shared a kiss like that.”
“Think what you want. It doesn’t matter anymore, Micah.”
He intended to make it matter. “Spend tomorrow with me. Give it some thought.”
“There’s nothing to think about. Go use someone else.”
Anger flashed through him. “I didn’t use you.” And then in a low husky tone, he added, “You meant a lot to me, Kalina.”
Kalina swallowed. There was a time when she would have given anything to hear him say that. Even now, she wished that she could believe him, but she could not forget the look of guilt on his face when she’d stumbled across him discussing her with her father. She had stood in the shadows and listened. It hadn’t been hard to put two and two together. She had fled from the party, caught a cab and returned to the hotel where she quickly packed her stuff and checked out.
Her father had been the first one she’d confronted, and he’d told her everything. How he had talked Micah into doing whatever it took to keep her in Sydney and away from Beijing. Her father claimed he’d done it for her own good, but he hadn’t thought Micah would go so far as to seduce her. An affair hadn’t been in their plan.
“You don’t believe you meant something to me,” he said again when she stood there and said nothing.
She lifted her chin. “No, I don’t believe you. How can I think I meant anything to you other than a good time in bed when you explicitly told me in the very beginning that what we were sharing was a no-strings affair? And other than in the bedroom, you’d never let me get close to you. There’s so much about you I don’t know. Like your family, for instance. So how can you expect me to believe that I meant anything to you, Micah?”
Then, without saying another word, she turned and walked back toward the ballroom. She hoped that would be the end of it. Micah had hurt her once, and she would not let him do so again.
Two
By the time Micah got to his hotel room he was madder than hell. He slammed the door behind him. When he had returned to the ballroom, Kalina was nowhere to be found. Considering his present mood, that had been a good thing.
Now he moved across the room to toss his car keys on a table while grinding his teeth together. If she thought she’d seen the last of him then he had news for her. She was sadly mistaken. There was no way he would let her wash him off. No way and no how.
That kiss they’d shared had pretty much sealed things, whether she admitted it or not. He had not only felt her passion, he’d tasted it. She was still upset with him, but that hadn’t stopped them from arousing each other. After the kiss, there had been fire in her eyes. However, the fire hadn’t just come from her anger.
He stopped at a window and looked out, breathing heavily from the anger consuming him. Even at this hour the nation’s capital was busy, if the number of cars on the road was anything to go by. But he didn’t want to think about what anyone else was doing at the moment.
Micah rubbed his hand down his face. Okay, so Kalina had told the truth about him not letting her get too close. Thanks to an affair he’d had while in college, he’d been cautious. As a student, he’d fallen in love with a woman only to find out she’d been sleeping with one of her professors to get a better grade. The crazy thing about the situation was that she’d honestly thought he should understand and forgive her for what she’d done. He hadn’t and had made up in his mind not to let another woman get close again. He hadn’t shared himself emotionally with another woman since then.
But during his affair with Kalina, he had begun to let his guard down. How could she not know when their relationship had begun to change from a strictly no-strings affair to something more? Granted, there hadn’t been any time for candlelight dinners, strolls in the park, flowers and such, but he had shared more with her than he had with any other woman … in the bedroom.
He drew in a deep breath and had to ask himself, “But what about outside the bedroom, man? Did you give her reason to think of anything beyond that?” He knew the answer immediately.
No, he hadn’t. And she was right, he hadn’t told her anything about his family and he knew why. He’d taken his college lover, Patrice, home and introduced her to the family as the woman he would one day marry. The woman who would one day have his children. She had gotten close to them. They had liked her and in the end she had betrayed them as much as she had betrayed him.
He lifted his head to stare up at the ceiling. Now he could see all his mistakes, and the first of many was letting two years go by without seeking out Kalina. He’d been well aware of what her father had told her. But he’d assumed she would eventually think things through and realize her dad hadn’t been completely truthful with her. Instead, she had believed the worst. Mainly because she truly hadn’t known Micah.
His BlackBerry suddenly went off. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw it was a call from home. His oldest brother, Dillon. There was only a two-year difference in their ages, and they’d always been close. Any other time he would have been excited about receiving a call from home, but not now and not tonight. However, Dillon was family, so Micah answered the call.
“Hello?”
“We haven’t heard from you in a while, and I thought I would check in,” Dillon said.
Micah leaned back against the wall. Because Dillon was the oldest, he had pretty much taken over things when their parents, aunt and uncle had died in a plane crash. There had been fifteen Westmorelands—nine of them under the age of sixteen—and Dillon had vowed to keep everyone together. And he had.
Micah had been in his second year of college and hadn’t been around to give Dillon a hand. But Ramsey, their cousin, who was just months younger than Dillon, had pitched in to help manage things.
“I’m fine,” Micah heard himself saying when in all honesty he was anything but. He drew in a deep breath and said, “I saw Kalina tonight.”
Although Dillon had never met Kalina he knew who she was. One night while home, Micah had told Dillon all about her and what had happened to tear them apart. Dillon had suggested that he contact Kalina and straighten things out, as well as admit how he felt about her. But a stubborn streak wouldn’t let Micah do so. Now he wished he would have acted on his brother’s advice.
“And how is she?”
Micah rubbed another hand down his face. “She still hates my guts, if that’s what you want to know. Go ahead and say I told you so.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
No, he wouldn’t. That wasn’t Dillon’s style, although saying so would have been justified.
“So what are you going to do, Micah?”
Micah figured the only reason Dillon was asking was because his brother knew how much Kalina meant to him … even if she didn’t know it. And her not knowing was no one’s fault but his.
“Not sure what I’m going to do because no matter what I say, she won’t believe me. A part of me just wants to say forget it, I don’t need the hassle, but I can’t, Dil. I just can’t walk away from her.”
“Then don’t. You’ve never been a quitter. The Micah Westmoreland I know goes after what he wants and has never let anyone
