There was no response.
Cautiously I took a step toward the brooding businessman. “Look, you didn’t just get me fired. My boss lost Mogul and two other clients because of your ire. That means my boss blacklisted me. I won’t get another job in the industry again unless you fix this. Just … let Benito do the shoot. Please.”
A weighted silence fell between us as we stared at each other. I was pretty sure (or at least I hoped) Caine was silent because he was considering my request. The silence, however, just afforded me even more of a chance to soak in his rugged, dark handsomeness. Was it possible he was getting better-looking?
That was a problem for me.
My mom had always been so bowled over by my dad’s looks that she felt inferior to him, like maybe she was the lucky one to be with him and not the other way around. I’d hated that and I didn’t need a therapist to tell me it was the reason that I tended to date guys who were attractive but not so attractive they were intimidating. More important, my ex-boyfriends (and it wasn’t like there were lots of those) all made it clear that they thought they were punching above their weight by dating me. I didn’t look for that because I needed to feel more attractive than my partner. It was because I didn’t want to feel inferior.
Not like Mom had.
Which was why my reaction to Caine was an anomaly. I could admit when a guy was a hot guy. But I was never attracted to hot guys, because I’d hard-wired my brain not to shoot off all the chemicals that would make me attracted to hot guys.
With Caine, though … well, my thoughts had wandered into the indecent since the moment we met (if I was honest, maybe even before then) and I could feel my skin prickling with awareness under his fierce regard.
“No.”
No? “What do you mean no?”
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “It’s one of the most commonly used words in the English language, Miss Holland. Shocking that someone who doesn’t understand its meaning would find herself unemployable.”
I ignored his sarcasm and flipped my hair over my shoulder with what I hoped was an air of defiance. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
Caine’s already dark eyes shadowed with irritation as he said with a threatening calmness, “You’ll take it and you’ll get out before I personally remove you from my office.”
I shivered again at the thought of him putting those big hands of his anywhere near me. I quickly threw that thought aside and replied, “Please be fair.”
The air around him thickened with anger. “Fair?” he said, his voice hoarse. “What part of you being here is fair? I’m going to ask you to leave one more time, and if you don’t I will physically remove you.”
I closed my eyes, unable to see the pain in his without wanting to hurt my own father. Because my father was a weak and irresponsible man, Caine Carraway had lost everything, and despite all the “everything” he had around him now, I wasn’t convinced from what I’d seen so far that he actually had anything. “I’ll go,” I whispered. When I opened my eyes he was staring stonily at me. My stomach sank at the realization that this was it. His opinion of me hadn’t changed, and I was still jobless. “I really am sorry. I just … I’m just stuck.” And I meant that in so many ways. I grabbed the handle on his office door and had started to pull on it when his irritated sigh stopped me.
“I’ll call your boss and tell him to take you back.”
Relief swooshed through me as I whirled to look at him, amazed. “Really?”
He gave me his back. “Yes, but I will change my mind if you don’t get out of my office in the next five seconds.”
I shot out of that office in three seconds flat. I didn’t get everything I came for, which was probably why as I drove home my relief was gradually outweighed by my disappointment. It occurred to me that I wished Caine could see what I saw—that we were the same in some ways. And I didn’t want to be someone he hated.
However, it was clear Caine needed me to leave him alone. And I would. Even if it was the absolute last thing I wanted to do.
CHAPTER 3
The last day and a half of moping around my apartment had been torturous. With nothing but worry and time on my hands, I’d started reliving some pretty crappy memories, including that fateful day seven years ago when I found out the truth about my father and how he wasn’t an absentee father who gave up his jet-setting career in order to see us every day. No, he was a poor excuse for a man who abandoned his first family and took no responsibility for the woman who overdosed in his presence. This led to thinking about my relationship with my mom and about how shit things were before she died. None of those were things I wanted to remember, so I spent most of my time going over and over my accounts trying to figure out a way to stretch the savings I had. I could get by, living in my apartment without a well-paying job, for six months. This meant eventually giving up the apartment was inevitable.
Accounting was so depressing.
I lounged, legs dangling over the arm of my big comfy armchair that probably wouldn’t fit into the kind of apartment I’d have to move to if Benito didn’t hire me back, and I sipped at my Cherry Coke while Bing Crosby sang out “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” from my speakers.
“You sing it, Bing.” I raised my glass in the air in a gesture of solidarity and nearly spilled my soda as the much louder sounds of Bruce Springsteen singing “Johnny 99” blasted from my cell.
So I liked a relevant sound track to my life.
Heart racing, hoping the name I’d see on the screen was Benito, I rolled off the chair, landed hard on my knees, bit out a curse word, and scrambled along my floor, spilling Cherry Coke on the hardwood.
Almost smacking my nose against the wall, I got up onto my feet and snatched at the phone buzzing on my kitchen counter. I frowned at the number on the screen.
I didn’t recognize it.