Exposed to Passion (Five Senses series Book 3) Read online

  Rikki struggled to lift the corners of her mouth in a confident smile, to tell him without words that he had her love and support, that everything would be okay. His lips pinched tight, his eyes beseeching her for reassurance, for some hope that he could get through this. The moisture in his eyes saddened her.

  She blinked against the rush of her own tears and grimaced. She was about to make things ten times worse for him. Not trusting her voice to remain steady, she stepped out of his embrace. “I have to show you something.”

  She beckoned him to follow her to the computer on her desk. He allowed her to push him into the chair, a clear question in his eyes. Rikki cleared her throat, searching for a speck of courage. Wringing her hands together, she began, “Sam, I…”

  The house phone rang again, a momentary reprieve, drawing their attention. The small digital display identified the inbound caller as Gunnar. She’d never returned his text. And she wasn’t about to pick it up now.

  Waiting for it to stop bordered on torture. Sam remained silent. The noise of the phone was discordant, heightening the tense atmosphere in the room. Sam’s look turned expectant, waiting for her to go on, but she hesitated, almost afraid of what Gunnar might say if he left a message.

  The room went deathly quiet when the ringing stopped. Silence reigned for as long as it took to play her recorded greeting. Reluctantly, Rikki pulled her gaze from Sam’s face and stared at the phone, mentally entreating Gunnar to simply hang up.

  The ear-piercing beep of the machine echoed abruptly and her brother’s voice boomed through the phone. “Rikki, this is serious horse-shit going on. I know you’re there, Jenni told me you were home. Stop screwing around, literally, and pick up this phone. Now!”

  The command and panic in his voice were as insistent as his words.

  “I’m sorry, Sam. I have to—” She snatched the handset and hit the talk button. “Gunnar, now isn’t a good time.” She turned her back to Sam, giving herself a bit of privacy.

  “Are you okay?” Gunnar asked.

  The concern in her brother’s voice released the emotions she’d frozen since Sam had shown up at her door earlier in the afternoon. Tears she’d been holding at bay finally leaked out. Nodding, she scrubbed the wet away from her cheeks. “I’m okay. It’s just…there’s some other shit going on here on top of the crap you already know about.”

  “How can I help? What do you need me to do?” Gunnar lowered his voice, using the gentle, respectful tone he typically reserved for their mother. “I’ve got your back, Rik-a-rak. Just tell me what you need.”

  Her brother’s unconditional love touched Rikki’s soul, assuaging some of the anxiety that had gripped her for the past few hours. He’d always been her best friend and confidant. The tension buzzing in her head like an angry swarm of wasps eased enough for her to hear the clicking of the mouse and Sam’s shocked gasp.

  Whirling around to face him, she saw that he’d opened the tab for the Sims website. Christ, the disgusting pictured leaped off the page at her, and she stood six feet away. She knew firsthand the searing Sam’s eyeballs were getting in his front row seat. She lunged across the space, grasped the lid of the laptop and slammed it down.

  She left her hand on top of the computer, resisting Sam’s attempt to reopen it. “Sam, just wait. Please,” she begged. She resumed her conversation with her brother. “Gunnar, you have to run interference for me with Silas. He can’t know about this.”

  “I’m sorry, Rik. He already knows. He called me right before I called you. He’s been trying to reach you, but you’re ignoring his calls. He sicced me on you. He knew you’d talk to me.” Gunnar blew out a loud breath, then continued. “You better call him as soon as you can.”

  “Dammit, I thought I had time. He’s supposed to be attending a charity dinner in New York tonight.” The tension in her ribcage roared back, a swift, stabbing sensation. She curled her shoulders forward.

  “There were members of the press there, too. They questioned him about it on the red carpet.”

  “Shit,” she said simply. Sam had rolled the chair away from the desk and gripped the armrests like he was about to blast off into space. Vivid red stained his cheeks and he averted his gaze when she tried to make eye contact. His chest seethed, as if he’d run flat-out for five miles.

