His Brand of Passion

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Zoe said quietly, and although she sounded calm he still heard a faint thread of hurt in her voice. Of course she was hurt. Generally, when a woman said ‘I love you’, the man was supposed to say something—‘I love you, too’ being the preferred option. He knew that much at least.

‘I’m glad you love me,’ he said, pulling her close, and she let out a little laugh.

‘Well, that’s something.’

‘I’m glad you think so.’

She rolled over, her hair brushing his bare chest as she kissed him. ‘You’re glad about a lot of things, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am.’

She smiled softly and from the other room Aaron heard a sound that had him tensing, a sound he’d blanked out in the last hour. His phone.

He needed to answer it. Part of him wanted to ignore it, wanted to stay in the safe and warm cocoon of Zoe’s embrace, but he knew how much unrest there had been in both the economy and Bryant Enterprises. He needed to check his messages.

‘Just a minute,’ he said, and slid from the bed.

Zoe propped herself up one elbow. ‘You’re going to check your phone, aren’t you?’

‘It’s been an hour.’

‘I didn’t realise you’d set a timer. Or is it just your internal clock?’ She sounded waspish, and Aaron felt the first flicker of anger.

‘Be reasonable. It could be something important.’

‘Fine.’ She rolled over, her back to him, and with an impatient shrug Aaron slid on his boxer shorts and stalked to the living room.

He reached for his phone, his heart seeming to freeze within him as he saw how many messages he’d missed. He listened to the first voicemail with a numbing sense of disbelief.

‘Aaron, there’s been an emergency meeting of the board of trustees. Apparently, it’s allowable when there is a majority shareholder…’

The mystery man who was trying to buy up his company. He listened to the next message, and then the next, as his second-in-command detailed the events of the meeting.

And then the verdict—stark, impossible: ‘You’ve been voted down as CEO.’

He’d lost Bryant Enterprises. And all because of a woman.

CHAPTER TWELVE

ZOE LAY IN bed, her body still tingling from Aaron’s love-making even as she berated herself for being so bitchy about him taking his messages. Honestly, would she ever learn anything from her past relationships? It was just that she was so desperate and afraid. Neither were admirable qualities, and certainly not ones she wanted to possess in any relationship—especially not this one, the most important of all. She hated feeling like the person who gave more, who needed more, who cared more. Who loved.

She’d told Aaron it didn’t matter if he didn’t love her, but she knew it did. Of course it did. If he loved her, she’d hand him his stupid phone herself. She’d understand, she wouldn’t care about such trivial moments. It was because she knew he didn’t that those little moments became far too important. Defining.

Sighing, she stared up at the ceiling. Only moments ago she’d felt so joyously certain, yet now the doubts crept right back in. She took a deep breath and forced herself to stay calm. She’d be honest with Aaron. She’d apologise to him for being stupid about the phone. She’d tell him what she needed.

It seemed like a good plan and Zoe had sat up in bed, the sheet wrapped around her, when Aaron strode into the bedroom, his face as frighteningly blank as it had ever been.

Still, she had to try.

‘Aaron, I’m sorry I was obnoxious about you checking your phone. I know it’s such a small thing, and I clearly overreacted.’ Aaron didn’t answer. He sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her. ‘Aaron?’ she asked uncertainly. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Is something wrong?’ he repeated tonelessly. ‘You could say that.’

A cold, creeping fear took hold of her heart. ‘Was it the phone? Was there a message—?’

‘There were twenty-two messages.’ Aaron cut her off, his voice still flat.

‘Oh.’ She hugged her knees to her chest. ‘I guess it was something important.’

‘You guessed right.’ Aaron raked his hands through his hair, his body in the grip of some terrible emotion. Then he dropped his hands and Zoe had the horrible feeling that he’d just come to some major decision—and one she didn’t want to hear.

He scooped her dress off the floor and tossed it to her. Zoe caught it instinctively, the sheet slipping from her breasts. ‘You should go.’

‘Go?’

‘This isn’t working. It never could have worked. Everything between us has been a mistake.’

