The Owner of His Heart (10 page)

“Sorry, kid.” The detective sounded sincere. “It’s hard to turn down easy money when you live case-to-case.”

“You’re a slime ball,” Carol informed him, pointing at the cell phone.

“I totally understand,” Layla said. “And I hope you get plenty of cases to tide you over this summer.”

“So why exactly are you dating this guy again?” Carol asked after she hung up.

“We’re not dating,” Layla answered.

“What then, you’re just living together, and spending every hour you’re not here with him?”

“Yeah, it’s complicated,” Layla said. “Do you have any aspirin?”

She ended up taking the two Aleeve before getting on the bus to Nathan’s place. Just that morning, she had thought of swinging by his job instead of heading straight to his apartment, thinking maybe they could grab some dinner. But now that idea was off the table, because she already knew the only thing they’d be doing that night was fighting. This wouldn’t have been so bad, but two weeks into whatever their relationship was, Layla had surprisingly already grown out of the habit of constantly arguing with him.

To her surprise, after she’d agreed to leave Pittsburgh, they’d started getting along outside of bed, too. Growing up as she did, with a father who used sweet talk and manipulation to take advantage of people, she’d found herself oddly attracted to Nathan’s straight-forwardness. With other people she was constantly on guard, to make sure she didn’t say anything that would hurt their feelings or make them feel bad in any way. But with Nathan, she could say anything she darn well pleased, because he had no trouble doing the same. This made him shockingly easy to talk to.

They’d discussed their childhoods, their adult lives, their hopes and dreams. She’d confessed to him about how lonely it had been growing up without a mother or any siblings. And late one night, he’d told her about the “three year rebellion,” which was what he called the gap years between graduating from his elite private school and his matriculation into Yale.

“At first it was about making my parents see that they couldn’t control me past my eighteenth birthday, then I got bored, but I was too stubborn to admit it. I had them worried there for a while. I think they were afraid they’d raised a deadbeat. Sometimes I wonder if my father named me CEO in his will as a thank you for finally meeting their expectations.”

“What made you stop being stubborn and agree to go to college?” she’d asked.

Nathan’s answer to that had been to turn away from her in bed and reach over to his bedside clock. “I’m setting the alarm for an hour earlier. I have a conference meeting with Matsuda, and I want to go over a few details with the translator before we get on the line.”

That’s how Layla knew that she must have somehow figured into his decision to give in to his parents and go to college. The only thing they didn’t talk about was the short time that their lives had intersected. Whenever she tried to bring it up, even accidentally, Nathan either changed the subject or made it clear it was off-limits.

Still, everything else was on the table for discussion, and when you stripped away the class and professional differences, she and Nathan had a lot in common. Disappointing fathers: his had given his life to Sinclair Industries, literally—he’d had a heart attack in his office before ever really getting to know his son as an adult. They both had delayed college experiences – Nathan’s due to the three-year rebellion, hers due to the fall. They also both had a fair amount of ambition.

Sinclair Industries wasn’t publicly traded and had only netted domestic contracts for almost one-hundred years, but Nathan really believed he could make the company a worldwide name, especially if they landed the Japanese deal. Listening to him talk about it, Layla believed he could transform his company, too.

The night before finding out that he’d detective-blocked her, she’d told him about her secret dream of eventually starting a physical therapy center of her own while they ate dinner. “Our patients are often so traumatized when they come to us. I wish I could make it easier for them. I read about these spas in Beverly Hills that cater to people recovering from plastic surgery, and I wondered why we don’t have anything like that for physical therapy. People could come in and get their PT, but it would be in a relaxing environment. If they wanted they could get a manicure/pedicure after their session, and maybe we’d even have a hair salon. It’s hard to keep up with your beauty stuff when you’re in recovery, but people really do feel so much better when they look good.”

She had never told anyone this or even said it to herself out loud, but it honestly felt like she could tell Nathan anything without fear of judgment from him.

“That’s a great idea,” he told her.

