CHAPTER 14
Kenzie
THE PRESENT…
When you lived in the same house with another person, there came a time when hiding some of your vulnerabilities became nearly impossible.
“It’s time,” I said to myself nervously.
I’d known, from the first day I’d come to work on the Cay, that Dane would eventually know the real me. Living in the same home was personal, and I couldn’t be on guard every moment of the day.
I turned away from the mirror I’d been using, and went to the closet to grab a casual cover-up. I donned it over my one-piece bathing suit, knowing it hid very little since it was light and almost transparent.
I didn’t want to hide anymore, but I was terrified to show Dane who I really was beneath my façade.
If anybody would get why I hid, Dane would.
I couldn’t say I’d never have to run again in the future. But that was a different issue.
This problem wasn’t really a big deal. Or so I told myself. If he didn’t want to look at me, then I’d go back to being an assistant who never did anything but work when the boss was around.
Honestly, I desperately wanted to make the island a place where I could be myself, and that wasn’t going to happen without taking a risk.
I was tired of being afraid, and being in this tranquil place made me wish things could be different for me.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered to myself as I opened the door and took the steps to the lower level of the house.
I stepped into the pool area before I could stop myself, turn around, and go back to my room.
“About time,” Dane rumbled from the middle of the pool. “I thought you’d backed out on me.”
“I didn’t,” I called from the water’s edge. I shrugged out of my pink cover-up and dropped it on a lounger.
“Is this deep?” I asked.
“That’s the shallow end. Don’t dive from there,” he warned as he easily treaded the deeper water.
Don’t look back, Kenzie. Just jump.
I took a leap of faith, one of the hardest things I’ve ever done since I didn’t trust anybody, and hopped into the water.
The pool was heated, but the shock of the water still took my breath away.
I surfaced close to Dane, and swiped my drenched hair back from my face. “Oh, my God. That was colder than I thought it would be,” I said breathlessly.
“I don’t like it too hot,” he said in a deep, guttural tone. “I have the hot tub for that.”
He did. The spa was across the room. “I like it,” I admitted. “I guess I just wasn’t ready for it.”
I finally turned my head, lifted my chin, and stared directly at Dane.
Our eyes locked, and the tension in the air became nearly unbearable.
My heart raced as I watched his expression. Surprisingly, his features shifted into an expression I hadn’t expected.
He’s…angry.
It wasn’t difficult to pinpoint how he was feeling. The outraged fury was there in his dark eyes.
“What in the fuck happened to you?” he asked in a husky, dangerous voice.
I flinched as he moved forward in the water and grabbed my wrist as I lifted my hand to my face.
Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken a chance.
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
His nostrils flared as his gaze searched my face and my upper body, the only areas he could see clearly above the waist-high water.
“Who hurt you?” he rumbled.
I realized what he was asking. “Somebody I didn’t know.”
“I’ll kill the bastard,” he said, his furious expression earnest.
“It was years ago,” I admitted, my eyes glued to Dane’s face.
He let go of my wrist and lifted his hand to my face.
Dane traced the large mark on my cheek, and then the scar on the opposite side of my face.
Time moved in slow motion as the tension between us grew more and more intense.
My body was vibrating with tension, waiting to see if Dane was going to accept me as I was.
It was the first time he’d touched me, and the simple feel of his hand on my skin made my heart skitter.
“Tell me,” he demanded as he continued to gently trace the scars on my face like they were still new and painful.
I took a tremulous breath, and let it out slowly before I started to speak. “I went to California when I was eighteen to interview for a modeling job. I’d been working as a model during my teen years, mostly small stuff that came up in Boston, and minor teen pageants. Silly stuff, really, but it brought me to the attention of a reputable modeling agency.”
My stomach churned as Dane’s stare continued to impale me, and I continued, “My parents were both drug dealers and criminals. They didn’t much care what I did, and I forged their names to have consent for me to keep up my small modeling jobs when I was younger. If I didn’t, they would have taken every penny I earned, and I had to eat.”
Those had been tough years, and I’d had to scramble for costumes and to pay the fees. That was how I’d learned to make something from nothing.
“They didn’t feed you? They didn’t fucking take care of you?”
I shook my head. “No. I pretty much raised myself. They were rarely around, and when they were, they were stoned and drunk out of their minds. I liked it better when they weren’t there, but I had to find a way to feed myself and take care of some of the expenses. They rarely paid the bills.”
I’d been a grown up for as long as I could remember, the latchkey kid who had needed to make her own money somehow.
“Fuck! Where in the hell was social services?” he growled as he finally lowered his hand from my face to caress the minor scars on the skin of my shoulder and chest.
I shrugged. “Nobody knew what was happening, or they didn’t want to know.”
“Your neighbors—”
“Everyone in my apartment building were addicts, Dane. They didn’t give a damn about what happened to some unknown kid. They couldn’t get their own shit together.”
Fire was shooting from his beautiful dark eyes as he looked into mine. “That’s fucked up!” he exploded.
