Once Touched, Never Forgotten - By Natasha Tate Page 0,1

my father out of this,” Stephen warned in a low, dangerous tone.

“You need to cut the chit off before you get in over your head. Before you make a mistake you can’t fix.”

“I’m not cutting her off just because you think it’s time,” she heard Stephen say. “I decide when we’re over, not you.”

“As long as you do decide, I don’t give a rat’s ass when it happens. Sleep with her for another twenty years for all I care, just don’t make the mistake of thinking she’s wife material,” said his grandfather in a flat, authoritative voice. “If you learned nothing from your father, learn that.”

“She doesn’t have what it takes to make a Whitfield wife,” intoned Liam. “She never will.”

“Who said she even wants to be a Whitfield?” Stephen shot back, sounding more irritated than she’d ever heard him.

“She’d be a fool not to,” warned Liam. “Penniless nobodies never understand they’re incapable of belonging in our world. You, more than anyone, must realize that.”

“You’re using protection, aren’t you?” his grandfather continued, and Colette’s stomach bottomed out.

We used protection every time.

“Get out of my office.” When Stephen’s anger turned to cold, controlled menace, his relatives would be smart to heed the warning.

“Don’t tell me you trust her?” sputtered his grandfather, oblivious to the danger.

Stephen’s silence lanced Colette’s chest.

“He trusts her!” he exclaimed in audible disbelief. “Damn it, you’re smarter than this! What if she gets pregnant?”

“She wouldn’t.” He ground the words through clenched teeth. “She knows I’d never bring another Whitfield into this world.”

“Like that would stop her.”

“It would,” Stephen snapped. “She respects my boundaries, just like I respect hers.”

He’s right. She willed them to hear, remembering the walls she’d tried to erect between them. The barriers to intimacy she’d never wanted crossed. But then Stephen had stared at her with his scorching, sultry blue eyes and agreed to every demand she made, convincing her that she was the one in control even as he burned through her heart’s icy layers.

Whitfield dismissed his grandson’s claim with a patronizing grunt. “All women want commitment. How do you not know that?”

“Colette’s different.”

She’d thought she was, too. But she’d been wrong. She’d ended up loving him despite her vows not to, and now the pain of leaving him would be permanently lodged in her heart.

“She’s smart enough to make you believe it,” said Liam. “I’ll give you that.”

“And she’s got legs that go for miles,” added his grandfather. “So I can understand a bit of temporary blindness. But enough’s enough. You’re risking too much with that trash.”

“You’re done here,” Stephen bit out. The telltale squeak of Stephen’s chair as he pushed back from his desk was immediately followed by the protest of leather and wood as the two other men stood. “I suggest you leave. Now.”

“This isn’t over,” Liam said, his voice moving closer to Colette.

Desperate not to be seen, Colette ducked behind the open door, squeezing silently between wood and wall while the Whitfields passed by. Her pulse thrashed noisily against her ears and she held her breath until the two men boarded the elevator and then descended out of sight.

Her breath escaped in a silent, unsteady thread and she closed her eyes, trying to regain her bearings. She stood without moving for several anguished minutes, or maybe it was hours, until her cell phone chimed against her thigh. Reaching to silence its betraying ring, her numb fingers fumbled and missed. It chimed again, the distinctive ringtone she’d set for Stephen making her stomach twist with dread.

“Colette?” Stephen called from his office, his chair squeaking again as he stood. “Are you out there?”

She lurched from behind the door, scuttling back toward the elevator so she could approach his office as if she’d just arrived. Trepidation tightened her throat, but she forced a calm tone regardless. “Hey,” she said when he appeared at his door, his dark head nearly brushing the top casing and his broad shoulders blocking the light from his windows.

He slid his phone into his pocket and strode toward her. “We must be on the same wavelength.”

Before she had a chance to avoid him, he’d closed the space between them and reached for her. Both hands, wide and firm, threaded through her hair and tilted her mouth toward his, lifting her up to her toes. His lips caught hers and the lush warmth elicited the same shock of response it always did. Every part of her body reacted. Heated.

His scent and taste conspired to make her lose her focus, and