Yours for the Night (17 page)

A cloud blew across the sun, and she shivered. Time to get back. She had so much to do. Her fantasy world might have crashed and burned, but her real life kept rolling right on over her. She had mortgage calls, insurance, inspections, a thousand things she needed to hear back on for the sale. Sure enough, her phone beeped as she approached her desk. Four messages. It hurt that not one of them would be from Chase.

She plugged in her earphone and got out her pad. Her father’s voice hit her right in the heart. “Marianna, I’d like to talk to you. 103

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Could you come over after work?”

He asked, he didn’t demand. He didn’t even sound angry, but he didn’t sound normal either. In fact, a hint of worry threaded through his voice. What did it mean?

Honestly, she couldn’t take much more.

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15

HER MOM OPENED THE DOOR. “DARLING, IF I’D KNOWN YOU WERE

coming, I’d have waited on dinner.”

Following her inside, Marianna searched her mother’s face for a clue as to how much she knew about Sunday. She smiled the same as always. “Didn’t Dad tell you he called me?”

Clucking her tongue, her mom shook her head. “That man. What am I going to do with him?”

Marianna would have sworn he hadn’t told. Why not? “Well, I’ll see what he wants, then maybe I can warm up a plate for myself.” She kept her voice genial and the comment innocuous, though the thought of food right now made her ill. Her mom waved imperiously down the hall. “He’s in his office.”

Marianna’s high heels on the hardwood floor sounded like her death knell. The office door slightly ajar, she found her father sitting behind his desk, chair turned slightly as he stared out the window. Hands clasped over his abdomen, he was so lost in thought, he didn’t hear her. With only the desk lamp on, the light shining up on his face created deep craggy shadows and highlighted the bags beneath his eyes.

Her stomach tumbled. On Sunday, he’d appeared five years younger. Tonight, he looked his age. She’d done this to him. The carriage clock ticked on the leather-top desk. Marianna couldn’t stand the guilt. “Dad.”

He startled, and when he saw her, something unreadable flashed across his features. “Marianna.” He swallowed. “Would you please close the door?”

He was unnervingly polite. With the door shut, the wood paneled room lay mostly in foreboding darkness. Marianna couldn’t stand that any more than she could stand the guilt, and she switched on the standing lamp by his leather sofa.

“Please sit down.” He pointed to the couch. She sat on the ottoman of his easy chair instead.

“Dad.” The excuses and explanations wouldn’t roll off her tongue despite how she’d practiced on the drive up.

“Please don’t tell your mother.”

God. She should be the one begging him not to tell. “I won’t.”

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“I love your mother very much.”

“I know.” Actually, she didn’t. He’d never been demonstrative. But then, her mom didn’t seem to need it. “I won’t do anything to intentionally hurt her,” she said. With her father, Marianna’s conduct had resulted in deep disappointment. She hated even to think how it would affect her mom. Her father leaned forward, scrubbed his hands down his face, then rested both elbows on the desk. “I can’t explain away what I’ve done. Maybe it was a midlife crisis.” He laughed harshly. “But I’m a little old for that.”

Okay. Right. He wouldn’t tell her mom what Marianna had done because he was having a midlife crisis. In an alternate reality, maybe that made sense.

“I promise you I’m never going to do it again.”

Marianna sat frozen on the ottoman. Her skin prickled. She got a really bad feeling in the pit of her stomach that this was something she didn’t want to understand. “So you promise not to do it again if I promise not to tell Mom,” she said to clarify. Of course it wasn’t clear at all. He nodded his head, his face grave. “Yes.”

“And ‘it’ would be what that man was referring to on Sunday.”

His nostrils flared, and for the first time, his tone hardened into the voice of the man she was used to. “Don’t make me give you all the dirty details of what I’ve done, as some sort of penance.”

Her brain started to whirl like a washing machine on spin cycle. Her father thought Brock Ransom had been talking about him.

“I don’t want any details,” she said softly, trying to remember everything Brock had said that night. The exact words wouldn’t come. What she did remember now was the blood draining from her father’s face before Brock said anything to Marianna.

Asa, you sly devil.

Oh yes, she remembered that. Brock knew her father. And he knew Marianna as a courtesan. And he’d assumed . . .

She couldn’t wrap her mind around the truth. It had never occurred to her. It was too much of a coincidence. And yet it fit exactly with what her father was saying.

Brock made the assumption not only because of Marianna, but because he knew her father was a client of Courtesans. Her guilty conscience said it was about her. His conscience was just as guilty. They’d both heard what they feared 106

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the most.

This big man, her father, the all-important man she’d striven her entire life to please, the father she always seemed to disappoint—this man had cheated on her mom. And he was afraid Marianna would tell. A rush of anger welled up, choking her. He’d been cheating. He was a total asshole. He’d lorded it over them, not just herself, but her mom and Tina, too. Holier than thou, he’d told them all how he thought they should live, what they should do.

But he was a cheat.

She stood, her fists clenched. She wanted to shout at him. God, she even wanted to run right out to the kitchen and reveal his dirty little secret, because it was exactly what he deserved. Marianna wanted to pay him back for the way he’d treated her for as long as she could remember.

“Marianna, please.” Fear trembled through his voice. She realized that was what she’d seen on his face when she first arrived. Fear. He saw his comfortable life crumbling around him. Her mom would take him for everything he was worth.

“Please forgive me.”

She didn’t want to forgive, she didn’t want to—

She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, the oxygen like a calming drug. She didn’t want to judge. She didn’t want to persecute. She didn’t have the right, not unless she wanted her own secrets revealed. Her father was no worse than she was. The difference was she’d learned he was no better either. She unclenched her fists, the blood flowing back into her fingers. “I’ve lived my whole life based on your expectations, Dad.” She’d even dumped Chase because she couldn’t measure up. “I jumped jobs so many times trying to make you happy.”

