Billionaires' Secrets: Volatile Chemistry

Volatile Chemistry Part 15

The bright, humming lights of the copy room made Bella blink.

Dominic must have put a lot of thought into the situation and gone to a lot of trouble for a woman he'd never even met. That filled her with sharp and unfamiliar feelings that underscored her guilt over her duplicity.

"I know you hate what I've been doing. As soon as ReNew launches, I'm going to leave."

"Why should you leave? I bet your mom will be proud to see your dad's work carried on in the products you developed."

Bella shrugged. "Cosmetic preparations are not the end result my dad dreamed of for his experiments, but I'm pretty proud of them."

"You should be."

She drew in a deep breath. "ReNew launches on Tuesday with a big media blitz. The consumer line will be carried in Nordstroms all over the country, and several large metro hospitals have already ordered the medical line. I can leave as early as next week without feeling I cheated Tarrant out of anything." She was trying to convince herself as well as him.

"You can't leave." The words shot out of his mouth.

She held her head high. "I'd have thought you'd be happy to see the bad apple roll out of the barrel."

He couldn't stand to even sleep in the same house as her, let alone the same room. He'd made not the slightest hint that he'd ever like to kiss her again.

Or even touch her.

He watched her like a security camera, his expression guarded and intense, as if waiting to catch her doing something wrong.

And paying for her mom to have private care was both a gesture of shocking generosity and a sharp tightening in the noose he already held around her neck, keeping her in his debt.

Maybe he wanted to keep her here where he could watch her.

Control her.

Her skin quivered at the nearness of him. Close enough to feel his body heat through the wool of his expensive suit.

He edged toward her again, crowding her, almost crushing her against the machine. She steadied herself with a palm on the open, glass surface.

"Now is not a good time for you to go. Trust me."

"Why?" A curl of fear unfurled in her gut.

"Tarrant won't take kindly to a defection when he's sick."

"It's hardly a defection. Scientists move around all the time. The only way he'd be angry was if he knew..." She stared at his face. "But he doesn't know about me."

Dominic watched her, eyes narrowed, expression unreadable. His lips parted as if he was about to say something, for a split second the air hummed with painful anticipation that drowned out the hum of the Xerox machine and the florescent lights.

Bella's heart started to beat faster. "He doesn't know, does he?"

Dominic didn't say anything.

Her breath stuck at the bottom of her lungs and her heart threatened to explode from her chest.

His brow furrowed and he stared at her until her skin tingled, then he grabbed her and kissed the last gasps of breath right out of her body.

Bella shuddered with terrible relief as she wound her arms around his neck, unable to think of anything but falling into his embrace. His lips and arms were warm and so very, very welcome.