1
“I’m leaving.”
The low murmur assaulted Hayden Reynolds’ ears as if it’d been shouted with a megaphone. Her heart, which had just begun to slow from the after effects of a blistering orgasm, sped up again, pounding against her sternum like a caged wild thing. A sickening tension invaded her body, chasing away the delicious, warm lethargy that always followed making love with Griffin Sutherland. From the first time eight months ago, to the last time three minutes ago, he’d never failed to make her body sing. But now, two words had struck a discordant chord, and it reverberated through her like a sharp, painful note.
“Hayden?”
Rolling over, she clutched the sheet to her chest, wrapping it around her hips. She sat, one hand gripping the cover to her breasts, and the other curled over the edge of the mattress as if it were the only thing keeping her anchored. Keeping her from falling over into the dark hole of pain and loneliness that had suddenly yawned open at her feet.
“I heard you,” she said, amazed at her calm tone. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
God. Tomorrow?She stifled a gasp. She could count down the time she had left with him in hours and minutes. That explained why he’d shown up at the door of her small apartment without calling. Why there’d been a sense of urgency in his lovemaking. No. Not lovemaking. Sex. A person didn’t make love to someone they planned on leaving...on abandoning.
“So what was this, then? A good-bye fuck?” This time she couldn’t prevent the hurt from thickening her voice. Grief started clawing at her throat, determined to leave her in an anguished rush. Swallowing convulsively, she shoved it back down.
“No. Yes.Shit.”
The mattress dipped as he erupted from the bed. And damn her, she couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder and stare as he picked up his earlier discarded jeans and dragged them up his legs and hips. Even with pain burrowing deeper and deeper into her heart, arousal snaked through her, heating her blood, tightening her belly.
Moonlight streamed through the windows of her bedroom, gilding him in its pearlescent beam. Emphasizing the masculine beauty of his strong, broad shoulders, wide chest and ridged abdomen. Unable to help herself, she lowered her gaze to the flat belly and narrow hips where the defined vee only the truly cut sported arrowed into his unbuttoned jeans. At that moment, the Greek mythology stories she loved to read flooded her mind. The tales of the untouchable, powerful, beautiful gods who ruled from on high and sometimes blessed humans with their favor. That’s what Griffin was. A god.
A Sutherland.
And she was the poor, foolish human girl who dared to believe she could capture the heart of one.
Screw foolish. Somewhere in a village there was a Missing Idiot poster with her picture on it tacked to a lamp post.
She snatched the sheet off, and for a moment she fought the tangled material strangling her legs.Calm down, a voice warned. But she didn’t heed it as she finally tore free and grabbed her robe off the floor.
“Baby, please, listen to me,” Griff whispered, rounding the end of the queen-sized bed that took up most of the space in the small room.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She shrugged into the robe and tugged the sash tight, tying it in jerky movements. Then she gripped the lapels close at her throat, an arm circling her waist, shielding herself from the one person she’d never thought she would have to protect herself from.
“Because I just decided it today. But, Hayden, you more than anyone know how much I hate it here. I’ve been slowly suffocating with my father, the business…” He shoved his fingers through his thick, golden waves, fisting the strands tight at the base of his skull. “I’m twenty-five, and I don’t know what it’s like to be my own man. To be something other than my family name. To have a job I love and earned instead of inherited. I need to leave or else become someone I don’t know. Or worse. Hate.”
Yes, she knew everything he’d stated. She was a student at Rice University working her way toward a Bachelor’s in Managerial Studies, but she already possessed a Ph.D. in Griffin Sutherland. Had been an avid student from the second she’d met the devilish eleven-year-old son of the wealthy family her mother had been hired to work for as a housekeeper. At eleven, Griff had been a hellion, and while he’d matured through the years, he’d never lost that sense of rebellion. While his older brother Joshua and younger sister Callie had toed the Sutherland line of decorum, proper deportment and obedience, Griff had seemed to glory in touting it. He’d scratched at the Sutherland skin, itching to find his own way, his own path that didn’t include the well-travelled one his father Joshua Sutherland, Sr., youngest son of Texas oil baron Bud Sutherland, had set out for him. At twenty-five, he chafed at the demands placed on him, and in the last six months, that restlessness and dissatisfaction had intensified. Objectively, his announcement shouldn’t surprise her. But, oh God, it did. It wrecked her.
Because she’d allowed herself to fall in love with him. Fall so deeply, the thought of waking up tomorrow and acknowledging he was gone tore at her with greedy, vicious claws.
“Have you told your father yet?”
Griff nodded, his mouth firming into a straight line while his eyes blazed blue fire. “Yes, before I came here. He told me if I leave not to come back.”
In spite of her own pain, her heart ached for him. “Griff, I’m sorry…”
He shook his head, slicing a hand through the air. “Forget it. He reacted exactly how I expected. I don’t need his money or connections anyway. They come with strings, and I’m trying to escape his control and influence.” A hard smile curved his sensual mouth. “Besides, he still has the heir, he doesn’t need the spare. You’re the only one I had left to tell.”
“Where are you going?” she rasped.
“Florida, I think. We have distant cousins there. It’s a starting place, at least.”
Florida. Damn near across the country. So far. So far from her…
“Take me with you.” The words exploded past her lips before she could trap them. But once they were out, she couldn’t rescind them. No. No. She meant them. “I-I can go with you.” She hurried across the few feet separating them and clutched his arm, the heat from his body searing her palm. “Please, Griff. We can leave toge—”
“No, Hayden.”
