So, what do I do? Choose a woman I don’t care for at all? Would that woman’s life mean less?
No, I chose Reanna. I will be good to her. She will not refuse me. She will not run from me. My sons will not be raised by a miserable woman as I was.
“Are you bored?” Reanna asked softly. “You don’t have to keep working on this with me. You probably thought it would be interesting. This stage isn’t. Not really. It’s just logging the data and writing up a summary. I’ll understand if you want to leave.”
“Do you want me to go, Reanna?” he asked and hated that he held his breath while waiting for her answer.
She smiled at him shyly. “No. It’s nice to have someone to do this with.”
And there it was. Even though, Reanna didn’t know it, she had just decided her own fate.
Chapter Four
That’s it! It’s done,” Reanna said several hours later, as she attached her summary spreadsheets along with her findings to an e-mail and hit send. She closed the laptop, but didn’t look at Xander. Without the buffer of the project between them, she wasn’t sure what to do next.
To fill the awkward silence, she said, “Now all I have to do is drop off the samples and hardcopy files, then I don’t ever have to go back to Biostern.”
Reanna jumped when Xander threw the file he was holding onto the kitchen table beside her. He asked, “You’ve worked at that company for three years. Why would you leave it now?”
Reanna’s eyes flew to his. “How do you know how long I’ve worked there?”
He folded his arms across his chest again and calmly said, “I am a man of influence, Reanna. I don’t have the luxury of taking people at their word. I have to know who I’m dealing with.”
“You’ve had me investigated?”
“Extensively.”
Reanna clasped her hands before her on the table and parried, “Then you already know why I don’t want to work there anymore. Why ask?”
“Because I want to hear the reason from you.”
She didn’t want to tell him. The look he gave her reminded her of Kendra. Reanna wanted to run and hide, but he wouldn’t let her. There was something scary, but also exciting, about that realization. “It’s humiliating.”
His jaw tightened visibly as did the muscles in his broad shoulders. “An idiot can only hurt you if you give him the power to.”
Although she barely knew the man standing in her kitchen¸ part of her trusted him. “You can say that, but I doubt anyone has ever laughed at you. I doubt you know how it feels to be powerless, to know no matter what you do, no matter how you try, you’ll lose.”
His expression remained carefully controlled. “But you do?”
She nodded, and looked away.
For a long moment, a silence fell between them. Then he said, “Do you know when you are most beautiful, Reanna?”
Reanna kept her eyes glued to one of her chipped fingernails. She never considered being perfectly groomed important, but just this once, just for one night, she wished she were. “No,” she said softly.
“When you look at me.” He said the words so simply, so matter-of-factly, but they rang sincere.
She met his eyes again. Nothing she was feeling made sense to her. She should be afraid of him. But more than anything else, she wanted to continue to feel the way she did around him. He made her feel safe — special.
“Come here,” he said in a soft command.
Reanna froze in her seat. She wanted to go to him, but it didn’t make sense. She had told him when the project was done she would ask him to leave. That’s what she should do. Whatever he was offering her couldn’t be real.
In a voice that was a temptation all by itself, he asked, “What holds you back?”
Reanna looked down, hating her habit of doing so, but unable to stop herself.
“Look at me, Reanna.”
She did, and her breath caught in her throat. In all of her twenty-five years, no man had ever looked at her as if he already owned part of her soul. She whispered, “I’m scared. You could be here to hurt me. I’m comfortable with things I can measure and predict. I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Turn the question around, Reanna. What do you want from me?”
Possibly for you to call 911 because I might pass out if you keep looking at me that way. “What do I want?” She repeated his question, stalling as she tried to gather her scattered thoughts.
“Everyone wants something. Are you content with your life as it is?”
Reanna hunched her shoulders, unable to voice how he made her want what she’d stopped allowing herself to hope for. She wordlessly stared into his remarkable blue eyes, sure he would soon say something to break the spell he had cast over her.
“Let’s play a little game,” he said so softly she almost didn’t hear him. “I’ll tell you something about yourself, and if I’m right you must do one thing I ask you to do.”
“That doesn’t sound like a fair game, considering you’ve had me investigated.” Nor did it sound like a wise game. She should tell him to leave. Instead, she bit her bottom lip and waited for his response.
“Do you consider me more intelligent than you?”
Reanna’s back straightened with pride. Her high IQ was the one area she had always prided herself on. “No.”
“Then consider this a challenge.”
“The odds are stacked against me.”
“As they are in life. From the moment we’re born, Reanna, we are engaged in a battle for survival. A fight to hold on to what we have, to protect what we love, and to leave our mark on history.”
Even though he spoke in a formal manner, he was delivering a message Reanna had heard often from her friend. Okay, maybe not the part about leaving a mark on history, but the rest of it was painfully familiar. Reanna stood, but kept the table between them. “I’ll play your game, but only if I can add two rules.”
“Name them.”
“Facts you’ve read about me don’t count. And if you’re wrong, you have to do one thing I ask.”
His eyes sparkled with increased interest. “Agreed.” He studied her for a few minutes, then said, “You like chocolate.”
Reanna laughed and rolled her eyes. “Such a high percentage of people would say yes to that; my response shouldn’t count.”
“Level of difficulty was not a criteria for a statement. Do you, or do you not like chocolate?”
“I do.”
“Then remove your shoes.”
“Excuse me?” Reanna’s mouth suddenly went dry.
“You heard me.”
“I’m not taking off my shoes. You never said anything about getting undressed.”
“You agreed to do whatever I asked. Are you already quitting the game, Reanna? Are you that afraid you’ll lose? They’re just shoes.”
Reanna stepped out of her shoes. She met his eyes defiantly. “I should be able to say facts about you, too.”
“You should’ve thought of that before we started the game. Now the next one: you are allergic to cats and/or dogs.”
“That’s an odd statement.”
“Not really. You live alone. You seem to like company, but you have no pets. An allergy is a reasonable guess.”
Reanna licked her bottom lip nervously. “I don’t have any allergies I know of. So you’re wrong.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Then I must do as you say.”
“Take something off,” Reanna blurted. She instantly had second thoughts as a smile spread across his face, and he began to unbutton his shirt. Her last sane brain cell warned her she should tell him to stop — tell him to leave. But all she could do was stand there mesmerized as he removed his shirt and dropped it on the floor.
