The Owner of His Heart Read online

  Layla burst out laughing. “Peggy, you need to stop.”

  “No, you need to stop. Literally. Go find yourself a nice man and start spending your weekends with him as opposed to all these busted up people.”

  Layla waved her off and continued into the center after a little more small talk. She wished she had the time and energy to date. She could use some non medically-mandated company.

  Growing up, she dreamed of meeting a nice guy and starting a family. But first there had been all the physical therapy after the fall that had not only robbed her of her memory, but also broken just about every bone in her body outside of her spinal cord. Then she’d gone back to school and managed to get both her bachelor’s and PT masters in five years, after which she’d worked hard to pay back her student loans in record time. The next thing she knew, she was twenty-eight, and had never had a real boyfriend to speak of—that she remembered. Obviously, she’d become desperate if she was dreaming about Nathan Sinclair every night. He just might have been the most arrogant, horrible man she had ever met—

  This last thought stopped her in her tracks. What if the dream wasn’t a fantasy, she wondered, but a memory of something that had actually happened? Her father had once mentioned “her boyfriend in Pittsburgh” who hadn’t wanted her after she fell, who hadn’t even visited her at the hospital. She could see someone like Nathan Sinclair pulling a cruel move like that. And that would also explain why she had been at his family’s mansion when she’d fallen.

  So far, finding out anything about her accident had been like pulling teeth. The Pittsburgh hospital had transferred her records to the hospital in New Orleans. And the hospital in New Orleans wanted a large check and either an in-person signature or a notarized document to prove she was who she said she was in order to release them to her. Meanwhile a media search at the central library hadn’t turned up so much as a mention of her fall, even though it happened at such a high profile location.

  The more she tried to find answers, the more she realized she was dealing with a very powerful family. They had not only paid her father off, but had also buried the story so deep, if she wanted answers, she’d have to go through Nathan to get them. Nathan who really didn’t like her for reasons still unknown.

  On her lunch break, she googled him to see if he had also gone to Carnegie Mellon. But his online biography said he’d gone to Yale for both his bachelor’s and master’s after a few gap years spent in Pittsburgh.

  Again, she couldn’t see how their paths would have ever crossed. She pushed back from the computer with the now familiar feeling of frustration. Why did this have to be so hard? It would have made it much easier if Nathan Sinclair had answered her questions as opposed to just glaring at her the entire time she was in his office for some crime she couldn’t remember committing.

  Still, her instincts were telling her that she needed to apologize to him. For what? She had no idea. But part of her deep need to pay him back stemmed from a vague guilt that had been clawing at her stomach ever since he said he didn’t like her for reasons other than her father’s blackmail scheme.

  Maybe, she thought, she should dial up her usual niceness a notch or two when she saw him next. You can catch more flies with honey, as the old proverb said. But Nathan Sinclair wasn’t like most of the other human beings she had come in contact with since her accident. He didn’t exactly exude sweetness or even seem to appreciate that quality in others. Look at the way he surrounded himself with black and grey furniture and walls of hard tinted glass. Even his assistant was a block of ice. Layla supposed one would have to be to work with Nathan Sinclair day in and day out.

  No, being as nice as possible would definitely not work with that man.

  “Do you know anything about Nathan Sinclair?” she asked Carol, one of her co-workers, a tough physical therapist who often played bad cop to her good cop with the more difficult patients. Carol had been born and raised in “The Burgh” as the locals called it. And though Layla had only been living in the city for a few months, she had already noticed how small-town it could be. Everybody who had been born there seemed to know a little something about everybody else who had grown up there. So she figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

  That afternoon they were on therapy pool duty, calling out exercises to the ten senior citizens recovering from various surgeries with aquatic movement.

  “Nathan Sinclair, the rich steel guy?” Carol asked, frowning.

  “Yeah, him.”

  Carol shrugged. “Not much. He’s rich, hot as hell. But I think he only dates, like, blond super models. People keep wondering when he’ll ever settle down.”

  Layla could have guessed he was a playboy who didn’t want to settle down just by looking at him, so she pressed for more information. “Do you know if he ever went to Carnegie Mellon? Maybe he was there for a semester and dropped out?”

  Carol’s forehead crinkled, “No, if he’d gone to a Pittsburgh school, we’d all know it. You know how we like to represent. But there’s some other weird factoid about him that I’m trying to remember—” She broke off to yell at a senior citizen leaning against the far wall. “No slacking, Mrs. Peterson! That hip isn’t going to recover by itself.”

  After Mrs. Peterson was back in line, doing flutter kicks with the rest of the patients, Layla said, “Good job, Mrs. Peterson. Way to come back!”

  That’s when Carol snapped her fingers. “Oh, wait. He didn’t go to Carnegie Mellon. But you know what, his brother Andrew did.”

  By the time she got off work, the tired fog that had been dogging Layla all day had disappeared. His brother had gone to Carnegie Mellon, too. Finally, a break in the case, she thought as she made her way into the employee locker room…something she could hang on to and research further. She was so excited about this new information, it took her a moment to notice something off in the locker room.

