LITMIR.BIZ

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ready to argue, but Rand preempted him by pressing the speaker button. “Tara, please send the first candidate through to the boardroom.”

      “Yes, sir.” Her snippy reply told him his apology hadn’t totally placated her. He shouldn’t care. He’d done what he had to do to make sure she knew she wouldn’t fool him this time.

      Tara Anthony was a complication he didn’t need. Come hell, high water or hurt feelings he would keep his objectivity. Emotional distance was the key to surviving this year of playing house with a woman determined to land herself a rich husband.

      He had plenty of practice with meaningless, no-strings sex. It was the only kind he’d ever allowed himself to have. He never got sucked in to his lovers’ lives. They came together, satisfied each other’s physical needs, then went their separate ways when the chemistry burned out.

      This affair wouldn’t be any different. He wouldn’t let it.

      “Waiting up for me?”

      Rand’s hard voice startled Tara. She pressed a hand over her jolted heart and spun around. He stood in the open door of the dining room—the door she’d kept firmly closed for a year. His narrowed eyes pinned her in place.

      “You startled me.” Belatedly she remembered her tears and quickly turned back to her boxes.

      “Tara?”

      Ignoring the question in his voice, she swiped her face then snatched up the packaging tape and concentrated on stretching a long, sticky strip across the box’s flaps. “I thought you were working late. You said it would take you half the night to go through the information I compiled on each of KCL’s brands’ executives, and you wanted to be familiar with each employee’s history before the cocktail party tomorrow night.”

      He’d told—no, ordered—her to eat dinner without him and not to wait up. After the way he’d hurt her feelings and angered her with his nasty remark this morning, she’d been happy to have time alone. She hadn’t even been able to escape him at lunch because he’d insisted she join him, Mitch and Julie, the newly hired director of shared services, for lunch at a South Beach Thai restaurant.

      Her plan to regain what she and Rand had once had was on shaky ground because she couldn’t get past his anger and distrust. She’d lost hope this morning after their ugly confrontation, and she needed to regroup and rethink her plan.

      Maybe … maybe this new bitter version of Rand wasn’t a man she could love.

      Her fingers tightened on the tape dispenser and the serrated edge dug into her flesh. Exhaling, she made a conscious effort to relax her grip before she drew blood.

      She could hear the sound of Rand’s footsteps cross the hardwood floor. He stopped just behind her right shoulder. His scent and warmth reached out to her, and she had to fight the urge to turn and lay her head against his chest. Tonight had been hard, like saying goodbye to her mother all over again. But she’d known it would be. That’s why she’d avoided this task so long.

      “Why are you packing? You can’t leave. You signed a contract.”

      “I’m packing up my mother’s things. It’s something I should have done a long time ago.”

      She chanced a peek at him from under her lashes. His green and gold eyes searched her face, then scanned the room, taking in the portable toilet, wheelchair and walker and the bedroom suite from Tara’s old apartment.

      When her mother could no longer climb the stairs, Tara had done her best to make her comfortable in this makeshift bedroom. Her mom had gone downhill fast in her last six months. She’d barely left this room except to be wheeled to doctors’ appointments. She’d spent most of her time in Tara’s wicker rocking chair in front of the bay window overlooking the back garden.

      “She was handicapped?”

      “She was dying. Lung cancer. Too many years of smoking.”

      His impenetrable mask softened a little. “I’m sorry.”

      “Me, too. But it’s time to move on. She wouldn’t want me to keep this stuff when it could benefit someone else. It would have been cheaper to rent the medical equipment instead of buying it, but renting seemed like …” Her throat closed, burned. She stopped, swallowed, inhaled and then tried again. “Renting seemed like admitting it would only be a matter of time before I had to turn it back in. I wasn’t ready … to give up.”

      He studied her long and hard, then glanced at the door and rocked on the balls of his feet as if he wanted to leave. Instead he sank back on his heels, shoved his hands in his pockets and inhaled deeply. “You never mentioned her illness when we were together.”

      “She hadn’t been diagnosed then. That came … after … us.” One moment Tara had been wallowing in heartache and woe-is-me, and the next her world had turned upside down.

      Rand had been working overseas when she’d received the news, and with the ugly way he’d ended things, calling him hadn’t been an option.

       Forget it. There is no us. We have no future. I won’t marry you or father your children. It was sex, Tara. Nothing more.

      She’d had no one to turn to except the doctors, whose faces and prognoses had been grim. Panic had set in. She’d been so afraid of losing her mother and of the misery, surgeries and chemo her mother had ahead of her. The day after Tara had found out, she’d broken down in her office at KCL. Everett had whisked her to Kincaid Manor, where she’d poured out her fears.

      And then Tara had failed her mother by refusing the one lifeline they’d been offered. Shame scalded her cheeks and weighted her shoulders.

      She pushed back the pain and checked her watch. After ten. “I didn’t realize it was so late. Have you eaten? I could fix something.”

      “I ate. Did you?” He indicated the boxes stacked in the corner with a nod. “Looks like you’ve been at this for a while.”

      “I … no, I haven’t eaten. I … couldn’t.”

      “You have to eat, Tara.”

      Her stomach seconded his opinion by growling loudly. “I’ll grab something later. I’m almost finished.”

      She lifted another empty box from the floor to the mattress.

      Rand laid his warm palm over the back of her hand, stilling her movements. “Take a break.”

      Her pulse did a quickstep, but despite her body’s involuntary reaction, the idea of being intimate with him after what he’d said earlier today about sharing her with Mitch repelled her. As she suspected he’d intended his comment to.

      She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I, um … don’t need you tonight. So you can … go to bed. Good night.”

      His gaze held hers for a long moment. “Despite six months working in a ship’s galley, I’m not a whiz in the kitchen. But I won’t poison you. I’ll scramble some eggs and make toast.”

      Why was he being nice after being so hateful this morning? She couldn’t understand him. She bent her head and flicked a fingernail on the box flap. “You don’t have to cook for me.”

      “Tara.” He waited until she looked at him. His jaw shifted as if he were grinding his teeth. “You won’t be any good to me tomorrow if you don’t fuel up tonight.”

      She snapped her shoulders back. So much for believing his compassion was altruistic. “I’ll manage.”

      “Is that how you lost the weight? By starving yourself? Get your butt in the kitchen,” he ordered, then yanked the box from her hand.

      She held her ground. “Why are you doing this?”

      “Because I don’t want you to be a liability.”

      “You don’t want me period.” She grimaced and bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to

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