Her father rolled his lips between his teeth and nodded. Listening to her, not citing dirty details, was his penance.

“I gave up a career I loved because I was trying to make you happy. But it only made me unhappy.”

“I pushed you to help you.”

“I know. You wanted to get me off my duff.” She felt the anger storm up again and she tamped it down. “My duff was okay.” All right, not totally okay, because she’d overspent a lot. She’d forced her dad to bail her out. Funnily 107

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enough, she could see both sides clearly now, his and hers.

“We’ve both made a lot of mistakes.” She stopped, waiting for him to lift his gaze from the leather top of his desk. “But we’re not going to make the same mistakes again. We’re not going to talk about what happened on Sunday.” She took one step closer. “We’re going to start over.”

He closed his eyes, rested a moment, then nodded. “I won’t tell you how to live your life anymore.”

“And I’m not going to expect you to bail me out of my own problems either.”

The room echoed with a light knock on the door. Her father grimaced, glanced from her to the door and back again. She knew what he needed. “I will never talk about this with anyone because this is your problem. You fix what you did. You make it up to her.” Then she opened the door.

Her mom’s gaze flicked between them. “I heated up a plate for you, darling.”

Marianna wasn’t hungry. Food wouldn’t satisfy. Chase was the only thing that would. Opening her eyes to her father’s faults had suddenly opened her to everything. She needed Chase. It didn’t matter how she’d met him; she had to tell him tonight that she wanted him in her life. If it was just a fantasy world she’d created, so be it, but for once, she was going to follow through instead of jumping ship at the first sign of bad weather.

SITTING ON THE BALCONY, A HOODED SWEATSHIRT ZIPPED AGAINST the cool night air, Chase nursed the last glass of wine from the bottle he’d bought for Saturday night.

After talking with Isabel, he’d gone from despair to anger when Harve confirmed he didn’t know how to find Marianna either. Chase had shared something special with her. It wasn’t merely a fuck. It wasn’t just sex-for-hire. It wasn’t even a fantasy. Yet she’d tossed him out along with her phone. He deserved an explanation.

On the drive home, he’d realized he’d given her no indication of how he felt. He’d asked her to help him with his daughter. He never mentioned what Marianna had done for him.

When he’d pulled into his parking spot in the underground garage of his apartment building, what she’d said in Sunday’s message actually hit him. She was meeting her father. The ogre. With his bruised ego, Chase had been 108

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thinking that she’d thrown out her phone to get rid of him. Maybe something entirely different had happened. So here he was, sitting in the dark, considering his options. Of which he didn’t have many. He could call Isabel again and ask her to give Marianna a message. He could go to Courtesans—Harve had the address—so that Isabel could personally see how important this was to him. The only option he wouldn’t take was letting it alone. He belonged with Marianna. He would do everything to find her. He would find her. And they would talk through what really went wrong. After a year of guilt and apathy, he was not going back to the way he’d been, living with a specter. He propped his feet on the balcony rail as if the action were a punctuation mark.

“May I have a taste?”

He almost dropped the damn glass.

“I knocked and rang the bell,” Marianna said, “then I was about to walk away when I decided to try the doorknob.” She rescued the glass from his fingers, sipped the wine, then handed it back. “It’s dangerous to leave your door unlocked.” She spread her hands, shrugged. “Who knows what the cat might drag in?”

The dim light falling through the balcony door revealed the pulse beating fast at her throat. She wasn’t feeling as flippant as she wanted him to think. Chase didn’t care. She was here, that’s all that mattered. “I don’t remember leaving the chain off the door.”

She pulled a deck chair close and sat beside him. “Then maybe I was supposed to walk right in, cosmically speaking.”

“Would you have returned another time if I wasn’t here?” That did matter to him. A one-shot deal she’d done while she had the courage? Or something with more meaning?

“I would have kept coming back until you answered me.”

He set the wine aside, thinking he should explain himself, disclose his inner feelings as he’d planned to on Sunday. He did none of those things. “Why?”

“Because I’ve given up being a courtesan, but I don’t want to give up you.”

Chase closed his eyes, savored the relief and joy deep inside. “That’s what I was going to ask you to do. Give it all up.” He let that settle between them. “I don’t want to share you. You’ve come to mean a lot to me.”

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She rose, climbed onto his chair, straddled his lap. “I made a big mistake becoming a courtesan. But there was one really good thing to come out of it.”

She cupped his cheek, stroking the five o’clock shadow along his jaw. “You.”

Then she dipped down to take his mouth.

No kiss had ever tasted so sweet. She made him whole again. Marianna pulled back. She wiped off her lipstick glistening on his lips. She’d been terrified he’d slam his door in her face. “I’m sorry I simply disappeared without telling you first. I couldn’t think straight.”

“We moved very fast. I can understand needing some time.”

True, she’d been a goner almost from the beginning. “That was no excuse. I should have told you about . . .” It was still hard to say.

“Something happened with your father, didn’t it?”

She closed her eyes. A deep breath cleansed her. She could tell him everything. He somehow guessed parts of it anyway. He put his hand over her mouth. “I take that back, I don’t want to know. You’re real. You came back. That’s all I care about now.”

Maybe. Marianna owed him an explanation, about her father, about what went on Sunday night, that she couldn’t call because she’d let her fear take over. Yes, she owed Chase, but she’d give him all the answers later, after making love, when she was snuggled in his arms, the moment perfect for divulging secrets. For now, she had something more elemental in mind. “Wanna hear my plan?”