In suspended silence, he watched as very slowly, the high-backed leather chair at the head of the boardroom table swiveled around until the occupant faced him. Carmen.

  He felt a sudden tightening in his throat and fought a gut reaction to go to her. Fought, also, to deny the unwelcome acknowledgment of how badly he missed her. But the rapid beat of his heart overrode his determination to remain unaffected. The shifting of the ground beneath his feet made a lie of his carefully schooled indifference.

  Seeing her again was hell, and did things to him no sane man would admit to experiencing. Anger, love, even an unconsciously nurtured hatred for her betrayal ricocheted through him.

  A smart man would walk back out the door. Where Carmen Rodriquez was concerned, he’d proven he wasn’t a very smart man. He was about to prove it again.

  He walked slowly into the room, resisting an urge to breathe life into the hope that accelerated the beat of his already hammering heart. Sinking stiffly into the chair at the opposite end of the table, he regarded her over steepled fingers.

  “So,” he said, breaking a silence grown brittle with tension. “What story did you tell Ben to lure him into your camp?”

  Carmen felt the chill of Logan’s words across twenty feet of gleaming walnut and the myriad unclaimed emotions that separated them.

  In his eyes, in this boardroom calm, she could see how far he’d withdrawn from her. If he hadn’t yet shut himself off completely, the door would soon be locked.

  “No story,” she said, determined to break through that door. “The truth. And for the record, Ben’s allegiance is still with you.”

  His silence clearly indicated that this was her show; it was up to her to see it through.

  She looked around the regally imposing boardroom. “I’ve pictured you in this setting. With your business face on. Calculated, controlled, reigning over your empire.”

  Expressionless, he shrugged. “It’s where I belong. It’s who I am.”

  “Once I would have believed that. Once, before I knew the kind of man you really are.”

  The face behind his steepled fingers remained impassive. “Why are you here, Carmen?”

  None of this was easy for her. She’d never been a confrontational person. But she’d willingly become what she had to be it if meant getting him back.

  Meeting his gaze, she took the plunge. “I was hoping I might reclaim the right to be with you.”

  Her heart sank as he considered her for a long, silent moment. Too late. She was too late. He’d shut himself off and wasn’t about to let her back in.

  She loved this man. It was her fault she’d driven him away. And it would be her fault if she didn’t set things right between them.

  “I’m here because I’m the woman who loves you,” she said, braving his cold look with a conviction made strong by that love. “I’m here because you once said you were the man who loves me.”

  In the briefest of moments before he looked away, she saw a softening in his expression. Hope stirred to new life inside her—until his next words all but killed it.

  “That didn’t seem to be enough for you two weeks ago,” he reminded her. “Why should I believe it’s enough now?”

  She smiled sadly. “We’ve come full circle, haven’t we? Once it was you asking me to believe. Now I’m asking the same of you.”

  He was watching her carefully. Searching, she knew, for the strength it would take to see this through. This time she wasn’t going to let him down.

  “What is it, exactly, that you want me to believe?”

  “In everything you promised. In everything I resisted. We belong together, Logan. You were right all along, even though I was afraid to accept it.

  “I’m the one who wasn’t giving enough.” She hurried on when he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. “I’m the one who wasn’t willing to take the chance. I didn’t want to believe in us. In the possibility of us. It scared me because it was so good. Too good to pin any hopes on. Too good to want so badly.”

  She hesitated, staring hard at the hands she’d clasped tightly together on the table in front of her. “But the past two weeks without you made me see that no matter how afraid I am of fitting into your world, that fear is nothing compared to the reality of not having you in mine.”

  He looked very weary. “Was it really that difficult to believe in me?”

  She shook her head and stalled the threat of tears. “It was belief in myself that posed the problem. Growing up the way I did . . .” She paused, swallowed hard, and began again. “Growing up the way I did, I came to understand certain outcomes were inevitable. I learned to accept less than what I wanted. You don’t get hurt when you set your sights low enough. You’re never disappointed.”

  A slow but steady softening relaxed the hard planes of his face. “And you think that’s a conclusion exclusive to you?”

  “No. It’s not exclusive to me.” Now came the really tough part. “But where I came from—”

  “I know all about where you came from, Carmen,” he said, gently cutting her off. “I know everything about you.”

  Her heart pounded. “You know about my mother?”

  “From the beginning. I tried to tell you it never mattered.”

  “But your father—”

  “My father is a sadly selfish man who tries to control other people’s lives because he’s so dissatisfied with his own.”

  It was her turn to look away. From the memory of the day Preston Prince had leveled his ultimatum. From the guilt that had been badgering her ever since. “I feel sorry for him,” she said quietly. “And I never should have let him intimidate me.”

  “And I should have warned you he’d try.” An anguished look crossed his face. “I still can’t believe he gave you money.”

  “He can’t believe I gave it back.” A slow smile formed at the memory of her encounter with Preston Prince just hours before. “The windows are still rattling from his threats.”

  His answering smile was tentative, tempered with reservations. She intended to dispel every one. “If I had believed in you, he never would have come between us. I’m sorry. I should have let you explain about Juan.”

  He shrugged. “Preston Prince can be very convincing.”

  “So can his son—but for all the right reasons that I was too quick to believe were wrong. It’s all the power you have, Logan,” she added in a bid to make him understand. “It’s a difficult thing to see past it to the good it can do, especially when I was feeling so helpless where Juan was concerned.”

  “I’ve never wanted you to be anything except what you are.”

  “I realize that now. And I know that what I was fighting had less to do with our differences than it did with my own doubts. I didn’t want to depend on you, but more and more I found that I did.

  “I didn’t want to let myself love you, but I couldn’t stop that either. And against all the odds, I believe you were right when you told me we could make it together. The question is, do you still believe it too?”

  She held her breath. Until he held out his hand.

  “I believe in us,” he whispered, his voice quavering with emotion. “I never stopped. I never want to.”

  Love swelled inside her breast. Swallowing back tears of relief, she went to him.

  “What about Rico?” he asked, pulling her onto his lap.

  “He’ll cool off.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then we’ll cool him off together. We can handle anything as long as we’re together. Even your father,” she added, looping her arms around his neck.

  “It sounds like you already have.” He drew her into his arms and into the kiss they’d both been craving.

  When they’d given and taken and reassured themselves that what they were experiencing was real, Logan broke the kiss.

  Framing her face in his hands, he pressed his forehead to hers. “This is for keeps, Carmen. I won’t let you back away again.”

  Love, as strong as the heritage she was proud of, as deep as this man’s need, made them invincible. “I’m very glad to hear that.” She smiled. “I know someone else who will be too. I think Juan’s missed you almost as much as I have.”

  He drew her into another kiss, a kiss that told her how much he’d missed her, and of the hell he’d been through since they’d parted. “I thought I’d lost you. I thought I’d lost you both. And I didn’t much like the man I was destined to become without you.”

  She pulled back and looked deep into his eyes. “Careful. You’re talking about the man I fell in love with. And he’s not so different from you. Not really. He just needed the right woman to make him see how special he is.”

  “You fell in love with a beat-up cowboy,” he reminded her with that shadow of a grin that never failed to move her.

  “That cowboy,” she said, cupping his face in her hand, “was my prince disguised as a pauper. And never doubt this Logan—never doubt for an instant that the man I fell in love with was you.”

 

 

  Cindy Gerard, Charade

 

 

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