The door closed behind her and I looked at Caine in question. “What was that all about?”
Instead of answering me he glowered in outrage. “Were you fucking spying on me?”
I flinched at the nastiness in his tone. “No, I was not. I had an altercation with my grandfather and I needed you. Phoebe told me you’d gone this way.”
I thought my explanation would cool his temper, but to my surprise his fury seemed only to be increasing. Far beyond what the situation warranted. I watched him pace the floor like a tormented bull, surprised that smoke wasn’t billowing out of his nostrils.
That uneasiness I’d been feeling transformed into dread, a heavy, sinking dread in the pit of my stomach. “Caine, what’s going on?” I said quietly. “Who was she?”
“It was nothing.” He stopped suddenly and I saw it happen. I saw him closing down, shutting me out. “Let’s go back to the party.”
“No.” I stumbled in front of the door, blocking the exit. “You’re going to tell me what’s going on here.”
“None of your business, Alexa.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m pretty sure you’d want to know if I was locked away in a room with some guy while he held me in his arms.”
His dark eyes flashed. “You’re misconstruing the situation, and I don’t have the time or the patience to deal with your unwarranted jealousy this evening.”
Outrage burned in my blood. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that. What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve been acting like a caustic bastard all night.”
“Caustic bastard.” He sneered. “Not very ladylike, Alexa.”
“Don’t.” I gritted my teeth. “Don’t act like this. Please.”
Something in my face made his soften infinitesimally. “Not here,” he finally said. “This isn’t the time or the place. Let’s just go back out there.”
“Later, then?”
“Lexie.” He moved toward me and wrapped a hand around my arm. Not sure what he was doing, I allowed him to gently tug me forward.
To my annoyance he released me only to walk out the door.
That horrible sense of foreboding was back.
CHAPTER 23
My fingernails bit into my palms as the driver pulled the car down my street.
“My apartment?” I whispered.
There was no reply from Caine.
I sucked in a huge breath, trying to ease the tightness compressing my chest.
After hours of strained conversation I should have been relieved by silence. A person might believe that silence took less energy than forced communication, but the bristling tension radiating from Caine suggested he was exerting great control to remain reticent.
The dinner at the benefit had gone by in a blur of false niceties and banal discussions that went in one ear and out the other. Singers and dancers had entertained and yet I could barely remember the pretty turn of a ballerina’s pirouette. I’d ignored the concerned looks from Henry and Nadia while Caine had sat next to me only engaging in conversation with me when prodded. No one else seemed to notice his terseness, because he was universally known for it, but Henry was aware there was something wrong with his friend.
I was more than aware.
His attitude made me feel like my skin had caught on fire. It burned and itched as I tried to claw my way outside myself—outside this downward-spiraling evening into hell. Somehow I knew what was coming. My instincts were screaming at me to find some way to turn everything around. And then there was that little part of me that hoped my gut instinct was wrong.
Yet, as soon as Caine’s driver turned down onto my street instead of taking us to Caine’s apartment, that hope slipped out of my hands.
“Caine?” I looked at him as the car drew to a stop, wondering why that person with the coldly blank mien had come back after all these weeks. I didn’t like him. I much preferred the man who’d broken through his icy facade.
Where was he?
And why after that strange interaction with that Regina woman had he disappeared?
“I’ll walk you up,” Caine said in a monotone.
The driver opened my door and I got out, murmuring my thanks. I waited, shivering in the cool air of the early morning. Instead of coming to a stop beside me, Caine marched right by me and took the stoop two stairs at a time.
Now trembling more than shivering, I moved as quickly as I could in my heels and dress, and fought the quickly rising wave of nausea inside me.
“Keys?” He held out a hand to me.
I gazed up at him.
Still blank. Still ice.
Looking away, I dug into my purse and produced the keys. They were snatched out of my hand before I could say or do anything and Caine let us into my building.
I followed him upstairs, my heels clacking obnoxiously loud on the stairwell. Any noise in the face of his dispassionate taciturnity seemed obnoxious, if only because I was so hyperaware that to him it was obnoxious.
This was a man who wanted to be done with me as quickly and quietly as possible.
My dignity warred with my outrage.
I reached my front door to find Caine had opened it but was still standing out in my hallway. He gestured for me to go inside.
Indignation narrowed my eyes. “You first.”
Still blank. Still ice. “I’m tired. We’ll talk later.”
“You first or I’ll follow you back outside.”
“Don’t be childish.” Again with the monotone.
Earlier his overreaction, his fury, had pissed me off. Now I’d give anything to have it back. “You first,” I insisted.
With a long-suffering sigh Caine walked into the apartment. Bolstering myself for what was to come, I exhaled shakily and followed him in. I closed the door quietly behind me and strode down my hall and into my living room.
Caine stood staring out the window, reminding me of the first time he’d been in my place. Pain lanced across my chest. The silence between us was unbearable. It felt thick and cold and dangerous. Like if I slammed my fist against the air in front of me it would shatter and tear my skin.
I drew in a ragged breath. The noise caught Caine’s ear and he glanced at me. The moonlight illuminated his face, allowing me to see that his expression had not changed.