Rebel

“Ms. Russo…” The secretary’s dark eyes were wide as she set the phone down-from Frank’s call, Rubi knew. Then her gaze cut to Wes, where he stayed several feet behind her. “I… I…”

Rubi stopped in front of the desk and held out her hand. The young woman’s gaze darted between Rubi’s hand and her face before she reached out and curved her fingers around Rubi’s.

“Good to meet you,” Rubi said.

She pivoted on her flip-flop and went straight to the floor-to-ceiling door in her father’s office, flung it open, and walked in, with the shocked and panicked secretary stuttering behind her.

“Ms. Russo… Ms. Russo, please don’t…”

From the corner of Rubi’s eye, she saw Wes cut into the woman’s path. The secretary stopped short, her eyes wide as they climbed his chest to his face. Wes was a full foot taller. “You’ll be safer if you don’t get between those two.”

“B-but-”

Wes stepped into the office and closed the door-quietly-in the woman’s face.

He turned, keeping his body tall and taut, hands clasped, stance shoulder width. He met her gaze with a silent message of unwavering support and unquestioning belief. An irrational surge of emotion shot through Rubi-gratitude and affection and a sense of humility for his friendship. And she couldn’t deny the decrease in anger toward Dolph when she had someone as good as Wes in her life.

“I’m sorry to cut this short, Larry.” Dolph’s deep, commanding voice seemed to fill every crevice of the office. “A problem’s just come up.”

Rubi met her father’s annoyed glance. This was old, old history. Straight out of his worst-father-of-the-year playbook. The warmth Wes had infused now drained. Quickly. Leaving her cold. And empty.

“And that problem would be me?” she asked.

“I’m trying to run a business here.” Dolph stood in profile, looking out at the city lights from one of his many picture windows. He pulled a Bluetooth from his ear and tossed the headset on a stack of papers. His dark skin, at least three shades darker than Rubi’s, pulled taut over his face in what looked like both fatigue and aggravation. “You still listen as well as you did when you used to stuff Q-tips in your ears at four.”

She shouldn’t have come. She knew that now. The moment she’d gotten the call from the Realtor, discovered Dolph had undercut her again, she should have walked out of that house and into a hotel. Stayed there until she’d found another place to live. That would have cut her last tie to Dolph. This spontaneous visit had been an irrational codependent effort to keep the turmoil between them alive. A reflex. Because turmoil had always been better than nothing.

Only…it wasn’t anymore.

“You wouldn’t really know,” she said. “You never talked to me when I was four. Or six. Or eight. Or eighteen.”

With a condescending smirk, Dolph rounded his desk and sat on the edge. He cast a careless survey over Wes, then turned back to Rubi. “Are you just here to add more aggravation to my day?”

The simple act of looking at him, speaking to him, stirred years and years, layers upon layers of hurt and anger and soul-deep disappointment. She did her best to put it into perspective. This could be the last time she ever spoke with him if she chose. That helped her hold an even tone.

“Why did you put the house on the market without telling me?”

He made a careless gesture with his hand as if dismissing her. “The Realtor was supposed to take care of it.”

“Is it too much to ask of my father to touch a button and dial his daughter to give her the information himself?”

“I’m busy.” He used his don’t-push-it tone. Only, he couldn’t send her to her room anymore. Couldn’t punish her. Couldn’t take anything away-he’d already put the only thing she wanted from him on the market.

She wandered along the edge of his desk, glancing over the photos lining his credenza against one wall. Dolph flanked by Dodgers Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw. Dolph with Raiders’ quarterback Terrelle Pryor. Dolph with the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant. Then there was frame after frame of Dolph with politicians, Forbes 500 icons, celebrities, celebrities, and more celebrities.

Not one image of Rubi. Not from her childhood. Not from her two college graduations. Not from her modeling career.

Nothing.

“Right. You’re busy,” she said, her tone light but her heart heavy. “So why not take this house off your plate altogether and accept one of the six offers I made you over the last year? Or even simply acknowledge them?”

Wes remained perfectly silent. Perfectly still. Yet perfectly present.

“Because,” he drew out the word, patience waning, “this is business. Putting property on the market creates competition-”

“Driving up the price,” she finished for him, a sinking, half-numb sensation dropping low in her belly. “And the sales game is far more important to you than my feelings.”

“Feelings have no place in business.”

“What about ethics?” Rubi asked. “What about kindness? What about human decency? Do those have any place in business?”

He exhaled heavily, a look of utter exasperation on his face. He glanced at Wes again. Crossed his arms. “Who’s this?”

Wes approached. Rubi had seen Wes’s size and unexpected intensity intimidate smaller men, but Dolph was too full of himself, too arrogant for intimidation.

