An ache started deep in Josh’s chest. He’d had the chance to know that kind of love. Callie had offered it to him, and he’d cast it back in her face like a handful of bad stock options.
Josh strode to the nearby taxi stand. He couldn’t afford the time to retrieve his car from the parking lot nearby. Too many mistakes had been made already in the name of greed. He wasn’t about to make another.
Thirteen
Callie ignored the demand of her doorbell. She wasn’t in the mood for theological discussion or the latest multibuy bargain card. Not today—not ever.
Since she’d been summarily suspended from Palmer Enterprises, she’d lived in a kind of limbo—lacking even the energy to bother to dress each day. And underlying her miserable existence lay a sense of loss and pain and “what ifs,” making sleep patchy at best during the darkest hours of the night.
The door chimed again, and still she ignored it.
“Come on, Callie. I know you’re in there.”
Josh? What did he want? Hadn’t he made his position clear enough already? Whatever it was, she wasn’t up for any more emotional abuse. She’d ignore him. Eventually, he’d go away.
This time when the doorbell rang it was continuous. Her eardrums vibrating with the noise, she pounded down her stairs and flung her front door open.
“What? Ready to go another round with me? Well, I’m all out of fight so get out of my face.”
“Last time we talked you wanted to tell me your side of things. I wasn’t ready to listen to you then. I am now.”
“Oh, so everything is all on your timetable. I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice dripping with a sarcasm that did little to mask the pain throbbing through her at the sight of him. “I don’t have time in my busy schedule of unemployment.”
“Callie, please.”
Josh stepped across the threshold, forcing her to back up to avoid the breadth and strength of him. She should feel threatened by his mass, but instead all her traitorous body wanted to do was plaster itself against him. Feel his heat and hardness and envelop herself in it until she felt no pain, only sensation.
The snick of the front door closing made her take another step back.
“Tell me,” he prompted.
There was a note of sincerity in his voice that gave her pause. He wasn’t the kind of man to ask if he didn’t mean it and he also wasn’t the type to leave until he got the answers he sought. With a shrug of resignation, she led him through to her kitchen, where she grabbed her kettle from its stand and shoved it under the tap.
“Coffee?”
“If you’re having some.”
She grunted and dealt with the necessities of getting coffee ready. Instant, not percolated. She wasn’t going to any bother for a man who’d chewed her up and spit her out twice in the past month. And she’d let him. She’d set herself up that second time by going to him. By hoping she could appeal to his better nature. The nature she knew dwelled inside the focussed businessman who dominated his market like some feudal lord.
Eventually, she pushed a mug across the kitchen table toward him, paying no regard to the brown liquid sloshing over the sides.
If she’d had any pride left it might have bothered her that her hair was a tangle of unbrushed chaos and that her sleep shorts and tank top had seen better days. Her attire was a far cry from the nightgown she’d worn the last time they’d made love. A tight knot wadded up deep inside her. She didn’t want to think about that night, about what they’d shared. About how they’d given to one another, and taken—both overcome by an insatiable hunger.
She’d had plenty of time to think about that and she was done thinking. She knew she’d acted foolishly, impulsively. But she’d loved him with her heart, her mind and her body—and he’d taken that love and used it against her.
“Where do you want to begin?” he asked, taking a sip of the coffee and ignoring the drips from the base of the mug that splattered onto his Armani suit.
“Why now, Josh? You weren’t interested before,” she hedged. She wasn’t in a hurry to rip the scab off the emotional wounds that had finally healed and been tucked away.
“Because I was wrong. You were right. I realise that now. I was driven by anger and frustration over something I knew next to nothing about. Something I didn’t even have the maturity to understand. It did twist me up inside and make me bitter and both unwilling and unable to see anything from anyone’s point of view but mine.”
He put his mug down on the table and sighed.
“I did what you suggested. I read the letters again. Really read them this time. How I didn’t see what my mother meant to him the first time around I’ll never understand.”