Free Sugar and Spice: A Karma Café Novella by Tawny Weber

heart?—he strode to the window to glare at the Golden Gate.  “Do you really think I’m such an asshole that I’d expect you to have a physical relationship with me if you thought I was getting married?”
    “No.  But it’s not like it’s a marriage marriage.  It’s a merger.  A business transaction.”  She said that like she’d been practicing those words over and over.
    He hoped so.  He hoped she’d been worrying them and pondering and freaking about the damned things.  Paul’s fist hit the windowsill before he even realized he’d clenched it.
    “It’s a legally binding contract with a woman who would be determined to make it as much a marriage as possible,” he pointed out.  He took a vicious sort of satisfaction when she winced and bit her lip.
    “What’s the matter, Dedra?  You have a problem with that?”
    “You need to do what’s best for the company,” she sidestepped.
    “Always business,” he murmured.  “Always the right thing.”
    That did it.  The temper he’d never realized she had snapped.  Dedra surged to her feet and slammed both fists on her hips.
    “Would you prefer something else?  Maybe I should insist you throw away five generations of hard work, your family legacy and a small fortune?  And for what?  Sex?  You’ve never slept with a woman longer than three months, Paul.  So the potential of three months of sex is worth all of that?”
    Her words slapped at him, both the angry tone and the truth in them.  Peter was the one labeled a playboy, but Paul knew his reputation wasn’t much better.  Still, Dedra had been the one to seduce him.  Not the other way around.
    “I’d have preferred the truth,” he growled.
    “And I gave you the truth.”  Her words were insistent, but there was a faint hint of guilt in her eyes.  As there should be, dammit.  “I said I wanted to see what it was like between us.”
    “And what about lies by omission?”
    “I didn’t...”
    Her words trailed off and she closed her eyes.  Taking a deep breath through her nose, she met his gaze again and nodded.
    “You did talk to Peter.  He told you I’d quit.”
    “You quit your job and didn’t tell me.  You weren’t even going to say goodbye.  Just hop on the midnight flight and disappear.”  He spat the accusations at her, fury and pain overriding any concern he had about sounding like a pathetic loser who’d been ditched.  “After everything, you were just going to leave.”
    Everything.  Years of working together, of being friends.  Of making him depend on her fabulous work, her beautiful smile and her sly sense of humor.  Even before she’d given him a peek into heaven, she’d planned to break his heart.
     
    Guilt was razor-sharp, miserable and unyielding.  Dedra wanted to cry at the look on Paul’s face.  She wanted to run from the room and avoid the truth.  That she’d been too afraid of her feelings to stay.
    “I didn’t think I could say goodbye,” she admitted.
    “And yet, here you are.  So what changed?  You’d already staged a damned good exit scene.  I don’t think you can top sneaking out at midnight,” he said, the sarcasm cutting a little deeper because it was chilled.
    “I couldn’t leave things the way they were.  I owe you too much, owe us too much, to run away like that.”
    The look he gave her was pure skepticism.  Like he wanted to call bullshit on her claim, but was too much a gentleman to point out that she’d been fine running away before the lovely orgasms he’d provided.
    She couldn’t blame him.
    But she could try to explain why.  She owed it to him, to both of them—and those lovely orgasms—to be totally honest before she said goodbye.  
    “My father’s company is teetering,” she told him, waiting for that to sink in.  His frown and shift of his shoulders told her he understood how hard hat would be for her.  The dual feelings of triumph that her stepmother failed, and despair at all her father’s