Page 71 of Bedding his Innocent Mistress

Rocco nodded. He understood his friend’s pain. “You had your reasons for staying away.”

Thaddeus squeezed his eyes shut. “Such good reasons,” he agreed with a chill tone to his voice. “Until he died. And then I was left wondering why I let stubborn pride waste so much of our time?”

“Stubborn pride?” Rocco repeated. “There was no stubborn pride in your rift.”

“There was no rift in my rift,” Thad corrected angrily. “Aristotle would have made his peace with me at any time I chose. But no; I was determined. He had cut my father out. My mother too. And he had raised me in ignorance of that.” He shook his head. “If it had not been for my father’s will, I would never have known …”

“And you would have continued to love Aristotle as a father.”

Thad sighed. “I do love him as a father. Anger does not negate love.” He dragged a hand through his hair and tugged at its black ends until it hurt. “He loved me and so he erred. He feared losing me and so he lied. He forgot his scruples because he found his heart.” Thad shrugged. “I would not make those mistakes, and yet I understand them.”

Rocco stared at his laptop screen without seeing. “What a waste.”

He noticed her first from the periphery of his vision. Saphire emerged, wearing casual clothes and spiked heels, her shining dark hair shimmering about her shoulders, and her lips a bright, cherry red. The color, then, was natural too, like her curves, her hair, her thick black lashes.

He wanted to forget Aristotle, and here she was. His perfect vehicle for memory lapse; the one single woman who had managed to obliterate his ever-active consciousness and plunge him into a state of ‘present’ living.

“I’ll have to call you back,” he muttered, disconnecting the call to his oldest friend without a second thought. He straightened and slipped his phone into his back pocket. “Something much more important has come up.”