“Leave the folder with your assistant,” she said in a hollow voice. “I need the ladies’ room.”
“Siobhan.” He took a step to go after her, then stopped himself.Damn it.
He was her employer. He couldn’tdothis.
How had this even happened. He had been succeeding at treating her like any other employee until— No. He hadn’t. If he was brutally honest with himself, he would recognize that even when he wasn’t overstepping boundaries, he was a little harder on her, a little slower to offer praise, taking care not to reveal so much as a hint of favoritism toward her.
He was trying toprotecther, though. She saw every day the lengths Lorenzo would go to strike at him. Surely, she understood why this couldn’t happen?
Who could comprehend it, though? Really? He didn’t fully understand Lorenzo’s hatred of him. Lorenzo had been equally hard on Fernando, but had at least acknowledged Fernando’s position as his heir and groomed him accordingly. For years it had merely been favoritism of one son over the other, but once Lorenzo had been back here at LVG, it had become outright efforts to sabotage Joaquin. Why?
Yes, he’d been a boisterous child, always getting into things. He saw the same energy and curiosity in his nephew and knew it was easy to see that behavior as defiance.
We caught him putting his dinosaurs in the toaster, Fernando had said of the boy during one of their last conversations.Pulled a chair over to reach it. He wanted to know what would happen.
Fernando had been nonplussed, but proud of the boy’s ingenuity and desire to experiment.
Lorenzo had never been proud of Joaquin, though. He’d saved his praise for Fernando, who’d been smart and athletic, but also deferential and disciplined. Lorenzo had blamed his wife for Joaquin’s strongmindedness.Teach him his place, Lorenzo had told her many times.
Then his mother had left and Lorenzo had taken on putting Joaquin in his place with his own firm hand. Fernando had intervened as often as he could, but Lorenzo had swung enough at both of them that it made little difference. He preferred to punish his youngest, though. The one who didn’t matter.
There were times Joaquin had kept himself on a tight leash, thinking maybe, if he was good enough, his mother would come back. She had sworn to him that Lorenzo had driven her away, not him, but he still blamed himself. He was too quick to speak out, always determined to find a way to whatever he wanted even if he would be punished for it.
He knew now that his mother had taken the brunt of Lorenzo’s anger until she feared for her life, never dreaming her husband would turn on their sons. Then Lorenzo had undermined her financially and socially, making it impossible for her to gain custody of them.
Eventually, Joaquin had realized how much abuse she had taken on his behalf and, in a twisted way, was glad she had left so he didn’t have to worry about her.
Then there was Esperanza. Joaquin never would have engaged himself to her if he had known he would wind up back in his father’s sphere. From the moment Lorenzo wasintroduced to her at Fernando’s wake, Lorenzo had behaved intolerably toward her. When she broke their engagement a few weeks later, Joaquin knew it was for the best that she distance herself from him.
Women didn’t fare well when they were attached to him. Even his brief liaisons were fraught with the same thing that was plaguing Siobhan right now—he was aloof. Inaccessible. Not outwardly cruel, but carrying a history that left him stunted. Unable to attach.
Women left him and he let them go for their sake and his own.
He wasn’t letting Siobhan go, though. He kept trying to make himself relegate her to his past, but every time he pushed her away, he felt as though he was peeling away his own skin.
Even so, this obsession with herhadto stop.
Chapter Eight
Siobhan had arestless night. She tossed and turned, reliving how Joaquin had been so antagonistic about Ramon. Jealous?
That was what she’d thought when he’d declared so angrily,I care.
He had startled her enough that she’d spilled her guts over how badly she’d misjudged Gilbert and his feelings toward her.
Joaquin had seemed so kind, then. He’d sounded as though he really did care.
Flowing into his embrace had felt as natural as it had every other time. And she ought to know by now that an explosion of passion would happen, but it had caught her off guard, being even more powerful than she expected. She would have made love with him in his office! Anyone could have walked in on them.
She covered her hot face thinking of her abandonment and the way that he had put such a cold stop to it, as though he was barely affected at all.
He didn’t care. Not really. Not the way she longed for someone to care about her.
Once again, she was fooling herself into seeing what she wanted to see.
To hell with him, she resolved as she dressed for work. She had tried to make it clear to him that she needed to support herself financially because she didn’t feel right leaning on people she’d let down. She resented how he was making her ability to do so seemimpossible.
She jerked her brush through her hair hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, gathering it in a low ponytail as if it was Casual Friday when it was only Tuesday.