  As she got closer to her own locker, she saw it no longer matched the others. Hers now had words spray-painted down the front of it in red. Words that chilled her to her very bones: “LEAVE, BITCH.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EVERYONE on staff at the center was horrified by what happened, but none of them had seen anything. No patients were on the premise that shouldn’t have been. According to Peggy, no one had come through the door who hadn’t had an appointment. The security guard even checked the surveillance cameras, which they kept at the front and back entrances, but Peggy had been able to verify everyone who came through the door that day as either a patient or a staff member.

  “Why would anybody want to do this to a sweet thing like you?” Peggy asked, She rubbed Layla’s back while they watched one of the center’s handymen paint over the red words.

  “Maybe it was meant for somebody else and they got the wrong locker,” Carol said. “I’m more inclined to believe that. I know a few of my patients would love to spray paint my locker, but everybody loves you.”

  “Not everybody,” she said, thinking of Nathan Sinclair, which was when she remembered she had been in the process of leaving to meet him when she discovered her defaced locker.

  She glanced at the wall clock. “Oh no, I was supposed to be there an hour ago.”

  “Be where?” Carol and Peggy asked in unison.

  Layla didn’t answer. Just grabbed her purse and high-tailed it out of there. Hopefully Sinclair would still be at his office, because now she was even more determined to get some real answers from him.

  ***

  Nathan had been put in a few difficult positions with women over the course of his lifetime. He’d been semi-stalked, cursed, overly-coddled, and pursued by them. But he had never in his life been stood up by one, at least not until Layla Matthews no-showed at their five o’clock meeting. At six, he sent his assistant home. No need for her to witness his fume slow-boil into rage. And rage was definitely what it had become by the time seven rolled around.

  Who did she think she was to stand him, Nathan Sinclair, up? He didn’t make a habit of braggi
ng, but he was considered by certain publications one of the most eligible bachelors in the country. Most women would kill for the opportunity to be in the same room with him, but Layla couldn’t even be bothered to call to let him know she wouldn’t be showing up?

  “Nathan?”

  He looked up to see her standing at his office door. She was dressed in purple scrubs again, but this time they were covered by a white lab coat. He blinked, wondering if she was real or a hallucination called forth from his rage.

  “Hi,” she said in that good girl way of hers. She edged further into his office. “I tried to call, but the front desk wouldn’t put me through, because your assistant wasn’t picking up. Luckily, your assistant left my name on the guest list before she left, or they wouldn’t have even let me up here. I’m so sorry, I’m late. Something happened at the center. And then I had to wait for the bus. And then—”

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  Now it was her turn to blink. “What?”

  “I don’t care,” he said. “The deal is off.”

  “But, I have a third of the money right here.” She pulled a cashier’s check out of her purse and thrust it at him. “Take it.”

  He stood up. “No.”

  “Please take it,” she said, her eyes hinging on desperate. “You have no idea how hard I worked to scrimp together this payment. I need you to take it.”

  “If you really needed me to take it, you should have gotten here on time. I would have taken it at five. I might have even taken it at six. But now it’s too late. Like I said, the deal’s off.”

  ***

  “The deal’s off.”

  More than anything Layla wanted to turn on her heel and walk out of there. Pretend she’d never met Nathan Sinclair and just go. But the huge debt nagged at her. “I pay back my debts. My father used me to take this money from you, and I can’t just let that lie. That’s not who I am.”

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “How do you know?” he repeated, surveying her under his icy grey gaze from behind his desk. “For all you know, you were the kind of person who would be okay with taking something from me and never paying me back for it.”

  Layla might have been tired and seriously shaken from the locker incident, but she’d have to be in a coma not to read between those lines. “Are you insinuating I took something from you? If so, tell me, and I’ll do my best to give it back.”

  He stared at her for a few angry beats. Then he rolled down the sleeves of his light blue shirt and fastened them before jamming his arm through his suit jacket’s sleeves.

  “What are you doing?” Layla asked.

  “Leaving,” he answered. He grabbed the leather messenger bag he carried in lieu of an old-fashioned briefcase and came around the desk. “Like I said. You’re late. The deal is off.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said, rushing after him. “If I hurt you, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. And if there’s any way I can make it up to you, I will. But you have to tell me what I did.”

  She grabbed his arm to keep him from leaving. “Please, just tell me what you want from me.”

  The moment she touched him, he went still, stopping so abruptly Layla had to grab on to his arm with her other hand to keep from stumbling backwards.

  “Don’t,” he said. The single word came out on a strangled breath, but the undertone of menace was clear.

  “Don’t what?” she asked, wondering why their conversations seemed to mostly consist of her asking him to clarify what he’d just said.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Now Layla went very still. As a physical therapist, she’d been trained to be thoughtful of every patient’s boundaries. She always announced before touching one of them. And if they asked her to stop touching them, she did so immediately.

  But she couldn’t do that with Nathan Sinclair. She had a feeling her ability to get answers hinged on her touching him, on not letting him go until he told her what she wanted and had every right to know.

  “First question, how do we know each other?”

  “Layla…” he ground out.

