But he merely exhaled. “You were right to turn me down. And when you said I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”
It wasn’t what he said that had the steel of rage infusing her bones, the magma of outrage replacing her blood. It was that expression on his rugged face, that amalgam of earnestness and self-deprecation.
She found her voice at last, found the words that would not betray the blow he’d dealt her. “Thanks for letting me know. You didn’t have to come all the way here, though. You could have just let it go. I did leave you yesterday with the understanding that this case is closed.”
Before the hot needles behind her eyes dissolved into an unforgivable manifestation of stupidity and weakness, she began to close the door she found she’d been clutching with a force that was almost damaging her fingers.
The door stopped against an immovable object. His flat palm.
“I can’t just accept that,” he said, his voice low, leashed.
What did her tormentor mean now? Was he ending one game to start another?
She raised eyes as bruised as her self-respect to his, found them void of anything but solemnity and determination.
Before she could cry out her confusion and chagrin, he elaborated on his statement. “I never let anything go unless I’m certain it’s unworkable. I now realize I made you two unworkable offers, and that’s why I’m withdrawing them. But I’m here to offer something else. A workability study.”
Feeling her legs wobble, she leaned against the door, thankful for its support and partial shield. “Alex and I are not a business venture you can test for feasibility.”
His gaze grew darker, deeper, made her feel he was trying to delve into her mind, take control of it. “It’s actually the other way around. It is I who would be tested.”
She shook her head, her bewilderment growing. “Why bother? I know, and you know, that you’re not…workable.”
His spectacular eyebrows dipped lower over eyes she felt were now emitting silver hypnosis. “You’re right, again. Neither you, nor I, have any reason to believe that isn’t the truth. The only truth. It might be the best thing for both you and Alex to never hear from me again, to forget I exist. But then again, maybe not. I’m asking only for the chance for both of us to find out for certain. You believe I’m…unworkable in any personal relationship. I’ve lived my life based on this same belief about myself. I’ve never had reason to question or test it. I have one now. I have two.”
She stared at him, lost in the tangles of the contradictions he’d bombarded her with.
She struggled to rasp past the heart bobbing in her throat. “But you already admitted you were wrong when you rashly applied for the positions of part-time legal lover and father.”
He was watching her now with an intensity that made her feel he wanted to steer her thoughts and actions. Which she wouldn’t put past him—wanting to do it, or succeeding in doing it.
He finally nodded. “I agree that being a biological father to Alex doesn’t mean I’m entitled, or qualified, to be his father for real, part-time or otherwise. And being your two-night lover doesn’t mean I can be…any more than that. But I want to find out what I can be, for both of you.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, before blurting out, “Why would you want to be anything at all for either of us?”
His sculpted lips twisted. “I think that is self-explanatory.”
“Not to me. You don’t do relationships of any sort, remember?”
“I never forget. But this isn’t about the past, it’s here and now and we’re both in a situation we’ve never been in before. I think we owe it to ourselves—and to Alex—to find out what we can, or can’t, be to each other.”
“How exactly would we find that out?” Her voice was almost inaudible in her own ears now.
His voice was just as soft, as hushed when he simply said, “Give me today.”
She gaped at him.
After moments when neither had even breathed, he inhaled. “If I’m to be tested for…workability, I have to be put to the test in your everyday reality with Alex. If today works without major objections on both your parts, we’ll take it from there.”
She took two involuntary steps back, as if from the precipice of an active volcano. “I—I don’t think that’s a good idea. And don’t ask me to give you reasons why I think it isn’t.”
He compensated for the steps she’d pulled back, taking him over her threshold and inside her condo.
And all she could think as she watched his intimidating perfection fill her foyer was that he was really here. She’d been resigned that she’d never see him here. In her inner world, in the sanctum she’d created for herself and Alex.
But she’d imagined it, against her better judgment, so many times, in so many scenarios.
Reality was nothing like her fantasies. More vivid, overwhelming, messing with her mind. She felt breached, exposed, invaded. And he’d just taken one step inside her condo, hadn’t even touched her.
“I don’t think it’s too much to ask.” Just the touch of his eyes, the caress of his voice shook her to her core. She started to shake her head again and he went on, “In the world out there, I’d be entitled to far more, if I were to enforce my rights.”
This made her malfunctioning resistance rev from zero to one hundred. She bristled. “Are you threatening me?”
“No.” His level gaze told her he meant it. And fool that she was, she believed him. “I’m just pointing out that I do have rights to Alex.”
Her heart wrenched as his words snapped open an image of an abyss beneath her feet.
She struggled not to let the dread bursting inside her show, camouflaged it in defiance. “But not to me.”
He blinked, slowly, an unequivocal consent. His tone was as weighed down and profound. “I’m not demanding any, to either of you. I’m asking for a…gift. A day. Give it to me, Selene.”
She felt as if the building had been hit with an earthquake.
The floor beneath her feet rocked, a crash of thunder detonating, drowning all thoughts, traversing her being.
It was the first time he’d ever uttered her name.
And on his lips, it was no longer a name. It was an invocation, a spell.
Before she could succumb to either, or deal with the aftershocks of his employing the weapon he’d been reserving until drastic measures were needed, he released her from his influence.