Lady in Red Read online

  She swallowed. Could he read her inner doubts?

  “I know a little of your past,” he said gently. “Know you were bullied by your peers.”

  Realization hit. “Oh my god. Is that what the fundraiser was all about?” she whispered.

  His nostrils flared, as though he was a stallion ready to fight and defend. “Yes.”

  So it hadn’t just been about his own past bullying that had prompted him to support the fundraiser. Despite his obvious probing into her past, she couldn’t help but feel touched. What he’d done went beyond anything she could have imagined in her wildest dreams. In trying to heal some of her hurt, he’d helped countless others, too.

  He lifted a hand. “If that means helping you face your past, then I’ve achieved my goal.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Why would you do that for me?”

  He stepped toward her, his face stark with need. “Don’t you understand?” he asked softly. “I’m here to stay. God, Kate. Not everyone in your life wants to walk away.”

  Her mouth dried and pain hit, sharp and intense. Surely he couldn’t know that her father had left her mother for a younger woman? Surely he couldn’t know her deepest fear was that same scenario happening all over again?

  It would break her if she accepted his offer, only to watch him walk away from her. But even worse would be his staying long term out of a sense of guilt. She sucked in a steadying breath. Despite all that, she wanted to tell him a little about her family, needed to get some issues off her chest. If there was anyone she could trust enough to tell, it was Blaine.

  “Yeah. Good old Dad walked out on my mom and me just months after a gas stove explosion left terrible scarring on her face.” She shook her head with slow, remembered pain. “Gives you great faith in humanity, doesn’t it?”

  Shit. Where had those words come from?

  Blaine’s hands on her shoulders warmed her. His face was all compassionate understanding. “You’ve been conditioned into believing looks are everything. Kate, you are beautiful. Inside and out. Hell, you’re perfect to me right now, with your hair mussed and wearing an old t-shirt.”

  She looked up at him and released a little sigh, wishing she could believe him. Every time she looked in the mirror, she hoped her reflection didn’t reveal someone horrid. “I’m happy enough with my life now.”

  “Really?” He looked toward the puddle of melted ice cream in her bowl. “So why the comfort food?”

  She frowned, and then stepped back. His hands dropped from her shoulders at about the same time her defenses came up, like steel gates keeping out an unwanted visitor. “I enjoy junk food.”

  “As a teenager, probably yes. As an adult, I’m betting you prefer the gym and retail therapy.”

  Holy crap. What didn’t he know about her? She glared. “Your two minutes are up.”

  His stare held hers, seemingly searching for answers. He expelled a rough breath before he nodded and said quietly, “I’ll wait for you, baby.”

  She stood unmoving, her heart aching while he let himself out of the apartment, taking away all that was good in her world. Only long after he was gone and she’d finally shut the door did she realize that yes, maybe he would wait for her. But how long would he stay if she accepted his offer? How long before he walked out on her too, just like her dad?

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‡

  Kate spent the rest of the week vacillating between needing Blaine with a quiet desperation that left her inwardly reeling, and a contrary desire to escape the man causing the tumultuous emotions.

  Even putting on a brave face in front of her trio of friends hadn’t stopped them from asking concerned questions and treating her like spun glass. It was as if all the attention had swung from Claire to Kate. Being surrounded by their sympathetic looks and compassionate understanding had only made her feel ten times worse.

  She didn’t want to be reminded of the wreck her life had become. She wanted everything back to normal again.

  By the end of the week, she knew she had to get back on the wagon, so to speak, back into a routine. She’d come to accept that Blaine had never been part of her future plans, at least not long term, just the same way she wasn’t part of his long-term future.

  It was in his DNA to want what he couldn’t have. She’d made a living on that logic alone. She also knew he’d get tired of waiting and come after her, and claim what he thought was his.

  At least short term.

  It was past time to move on.

  The sooner she left, the sooner Blaine would forget about her and find someone else unattainable. Or maybe he’d meet someone perfect for him in every way. Wife and potential mother-to-his-children material.

  She closed her eyes for a moment as pain washed over her anew. She had to get through this, had to forget about Blaine. And if the only way to do that was to leave the country for a couple of weeks, then so be it.

  She opened her eyes on a shuddering breath before she snapped shut her carry-on luggage.

  Everything was in place. She’d accepted an Italian count’s proposal to stay with him for a few weeks in his luxury five-star hotel. Count Pierre Moretti had been a regular john once, before she’d minimized her lovers.

  He’d been generous, if a little sleazy.

  She inwardly shrugged. Perhaps this time she’d give in to his request that she fuck another woman while he watched. At least it might take her mind off of a certain male for a while.

  Yeah, fat chance.

  Her cell buzzed. She frowned. Caller ID showed a private number. And no one who knew her business number rang her incognito.

  It had to be Blaine.

  She wouldn’t answer.

  No way.

  Fuck it.

  “Brandy,” she said huskily.

  “Kate. I thought I could leave you alone. I can’t.”

  “Blaine, don’t,” she whispered, voice cracking. “Just…don’t.”

