“That’ll be fine.” He turned to leave, then stopped and looked at her again. “I’m really sorry, Katie. About everything.”
She flushed and now it was her turn to be uncomfortable. Blast Rafe King for putting her in this position. “It wasn’t your doing.”
“It was, in a way,” he insisted, apparently unwilling to let it go that easily. “You know, Rafe’s actually a good guy.”
“Of course you’d say that,” she told him with a sad smile. “You work for him.”
“I do,” Joe argued, animation coming into his face at last as he tried to defend his employer. “And that’s why I’m in a position to know just what kind of man he is. You can tell a lot about a person in the way they treat the people around them. Rafe’s not an easy man, but he’s a fair one.”
“To whom?” Only moments ago, she’d been feeling sympathetic toward Joe since Rafe had put him in such an awkward position. But now, outrage began to bristle inside her. “Was it fair to lie to me? To force you to go along with the lie?”
Joe scowled and scrubbed one hand over his jaw. “No, it wasn’t. But he was paying off his bet to me, so I think we should cut him some slack. Not all employers would have had the spine to honor the debt like that.”
“Honor?” A burst of laughter shot from Katie’s throat.
“Yeah,” he said flatly. “Honor. I don’t know what happened between you two and I don’t want to know. But I can tell you that Rafe’s not a man who goes out of his way to treat people badly.”
“Just a happy accident, then?” she sniped and instantly regretted it when Joe winced. Honestly, why was she taking her anger and hurt out on him? He hadn’t done anything to her beyond supporting Rafe’s lies. It was Rafe who had set everything in motion. Rafe who had slept with her and still lied to her. Rafe who had let her believe that something amazing was coming to life between them, all the time knowing that it was a sham.
Katie struggled for control and found it. Forcing a smile she didn’t feel, she said, “Joe, why don’t we just call this a draw and agree not to talk about Rafe King?”
A moment or two passed when it looked as though he might argue with her. But at last, Joe nodded in surrender. “That’s fine, then. I’ll just let you get back to work and go see if I can help the boys finish up any faster.”
She watched him go, then took a deep breath and tried to push Rafe from her mind. Again.
Naturally, it didn’t work.
It had been almost a week since he’d last seen Katie Charles.
Rafe felt like a caged man. He was trapped in his own memories of her no matter what he did to try to shake them loose. Her image haunted his dreams, and awake, he couldn’t seem to keep thoughts of her at bay. Didn’t matter where he was or what he did, Katie was never more than a thought away.
Hell, he’d even considered calling one of the women he knew, to dive back into his life. Get back in the normal swing of things. But damned if he’d been able to make himself do it. No, he had a charity event he had to go to in a few days, but until then, he wasn’t going out.
Didn’t have the patience to put up with any of the women he knew and wasn’t interested in finding someone new.
He just wanted to be alone. But not by himself. Which didn’t make sense even to him.
He had tried holing up in his suite at the hotel, locking himself away with only his racing brain to keep him company. But the hotel rooms felt sterile, impersonal, and the echoing emptiness had pounded on him until he thought he might lose what was left of his mind.
So here he sat, trying to focus on inventory and supply sheets while images of Katie taunted him. To make matters worse, there was Sean. The problem with coming into King Construction offices, Rafe told himself, was that he couldn’t really avoid his brothers.
“What is your problem?” Sean asked.
“I’m fine,” Rafe insisted, keeping his head down, his gaze on the paperwork scattered across his desk. “Just get off my back, all right?”
Sean laughed. “Trust me when I say, I’d love to. But you’re making everyone around here nuts. When Janice was doing some phone work for me, she begged me to get you out of the office.”
That’s great, he thought. Always before, Rafe had kept his personal and business lives separate. Now though, it seemed his lousy attitude was bleeding into the office. Hell, maybe he should take some time off. But if he did that, his mind would have far too much time to think about Katie. So whether his assistant was happy about it or not, he wasn’t going anywhere.
Rafe scowled and looked up to watch his brother stroll around the perimeter of his office. When Sean stopped at a shelf and plucked a signed baseball off its pedestal, Rafe grumbled, “Put that down.” When he complied, Rafe demanded, “Why is my assistant doing work for you anyway? Don’t you have your own? What happened to Kelly?”
Sighing, Sean walked over and perched on the edge of Rafe’s desk. “She eloped last weekend.”
“That’s the third assistant you’ve lost this year, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I’ve got to stop hiring the pretty ones,” Sean mused. “Inevitably, they run off and get married and leave me swinging in the wind.”
“Well, call the temp agency and get someone in here. Just leave Janice alone.”
“Funny,” Sean said, his eyes narrowing as he watched Rafe thoughtfully, “she’d rather work for me these days.”
Disgusted, Rafe muttered, “Yeah, well, she doesn’t.”
“Better she work for me than quit. And until you lighten up, nobody wants anything to do with you. So why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”
“Work,” Rafe said flatly, his gaze giving nothing away as he glared at his brother. “You should try it.”
“Just so you know? The whole ‘King Glare’ thing doesn’t work on me. I can do it too, remember?”
Rafe tossed his pen to the desktop and, giving into the irritation flooding his system, jumped out of his chair as if he couldn’t bear to sit still any longer. Turning his back on his brother, he stared out the window at the spread of sunlit ocean before him. There were a few sailboats out on the water today and in the distance, fishermen lined the pier. Gray clouds gathered on the horizon and the wind whipped the waves into choppy whitecaps.
“So,” Sean asked again, “what’s going on?”