me that you were just like the rest of them. You were just another Ballard who thought Caldiera girls were nothing more than white trash who could be slept with and discarded. For all I know, that’s still what you believe.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

But before Matt could even formulate the question, Claire left the bedroom. He followed her to the living room where she stood by the door. She may have looked fragile, standing there wrapped in a cuddly blanket, but the resolve written in the lines of her face warned him otherwise. “I’m sorry, Matt, I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t wait around for you to break my heart again. I want you to leave.”

“I’m not—”

“I want you to leave town. Nobody needs you here complicating things.”

Her words were like a knife in the gut. Brutal, painful. Potentially deadly. He snatched his shirt from the floor and pulled it over his head. Then propelled by some need he didn’t understand, he stalked across the room and pulled her into his arms. He slid one hand into her hair, which was loose about her shoulders. The strands were slightly damp close to her head where her hair hadn’t yet dried from her shower. The locks seemed to cling to his fingers.

At first she tensed against him, her hands wedged between them. But when he brought his mouth down to hers, her lips were soft and pliant. She smelled of shampoo and lavender soap and hot sex. After the
briefest instant, she seemed to melt against him. The throw around her shoulders dropped to the floor. The last of her defenses falling away. The defiance in her eyes hadn’t made it to her mouth yet. Intellectually, she may want him to go, but her body wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Her hands yielded, stroking his chest, snaking up around his shoulders and into his hair.

Relief flooded him. Whatever else she seemed to think stood between them, at least they had this. They would always have this.

He kissed her long and hard. His tongue seeking hers over and over. He didn’t even dare to lift his mouth, just plastered himself against her warmth and held on, secure in the knowledge that if he could just keep touching her, she wouldn’t make him leave. All he had to do was never let go.

Then, as his mouth moved against hers, he tasted the poignant saltiness of tears. Her tears.

Forcing himself to pull back, he still didn’t release her completely, but took in the sight of her. Eyes squeezed closed, lashes spiky, mouth damp and parted, lips red, cheeks streaked with tears.

Slowly, her eyes fluttered open. There was sorrow there, as well as an accusation.

“That just proves my point,” she said softly. “Does it make you feel better knowing I can’t resist you?”

He almost wished it did.

But he didn’t want her to be unable to resist him. What he wanted was for her to need him as badly as he needed her. Not just in bed. But in her life.

Before he had a chance to admit that—before he even had a chance to think about whether he was ready to admit that—she pointed to the door. “Just go. It’ll be easier on everyone.”

“Easier on you maybe,” he said. Because, dammit, it sure as hell was not going to be easier on him. Despite that, he left. Shoeless and barefoot, he stalked out into the night, far more miserable than he’d been when he arrived.

M
att didn’t have the kind of relationship with his brother where he could go and ask Vic for advice. A therapist he’d once dated had suggested their parents fostered an unhealthy rivalry between them from a young age. He’d broken up with her about twenty minutes later.

He didn’t need anyone to tell him that Vic was an ass and that no one in his family—not his former football player dad, not his social-climbing mom and certainly not his bully of a brother—had known what to do with a kid who was smarter than all of them combined.

Which was only one of the reasons why Matt hadn’t stepped into the offices of Ballard Enterprises since his father’s will had been read there five years ago. As he waited outside the office that had once belonged to his father and where his brother now worked, he almost
wished he’d had the kind of brother he could go to for advice.

But he’d been about six when he accepted that he’d never have that kind of relationship with Vic. No. Six and a half. He’d been six and a half years old when he realized that Vic would always look out only for himself. Vic had dared Matt to dismantle the brand-new Macintosh computer their father had just bought. Matt still believed he could have put it back together, if only Vic hadn’t called their parents and ratted him out.

Matt had known then that Vic would always screw him over if given half a chance. And so Matt hadn’t given him one.

But now…well, now, he was pretty sure that at least part of whatever the hell was wrong between him and Claire had something to do with either Vic or their mother.

Since Claire had asked him to go—no, begged him, dammit—he didn’t see that he had any choice but to leave. However, if his family had been giving her a hard time, he was certainly going to put a stop to it before going.

After keeping Matt waiting for over an hour, Rachel, Vic’s anemic bombshell of a secretary, finally received a page from the phone, and told Matt that Vic could see him. She toddled over to the office door and held it open for Matt, her hip popped out suggestively and her eyelashes fluttering in a manner she no doubt thought attractive.

Matt barely gave her a second glance as he lowered himself to the wingback chair opposite the desk. The office hadn’t changed much since their father’s days as the head of Ballard Enterprises. The oak paneling, which had previously boasted a variety of framed photos
of their father smiling next to different elected officials and celebrities, now held similar photos of Vic. One of the shelves on the bookcase had been emptied to house paraphernalia from Vic’s career as a college football star, but other than that, everything looked about the same but twenty years older.

Even Vic, who Matt hadn’t seen since the funeral—other than the night of the fundraiser—was starting to look much as their father had when they were boys. Shoulders broad, girth just a little too massive, jaw as square as a Neanderthal’s.