  For the sake of her weakening resolve.

  “I’m coming over.”

  “No. I won’t be here. I’m…leaving. You won’t see me again.”

  “Kate, no!”

  “Goodbye, Blaine.”

  “Don’t hang up—”

  As she disconnected, she couldn’t stop the sudden flood of tears from falling down her face, couldn’t keep all the discordant emotions from spilling free.

  She looked around her apartment. She’d lived a good life here, and made some great friends. But maybe it was time to start fresh…with everything. She would hire a discreet moving company to pack away her possessions and put them into storage. Then she’d sell this place.

  And then?

  It didn’t really matter. She’d nurse her bruised heart and rebuild her life, in just the same way she had after her parents’ breakup.

  Her mother’s suicide.

  She sucked in a breath, striving not to open the floodgates to the memories that were so painful, she never revisited. But suddenly the recollection hit her front and center, and she was a spectator looking in from the outside.

  *

  Kate stopped at the wire gate that hung crookedly from its hinges, admirably showcasing the neglect of the front yard. Not to mention the home and the people within it.

  She scuffed her worn sneaker on the cracked sidewalk, beyond reluctant to enter the house that had long ago stopped being a home.

  In the three months since her dad had walked out on them, her once vivacious mother had become as scarred on the inside as she was on the outside. A listless, uncaring woman whose inner torment pushed away her only child…who wanted nothing more than to love her.

  She sighed, wishing she could simply turn away and leave, run away from the life that’d somehow befallen her.

  Leave? And go where? Back to school where the vultures want to pick off what is left of my pride?

  The only thing she had to look forward to at school was Jeremy, the boy two years her senior. He’d been sending her secretive smiles and su
ggestive glances for weeks now. Oh, she knew he wanted one thing and one thing only—he’d already been with at least a handful of girls in his class—but the thrill and flattery of it all outweighed any of the negative.

  She was wanted. And that counted for more than just about anything in her life right now.

  Another sigh left her lips, a far more wretched sound than before, as she walked up the short, weed-infested path to the front door. Time to clean the mess that was undoubtedly inside. Time to cook and play slave in waiting to her shell of a mother. The same mother whose selfish need to vent on her daughter had worn Kate down until she wondered if this life was the only one she deserved.

  She opened the front door with dread.

  Her eyes widened. Awareness hit her hard. In the tiny entrance hallway, the gold-framed mirror that’d once hung in pride of place had been knocked to the floor, big, jagged pieces of glass littering the faded tan carpet.

  “Mother!”

  Her breath caught. Her pulse thundered in her ears. Everything within her knew something was horribly wrong.

  She sprinted into the sparse, open kitchen and dining room. Her eyes jerked left and right. The squeaky clean interior frightened her as much as the broken mirror in the entryway.

  Perhaps more.

  “Mother!” she screamed.

  The two bedrooms of the house were empty. Shit. Where was she? Kate pressed a hand to her mouth. Had her mother left her, too?

  No, impossible. Her mother had become all but housebound, detesting the burns that caused people to give her long, pitying looks…the same burns that had caused her husband to leave her for someone else. Someone young and pretty. Someone without any scars.

  Kate only saw the wounds on her mother’s inside now. A disfigurement that’d been left by a callous, cold-hearted husband who’d decided a beautiful girlfriend was more important than loving his wife, his family.

  If she hated her mother, then she sincerely loathed her father. He’d deserted them when they’d needed him most and left behind a toxic wasteland Kate had no idea how to fix.

  A dripping tap abruptly snared her attention. She froze. The repetitive sound was loud as a drum in the stifling silence.

  The bathroom.

  She crashed open its door.

  Her mother’s body lay lifeless in the tub. Blood-red water overflowed the rim and onto the white-tiled floor. A hand still clutched a jagged piece of broken glass she’d used to slit her wrists.

  “Mom,” she whispered numbly.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‡

  Paris. A city of love and romance.

  Brandy could only hope a little of that would rub off on her and lend her…something. Anything. Because right now, she felt little more than dull apathy.

  She brushed at her arms as a chill settled over her. She was turning into her mother. A shell with too little life and light left inside.

  Except, unlike her mother, at least she still had her looks.

  And when those looks fade…?

  She gnawed at her bottom lip, her hands interlacing. She’d worry about that when it happened. For now, she was youthful and beautiful and should be enjoying every moment of it.

  Besides, she’d have made her money by then. When her call girl days were behind her, she’d be wealthy in her own right.

  She sagged against the luxurious leather seat, taking deep, calming breaths. This was the life she’d fought hard to attain. This was the life she’d always wanted. Except people grew and changed. Some even discovered that what they’d once wanted badly and finally got was no longer of consequence.

  Had that happened to her?

  Financial ease. Men adoring her. Independence.

  Shouldn’t that be enough?

  But something within her had changed. She couldn’t deny it any longer. The incredible wonder she’d experienced from her very first sexual encounter, and then all the ones afterward, had faded. She wanted only to recall and embrace that heady feeling again.

