He nodded. “Good. Here’s the deal. Colby Harrison is your past, got it? He doesn’t matter. What he says…doesn’t matter.”
“But all of those people…they saw. They heard.” They’d all been staring at her. When she’d lived in Alabama, she hadn’t even been able to walk down the aisle at the grocery store without people stopping to stare and whisper.
Did you hear…that’s the girl…she seduced that poor boy…made him crazy…
Got him to kill her folks…
Claire shook her head as she tried to make those voices vanish. They’d haunted her for too long.
“I don’t care about those people.”
“It’s your business. Your hotel. You should care.” She’d been so worried about doing something to tarnish his image. And now…
“Scandal sells, baby, or haven’t you realized that?”
Claire flinched. She hated scandal. She wanted…secrecy.
The elevator doors opened.
“So much for dinner,” she muttered.
He caught her hand. Brushed his fingers over the ribbon on her right wrist. She’d learned to be creative over the years. When people saw the scars there, well, there was no mistaking them. You got scars on your wrist-those long, thin scars—from one act.
Claire had wanted to die when she was sixteen. When she stood at her parents’ graves, when it seemed that the whole world hated her, she’d wanted to escape.
To be with my mom and dad again.
People had spray painted her home. Written words like “whore” and “killer” on her windows. Senator Harrison had done a massive job on the local media. He’d worked so hard to convince everyone that his son was just the poor, misled boy.
And Claire was the evil seductress.
He’d told her, time and again, that she should be the one to suffer. The one to be punished.
I just wanted to escape.
The scars would always be there. She covered them so she didn’t have to see the curiosity, the pity, in the eyes of strangers.
“Come back to me.”
Claire blinked and focused on Noah.
He had lifted a dark eyebrow. “I told you, the past is over.” Anger pumped in his words. He pulled her toward his room. Not just a room. A suite. One as big as the place he had in New York.
He opened the door. Kept his hold on her and pulled her over the threshold. When the door closed behind them, Claire exhaled slowly as relief hit her.
Safe.
“He’s the reason, isn’t he?” Noah asked her. “The reason you lose your other jobs. The reason you move around the country so much.”
Claire nodded. Her gaze was on the D.C. skyline. She’d wanted to walk through the city at night.
But Harrison is out there.
“He…I think he hires someone, a detective maybe, to watch me. Each time when I feel like I might have a life, Colby Harrison comes in. Reveals my past. Gets me fired.” An endless cycle.
“He won’t be a problem any longer.” Noah’s voice was grim.
Claire glanced over her shoulder at him.
“He’s done, Claire. Done. He won’t ever get near you again.” He yanked a hand through his hair. “Nine years? Jesus, you put up with this for nine years? Why didn’t you get a restraining order against him? Why didn’t you—”
“He’s never physically hurt me.” There were so many other ways to hurt. Like when she’d been nineteen and her grandfather had been struck down by a heart attack. She’d flown back home to bury him. And at the funeral, Colby Harrison had been there…telling everyone that the whore was back in town.
“Never again,” Noah vowed.
She wished it could be that simple. “Noah, he’s not going to stop. Not until I’m dead or-or he is.”
Noah held her gaze. Nodded. “He’s done,” he said again, simply.
A chill skated over Claire’s spine.
His stare drifted over her face. Down her body. Lingered on her legs. “I was supposed to wine and dine you tonight.”
She’d never been wined and dined.
His golden eyes lifted. Locked on her mouth. “I knew one taste would do it for me. Claire, sweet Claire, you taste like candy.”
She could still taste him.
“No lover? Not in nine years?” He stood about five feet away from her.
Claire shook her head. “The people in the lobby—”
“I told you, what they saw doesn’t matter.”
“They saw you kiss me. The other—the other York Towers employees. They’ll all think—”
He took a step toward her. “That I’m fucking you.”
“Yes.”
He took another stop. “I told you, I don’t fuck my employees.”
He had said that but… “You kissed me.”
Another step. “Nothing would have stopped me from kissing you then.”
He hadn’t turned from her in shock or disgust. Hadn’t been embarrassed. After everything, he’d…wanted her. “You don’t think I did it? You don’t think I seduced Ethan Harrison into killing for me?”
“No.”
Her lips trembled. They’d crossed a line downstairs. She knew that. She also knew exactly what she had to do.
They saw us kiss. I can’t keep working for him now. Coming to Noah…taking the job…it was a mistake. One desperation had led her to make.
And perhaps she was about to make another mistake. But Claire found she didn’t care.
“I want to kiss you again,” Noah told her.
He took another step toward her.
So little space separated them. Claire shook her head.
Noah’s face hardened.
“I want more,” she told him, then Claire pulled in a deep breath, grabbed tight to her courage and asked, “Will you fuck me?”
***
“You shouldn’t have gone to the hotel,” Vincent murmured. “Th-that was a mistake, sir.”
“The mistake was made years ago,” Colby snapped back at him. “When that girl wasn’t charged along with my son.” Sure, Ethan had been troubled. He’d been a little wild, but he’d never killed.
Not until he’d gotten involved with Claire Kramer. A little cheap piece of ass who’d destroyed Colby’s world.
Vincent shifted uncomfortably beside Colby. They were in the back of a cab, heading to their hotel. Once, Colby had only ridden in limos. He’d had the D.C. folks jumping to do his bidding.
But he’d lost his congressional seat after the trial.
Nearly lost his fortune in the legal battles over the years.
He would have lost it all, if it hadn’t been for his other son. Austin has saved him.
Austin was the only good thing he had left.
Because Claire took my life away.
“Uh, sir, I read the newspaper articles. Ethan tried to kill Claire—”
The bastard dared to say that to him? “Because he couldn’t live with what she’d made him do! Ethan told me the truth. He couldn’t stand what she’d done, how she’d used him, and he was just trying to stop her from hurting anyone else.”
Claire Kramer. Not some sweet innocent girl. She was a lying, manipulative whore who’d destroyed his boy.
It was a good thing Colby’s wife hadn’t lived to see the tragedy that hit his son. But Lily had died when Ethan was just three years old. She’d slipped from Colby’s life too soon. His perfect Lily—gone.