As Matt walked into the room, Vic made a big show of being on a phone call on his Bluetooth headset. As if he were too important to waste the sixty seconds it took Matt to cross the antechamber.

After a few minutes of a conversation that Matt was pretty sure was about a fantasy football team, Vic hung up, stood and held his hand out across the desk. “How you doing, bro?”

Matt didn’t even stand. “I need you to leave Claire alone.”

Vic stood there a moment longer, his hand hanging in midair. Then he pulled it back, ran it over the side of his hair, smoothing down strands that weren’t the least bit out of place. His smile widened, all congenial innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m leaving town.” Matt leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “I got the impression from some of the things she’s said, that you—or possibly our mother—sometimes give her a hard time.”

“I don’t know what—”

“It stops now.” His tone brooked no argument.

Vic held up his hands in a gesture of benign innocence. “But I don’t—”

Matt stood. “Now. I don’t want you to talk to her. I don’t want you to so much as step into her diner. And I want you to make sure Mother knows to do the same.”

Finally, Vic dropped the facade. He studied Matt, his gaze calculating. “Man, she has really got you by the balls, doesn’t she?”

“Vic, leave it alone.”

But Vic wasn’t smart enough to heed the warning in Matt’s voice. “Don’t get me wrong. I can see why. She is one tasty little piece of—”

Vic didn’t get the chance to finish the thought. Something inside of Matt snapped. The repressed anger of a lifetime of dealing with his family’s manipulative crap burst out. He rounded the desk and slammed his brother against the wall, pressing his forearm against Vic’s throat. Vic’s mouth flapped open as he gasped for breath, his gaze registering shock.

“You know what your mistake is, Vic? You’ve always assumed that because I’m smart, I’m not also tough. You picked on me my whole life, and I let it go, because it wasn’t worth it to fight you. So you have no idea what I’m capable of.” Matt felt the soft pliancy of his brother’s throat. Felt the sharp bite of Vic’s fingers clawing at his arm. And felt the satisfaction in knowing Vic wasn’t strong enough to shake him off.

Finally, he stepped back, letting Vic go. Shaking out his arm, he said, “If you so much as look at her again. If you even breath in her direction, I will come back to town and I will crush you.”

“You wouldn’t.” Vic’s hands were at his throat, massaging the spot where Matt’s forearm had been. “You couldn’t.”

“Ballard Enterprises barely supports you or Mom
anymore. For years now you’ve both been quietly selling off your shares to me to finance your lifestyle. I could own this company outright before you know it. And I would love to take it apart, piece by piece, and leave you with nothing. Don’t be stupid and make it any more tempting than it already is.”

“You wouldn’t do that to your family.”

Matt gave one last look at the office from which their father had ruled his little empire.

“You’re not my family anymore.” He turned his back on Vic, fully intending to walk out of the offices and never again set foot in the same room as his brother.

He took one last look back to see Vic hitching up his pants, his chest puffing out the way it used to just before he picked a fight with some kid too small to fight back.

“What, you think that Walstead kid is your family now?” Vic hurled the accusation. “You think they’re going to want anything to do with you?”

Matt stopped and slowly turned to face his brother once again. “What was that?”

Vic’s gaze narrowed, assessing Matt in that scheming, snaky way he had. Then one corner of his mouth curled up in a sneer. “She didn’t tell you.”

“She didn’t tell me what?”

The sneer turned into a full belly laugh, the kind tinged with gleeful hatred. “If I were you, I’d go find Kyle Walstead and take a real good look at him.”

Claire’s house was within easy walking distance of Cutie Pies. Close enough to Main Street for the neighborhood to be aging and not quite popular. North of Main, most of the houses had been renovated into trendy showplaces, but the smaller bungalows in this
neighborhood were still on the worn-down side. But her small house sat back from the road on a decent-size lot with a pine tree towering in the front yard. Half a dozen steps led up to the porch that stretched across the front of the house.

Matt had sat in his car outside her house a good half hour the previous evening after he’d walked out of her house, leaving her in tears. He hadn’t ever thought to come back. But he needed to know just what the hell his brother had meant about Kyle Walstead.

Shelby Walstead had said Kyle hung out at Cutie Pies after school on Wednesdays. So Matt knew he couldn’t go there to talk to Claire. He’d come to her house precisely because he wanted to avoid talking to the kid. Which made it very inconvenient that Kyle was there waiting on her porch when Matt pulled up.

He didn’t look like much. The only other time Matt had seen him, through the plate-glass windows of Cutie Pies, Matt hadn’t gotten that really good look his brother recommended. Now, as Matt crossed Claire’s yard, he studied the boy. He was either young or scrawny for his age.

For a moment, Matt considered leaving all together. He had zip experience with kids. But whatever was up with Claire, this kid was in the middle of it.