  She closed her eyes, thinking back to the day that’d changed her whole life, and sent her into the call girl profession.

  *

  “Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”

  Kate paused, hating the tone of condescension in her foster dad’s voice. Even without seeing him from where he sat behind the horrid floral couch, she could well imagine the contempt pressed into his haughty face. “Out.”

  Was it wrong to hate her foster parents? After all, they’d taken her in after her mother’s death, clothed and fed her. But the one thing she craved—love—they’d been unable to give her.

  The feeling was mutual.

  She snorted. The pair of them barely loved one another. How did she expect them to embrace her too?

  “Not a good idea,” her foster mum chimed in from beside her husband on the couch. “The last thing you need is to have some fella take advantage of you and knock you up.”

  “That’s not going to happen—”

  “Leaving you with some bastard child,” her foster mother continued, “just like what happened to your mother with you.”

  Kate strode over to the front of the couch and faced her revolting foster parents with nothing less than scorn. “I’d rather live my life the way my mother did, loving someone wholeheartedly, than end my days as a loveless sack of shit like you two.”

  She turned away with them both shouting obscenities. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t be going back. Not for anything. From now on, she’d make her own way in the world.

  Somehow.

  The moon was a tiny sliver high in the sky, barely yielding any light. But never had the night looked more beautiful, dark velvet edged with untold promise. She all but skipped to the car waiting just down the road from her house.

  And as she climbed into the front seat, she didn’t think beyond the moment when Jeremy, no longer a school student but an apprentice in his father’s law firm, dragged her toward him in the driver’s seat and kissed her like he couldn’t get enough.

  Seventeen and never been kissed, Kate responded to him equally as passionately…

  *

  Brandy smiled as the car braked to a stop and the memory faded.

  She’d lost her inhibitions all those years ago. Jeremy had made the girl a woman. And then, when he’d been about to drive her home and she explained she had no home to go to anymore, he’d inadvertently turned her into a businesswoman.

  He’d given her a hundred-dollar note and planted the seed that would become her future inside her head.

  She often wondered what her life would have been like had her father taken her into his new life. But she hadn’t been wanted, not by him or his new girlfriend. They hadn’t wanted her to hinder their newfound romance.

  Looking back, she sensed her dad had been unable to face the guilt, hadn’t wanted to appease his daughter’s raw despair and disgust.

  A valet opened her door. She nodded thanks, pushing all the negative thoughts aside even as her heels clacked on the pebbled drive of the hotel’s grand portico entrance. Leaving her luggage in the capable hands of the hotel’s porters, she approached the Count, who waited for her beside the huge glass doors.

  Though nothing like Blaine, Pierre was nevertheless charming and good-looking in his own way, with his olive skin and messily styled, raven-colored hair.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said with a wide smile, his appreciative gaze sliding over her as though he was a bidder at auction eyeing a fine filly. “I trust you had an enjoyable flight?”

  She accepted his outstretched hands with a gracious smile and murmured, “I did. Your private jet is opulent and beyond comfortable.”

  “Good, good.” He brought her in close before one of his arms snaked around her waist.

  She leaned into him, though every instinct screamed at her to step away. His touch on her felt wrong.

  “Come.” He drew her inside the huge entrance doors. A waterfall cascaded over rocks the size of boulders betwee
n the escalators. Huge chandeliers glittered from a high-domed ceiling. “Let me show you around before we get down to business.”

  She nodded stiffly before casting him the most enticing expression she could muster. “Sure.”

  Somehow the coming seduction held no appeal. She should blame Calvin for that. But she knew without a doubt, it was Blaine who’d compromised her enjoyment and passion of being with anyone else. She’d be unable to help comparing her clients to him. Their touches, their glances. God, their everything would all be sadly lacking.

  I’m in love with Blaine.

  Realization hit and left her reeling. But then a smile lit her face and she realized she was anything but stricken. It certainty made things a whole lot easier to deal with. No more indecision. No more being too scared to face the truth.

  She’d tell the Count her true feelings and hope he had enough romance within him to understand.

  But then he swept her into a melee of people and noise, and she knew she’d have to leave blurting out her confession until a little later.

  *

  Blaine strode through the expansive lobby of the lavish hotel, his eyes taking in little else but the guests milling around.

  His gut clenched with an urgency borne of desperation as he scanned and disregarded every woman in the vicinity. None had Kate’s glorious strawberry-blonde hair. None had her gorgeous svelte figure along with an aura, a presence, that drew the eye.

  The sick feeling in the pit of his belly grew and grew.

  Fuck. He was too late. Way too late.

  He could picture, all too clearly, Kate—his Kate—beneath the Count, her eyes closed in ecstasy with her lips plundered and her body strummed as if it was some well-loved instrument.

  His jaw clenched, teeth aching with the effort to restrain the anger within. Pierre Moretti wasn’t the right man for Kate. Christ, the man didn’t love her. He had no right to touch her, kiss her and fuck her.

  None.

  It mattered little to him that Kate’s profession gave the man every right in the world to touch, kiss and fuck her.

  She. Was. His.