them. Their needs mixing, mingling into one giant pool of regret.
“I have a feeling we’re both a bit too many levels of screwed up to be able to deal with each other,” she said, looking down at the ground. At her feet, still clad in those patent-leather black high heels.
“I imagine you’re right.”
She stepped into her dress and zipped it up. And they stood there. Like two strangers. Like he hadn’t been inside of her only a few moments ago.
Like he hadn’t left marks on her. Inside and out.
His phone buzzed. “That would be your car.”
“Spiffy.” She turned, and the moment she couldn’t see him anymore, her heart squeezed so tight she thought she would suffocate. “Hey, before I go,” she said, turning partially, “did you want my name?”
He shook his head. “I don’t need it.”
More than that, he didn’t want it. She could see it. That he was almost afraid of it. Afraid to put a name to the virgin he’d just violated, or whatever the hell issue he was having. Afraid to have a name for the woman he was throwing out only minutes after having sex with her.
“Katy,” she said, her hand on the doorknob. “My name is Katy Michaels. It was nice to have met you.”
My name is Katy Michaels.
Those words kept echoing in his ears. They had been for three days.
Because he knew that name.
Sarah had talked about Katy. Her younger sister. One of her inspirations for working so hard. One of the reasons, in the end, why she’d put up with Jason’s abuse instead of leaving the firm.
Because there weren’t a lot of ways out of the pit of poverty. Not easy ways. Many needed a hand-up, that was for sure. But there were very few people willing to give one without strings attached.
Which had been the situation Sarah had found herself bound up in, and he hadn’t even realized it.
She’d been sending money to her younger sister. To her younger brother.
Katy had been in school; he knew that much.
He was a dick. There was no way this could be worse. None at all. He’d used her to feel in control of his own miserable life, a life that he was in the process of exploding so that he could make right what had been done to her sister.
He’d chosen to, for the first time ever, unleash his domination fantasies on a woman and it turned out to be Sarah’s younger sister. The sister Sarah had protected with everything in her.
Sarah had died, in all likelihood, under a stress she never would have endured if she hadn’t had Katy and their brother to take care of.
And he had debauched her. Holy hell, it was like he was destined to screw up everything. Like he was destined to be the villain no matter how hard he tried to avoid it.
One slipup with regards to his self-control and he’d done the worst thing imaginable.
“Stephanie,” he said, approaching the reception desk in the front of his father’s office, “is my father in?”
“Yes, he is, Mr. Treffen, but he’s in a meeting.” The woman looked down and Austin noticed that she seemed dull. Tired. It made his chest ache. “I can let him know you’re here and see if he wants to interrupt?”
She lifted her hand to brush her hair behind her ear and he noticed finger-shaped bruises curving around her wrist.
And he saw a flash of his hands on Katy’s hips. He wondered if he’d left bruises behind, too. If he were any different from his father, a man who used others to his own ends. For his own pleasure.
Even if it left them damaged beyond repair.
Then he saw red.
“I’ll be interrupting the meeting, thank you, Stephanie. I find I’m not in the mood to wait.” He strode past reception. If Stephanie were arguing, he couldn’t hear her over the roar of the blood in his head.
He kept seeing flashes of his night with Katy.
And he wondered now if Sarah had gone through something similar. But he wondered if she’d ever been told she could say stop. Or if his father had unleashed all of that on her without ever giving her a choice.
It made him sick to think about it.
He walked down the long, bland corridor, the walls closing in on him as he went. Then he heard a familiar voice and stopped cold outside his father’s door.
It was cracked slightly, and he couldn’t see the speaker, but he could hear her.
My name is Katy Michaels....
What was she doing here?
“Thank you, Mr. Treffen, that will be all. I’ll be handing over my case to another events coordinator. I’m sorry that the party of the other night wasn’t to your specifications.” Her tone was tight, stiff.
“Not at all, Ms. Michaels. I apologize that the complaint found you in trouble with your firm.”
A sliver of ice wound down Austin’s spine.
Jason wasn’t sorry at all. He had that tone in his voice, when he spoke to a victim. A woman he intended to draw in. Austin recognized it now, and he had no idea how he hadn’t seen it before.
“It’s nothing, Mr. Treffen. I’ll do other accounts.”
“Of course it’s not nothing,” his father responded, his tone cajoling. “I know that Treffen, Smith and Howell is a big account. Losing it would be difficult for anyone. I imagine you receive a commission per event?”
“In addition to my regular salary, yes.”
“So you’ll be suffering financially.”
“A bit,” she said, her voice clipped. “But I’ll soldier on.”
“If there’s anything I can do, let me know. I have other work.”
Austin tightened his hand into a fist. What the hell was this? What was her game? What was his father’s? Did he know who she was? It wouldn’t be hard to place her. Michaels was a common enough last name, but Austin had figured out the connection easily.
And as for Katy...had she been using him to get to his father? Was that why she’d given him her virginity? So that she could maneuver her way into a better position?
Of course, their night together had gone to hell, so it hadn’t worked that way, but he could see the logic in it.
“Thank you,” she said. His father was seemingly unaware of the edge in her voice. Sharp and cutting, and, Austin had the feeling, prepared to verbally castrate him at