  “Were we friends who had a falling out? Did your brother introduce us?” She paused to rally the nerve to ask her next question, but it still came out as a mere whisper. “We’re we in love at some point?”

  He kept his face turned toward the door, and they looked like a frozen picture of what they were: a man trying to leave and a woman trying to hold on to him. “No, we weren’t in love.”

  “Okay,” Layla said, picking up on his emphasized ‘we.’ “Was I in love with you and you didn’t love me back? Did I chase after you? Get a little too pushy? Is that why you don’t like me?”

  His face turned red with fury. “Let go of me. Now.”

  “If you answer my questions, I’ll let you go. I need to know if we were together. I keep on having these dreams where we’re…” Layla searched for the appropriate words, but could only come up with, “Doing it. Is that a dream or a memory? The not knowing is driving me crazy. You’re driving me crazy.”

  That’s when he dropped the messenger bag and turned on her. “I’m driving you crazy? No, it’s you. It’s always been you driving me crazy.”

  Then, without warning, he plunged his free hand into her riot of curls and slammed his mouth down on hers.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LAYLA’S mind struggled as it tried to process what was happening. Nathan’s lips were crushed to hers, his tongue inside her mouth, effectively silencing all of her questions. And even more surprising than his unexpected kiss was the way she responded to it. She’d immediately began kissing him back and flames of desire burned a path down her torso, engulfing her womb with a need so insistent it verged on pain.

  “Please,” she moaned against his lips, not quite knowing what she was begging him for. “Please…”

  “No,” he said, running kisses down her neck. “I’m not going to let you do this to me.”

  Then, to Layla’s utter dismay, he pulled back from her, all but shoving her away from him when she tried to kiss him again. He shook his head and pointed at her, more angry than she’d ever seen him, which was saying something, since he’d pretty much stayed furious from the moment they’d re-met.

  “I’m not doing this with you. I’m a grown man now. I can control myself.”

  Her clothes were still on, but Layla felt naked and ashamed, standing there under his accusing glare. She had no idea why she had responded to him like that, so brazen and completely willing to give him her body with just one kiss. Humiliation washed over her in waves, freezing her to the spot.

  “Get out,” he said. He pointed to the door she’d left open.

  Numb to her very core, Layla gathered her purse to her chest and followed his directive, just as eager to leave the scene of their kiss as he was to have her gone. But when she tried to rush out past him, he grabbed her arm, keeping her there. And with just that touch, a bolt of electricity passed between them again. She stood very still, waiting, just waiting to see what he would do next.

  “Are you wet?” he asked her. His voice sounded more feral than human at this point.

  “What?” she asked, confused.

  “I won’t be able to be gentle with you. If you’re not ready for me right now, then you should run and never come back.”

  He was right. She should run. Send him the money she’d saved so far in the mail and then send the rest of the installments the same way, until her father’s debt to his family was paid off. But…

  “The truth is I’m dripping,” she told him.

  He groaned. “Layla, don’t toy with me.”

  Along with being too honorable, Layla had always been honest to a fault. So she continued telling him the truth, despite her better instincts. “I can feel my panties sticking to me, I’m so wet for you.”

  This time when he turned his grey gaze on her, it was hot as opposed to cold. “You’re wet. For me.”

  It
wasn’t stated as a question, but somehow Layla understood he was demanding a confirmation. “Yes, I’m wet. For you.”

  “For me,” he said again.

  “For you,” she repeated, barely able to believe these words were coming out of her mouth or that she wanted him this bad.

  He let her arm go and stepped back. “Show me,” he said.

  Even though he had let her go, the way he was looking at her now, like a hungry, angry animal, kept the electricity buzzing through her. “Show you?” she asked.

  “Take off the lab coat.”

  She took it off, her eyes glued to his as she did so.

  “And your pants.”

  She hesitated. Some part of her understood this would be her only chance to turn back, to lead with her brain as opposed to her throbbing womanhood. But in the end, she couldn’t ignore the strange, sweet ache that had been building up ever since she’d met this infuriating man. She kicked off her lime green crocs and pulled down her scrub pants. This left her standing there in her pale blue panties, which just as she’d said, had a large, distinctive wet spot at the crotch.

  ***

  It took every ounce of control Nathan had not to throw her on the floor and bury himself inside her. His throat clogged with lust when she revealed her bottom half, encased in cotton panties that, unlike the black lace his lovers usually wore, did nothing to hide her desire for him. Indeed, if he had still been touching her when she took off her scrub pants, this would all be over now. He’d have rutted her like an animal in a blaze of heat and need.

  As it was, he had to turn away from her to keep from coming in his pants like a boy half his age. Instead, he forced himself to think about the performance he’d seen at the Pittsburgh Opera last spring, a world premiere, by an up-and-coming German composer known for being particularly dour. The opera had been so bleak, it had put him off having sex with his date that night. What had her name been? Samantha? Sandy? Sally? Just another in the string of blondes he had dated over the years in an effort to get Layla out of his system. He tried to recall the tune of the last aria, which had been delivered in the wasteland of a bombed out city.