Into My Arms - Lia Riley Page 0,17

me any further. I can assure you that I do a fine job of that on my own. If you want to treat me badly or make me feel worthless, too late, get in line.”

He flinches as if I’ve struck him. “Never have I and never will I desire such a thing. You are a most surprising woman,” he says slowly. “I weary of people. Everyone always does the same things. I can predict reactions and am always correct. Except for you. I think you’ll turn right and you go left. I think you’ll say no and you say yes. I don’t know anyone like you.”

“Well, let’s face it,” I say with more bravado than I actually feel, “you also don’t get out much.”

He grins at that, a grin that is so full of self-loathing that it makes me want to reach out and cradle him.

“Kiss me,” I say in a stern voice. “Now. On the mouth.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m calling you out on that. There is no way you carried me across your yard, through your house, and up a flight of stairs and now can’t give me a kiss.”

“Perhaps I can indeed physically bear to kiss you. That’s an interesting notion, appealing in the extreme. But first, don’t forget about your payment. You wanted to peek inside Pandora’s box. I shall make it worth your while.”

An alarm bell rings. Is this what I want—a secret? His eyes are hard, telling me there is no going back. Once you hear a thing, you know it forever.

Is it better to be ignorant? I’ve been in this situation before with Pippa, where I could have said Please, don’t tell me, and maybe then she’d still be alive. Instead, I let her talk about her eating disorder, plans for treatment, how she’d tell her parents, and she didn’t notice the car coming too fast. It only takes an instant for brain death to occur.

Seeking truth can be dangerous. But a deal is a deal and if Z wants to scare me, let’s see him do his worst.

“I’m listening,” I say, my voice steel.

His shoulders drop as he lifts haunted eyes to mine. If I have rooms locked away within me, he has whole countries. “When I said my parents were dead, I omitted an important piece of the story. I killed my father.”

Chapter Six

Beth

You…killed your father. But…wait…how?” It’s as if the thick fog outside has entered my brain. Z—a murderer? Something is off. I’m not sure what but I need more information.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.” I don’t know why but it does. My gut says this isn’t a guy who goes around ice picking others in the back. Although, then again, how many people do I know that I’d be like, Oh, yes, him? Yeah, I totally expected that guy to be a murderer.

Not many. Not anyone.

“There are ways to kill a man without giving him a bullet.”

“So you didn’t physically do it?” I swallow hard, my shoulders dropping a little. Calm down. Remember Z is a little bit—okay¸ a lot bit—dramatic. It serves him well when unveiling new products and capturing national attention during Zavtra Tech’s annual sales meeting conferences. There is speculation that part of his reclusive Howard Hughes act is also to foster that image of mysteriousness. But right now he doesn’t appear to have a big act to play. He looks almost boyish. At last that wave of hair flops over his forehead and he doesn’t move a muscle to shove it back into place.

“You are an interesting woman,” he says.

“It’s funny to be called that,” I whisper. “A woman.”

“Why?”

“I am not quite sure when I ceased to be a girl.” But as I say the words, I see it’s a lie. I know when my girlhood ended. It was before my parents’ betrayal. It was the day when I sat, strapped in a crushed car, smelling my best friend’s blood, feeling the wetness leach into my favorite shirt.

“You are tough and not altogether innocent. The sort of woman who scares most men.”

I think to my roommate, Courtland, and the cocky way he grinned at me, as if he could smell the desperation wafting from my body like a pathetic pheromone. “You’re wrong. Besides, I don’t like talking in circles. You told me you killed your father, but then alluded that it wasn’t through physical violence. What did you do?”

His eyes harden and at last the correct color of his irises comes to mind.

Granite.

“I took away the one thing in his