AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ll show you to a room so you can change.”
“If you just tell me—”
“No!” The thought of a stranger wandering through the house—his mother’s house—filled him with anger.
Rosalind watched him from her place by the door. She didn’t tremble, didn’t look away. The longer she watched him, stared at him, the angrier he became. Angry at her being in his house, the one place that was supposed to be safe. Angry at himself for displaying such raw emotion. Angry at the world for constantly taking, punishing, driving him closer and closer to the edge.
“Follow me,” he growled.
He knew he was overreacting, despised himself as much as he despised her seemingly calm demeanor. She’d walked into a fierce storm, nearly been crushed by a tree and now followed a scarred, hollowed husk of a man up a staircase into a strange house. A man who had threatened to have her fired and, by her account, made her life miserable. Not once had she cried or complained. Up until twenty minutes ago, her name had been synonymous with irritation. The uptight, overzealous lawyer with a ridiculous umbrella who couldn’t leave well enough alone.
But now...now he saw more of what he’d glimpsed that day in the Diamond Club. Confidence, strength, resilience.
No. He had survived the past year without sex, without extravagance, without anything from his old life. Too little, too late, but at least he was doing something to honor Belen. To be the man he should have been instead of the indulgent bastard who had kept his father at arm’s length.
His lust for Rosalind threatened his self-imposed punishment. A whim that he would not allow himself to satisfy.
He stalked down the hallway and stopped in front of a white door trimmed in gold filigree.
“Here.” He twisted the knob and opened the door. “Power should stay on with the generator—”
“Oh!”
Her breathless exclamation cut him off midsentence. She moved past him into the room, spun around in a circle with wide eyes and parted lips. Her wet hair framed her face, delicate in its shape but countered by the narrow, strong point of her chin. Rain dripped from the hem of her trench coat onto the plush wool and silk Persian carpet. She looked nothing like the sophisticated, discerning women he had dated over the years.
He shouldn’t want her. Couldn’t want her. Didn’t deserve to want her. He could hardly stand to look at himself in the mirror, share his bed with a woman. Indulging his own whims, his own desire, was out of the question.
Rosalind shot him a huge smile, one that made her eyes crinkle at the corners and a tiny dimple appear on one side of her mouth.
“This room is incredible.” Her eyes softened. “Thank you, Mr. Lykaois. For saving—”
“Don’t.”
The smile faded from her face. A part of him mourned the loss, wanted to do something to bring back the radiance.
But that would only prolong the torture.
“You’re staying here so you don’t get killed on my property and someone sues.”
The words tasted sharp, bitter. The brief flicker of surprise and pity in her eyes drove it home.
“Of course.” She turned her back to him then, dismissing him. “I’ll be gone as soon as the storm clears.”
She didn’t even look at him as she turned and moved to the window, pulled aside the filmy curtain to gaze out into the wall of rain.
Griffith strode out, managing to refrain from slamming the door behind him as he headed for the stairs. Miss Sutton had already stirred up his emotions, piqued his curiosity. She hadn’t flinched at the sight of his face, true. But what would she do if she saw the worst of the wounds that cut over his ribs, snaked along his thigh and down his leg?
It didn’t matter. She would never see them. He wouldn’t allow himself to surrender to the inferno raging through him. Not with the woman who wanted him to acknowledge that his father was gone, her actions rubbing salt in the wound of his culpability.
If I would have been paying attention...if I wouldn’t have been angry...
It didn’t change anything. Never would. His father wasn’t coming back.
He entered the library and set about making a fire. The rough scrape of the wood on his palms, the scent of smoke, grounded him, gave him something to focus on beside thoughts of Miss Sutton moving about on the floor above.
He hurled the last log onto the fire. Sparks shot up, glittering red and orange and crackling up into the air before falling back down. Some littered the edge of the hearth, pulsing with a hypnotic glow.
Rosalind was the kind of woman he had always stayed away from. The kind of woman who wanted compassion, affection, love. Things he was incapable of giving. Her enthrallment with her room, her gratitude and, most telling of all, her perception of his pain before she’d walked out into the storm, told him all he needed to know. Fierce but kind. Determined but empathetic.