“Really?” she said.

“Yes, really,” he answered. “You’ve got a growing market, insider know-how, and a vision. Call me when you’re ready to make it happen and we’ll talk start-up capital.”

“Oh, I couldn’t take your money,” she said.

“You wouldn’t be taking it. I know a good idea when I hear one, and I’ll fully expect a return on my investment.”

The way he said this, made her believe in the idea, too. She smiled. “Okay, I just have to decide where I’m moving to, then we’ll talk.”

A shadow crossed over his face, just as it did whenever the subject of her leaving came up. But then it was gone, and Nathan just said, “Make sure to do that.”

Yes, they’d been getting along great, which was why he was probably unpleasantly surprised when he came home from work to find her furious and fuming.

***

The only thing that had gotten Nathan through a long day of back-to-back conference calls with Japan and a few of the other international clients Andrew should have been handling, was knowing Layla would be waiting for him at the end of it.

He’d even texted her before leaving work to say he was on his way, which he never did with women he was dating. But then again, he’d never invited a woman to share his home, even for a weekend, so all of this was new territory for him.

A certain worry crept into his thoughts as he drove home. They’d been together for two weeks now, and unlike every other woman he had dated, he hadn’t grown even slightly sick of her. If anything, his need for her had deepened from an angry frenzy, to a bone-deep wanting. And it made it hard to fathom her moving away in six weeks, even though he knew what would happen if he let her stay, and there was no way he was going to allow for that.

He could still remember how stupid he had been about her before. Making excuses to visit his brother on campus if he mentioned he was meeting up with Layla, inviting himself along on their movie dates, renting a house in Miami over Spring Break just so he could invite them down. He’d even started applying to colleges, so he’d have an excuse to hang out in the library while she and Andrew were in there studying.

Then came that weekend when his parents had flown to Arizona on business and Andrew had gone on a three-day hike with the Outdoor Club. It had occurred to Nathan maybe he had become good enough friends with Layla to invite her over to their family home without Andrew.

He recalled how heavy the phone’s receiver had felt in his hand as he picked it up and called Layla’s dorm room.

She’d answered the phone, “Andrew?”

“No, it’s Nathan,” he said, feeling more awkward than any man over the age of twelve should when talking to a girl. “Andrew’s out of town.”

“I know,” she said. “But when I saw the number on the Caller ID, I thought maybe it was him.”

Nathan decided to get off the subject of Andrew. “I, um, put in my college applications like we were talking about and I got accepted into a few of them, including Carnegie Mellon and Yale.”

“Oh, that’s great, Nathan,” she said. “I’m really happy to hear it. Is that why you called?”

“Not exactly. I’m trying to decide whether I should go to Carnegie Mellon with you guys or maybe go out-of-state. And I was wondering if you could come by the house and help me make the decision.”

He held his breath. Having just made that whole excuse up, he had no idea whether she’d buy it or not.

“Really? Me?” she said. “You don’t want to ask your brother?”

“I already know what he’ll say. He’s a CMU Tartan through and through, his blood runs plaid. CMU was his first choice and he used Pitt as a back up, but you applied to way more places, so I think you’re the better consult for this.”

He half-expected her to call him out. She’d applied to a few more places than Andrew, but not enough to qualify her to give him advice about where to go to college.

“Oh, I get it,” she said.

He stopped breathing and braced himself, sure she’d figured out he had a crush on her. “Everybody’s out of town, and you need some company.”

Layla’s ability to always believe the sunniest version of a story never failed to amaze him. “Yes,” he said. “The house is big, and I’m not used to being here alone.”

Again, he was afraid she’d call his bluff. But then she said. “Sure, I can come over. Give me thirty minutes, okay?”

His heart jumped in his chest, excited at the prospect of being in the same room with her alone. He’d had no idea back then, what he was setting in motion.