  “He’ll be on your doorstep early tomorrow afternoon.” Gunnar’s words drew her attention away from Sam.

  Wasn’t there any good news today?

  “I told him I was coming, too, and planning to stay with you, so he’s made a reservation at the Bay Breeze Inn.”

  “You’re coming?”

  “Of course. Why should you have all the fun?” Gunnar’s thinly veiled reference to the pictures on the website rankled. “Seriously, I won’t let you face him alone. I’m packing right now. If I drive through the night, I’ll arrive ahead of him. We’ll deal with it together. With any luck, Tony will have the site down in the next hour or two.”

  Sam leaped out of the chair. Pacing furiously across the distance from the dining room to the front room windows, he muttered with each step. Rikki tracked his progress and increasing agitation warily as she finished her conversation with Gunnar and said goodbye.

  She scrubbed her hand over her forehead before she turned to face Sam.

  His cold, furious look seemed a bit over the top. She was the offended party as much as he. His eyes were flat disks of a January sky, his lips compressed into a thin, stark line. Fists clenched at his side, he braced his feet apart, as if anticipating a blow to his midsection.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand to stop her, and dropped his own little bomb into her world.

  “You’re Marguerite Sims?”

  Chapter 20

  “What?”

  The confused look on her face royally pissed him off.

  “The captions on those pictures of you and me. You aren’t Rikki Salerno. You’re Marguerite Sims! You didn’t think it was important to maybe mention that to me? At some point? Couldn’t you have casually dropped the information into a conversation, I don’t know…maybe before you screwed me…Jesus Christ! You lied to me. That’s just freaking awesome.”

  She winced. Unable to look at her, he spun away. His heart raced so fast he thought it would explode at any second.

  Not that Rikki—no, Marguerite Sims—would care. She’d lied to him from the minute she’d met him. Led him on by calling herself Rikki Salerno. Each time he’d ranted about her “boss,” she got angry and acted like the injured party, making him out to be the bad guy. His gut churned with the certainty that she’d done it deliberately.

  And what had he done?

  He’d gone and fallen in love with a woman he didn’t know. Dammit, when had he done that? His heart seized in a vicious twist with the sudden understanding of the depth of his feelings. Knowing how he felt about truth, she’d lied to him anyway.

  His shoulders slumped forward as he surrendered to the knowledge that he’d given his heart to Rikki, only to have it smashed to smithereens by Marguerite.

  Heat from the palm of her hand seeped into his bicep when she curled her fingers around it and tried to turn him to face her. He jerked away, instantly feeling the loss of warmth. He crossed his arms over his chest protectively, physically guarding his heart against further hurt, and turned to face her.

  Tears slipped down her cheeks, fear and sadness battling harshly in her exotic eyes. How the hell did she do that? Make it look like she was upset that she’d hurt him.

  Fighting the urge to go to her and offer comfort and forgiveness, he reminded himself there’d been plenty of chances for her to mention her real name. What a shitty way to find out. Through the damn captions on the pictures of them screwing. He and the woman he didn’t know. She was probably only sad that her deceit had been revealed, and now her little game was over. Ice settled around his racing heart, each thudding pulse hammering against his ribcage.

  “Sam, please, you have to let me expl
ain. I—”

  He shot his hand up to halt her explanation and glared at her. And wasn’t that just perfect? She was even more beautiful with silent tears flowing down her face. All he wanted to do was gather her close and kiss away the hurt.

  The rage he’d fought to contain threatened to boil over the second he accepted he still wanted her, even though she’d led him down the old dirty path.

  “You knew how I hate being lied to. From the get-go, I’ve never hidden the fact that a lie is a deal-breaker for me.” The bite in his tone startled him and drew her gaze to his face. “We’re done.”

  “Sam, I didn’t lie.” He scoffed and she rushed on. “I just…didn’t tell you the whole truth. I couldn’t—”

  He cut her off. “That’s splitting hairs a bit too finely, don’t you think? I mean, for crying out loud, there was ample opportunity to tell me before I fell in …”

  He snapped his mouth shut. He wouldn’t give her any more ammunition to use against his stupid heart. Lowering his hand, he extended his palm out toward her, unconsciously beseeching her to explain it to him.