The boy tensed as Matt moved up the steps. For a second, he frowned as if surprised, then he hopped to his feet, nervously rubbing his palms up and down the legs of his pants. He wore a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, making it hard to see much of his face.

Matt paused at the bottom of the stairs and squinted up into the shade of the porch. “Hi. You’re Shelby’s boy.”

The boy looked at Matt like he was an idiot, then gave
a tentative nod. “Yes, sir.” He had his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulders set in a defensive slouch. “You’re that guy.”

His tone made it obvious.
That guy
was an insult.

Matt wasn’t good at gauging the age of kids, but he put this kid on the early side of his teens, maybe eleven or twelve, if he was small for his age. Just old enough to be distrustful of adults. There was something vaguely familiar about his posture. Matt could see a glimpse of himself in the kid’s suspicious belligerence.

Unsure what else to say, Matt just nodded. “Yes. I guess I am that guy.” He started up the steps. “You waiting for Claire, too?”

The boy backed up, as if trying to judge whether or not he dared to let Matt onto the porch with him. Finally, he edged to the far side of the steps and sat back down, his shoulder pressed snug against the wooden column. Matt lowered himself to the other side of the step, resting his elbows on his knees and giving the boy another furtive look. Maybe he was being an idiot, but if this kid was at the center of some big deep mystery, he sure didn’t see it.

“I thought Claire said you hung out at Cutie Pies on Wednesday afternoons,” Matt prodded.

“I do. But Aunt Claire called in sick today.” Then he broke off, ducking his head. “I wanted to talk to her but she’s not here now, so I thought—”

“Aunt Claire?” Matt interrupted the kid.

“Yeah.”

Matt pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling like the conversation had suddenly gotten a lot more complicated. “I thought Claire’s sister was named Courtney.”

He considered it for about a second. He’d been sure that was the name of Claire’s sister. Even if he’d
remembered incorrectly, Shelby and Claire looked nothing alike. And Shelby was far too old to be Claire’s younger sister. It just didn’t add up.

When Matt looked back at him, the boy had pulled off his hat and was scrubbing a hand through his hair awkwardly.

“I’m adopted,” the kid said. He didn’t seem self-conscious about it, but instead gave Matt an odd assessing look as he added, “Aunt Claire is my real aunt.”

It was the boy’s tone that clued Matt. The way he said it so clearly, as if he were stating the obvious. As if Matt should have known something but was too stupid to see the truth in front of his eyes.

And then Matt finally got that good look at Kyle. The boy’s features still had the softness of youth about them. The lines of his face still undefined. But the similarity to Claire was unmistakable. It was there in the jut of his jaw and the pointiness of his chin.

In fact, only his eyes differed. They were a unique shade of light brown. The exact same shade as Matt’s.

Claire knew she was in trouble the moment she pulled up in front of her house and saw Kyle and Matt both sitting on her front porch. Her gut clenched in anxiety even as her heart leaped into her throat.

They looked so similar, both sitting with their elbows on their knees. Their postures similarly defensive. They were so alike, not just in looks, but in temperament, as well.

And here they were, face-to-face. She hadn’t wanted them to ever meet, yet she felt the oddest sense of relief now that they finally had. Yet this had to be so hard on Kyle. Maybe she should have introduced them after
all. In the end, trying to keep them apart had solved nothing.

Though her heart was pounding, she pulled slowly into the driveway. She clutched her keys as she climbed out, relishing the way they bit into her palm. The pain helped focus her thoughts and slow her breath.

Both Matt and Kyle stood as she approached. She walked up the steps, wrapped her arm around Kyle’s shoulder and pulled him close. They stood, his back against her chest, facing down Matt together.

“I thought you said you were leaving town,” she said. Which she knew was idiotic, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“You asked me to leave.” His tone was hard and his gaze shifted from her to Kyle and back again. “That isn’t the same thing as me saying I’d go.”

She could practically read his thoughts. He knew now why she wanted him to go. More important, he
hadn’t
known before. She was almost sure of it.

All this time, she’d believed he’d known about Kyle and just been ignoring him as all the other Ballards had. She’d been
so
sure. Now, for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine why. His expression was so shocked, he couldn’t possibly have known the truth.

To Kyle, she said, “Why don’t you go wait in the car. I’ll drive you home.”

For a second, he looked ready to protest, but a glance in Matt’s direction sent him scurrying. Smart kid. Matt’s jaw was clenched tight. His fists, tighter. If it had been a humid day, tendrils of steam would have curled off of him.

As soon as Kyle yanked the car door shut, Matt spoke, “This is one conversation you can’t put off by running away.”

“I’m not running. And you don’t really want to have this conversation with Kyle waiting in the car, do you?”

Her tone came off more defensive than she intended. Why was he angry with her?

She bumped up her chin. “What exactly do you think I’m going to do? It’s not like I can leave town.”

He leveled a steady gaze at her. “You’re a runner, Claire. It’s in your blood. Isn’t that what you always said?”

“I may be a runner, but this is my home. I’ll be right back.”