“Wes Lawson,” he said without offering his hand. His eyes looked stony in the dim light. “A friend of your daughter’s.”

Rubi appreciated his attempted relationship plug, though she knew it would go unheard.

“Wes Lawson.” Dolph’s eyes narrowed. He turned, taking a sudden interest in Wes. “Lawson…” he drew out as if trying to remember where he’d heard the name. Dolph’s gaze darted back to Rubi. “Is this the guy you called me about? Something about a physical therapy device?”

Wes shot a stunned look at Rubi, and her stomach fell the rest of the way to her feet. Her phone call to Dolph about the rig had never entered her mind. Shit. She would have liked to have told Wes about that first. But…too late now.

“Wait.” She held up her hands, palms out. “You remember that, but you don’t remember my six offers on your house?”

“I gave the message to one of my junior partners.” Dolph spoke directly to Wes. Rubi had been completely dismissed. “She did some research into this rehabilitation unit and thinks it’s viable. She tells me you’re a very talented engineer. Graduated at the top of your class from Missouri S&T, right?”

“I graduated top of my class from USC and Birmingham,” Rubi said, “but you’ve never even mentioned it. Didn’t show for graduation. Didn’t even pick up the fucking phone.”

“Excuse me.” He spared her a disapproving, don’t-interrupt parental glance. “I’m talking.” Then refocused on Wes. “Tell me about this device you’ve created.”

The look on Wes’s face was a cross between disgust and fury. “I’m here because Rubi is interested in buying the house she’s living in. Not to talk about the rig.”

“Have you hit up other developers?” Dolph asked with a fresh glint in his eyes as if he smelled money. “Have you had any offers on the device yet?”

“Several.” Rubi stepped up beside Wes. This was over. She was swamped in a flood of pain and anger that stretched deep below the surface, and she had to get out of here. Hopefully save Wes in the process. “Multimillion-dollar offers from major corporations.”

Wes gripped her forearm. “I think we’re done here.”

“If you’re interested,” Rubi laid out her last card on Wes’s behalf, “you’d better come up with a better deal than he’s already got.”

Wes pulled her around toward the door. She didn’t resist or argue.

“Wes.” Dolph called at his back, approaching with a business card in his hand. “Call my chief of development. She’s young and sharp. And very excited about your invention.”

“Rubi’s also young and sharp and very interested in your house.” Wes took the card and met Dolph’s gaze purposefully. “It seems like a good time for consideration all around.”

Seventeen

Wes jammed the elevator’s down button with a knuckle. It took everything he had not to walk back into that room and slam his fist into Dolph’s face. He was so damned average—average height, average build, average appearance. All the looks in the family had to have come from Rubi’s mother. How a man so average could spew such hurtful words, Wes couldn’t quite get his mind around.

“Wes…” Rubi twisted her arm in his grip. When he looked down, her brow was pulled in a grimace.

He eased the pressure on her hand as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Teeth clenching, he stepped in and didn’t release Rubi until the doors had closed. He didn’t expect her to go back into her father’s office; he just…needed to have a hold of her, as if that would somehow protect her.

But even after the doors closed, he couldn’t let go.

“Please, Wes.”

He forced his hand open, then crossed his arms and pressed his back to one wall.

“Let me explain,” she said, her face a mix of misery and fear. “You have every right to be pissed. I overstepped. I shouldn’t have talked to my father about the rig. And I didn’t, really… I mean I—”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” He hadn’t been this mad since…oh, yeah, a few nights ago, when some stranger had plowed his fist into his eye because of that fucker Bolton. “I don’t give a shit about the rig. How could you let him talk to you like that?”

She stared, that confused vertical crease between her eyes, lips parted. Christ, she was so beautiful. Inside and out. And so much he hadn’t understood about her made sense now. After being raised by a pig like that, it was no wonder she wasn’t interested in a relationship. Not a fucking surprise she didn’t believe love could last. If Wes had been taught that love was bad, ugly, painful, he wouldn’t have believed it either.

“I…I don’t…let him talk to me like that, he just…does. Which is why I don’t see him. Why I hate him. Why…I’m never going to speak to him again after tonight.”

Wes’s skin was on fire. His brain a twist of fury. He wiped a palm across his forehead. Before he knew it, the rage overtook him, and he slammed his hand into the mirrored wall with a feral growl. The reflective surface splintered, and pain shot through his hand. A strangled scream curdled in Rubi’s throat. In the cracked reflection, she jumped and tented her hands over her mouth.

“Stop.” She sucked an audible breath. “Don’t.”

Goddammit. He instantly regretted the show of insane frustration.

She pushed her hands through her hair, her gaze on the floor. “I knew I should have come alone.”