More Than A Vow. Michelle Reid

to you, Melodie. It’s us. I’m this close to having you against this damned wall with the entire room watching. It’s that powerful.”

      “Even though you hate me.” She turned her face to the side, eyes glistening.

      “What do you want me to say? That I love you?” The word caught like a barbed hook on the way out, snagging in his chest and the back of his throat. It wasn’t a word he even understood beyond its bastardized use. I love this car. I love crème brulée.

      “I wouldn’t believe you if you did, but I want the man I sleep with to say it,” she said with a break of anguish in her voice. “I want to feel it. It’s the only thing that’s kept me going all those years, believing I’d make better choices with men than my mother did. I’m so lonely I want to cry, but I can’t bring myself to believe any of you anymore.” Her lips trembled. “You broke me, Roman. That’s why I hate you.”

      He sucked in a breath that felt like razor blades.

      “I hate being this person. I hate being skeptical and negative,” she went on, skimming trembling fingertips beneath her eyes. “I hate using words like hate.” She sent a quick, desperate glance toward the exit. “I need to go to the ladies’ room.”

      Because she was falling apart.

      He thought he might. Hell.

      Catching her arm, he used his height and confidence to muscle through the crowd to where a bellman was checking names at the door. “You have something for me. Roman Killian.”

      “Of course. Right here, sir.” The bellman handed over a small folder with a number on the inside cover. It contained Roman’s room key and the credit card he’d handed to a member of staff on his way back into the ballroom after dropping off Greta with a handshake.

      He hadn’t intended to book a room here until he’d seen Melodie.

      Melodie gave a muted sniff and turned toward a sign pointing out the facilities, but he drew her across the atrium toward the elevators.

      “I can’t leave,” she said, accepting Roman’s handkerchief as he hustled her along. Then she paused to lean into her smudged reflection in an etched panel. “Actually, I should go to my room to fix my makeup.”

      The elevator doors opened and he pressed her into the car.

      “Six,” she said.

      He ignored that and pressed the P.

      “Roman—” She started to poke 6.

      He stopped her. “We’re going to talk, Melodie. Clear the air once and for all.”

      “There’s no point,” she insisted, voice husky and fatalistic. “You’re right. We do goad each other and bring out the worst. That means we should stay as far away from each other as possible.”

      Her words spiked into him, making him fearful to draw breath, knowing it would burn. “Do you really think that?”

      A rush of emotion welled in her eyes and made her clamp her lips together. She dropped her gaze.

      “I didn’t listen to you that first day. We might not have damaged each other so badly if I had. This time we get it all on the table. Neither of us can move forward until we do.”

      “I damaged you?” she asked with disbelief. “How?”

      “You made me question whether I’m a worthy human being.”

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      MELODIE FLINCHED AT being called out for hurting him, astonished that she could.

      And disturbed. It meant they really were bad for each other. So how could she drop her anger and embrace the idea they could sort things out? Anger was safe. Listening and understanding would only make her feel guilty and vulnerable. Trusting Roman would mean abandoning her defensive animosity, and that scared her. It would leave her with nothing to hold him off.

      He still scared her, she admitted privately. Still caused a reaction in her that was stronger than logic. Whether it was fury or passion, she’d never dealt with such intense feelings. The closest she’d come had been the fire that had burned inside her while fighting with her father over her mother’s care. Those emotions had made sense, though. They’d been born of deep loyalty and love...

      She cut short looking for similarities. Roman was a stranger. They’d only met a handful of times, and even she, with her Pollyanna ideals, suspected love at first sight was a myth. If it did exist it wouldn’t feel like this. As if a man she barely knew was a god with the power to smite her in a blink.

      As they entered the penthouse, he went to the bar while she took in the well-appointed suite with its view of the New York skyline, its Old English furniture and its softly glowing vintage lamps draped in shimmering crystal beads.

      “Scotch? Or wine?” he asked, holding up a bottle.

      “I can’t stay long.” She glanced at the time on her phone, ignored a text from one of the aides asking how things were going and dropped the device back into her clutch, sighing heavily. “What is there to say anyway? I was feeling very low about my mother’s death when we met. I wanted to meet someone, to feel alive. I let myself think there was more potential between us than there was. I shouldn’t have slept with you, but I did. It gave you the wrong impression about how I conduct myself.”

      He brought her a glass of white wine, the glass frosted by the chill of the liquid. His expression was cool and unreadable. She sipped, wetting her dry tongue and soothing her burning throat, trying to collect herself while the strange energy that emanated off him took her apart at the seams.

      “Did you hear me that day in the car? I didn’t make hatred to you. There was nothing in my mind at that moment except the pleasure we were giving each other.”

      “Don’t,” she said, brushing a wisp of hair behind her ear and using the motion to hide her flinch of self-consciousness.

      “We have to be frank. I don’t like it any more than you do.” He brought his glass of neat scotch up to his lips but paused and lowered it again. “I don’t chase women for sport, Melodie. It’s important to me that you believe that. I’m lousy in a relationship, but not because I treat women like sex providers. If I hadn’t had a reason to kick you out that day, you would have been in my bed until you tired of me.”

      “Does that happen?” she asked with a faint attempt at levity. It was supposed to be a swipe at the man she assumed him to be: a gorgeous playboy with enough money to hold any woman’s interest.

      “I’m emotionally inaccessible,” he said with a pained smile, as if it was a tragic but proved fact. “And the sex has never been like it is with us.” He spoke as though it was something happening in the now, and indicated the invisible strands that pulled her toward him and, if he was to be believed, drew him just as inexorably.

      She shifted away from the disturbing aura of sexual tension that grew between them so easily, feeling terribly weak. She would understand this gross sense of helplessness if she had given her heart to him. As a child yearning for love and approval from Garner and Anton, she’d walked around as spineless as her mother, taking each slight to heart. Eventually, living in the real world, she’d suffered fewer attacks, and most of them from people she cared little about. Her inner defenses had rallied and strengthened.

      Now, after a handful of encounters with Roman, a man who should mean nothing to her, she was more emotionally sensitive than ever, responding to every word he said as if it was her own inner voice. It was disconcerting.

      She eyed him, unsettled by his talk of feeling the same irrevocable pull. “I don’t understand how it can be like this if we don’t love each other.”

      “I’ve never understood how love enters into sex at all.” He