Why now? Why would that innocence die within her eyes as she stared back at him with such bleak pain? Surely she had known, had understood, that he had lost his ability to love years ago. Hadn’t he?

“She’s my daughter,” Dane snapped. “If I had any clue he would touch her—”

“Oh shut up, Dane,” Marguerita sighed, her voice lacking fury, but filled instead with disgust. “You refuse to admit she’s a woman, not a child. You’ve been hiding your head in the sand for years, unwilling to admit that as she grows older, so do you. And in doing so, one day, she will leave our home for another. I knew exactly why she was coming to Ian, and what she planned to do. Had you been man enough to listen to reason the past hours I’ve been arguing with you, you would have understood that.”

“He’s too old for her—”

“She’s wanted him since she was a teenager. Be damned glad she waited this long rather sneaking into his bed when she was sixteen, as she once threatened to do,” she snapped, her eyes blazing as she turned back to Ian. “And I do believe you are as pathetic as any man it has ever been my misfortune to meet. Why my daughter should love one so clearly determined to be miserable for the rest of his natural life, I have no idea.”

He stared back at Marguerita in surprise.

“You know, Ian.” Her voice trembled as she spoke. “I remember something you told me once, after you and Dane rescued me from that hell my family consigned me too. When life was a bleak, ugly little hole I had no idea how to climb out of. You told me nothing mattered but love. Nothing was so innocent, so pure, as true love. I just watched you destroy the very thing you once said you would treasure above all things. Pure, innocent love. May God have mercy on your soul.” Then she turned to her husband. “And pray he has mercy for you as well. For it will be a long time before I do. Now, I go to give what comfort I can to my daughter. If she will allow it—” Her voice broke. A reminder, that because of them, her daughter had flinched from her, unwilling to be comforted in their presence.

Ian stayed silent. He heard every word she said, felt them like knives in his gut, but all he could see, all he could truly remember was watching that purity slowly die in Courtney’s gaze.

As the door slammed closed behind Marguerita, he stood, facing the man who had been his dearest friend.

Dane was watching him soberly now, the fury of moments before having dissipated in the face of his daughter’s pain, and his wife’s fury, perhaps. He watched Ian thoughtfully, his eyes narrowed, the cold gray depths reflective.

“Well, you two have truly managed to fuck up what began as an otherwise perfect morning.” Khalid picked his shirt and shoes from the floor as he moved to the door himself. “And let me be the first to say that Marguerita summed it up quite well. You are both pathetic.”

He slammed the door behind him as well, leaving Ian and Dane alone to face each other.

“She’s my baby. You’re my best friend.” He pushed his fingers wearily through his dark blond hair as he faced Ian now. “Thinking of her, in bed…” He grimaced. “Dammit, I don’t want to think of my child, my baby, doing that stuff.”

Ian grunted at that.

“I won’t let her take the blame.” He shrugged. “As you said, I could have said no. I could have warned you and let you come after her.”

“But she’s an adult,” Dane spoke over him. “As Marguerita keeps pointing out, she’s not a child anymore.”

Ian shifted uncomfortably. He wished Dane would just fucking hit him. It would help alleviate the ache growing in his chest.

“She loves you,” Dane sighed as he pulled himself from the chair then. “I didn’t believe it. Not when Marguerita and Sebastian argued so fiercely. I couldn’t imagine she could understand the depth of acceptance it takes to love men such as we are. But as my wife is always eager to point out, our daughter has her grace, not just my stubbornness.”

Courtney was hurting.

Ian pushed his fingers through his hair as he turned from Dane, unconcerned with the other man’s bitter realizations.

Damn it to hell, he could feel her hurting. As if something had ripped a hole in his soul when he watched that light die in her eyes, he could feel her pain. It hadn’t lessened, but had grown stronger, affecting his breathing, his sense of reality.

Nothing lasts forever. He had made himself believe that over the years.

Nothing endures. Nothing lasts. Nothing is permanent.

But Courtney was. Her love was. From the moment he met her, a wild little girl with big doe eyes, she’d watched him with the same unabashed emotion. The same innocence.

He had carried her out of her grandparents’ estate in the dead of night while Dane went after Marguerita. Her arms had been tight around his neck, her little voice whispering, “thank you”, “thank you”, over and over again. And from that day forward, she had watched him with that same, overwhelming innocence.

The innocence of love.

She was shameless. As honest in giving of herself as she was in how she viewed life. One of the few who endured simply because they loved.

What had he done?

Chapter Fifteen

One Month Later

The pain didn’t go away.

The aching loneliness refused to abate.

And dammit, she was fucking horny and couldn’t get off.

Courtney paced her room, dressed in the comfortable black cotton lounging pants and matching top. Her hair was loose, flowing down her back, the ripple of the strands against her shoulders reminding her of Ian. He had liked her hair. Many times he had wrapped it around his hand, holding her head back as he came over her, his cock working inside her as he whispered how tight, how hot she was.