The memory of that phone call dissolved and he came back to present day. No, he couldn’t let her stay in Pittsburgh, he decided, remembering what had happened the last time. But maybe he could visit her. He really did like her idea for a physical therapy spa. And if he invested, it would give him a good excuse to go to wherever she was, ostensibly to check up on his investment, but really to get his Layla fix until he no longer needed her.

He whistled as he unlocked and pushed open the loft’s fire door, but when he walked inside, he found her standing there, obviously fuming. “You paid off all the detectives in the city, just so I couldn’t retain their services?”

His eyes narrowed. “You tried to hire a detective?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I have the right to hire someone to try to figure out what happened ten years ago. But you don’t have the right to stop me from hiring a detective.” He removed his suit jacket with a sigh, kissing the happy homecoming he’d imagined good-bye and going straight back into business mode. “Layla, you’re assuming ethics on my part, but I don’t have any, not in this situation, and especially not when it comes to you. I don’t want you to know what happened during the year you lost, and I refuse to apologize for that.”

“Fine.” Layla said, spreading her arms. “I can find an out-of-state detective.” She went over to his desk and sat down, presumably to look someone up on the computer.

“And then my detective will find your out-of-state detective and pay him off. You cannot win this game, Layla. I have too much money, and too few principles when it comes to you.”

Layla turned around in his desk chair. “Wait, you have a detective you keep on retainer just to keep me from hiring my own detective?”

He smirked. “No, Layla. I hired a detective to investigate you when you first came to town, then I kept him on to try to find out who’s been threatening you. The preventing you from investigating component is only one of his duties.”

Layla stared at him for a few angry seconds before saying, “Okay, I’m leaving.”

Now he went from smug to confused. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” she said, grabbing her purse.

“Why?” he asked. He tried to ignore the way his heart sank at just the thought of sleeping in his bed without her.

“Why? Why?! Because I’m mad at you, and that’s what women do when they’re mad at the guy they’re with. They leave. I’m sure this scenario has played out for you before.”

He shook his head, still confused. “No, not really. I’m used to a more passive-aggressive fuming in silence.”

“Well, I’m not that kind of woman.”

He knew she wasn’t. It was one of the many things he liked about her when she wasn’t trying to pry open the Pandora’s box of their past. “Why can’t you let this go?” he asked.

“Because it’s my past, almost a whole year gone. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be walking around with a missing part of your life, especially since it had nothing to do with the fall—”

She stopped, her face making it obvious she’d said more than she wanted to.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She turned her head away, studying the moonlit view of the city’s landscape outside of his window.

And it happened again, that tug to help her, even if it would be against his own interest to do so.

He went over to her and ran a finger down her smooth cheek. “Tell me,” he said.

She kept looking out the window as she said, “I hit my head and that sent me into a coma, but…” It seemed like she struggled to get this next part out: “I didn’t have any brain damage. They did all these scans and everything came back clean, which meant there was no reason I should have lost that year. Basically it’s a psychological condition. It’s not that I can’t remember, but I don’t want to for some reason.

“They sent me to a psychiatrist, and she said I should come back here to see if anything jogged my memory. But then I got a scholarship to go back to college, and it took a few years to find a job opening in Pittsburgh. Still, I’m here now, and I need to know what happened. Please just tell me.”

Layla’s pleading gaze tore at his heart and made him want to tell her everything. He prided himself on being a cold bastard, tried to live up to his business reputation in every way. But this woman did something to him, made him want to do the right thing, even if it meant hurting himself.

“Ask me again in six weeks,” he said. “And I’ll tell you everything once you’re out of the state.”

“Nathan, I…” she stopped, but then decided to say it anyway. “I know we don’t know each other well anymore. But I care about you. If you let me out of the contract, and just tell me what happened, maybe we could—”

“Sshh.” He pulled her into his arms and held her close, breathing in her earthy scent. “Six weeks. Just give me that and if you still want to know, I’ll tell you. But give me the six weeks.”

She drew away from him and he could see all the questions still burning in her eyes, but she clamped her lips together before saying, “Okay, six weeks.”