I shot him a sad smile. Somebody like Dane Walker would never know what it was like to live through a childhood and adolescence like mine. He’d fought his own demons, but he hadn’t done it without two pennies to rub together. Not that I was saying he’d had things better than me. He’d suffered his own pain. But our circumstances had been…different.
“It was fucked up,” I agreed. “But I adapted. I knew if I could succeed at a career in modeling, it would be a way of stepping up in the world. I wanted to go to college, and I couldn’t do it without making some serious cash. I wanted something better than I had. And if modeling was the only way to get out of living in poverty, then I’d use that road to save up some college money.”
“How did you get these scars?” His tone was deep and husky.
“In California,” I told him, my body trembling from the continual, gentle touch of his fingers. “When I left Boston for California I was eighteen, I was grateful that it might be the break I needed. I needed to get out of Boston, and start living my life. All I wanted was to be successful at something back then. I wanted to stop living hand-to-mouth. I couldn’t afford the pricier areas of L.A., so I settled for a studio apartment in a much less expensive area. I’d been in crappy neighborhoods my whole life…”
“Keep talking. Tell me everything,” he prompted.
“I came back from my interview pretty happy. I was sure I’d be picked up by the modeling agency. My interview had gone really well. But when I got to my apartment, there were two men there, stoned out of their mind.”
“You walked in on them?” he guessed.
I nodded. It was true. I couldn’t tell him the whole truth about my past. Not now. Possibly never. But I could share what happened to me in California. “I didn’t see them until it was too late. I fought as hard as I knew how, but I was no match for two men with switchblades.”
I closed my eyes as flashes of that incident intruded into my brain.
The fight.
My overwhelming terror.
And my certainty that I was going to die that day.
“Open your eyes, Kenzie. Now. Don’t let the memories get to you,” Dane commanded.
My eyes popped back open, and I was suddenly staring into the comfort of Dane’s compassionate stare.
I swallowed hard before I said, “I lived. But I had the scars, so that was the end of my modeling career.”
“Why?” he muttered. “You’re still so fucking beautiful that I can’t stop looking at you.”
My heart clenched inside my chest, a squeezing pain that brought tears to my eyes. “Not beautiful enough,” I answered. “I eventually learned how to cover my scars with makeup. I’d learned a lot about covering up imperfections during my teen years. But it wasn’t good enough. The camera would still see my flaws, especially back then when they were fresh. The marks weren’t completely coverable.”
I usually wore clothing that would cover the scars on my body, but I had never been able to work in the modeling field again.
“They aren’t that bad,” Dane protested.
“They’ve improved over time,” I told him. “But the world wants perfection.”
“So what happened after California?”
“I moved back to the East Coast. It was a world I was familiar with. I took any jobs I could get to stay afloat.”
“What about your parents?”
“My mother died while she was serving her sentence, and my father is still incarcerated. They were responsible for killing a guy during a bad drug deal. They took a plea deal and went to prison.” My parents were murderers, and I rarely told anybody the truth about what had happened to them. I preferred to say they were gone, which they were. I preferred to leave out the information that my father killed a man, and he was still behind bars.
“And your attackers?” he asked in a low, dangerous voice.
“Dead,” I told him truthfully. “They raided another apartment the next day to look for money. The owner killed them both.”
I let out a sigh of relief, glad I’d come clean with some of my past. I just wasn’t sure how he’d process it. I was the scarred up kid of two convicted murderers. How could anybody process that without some kind of suspicion that I could be as bad as my parents?
“I guess that saves me the time of tracking them down,” he answered in a disgruntled voice, like he was disappointed that he couldn’t get revenge himself.
“That part of my life is over,” I informed him softly. “I was hoping I could start all over again here on your island.”
I was also hoping I’d never have to go on the run again, but I chose not to mention that.
“You can,” he said in a gentler tone. “Any damn thing you want is yours. Just name it.”
My body was beginning to scream with need, but it wasn’t clamoring for anything Dane owned. It was pleading for him to touch me more. “I’m happy here right now,” I confessed. “For the first time in my life, I actually feel safe.”
“Good,” Dane grunted. “You’re going to stay that way.”
Not once, from the time I’d entered the pool, had Dane looked at me with anything other than an out-of-control protectiveness that I coveted. But in between those emotions, I could feel that sizzle of a gathering storm between us.
My fingers were itching to touch the massive amount of tanned skin of his chest. In spite of any scars he might have, Dane was beautiful to me. There was something so ruggedly handsome about him that I craved his touch.
“Are you going to kiss me?” I whispered breathlessly.
“I shouldn’t,” he rasped as his hands came to rest on each side of my face.
Disappointment flooded my being. “I suppose not.”
Dane was a billionaire, and my employer. The last thing I wanted was to risk this job. Now that he accepted me, scars and all, I didn’t want to leave his island.
I risked revealing my imperfections because I’d had a feeling that Dane would understand. His acceptance and protectiveness was more than I’d hoped for.
He looked at me with desire in his eyes, a reaction that was unexpected. Yes, I’d wanted him to be able to deal with my flaws. But knowing that he wanted me despite my imperfections was almost more than I could handle.
“But fuck if I’m not going to do it anyway,” he warned as he tilted my chin, right before his mouth crashed down on mine.