Claimed (Diamond Tycoons 1)

Because he didn’t believe in the new her.

He didn’t believe that she had changed at all.

The magnitude of the pain made her want to whimper, to cry. Why, she wanted to shout to the unsympathetic sea, why was there always more pain?

She kept walking, head bowed against the cold rolling in as darkness descended over the roiling sea. The wind picked up, blew her hair around her face, snuck inside the thin blouse that was no protection at all. It creeped inside, bringing the cold under her skin. Bringing it all the way to her bones.

And still she walked. And still, as she looked out at the waves crashing against the shore, all she could see was him.

Eyes shadowed.

Skin pale.

Jaw tight.

Fists clenched.

He’d been all but seething with rage, with betrayal, with the past that lay between them like a wasteland.

She’d known better. Had known not to take this job, not to do him this favor. Everything inside her had screamed that it was a bad idea. And yet, she’d done it anyway. How could she not have, when he’d needed her? When—despite how it had ended six years ago—she’d once loved him with everything inside her? With her heart, her soul, her entire being.

When—and she hated to admit it almost as much as she hated that it was true, that it would always be true—she loved him still.

It was because she loved him that the pain was so catastrophic.

Oh, the trip she’d just taken down memory lane had been a bitter one, filled with all the mistakes she couldn’t change. But the pain of that didn’t come close to the pain she’d felt seeing the look on Marc’s face as he’d demanded to know if she had stolen from him again. As he’d ordered her, voice blank and eyes dead, to get out of his office. Out of his building.

Out of his life.

Just the memory had her breath hiccupping in her throat and tears blooming in her eyes. She told herself she wasn’t crying, that it was just the sharpness of the wind that had her eyes stinging and her chest aching.

She didn’t buy it, though.

She wasn’t much of a crier—could count on one hand the number of times she’d cried in her adult life—but right here, right now, she couldn’t not feel the agony and the defeat of what could have been.

She couldn’t not cry.

She didn’t know how long she stood staring out at the vast and endless ocean.

Long enough for the tide to roll in and over her toes, across her feet, up her calves.

Long enough for stars to twinkle against the darkness of the night sky.

More than long enough for her tears to dry and her heart to crack wide-open as the truth settled over her like a mantle. Like a weight she couldn’t bear.

Marc would never believe in her. Even if he found proof that she hadn’t stolen those diamonds, he still wouldn’t trust her. No matter what she did, no matter how much she’d changed her life, no matter how much she tried to convince him that she wasn’t the person she’d once been, it wouldn’t matter. He would see only what he wanted to see, believe only what he’d always believed.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, one that shattered the last vestiges of hope she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding on to. But it was also the catalyst she needed to get moving again, the impetus that got her started on the long walk back to Bijoux’s headquarters—and her car.

And if she cried the whole way back, well then, nobody needed to know but her...

Eighteen

Marc kept his staff working well into the night, trying to find out what had happened to the diamonds. Or, more accurately, trying to find proof that Isa had stolen them. Not because he planned to press charges but because he wanted to know.

No, not wanted. Needed. He needed to know. Needed the vindication that came with being proven right. He needed to know that the look on her face—in her eyes—as he’d gone off on her had been as fake as the tender words she’d whispered to him while they made love.

Because if that look wasn’t fake— He shut the thought down fast. No, he wasn’t going there. Wasn’t going to think, even for a second, that he had made a mistake. Because if he let that idea in now, he’d never get it out of his head again. And he wanted to believe it so badly, wanted so much for Isa to be innocent, that he was afraid he would convince himself she was, even if she wasn’t.