  She stared at it like he’d offered her a big, stinky, sewer rat instead of his heart. Her brows drew together and a fleeting, ominous shadow passed over her face. “You know, you didn’t make it easy to tell you anything. Every time I tried, you launched into a tirade about her…me… oh, son of a bitch!”

  Her hand shook when she brushed it across the trail of tears on her face, but her eyes continued to glitter. She took a deep breath. “Every time it seemed like the right time, something would come up and I couldn’t find a way to tell you. I did try, Sam. I really did.”

  She was mad at him? That was rich. “Not hard enough.”

  “You didn’t make it easy, you jerk! You know, you hopped up on that sanctimonious soap box of yours and bad mouthed me, called me names and refused to acknowledge how hard I work.”

  “Well, I didn’t fucking know it was you, did I?”

  “There is no need to swear at me. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “No, maybe not. But you did it.” Emotion blocked his throat like a gorge, damming his breath deep in his chest. Pressure built behind his eyes, tears stinging to be released.

  The frown on her face softened and her mouth formed a small O as if at a loss for words. He spun away, terrified he was going to bawl like a baby. The hurt of her betrayal flayed his soul, burning worse than anything he’d ever experienced.

  Rikki’s footsteps rang sharply on the hardwood floor as she marched away from him. There was no reason for her to be angry with him. The mere idea that she was irritated swung his desolation back to ire in an instant.

  “Sam, this isn’t important right now. We can sort it out later. You have to see this.”

  Could she really dismiss this so easily? This whole fucked-up mess was killing him and she wanted to distract him with some other made-up problem. He clenched his fists, whirling to face her. While he blinked away his remaining tears, she opened the laptop on the desk. She wanted him to look at something on her computer?

  “Are you kidding right now?” He needed to get out of here. He should have stayed at his parents’ house instead of rushing back here to be with…someone he didn’t really know.

  “No, you have to see this. It’s important.” Focusing her attention on the computer, she opened a window.

  “What’s more important than the fact that you lied to me? I suppose now you’re going to show me pictures of a husband you forgot to mention. Were you just using me to pass the time?”

  The look she shot him over her shoulder was agitated. “I’m not married. Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t know. Why would I think you were Marguerite Sims?”

  Rikki took two quick strides toward him. “Sam, I’m sorry. Really, really sorry I’ve hurt you. You have to believe me when I tell you it wasn’t my intention to lie to you. Never. I…care about you more than… You have to believe me. But for now, I need you to focus on something else. Please.”

  “You don’t give a shit about me.”

  She bit her lip, hesitating before responding to his challenge. “Not true, Sam. I love you.”

  “You love me? You have a funny way of showing it.”

  “I do, Sam. I love you. You have to believe me. I never meant to hurt you. You have to forgive me.”

  “Nope. I don’t think so. You don’t lie to someone you love. I don’t think I can ever forgive you.”

  He sidestepped around her and walked to the front door. Wrapping his hand around the knob, he gave it a vicious twist and jerked it open.

  Pausing, he glanced back toward where she stood frozen in disbelief. He chose his next words with malicious intent, picking the ones he knew would inflict the same kind of pain on her that anguished him. The instant his world crashed and burned around his head. “We’re. Done. I can’t believe I fell for your lies. I guess that’s what a pair of bodacious tits will do to a guy. As racks go, yours is pretty spectacular. But that’s all you ever were to me. A nice, distracting playground.”

  Shame filled him the instant she gasped. He should take it back and then paste his mouth shut with the biggest length of duct tape he could find. But anger and pride made it impossible to find the words to apologize. He didn’t even know for sure who to ask—Rikki or Marguerite.

  Without a backward glance, he walked out the door and out of her life.

