Her hostility took him aback, as did the underlying challenge. He bristled, but managed to keep himself from pointing out her scars were an equally indelible reminder that she had had a life before he entered it.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t talk about him, but it’s obviously upsetting you so you should stop,” he managed, barely hanging on to a civil tone.
Her jagged laugh abraded his nerves, plucking his aggression responses to even higher alert. “Yeah, well, if that’s the criteria, there’s a lot of things I should stop doing.”
Don’t ask, he told himself, but the elephant in the room had grown large enough to put pressure on both of them. A few weeks ago she hadn’t had the courage to go to the grocery store in her hometown. Today she was being shoved into a supporting role on the world stage. If she didn’t want to do it, she ought to have said so by now, but apparently that was up to him.
“You’re not happy in the spotlight. I understand that.” He removed his belt and flung it away, angry with himself for turning a blind eye to what was obviously damaging their relationship, but he couldn’t undo who he was any more than he was willing to have Luiza’s name erased from his chest.
“Stanley said Paulie’s mother was always jealous of my mom because she looked like she had it all, but at least Maude had privacy. All I could think is, What am I doing? Why am I here?” She lifted helpless hands.
“Tiffany, you’re good at this,” he began.
“I’m good at sex. Should I do that with every man who asks?” she snarled back.
He recoiled, shocked by her vehemence and scored by a remark that made it sound as if she only tolerated sleeping with him. “As I said—” The words ground from between his clenched teeth. “You shouldn’t do anything that fails to give you some level of enjoyment.”
Her fierce expression flickered toward remorse, before she collapsed in a chair, elbows on her knees, head in hands, shoulders heavy with defeat. “I’m sorry. I know better than to have this fight. It accomplishes nothing because at the end of the day, you still need me beside you.”
“I want you beside me, Tiffany. I don’t need you. If you’re feeling used then you know my feelings on that. I’ll achieve my two-thirds votes with or without you.”
She lifted her head out of her hands to stare at him, face like a mask, half of it tortoiseshell reds, the other side white. Slowly her flat gaze moved to the floor while her hands twisted together. She forced herself to sit upright, but her shoulders remained bowed.
“That certainly tells me where I stand.”
The ice maiden was back, causing cold fire to lick behind his heart, leaving streaks of dead, black tissue.
“I’m saying you don’t have to participate if you don’t want to. We can still be together. It doesn’t have to change anything,” he said rather desperately, sensing things slipping away without any chance to control it.
“It changes everything, Ryzard! What am I going to do? Sit in your presidential castle waiting for you to come home? There’s a departure from turning into my mother,” she said with a caustic laugh. “What else could I do? Follow you around but never be seen? That would be living as a recluse again. If you—” She bent her head to stare at her pale knuckles, but he saw the pull in her brow of deep struggle. “If we loved each other, it would be different.”
He couldn’t help his stark inhale of aversion. Marriage he might rationalize. Pulling his heart from the grave where he’d buried it next to Luiza was impossible. There, at least, it was safe from another blow of great loss.
Silence coated the room in a thick fog for a long minute. Tiffany was the first to move, swiping at her cheek before speaking haltingly.
“I thought my life was over, that I’d never be able to have a husband and family. I even reconciled myself to it and figured out how to fill my life with other things. I could live unmarried and childless with you, Ryzard. But you’re the one who made me believe I shouldn’t sell myself short. If someone could love me, if I have a soul mate out there, I shouldn’t settle for anything less than finding him.”
He clenched his hands into fists, trying to withstand a pain so great it threatened to rend him apart. She did deserve to be loved. He couldn’t keep her here to serve his passion while he withheld parts of himself. It would wear on her self-esteem. If he wasn’t capable of giving her all of himself, he had to let her go.
But the agony was so great he wanted to scream.
The weariness and misery in her eyes when she lifted them to meet his gaze was more than he could bear though.
“It’s time for me to go home,” she said gently.
He nodded once, jerkily, incapable of any other response. His throat was blocked by a thick knot of anguish, the rest of him caved in on itself so his skin felt like a thin shell, ready to crack and turn to powder.
“I’ll go make the arrangements,” her voice thinned over the last word as she stood and rushed from the room.
She didn’t return.
When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he went looking for her and came up against a locked door. He could hear her sobbing inside the bedroom, but he didn’t knock. He silently railed at her for shutting him out, but the truth was, he was close to tears himself. Drowning himself in a bottle of vodka looked like a really good idea.
Taking one to his room, he sat on the bed then left it untouched on the nightstand as he stayed awake through the long, dark night, willing Tiffany to come to him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BARBARA HOLBROOK WANTED to know exactly what had happened.
“Mom,” Tiffany protested, feeling cornered in her room, jet-lagged and wondering how she still had a doll propped on the pillows of her made bed. It was an antique, granted, but seriously. “I’m about ten years too late for having my heart broken by my first crush. That’s all it was.”
That’s what she kept telling herself anyway. She sure as heck didn’t want to deconstruct everything that had happened with Ryzard. It was too painful.
But she missed him. Sleeping alone sucked and stalking him on the web only made her heart ache. Or laugh aloud.
Mrs. Davis and I remain on excellent terms. Print something negative about her at your own peril, she read over breakfast one Saturday morning and got herself goggled at by her entire family for her outburst.
“What,” she hedged, amusement fading. “It’s funny,” she insisted after reading it to them. She wanted to kiss his austere image, feeling as though he was flirting with her from far, far away. He’d been so contained that last night, so willing to let her go without a fight. That had made her feel insignificant, but reading that they remained “on excellent terms” bolstered her.
“You’ll be seeing him again, then?” her father asked, sipping his coffee.
“Why? Does sleeping with him help your approval rating?”
“Tiffany,” her mother gasped.
Christian sent her a hard look. “Come on, Tiff.”
Setting her cup into its saucer like a gavel announcing a judge’s decision, Tiffany said, “That was out of line. I apologize. But I’m tired of being a bug under a microscope. It’s time I went into the office.”
“You’ve been in there every day since you came home,” her mother said with confusion.
“Not my office here, Mom. The real office. In the city.”
“What? When?” Chris asked swiftly. “I can’t drive you for a week at least. I told you I’m working from here until I get that design done, so I’m not interrupted.”
“And I have to be in Washington,” her father said with apology.
“I have an appointment in New York at the end of the month, darling,” her mother offered. “You can come in for the day with me, but are you sure you’re ready?”
She wished she’d had her tablet set to record. Ryzard would shake his head at this display and probably claim this coddling was the reason she was such a spoiled brat. She suspected he’d also remind her how lucky she was to be so loved.
Misty emotion washed over her in a flood of gratitude for the family she had and an ache of longing for the man she didn’t.
“You guys are awesome. I love you,” she said, meeting each pair of eyes in turn to let her sincerity sink in. She silently thanked Ryzard as she did it, finally able to see herself as a whole, independent adult because he had treated her as one. “But it’s time for me to be a grown-up. I’ll drive myself to New York and stay in the company flat until I find my own place.”
Her mother’s gasp and near-Victorian collapse didn’t sway her. On Monday she walked through the glass doors of Davis and Holbrook, palms clammy and half her face hidden behind giant sunglasses. By Thursday the worst of the buzzing and staring was behind her. Friday morning she was interrupted by a delivery of flowers.