Unwrapping the Playboy / The Playboy's Gift. Marie Ferrarella
For the longest time, Lilli’s delicate, almost waif-like image had been stitched on his heart and even now, although shut away, it still occupied a small, darkened corner of his soul.
Surprise, joy and anger swirled around within Kullen. Along with deep confusion. Why was she here?
It took him a second to remember that regular breathing was essential to keep from keeling over, head first, onto his desk, and that he’d stopped breathing the moment he’d seen her enter.
Rising to his feet, Kullen felt as if his body didn’t quite belong to him. Felt, instead, as if this was a small segment of a recurring dream that still, on occasion, haunted him. Breaking up into tiny fragments once he was fully awake.
But he was awake now.
Wasn’t he?
“Lilli?” he whispered uncertainly.
Part of him expected the client to eye him quizzically, not recognizing the name because there was no earthly reason for this to be the woman who had bolted out of his life the night after he’d produced an engagement ring and asked her to marry him. Not only bolted, but disappeared without a trace. No one knew where she’d gone or why she’d suddenly dropped out of law school—and, for all intents and purposes, out of life.
But this was Lilli standing before him. Kullen would have bet his soul on it.
The next moment, as a small, incredibly sad smile curved her lips, his silent wager was validated and he held on to his soul a little longer.
“Hello, Kullen.” The slender blonde he’d once envisioned spending the rest of his life with stood behind the black leather, ergonomically correct chair that faced his desk, making no move to claim it. “May I sit?” she asked him in a soft, melodic voice that seemed to drift to him on an invisible cloud.
He felt as if he’d just been struck dumb. It took another long moment for him to engage his brain properly, to clamp down on the cauldron of emotions still bubbling up.
“Yes. Sit. Please.” All things considered, he was surprised his tongue still worked.
Kullen gestured toward the soft leather chair. Belatedly, he slowly sank into his own. It amazed him how, despite her rather diminutive size, Lilli seemed to fill up the room with her presence.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her, a very small part of him still fully expecting her to disappear because his mind was playing a terrible trick on him.
But it wasn’t playing a trick. Taking a deep breath, he went on automatic pilot, saying things he’d said to other clients scores of times before. Doing his best to shake off this surreal feeling that held him captive.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” he asked, nodding toward the narrow black-lacquered side table, where various necessities of life stood at the ready. “Coffee? Tea? Bottled water?”
She shook her head with each choice. “No, thank you. I’m not thirsty.”
He nodded, rigidly taking his seat again. “All right then, maybe you’ll tell me what you are,” he suggested tersely.
Kullen caught himself before he went any further. With effort, he banked down the bitterness swelling in his chest and crowding his throat. He squared his shoulders ever so imperceptively and asked the only logical question.
“What are you doing here, Lilli?”
She cut to the heart of it, because she knew he had every right to turn her away.
If he did that, she didn’t know what she would do.
Start over again, the way you did the last time.
In the years since she’d abruptly left him, Lilli had discovered that she was stronger than she’d ever believed. It was amazing how someone small and helpless depending on her could transform her. She was a survivor now.
“I’m here to ask for your help,” she said.
The simple words seemed to pierce his chest.
Kullen wanted to know what gave her the right to surface now, after all this time. What gave her the utter gall to ask him for his help?
Eight years ago he would have done anything for her. All she had to do then was to ask. He would have been willing to literally give up his life for her. She had to have known that. But even so, she had all but spit in his face. And left.
The seconds stretched out into a minute as he sat, looking at her. Studying her. Finally, in a deceptively calm voice, he asked, “So all the other men in the world are dead?”
She stared at him, confused. The question made no sense. “Excuse me?”
“That was the way you made me feel when you took off, that you wouldn’t have anything to do with me even if I was the last man on earth. Since you’re here, I’m assuming that for some reason, all the other men in the world have been mysteriously terminated, although I have to say I don’t see how that’s possible, since I passed a few of them in the hall not fifteen minutes ago.” He lifted his shoulders in a casual, dismissive shrug. “I guess I must have missed the Armageddon that took place in the last ten minutes.” He leaned forward over his desk, his voice lowering to a rumble. “Or did it happen in less?”
Lilli recoiled emotionally despite sitting ramrod straight.
She knew she had that coming. That and probably more. Lost in her own predicament, she’d treated him shamefully.
Lilli took a breath. She should have known better than to come. Though Kullen had every right to be angry at her, even to hate her, hearing his cold, emotionless voice as he addressed her hurt far too much for her to withstand.
Hurt, because even with everything that had happened, everything that she’d done, she knew in her heart that Kullen Manetti was the only man who had ever mattered to her. The only man who would ever matter to her.
The only man she’d ever loved—even if she had put him through hell. And he was better looking than ever. Then he’d been almost pretty. Maturity had found him and now he was breathtakingly handsome. She felt the attraction immediately. Just as she had all those years ago.
“This was a mistake,” she told him stiffly. Pushing against the floor, she moved back her chair. “I shouldn’t have come.” As she rose to her feet, she told him, “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
Logically, Kullen knew he should just let her walk out. It had taken him a long time, but he had managed to successfully reinvent himself, to become a different man. He didn’t want to go back to that place where feelings had such overwhelming power over him. That place where he’d ached so badly he didn’t think he could survive the night without the woman he loved.
He needed to remember that, remember the price he’d paid for letting down his guard.
For loving her.
The pep talk wasn’t working. He could feel himself weakening. Slipping.
Despite his resolve, something in those light blue eyes of hers spoke to him, pulled at him, just the way it had that first time so many years ago.
“What was a mistake,” he told Lilli crisply, struggling with the insane urge to take her into his arms and just hold her, “was your disappearing on me eight years ago.”
On the verge of leaving his office, Lilli stopped just shy of the door. She didn’t turn around. Her voice was flat as she addressed her words to the beveled glass. “I had my reasons.”
“Which you didn’t think enough of me to share,” he pointed out. He never meant to say this out loud, but the question tumbled out anyway. “Did you really hate me that much?”
Stunned, Lilli swung around to face him. “Hate you?” she echoed incredulously. “I didn’t hate you. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“And