She stopped at her window, staring silently into the gardens below. She couldn’t cry anymore. She had cried until she felt she could fill the oceans with her tears.

There wasn’t even anyone to blame, except herself. It would have been easier, she thought, if she could have hated someone else for the pain. She had known going in that making Ian realize he had a heart would be a difficult journey at best. But in her immaturity, in her own belief in herself, she had believed she could accomplish that goal.

She hadn’t considered failing. And in not considering it, had not thought of the harm she could cause if she did fail.

She had hurt not just him, but her father as well. Two men who had forged a bond in pain years before were now no longer friends. The two men she loved most in the world had been irreversibly hurt by her foolish actions.

And she was alone.

A dry sob tore at her chest at the thought. She now slept alone, she wept alone.

Drawing in a deep breath she turned back to her bedroom, considering it as she had been for most of the morning. Her mother had suggested refurnishing her suite, changing it. But perhaps it was time for more.

She had lived with her parents all her life. After finishing school, she had come home, unwilling to commit herself to college at that time, eager to be the adult she thought she was. She had built her life around her dreams of Ian, and now that life no longer existed. It was time to build a new one.

It wouldn’t be as fine as the one she felt she could have had with him. The laughter and heat, the sharing. She could have grown in his arms, become anything she wanted to become and still be Ian’s woman. She had known that. She had thought there was time to make the decision of where her education would continue, and how she would fill her life.

Perhaps, rather than refurnishing, it was time she left instead. Time she forced herself to step away from the protection and the love her parents’ home afforded her, and forge her own life.

She had a multitude of things she enjoyed. Decorating, training the horses on her father’s estate for the competitions they were often entered in, she even liked the charity work she often helped her mother with. She could turn any of those into a career.

She especially enjoyed…Ian.

It seemed there were more tears after all. Another slid down her cheek as the loss threatened again to overwhelm her.

“No more tears,” she chastised herself severely as she moved to her closet. “Change instead.”

Change required energy. It forced one to stay busy, to push all other things to the rear and focus solely on what must be done. It was the only answer to the life she now faced. She had accepted, at least for now, until she could cope with losing everything she had believed would be hers, she would be alone. But that didn’t mean she had to wallow in the pain, nor did she have to let it worsen.

She pulled a chic dark gray dress from the closet along with matching pumps. She would need her own apartment, a place of her own. Then she would enroll in college as her father kept encouraging her to do. She would slowly rebuild her life. It wasn’t her dream, but it would do.

As she laid the dress over the bed, a soft knock at her bedroom door interrupted her thoughts.

“Come in,” she called out, watching warily as the door opened and her father stepped into the room.

He was a handsome man for his age. Still well-developed, his sandy blond hair as thick as ever, his gray eyes turbulent. He had always been her strength as she grew up. Ready to protect her, to guide her, or merely to laugh with her. She had always believed there could never be a man more perfect than he was. Except Ian.

“Going out?” He glanced at the dress, moving further into her room as she watched him, aware that letting her go would be difficult for him.

He had so loved and spoiled her, all her life. He had taught her many of her greatest accomplishments and had cheered her on ahead of everyone else. He had taught her confidence, taught her strength. He had helped her find the best of what she was inside herself.

“Yes.” She glanced at the dress, then back to him. “I’m going apartment hunting.”

She didn’t have to imagine how it would affect him. His eyes instantly darkened with an instinctive protest as his big body tensed. He couldn’t know how hard it was for her as well, though. Leaving the only security she had known besides Ian’s arms, would be one of the hardest things she had ever done.

“A rather sudden decision, isn’t it?” he growled. “No one has asked you to move out.”

“I know, Daddy.” She smiled softly. “It’s just time, I think. Perhaps it’s time for college as well.” She shrugged restlessly. “I can’t spend my days just drifting. And after so many parties, it becomes rather boring. I…I need something more…” She glanced away from him, unwilling to look as she hurt him further.

“You can live here and go to college,” he suggested.

She could, but living with her parents wouldn’t accomplish the growth she needed. She needed to learn how to dream dreams that didn’t include Ian. She couldn’t do that here, where all her dreams of him had begun.

“No.” She breathed in deeply. “I need to be on my own, I think. It’s time I grow up.”

How a woman who had indulged sexually as she had with Ian could utter those words, she wasn’t certain. She felt ages old. And yet, as uncertain now as she had felt during the time her parents had been apart.

He lowered his head, pushing his hands forcefully into the pockets of his slacks as he nodded slowly.

“It’s hard, letting you go.” He cleared his throat, staring around the room as he blinked several times. Hard. “Hard to let go of the years I lost and remember you’re not a baby anymore.”

Courtney bit her lip and found there were many more tears. Tears she would shed later rather than now.

“You taught me to follow my heart, Father,” she whispered huskily. “That’s what I must do.”

He nodded. Cleared his throat again.

“Ian called,” he announced as his head rose.

She flinched. She couldn’t help it. The pain built inside her until she was certain it would take her to her knees. He hadn’t called her. Not even once.