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“Does it work for you?”
“What?”
“This impenetrable shield you’ve got going on.”
She stepped closer. The muscles in his back tensed. Suddenly he felt cornered, with the windows at his back and fiery temptation in front of him.
“You snap at people. Say horrible things to push them away.” Another step closer. The faint scent of jasmine reached him, teased him with its alluring dark floral fragrance. “But I think there’s something else going on.”
“I didn’t realize you had a degree in psychology, too.”
“No, just good people skills. You keep people at arm’s length because then you don’t have to try.”
His mouth dried. “Excuse me?”
“When you’re rude to people, you set a precedent. No need to try, no need to make nice when people don’t expect it of you. Then you can hide in your Kent estate or your secret London club or wherever and just...” She threw her hands up in the air, as if trying to physically grab onto the words that eluded her. “Just wallow in your pain and misery.”
“Wallow?”
If she caught the dangerous edge to his voice, she didn’t show it as she held his gaze.
“Yes. I lost my mother a few years ago. I know it’s hard to move on from—”
“You know nothing.”
He ground the words out, watched as her eyes widened in alarm. She saw too much, made him want too much, feel too damned much. She had the perception, the power, to rip away every wall he’d built and leave him with nothing except the pain he’d managed to keep at bay for thirteen years.
She threatened his very sanity. He needed her gone, out of his office, out of his life.
Now.
“Don’t try to build a bridge between us, Miss Sutton. There is no common ground. Yes, we both lost our mothers. But that is where the similarities between us end. If you think sharing the woe is me details of your life will somehow make me sign that contract, then think again.”
Too far.
He’d gone too far. She didn’t cry, didn’t yell, didn’t even blink. But he could feel the change in the air, the cold creep in as her heart hardened against him and his reckless words.
Ashamed, his eyes flickered to the side, caught sight of his reflection in the glass of a painting hanging on the wall. The scars twisting down his face, distorting his once handsome visage into something unnatural and beastly.
Monstrous.
That was what Kacey had called him. And she was right. The way he acted could be monstrous. But how else could he protect himself?
“No, I don’t know your whole story, Mr. Lykaois, or what losing your mother was like.” The compassion beneath her cool words only deepened his guilt. “I think you’re punishing yourself.” A board creaked. The scent of jasmine grew stronger, sweet yet seductive. “But have you ever stopped to think, for even one moment, that you’re punishing everyone else around you, too?”
It was as if someone had reached down his throat, wrapped their hands around his lungs and squeezed every ounce of air from his body. He couldn’t speak, could barely think, as the shocking weight of her words penetrated and left him adrift in a new reality.
One where, once again, he had made himself the center of it all.
He recovered just enough to say what he should have said the moment she came to his office door.
“Get out.” The icy calm in his voice belied the storm raging inside him.
With the faintest rustling of her skirt, Rosalind turned and did exactly that.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ROSALIND PAUSED LONG enough to pull on a pair of slippers she’d brought downstairs before she hurried out the door onto the patio. Heart pounding, eyes aching with unshed tears, she rushed down the stairs and into the garden.