It was as if he were saying every fear her heart had whispered, turning them into terrible realities. ‘You don’t mean that, Aaron.’

He turned to her, his eyes hard and cold. ‘I mean it absolutely.’

‘You’re just going to end it like this? Kick me out?’

‘A clean break is better.’

She shook her head slowly, still numb with disbelief. Ten minutes ago he’d been inside her. ‘Who the hell was on that phone?’ she asked and Aaron didn’t answer; he just gathered her underwear and shoes and deposited them on the bed.

‘I’ll have my limo drive you to Millie and Chase’s,’ he said, and left the room.

Zoe sat frozen in the bed they’d just shared, her crumpled dress between her clenched fingers. Her mind spun uselessly, for she had no idea what had just happened…or why. Had a single phone call really made such a difference, or had Aaron been stringing her along the whole while? In either case, she had judged badly—again. And now she was left reeling and hurting more than ever before.

She dressed quickly, feeling sordid and shamed as she put on her crumpled evening gown. She slipped on her heels and did as much repair as she could to her face and hair. Then she took a deep breath and headed for the living room and Aaron.

She didn’t know what to expect, but when she emerged from the bedroom he didn’t even look at her. He’d dressed in a business suit, which seemed odd at this time of night. It had to be nearing midnight.

She walked to the lift doors and still he didn’t say anything. In stunned disbelief she realised he was just going to let her walk out of his life for ever. In fact, that was what he seemed to want.

Emotions tightened in her chest and clogged her throat. ‘I think,’ she managed after a moment when he still hadn’t so much as turned his head, ‘I deserve an explanation at least.’

‘There’s no point.’

‘Really?’ Her voice choked and she strived to even it—then wondered why she wanted to hide how much he’d hurt her. Devastated her. ‘And how did you come to that conclusion?’

Finally he looked at her and then Zoe wished he hadn’t. He was the same man she’d first met at Millie’s wedding, cold and pitiless, arrogant and hard. A man she hadn’t liked or respected. Was that the real Aaron, and the rest had been no more than a facade? ‘It doesn’t matter, Zoe,’ he said flatly, and he sounded impatient, as if he could barely stand to give her these few seconds of his time. ‘All that matters is that this—us—was a mistake.’

‘A mistake.’

‘Yes.’

She stared at him, searching for some crack in the mask, some sign that he still was the man she wanted and loved underneath. There was nothing. Even so, a part of her longed to try to reach him, to cross the frozen silence between them, take his face in her hands and kiss his lips. To insist that she knew him now and he wasn’t this man. He was someone kind, tender and good. He was the man she loved.

The words were there, clogged in her throat, on her lips. A flicker of impatience crossed Aaron’s face like a shadow, and with it came Zoe’s defeat. She’d done this before—tried and begged and believed when she shouldn’t have. When Tim had ended it, she’d insisted she could change for him, that it could work. She’d begged him not to give up on her. The memory now was unbearably shaming; long ago Zoe had promised herself she would never debase herself so again. Then she’d gone on basically to do the same thing in three other relationships.

She wouldn’t do it now.

Lifting her chin, she met Aaron’s gaze straight on. ‘Goodbye, Aaron,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster. He didn’t answer, and as the lift doors opened and she stepped inside she couldn’t keep from some of the awful hurt spilling out. ‘I hope you go to hell,’ she spat, the words ending on a sob, and the doors closed on his stony, unchanging expression.

Two days later Aaron sat in his former office and stared at the remnants of his life. A few boxes of confidential files were pretty much all he had. There were no photos, no mementoes, no personal items beyond a spare suit to remove from the executive office of Bryant Enterprises. The high-rise office building in midtown had been in the Bryant family since it had been built back in the 1930s.

Now it belonged to someone else, some techno-wizard from California who had masterminded the hostile takeover of his company. Today was Aaron’s last day.

The newspapers’ business pages had been full of his failure: Bryant Enterprises Crumbles! And No More Bryant in BE He’d read every article, punishing himself even as he refused to give into the pulsing pain that coursed through him unrelentingly. He would not succumb to self-pity. How could he, when this was all his fault?