He tugged her icy hands into his and held her gaze. It drilled into her, making mincemeat of her fragile defenses. But he didn’t say a word. “I had a feeling about the diamonds,” he said, his gaze still raking her, and clicked open the velvet case.
A huge ruby pendant nestled on a thin, almost-not-there gold chain.
She leaned back into the plush leather seat, panic swirling through her. “You ordered that between when we left and now? It must cost a...fortune.”
He frowned. “It’s a trinket, Olivia, something to wear with that dress.”
Of course, it didn’t mean anything. She turned around meekly. She took a deep breath, fighting for composure as he put the chain on her. The graze of his knuckles sent ripples of sensation over her skin. But there was no place for the warm, gooey feeling swirling inside her. The fact that he called a pendant that probably would pay for a penthouse in New York, a trinket, said it all. It was nothing but another step in ensuring her cooperation.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
She ran a finger over the pendant, nestled in the valley of her breasts and his gaze followed it. She folded her hands in her lap and looked away from him. The quiet surrounding them scraped against her nerves. She needed chatter, something, anything to dispel the cocoon of desire spinning around them. “Did you ever want to be an actor?”
At his continued silence, she sighed. “So let me get this straight. You can pass judgment on every aspect of my life, but I can’t even ask an innocent question about yours.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is it an innocent question?”
“Of course it is. Seeing that you’re the son of Oscar-winning parents, and are particularly easy on the eyes, one does wonder.”
“Am I?”
“Are you what?”
“Easy on the eyes?”
She shrugged. “You’re the sexiest man I’ve ever laid eyes on, even when you’re shooting daggers at me for one of my multitude of sins.”
Heat uncurled in his gaze, the dark pupils shimmering against the blue. “The drama of my parents’ life was enough to keep me away from anything connected to them.”
“Do you ever see them?” She was skating dangerously close to the edge. His penchant for privacy was as widely known as his business acumen. But she couldn’t stop herself. It was either engage her mind or her senses.
A warning glittered in those mesmerizing blue depths. “No.”
The finality of that answer, the utter lack of emotion in it sent a shiver through her. No second chances, no looking back for Alexander King. Granted, in this case, his mother had shot his father, leading to one of the biggest scandals in Hollywood. “The press always makes more of it than it is.”
“There’s never smoke without fire, Olivia.”
She tried to ignore the censure in his gaze, fought the urge to explain her past. “No. But sometimes, there’s foolish naïveté instead of actual offense.” Like her assumption all those years ago that once she was out of her father’s control, her life would be a bed of roses, that she would forge herself a successful career, find a man who loved her. Like her sister’s assumption that Alexander King was the perfect man. He was, if you lived in a world where no one ever made mistakes. The thought curled up around her chest, making it hard to breathe.
“Not in the case of my parents,” he said without compunction. A shadow fell over his features, as if he wasn’t in the present. “They were incapable of thinking beyond their needs, their desires or their passion, as my mother was fond of saying, as if it was just another great part she was playing. As a result, Emily and I spent months in and out of court, social services and the rest of our days haunted by the press. Is your curiosity satisfied now?”
Having pushed him into answering, Olivia didn’t know what to say. At least, his sister would have been too young to understand much. But he had taken the brunt of it. It explained his obsessive need for privacy, to protect his sister, to control every aspect of his life and how it was perceived even. “I would have preferred it if my mother had shot my father instead of leaving.”
A lick of fury came alive in his gaze and she wished she hadn’t made the remark. “Why did she?”
She ran a hand over her throat. “Did you never ask Kim?”
He shrugged. “I know that it pains her to mention your mother. So I left it at that.”
Bitterness rose like bile through her, choking her. She abandoned us, Liv. Kim’s words rang in her ears. Yes, their mother had found an escape from their father, leaving them at his mercy. With their mother gone, he had turned his corrosive attention to them. But the one thing Olivia remembered despite her father’s best efforts was the cloud of misery that had always surrounded their mother. “How perfect you are for each other, looking down your noses at weaker people, sweeping it all under the rug so that none of it touches you. Did Kim say our whole family was perfect, like her?”