  Chapter 21

  The door clicked shut with ringing finality. Sam hadn’t slammed it when he left. He didn’t need to. His parting words had crashed against her heart with the brutal force that his exit lacked. She’d never experienced physical pain from someone’s words. Even as a young girl, none of the hateful barbs and insults her classmates had tossed at her had the impact of Sam’s taunt.

  It started in her chest, spread rapidly to her head, then to her stomach. The intense ache spiraled down her spine into her lower body. It softened her knees until she nearly collapsed into a sniveling ball of hurt. Only sheer force of will kept her on her feet.

  Bracing a hand on the desk, she breathed through the fiery torment flogging her soul. Okay, okay, I can get through this. He’ll forgive me, eventually. But he hadn’t accepted her apology. Hadn’t given her declaration of love more than a passing salute with his middle finger.

  Her stomach clenched violently, threatening to re-introduce the lunch she’d eaten so many hours ago. Rikki sank to her knees beside the desk and gave up trying to stop the traitorous tears lurking behind her eyes. Bending over, she pressed her forehead against the scratchy rug covering the dining room floor. The harsh bristles of antique wool barely made an impression through her sobs.

  She’d messed everything up with one stupid omission. What had she been thinking?

  And now that Sam needed her help to clear his name, and she needed his to save Katie, her lie had driven a wedge between them. A chasm so wide and so deep, she couldn’t see a clear path to the other side.

  Struggling to draw a deep breath, Rikki rolled to her side as tears continued to slide from her eyes. Mercifully, her sobs had dwindled to sporadic whimpering and occasional sniffles. The wall clock ticked away the seconds and minutes of her misery.

  Why had he said that about her boobs? How could he?

  She wasn’t sure how long she lay there, wallowing in the abject grief Sam’s words had caused. The insistent shrill of her cell startled her out of the funk. She jerked upright and scrambled for the phone, praying it would be him, calling to tell her he’d been wrong, that he knew she had no intention of deceiving him.

  No such luck. She sneered at the display, reading Silas’s name. She’d been in such a state she hadn’t recognized the angry ringtone as her grandfather’s.

  Just freaking great. As if her day wasn’t as horrible as it could be, now her sanctimonious, stick-in-the-mud grandparent was calling. Why didn’t she just race to the kitchen and get some salt to rub in the raw wounds while she was at it? It would be less painful
than her grandfather’s call.

  But she’d quit running from a fight long ago. Drawing a deep breath and smoothing the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, she pressed the talk button.

  “Hello, Grandfather,” she began. She got right to the heart of the matter, raising her voice to be heard over his belligerent shouting. “Grandfather, what I do behind the closed doors of my home is my business. I’m just as violated here as the foundation. More so, I’d say. Det ar inte som jag poserade for de javla bilderna.”

  “Marguerite! Do not think you can appease me by lapsing into Swedish now. Especially with that ugly word in your mouth.” Her grandfather’s growl sounded deep in her ear, then eased to a snarly chuckle. “Of course you did not pose for those pictures. Only the worst kind of woman would allow such things to be photographed. I’m sorry you have to deal with this, and that I had to check the urge to punch the horrible journalist who insisted to show me the awful pictures in public. Den lilla skiten took pleasure in embarrassing me. And you.”

  Okay, he was mad, but understanding, in his way. “Jenni assures me that Tony is working to get the site taken down. But he hasn’t been able to crack the code yet, and the hosting company isn’t helping. Even if he took care of it in the first thirty minutes, it wouldn’t make a difference. The damage is done.” She sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. She had to get her next words out or risk changing her mind. “Grandfather, I’ll resign. Jenni can run things until you can find a replacement. I’ll stay with the exhibit, too, until someone is trained to run it.”

  “Ah! Rikki, this is not necessary. This we can fix.”

  Silas’s voice took on the soft tone he’d used with her when she’d missed her parents during their long summer travels. And he’d called her by her nickname. He never called her Rikki.

  Her heart swelled with gratitude for his gentle understanding and support.

  “Tell me, who is this man you are with? I hope he is someone special, not just, how do you kids say…a one-day stand?”