“Did I hurt you?” he asked after a long but strangely comfortable pause. He could see the faint red welts on her arm.
“Yes. A lot. I’m very impressed.”
Zach laughed but the laugh rang hollow even to his own ears.
“She left me, Nora,” he said, his throat tight as a fist. “God, she left me and it’s all my fault.”
He rubbed his forehead but Nora took his hand and pulled it away.
“I know she left you. But I’m here.”
Zach inhaled slowly, exhaled even slower. He turned and cupped Nora’s face in his palm.
“I don’t deserve either of you.”
Nora gave him a wicked smile.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Zach. That’s my job.” She came up on her hands and knees. “You’re still in charge. Tell me what to do.”
“Tell you what to do? Where to even begin?”
Nora grinned at him still on her hands and knees over him.
“Use your imagination.”
His imagination gave him a very good idea.
“Stay,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
Zach reached for the drawer of his nightstand and pulled out the lubricant that Nora had given him.
“Why, Zachary, you surprise me.”
Zach nearly groaned aloud as he pressed into her. She was so tight around him he could barely breathe.
He pushed hard and Nora flinched.
“Sorry,” he said, smiling at his own eagerness.
“No, you aren’t.” He heard the laughter in Nora’s voice.
“No,” he admitted. “Not this time.”
32
S
hortly before dawn, Nora dragged herself out of Zach’s bed and dressed quietly in the dark. She found her tie that she’d used as a blindfold and hid it away where Zach would find it later. Last night certainly deserved a memento.
Nora gazed down at Zach’s still sleeping form. She could scarcely believe what had passed between them just two hours earlier. Someone, something, the real Zach who had been hiding for the past ten years and six weeks came out the moment she’d ripped off the blindfold. Last night she didn’t spend with Zach, her prim and proper editor. Last night she spent with the Zach who’d been a lady-killer as young as thirteen, had drunken threesomes during his university days and had taken the virginity of his eighteen-year-old student on his Cambridge office desk. Nora’s whole body ached from last night’s brutal sex. Without her toy bag they’d had to make do with just his hands to pin her down, his knees to hold her legs open, his hand over her mouth to gag her cries. It was some of the roughest, dirtiest sex she’d ever had in her life. She couldn’t stop smiling.
On her way out of his apartment she stopped and picked up her contract still lying on the sofa. She glanced through it, making sure all the i’s were dotted, all the t’s were crossed. The advance wasn’t going to make her rich, but it would keep her very comfortable for the next few years while she focused solely on her writing.
Nora drove home and dragged her exhausted body into the house. Although she longed for sleep, something nagged at her, something that told her that in her excitement over finishing her book with Zach, she’d forgotten something very important.
Nora entered the hallway that led to her room but stopped in midstep. Wesley stood outside her bedroom leaning back against the door. In his hands was a small box of Tiffany blue. From his stance it appeared he’d been waiting for hours, maybe all night. At first his eyes shone with relief; but then as he took in her tousled hair, her disheveled clothes, a terrible realization dawned on his face. His arm fell to his side, the box dangling by its ribbon from his slack fingers.
“Zach?” Wesley asked.
“Yes,” Nora said, cold with fear and shame.
Wesley only nodded. The box tumbled from his fingers and fell to the floor. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Wes—” Nora began, desperate to explain. Their date, their celebration, was supposed to have been last night. But she’d stayed with Zach instead, stayed and finished her book. She wanted to explain all this to him, but Wesley only brushed past her and disappeared into his bedroom. Nora tried to follow but found his door locked. She stared unbelieving at the knob for a tortured eternity. In all their time together Wesley had never once locked his door.
In quiet shock, she walked to her room but stopped to pick up the box from the floor. With trembling fingers she opened it. Inside the box she found two silver hair combs, delicate and ornate. Nora’s heart cracked like glass in her chest. Wesley’s innocence, his father’s watch, the only thing he had of value…this was his way of telling her he would sell it all to be with her. He’d been waiting all night to give himself to her, and she’d crawled home bruised and stained from a night with Zach.
Nora entered her bedroom and collapsed on her bed without undressing. She was too tired to sleep, too broken to cry. She curled up into a ball, clutching the combs in her hands so hard the metal prongs bit into her skin. She held them tighter, let them hurt her more. Finally it hurt enough she could sleep.
* * *
Morning’s relentless assault finally defeated Zach’s resolve to sleep Saturday away. He opened his eyes reluctantly, knowing from the silence that Nora had already gone. Everything hurt, but he couldn’t care less. Had there ever been such a woman in all the world like her?
Zach got into the shower with as much reluctance as he’d left his bed. The hot water burned his skin. He couldn’t remember when his body had been this raw from so much sex. He lingered in the shower, needing the heat on his sore and aching muscles. After getting out he toweled off and dressed carefully, cursing himself for behaving like an eighteen-year-old lad in his forty-two-year-old body.
By midmorning he remembered Nora had unplugged his phone last night. He plugged it in and checked his voice mail. One message—most likely from work, he guessed.
“Zachary, it’s me.” At the sound of Grace’s voice Zach’s hands went numb and his legs turned to stone. “I’m in New York. Not sure why.” Pause. “That’s a lie. I do know why. You don’t seem to be home. I stopped by and knocked but no one answered. I called Mr. Bonner. I may try what he suggested. Anyway, I’m only in town until tomorrow morning. I wish you’d get a bloody mobile. Never mind. I’m staying—”
Zach grabbed a pen and scrawled the name of Grace’s hotel on his palm. He considered calling to see if she was there but didn’t want to waste a second. He threw on his coat and raced from his apartment. If the lift had broken the sound barrier on its way down, it still wouldn’t have been fast enough for Zach. She’d come by his flat? When? Probably when he was in the shower. Of all mornings to take an hour-long shower, he cursed himself again. Traffic was blessedly light, but it still felt like a lifetime passed before the taxi pulled in front of her hotel.
Zach shoved money in the driver’s hand and raced into the hotel lobby.
“Could you ring Grace Rowan’s room please?” Zach asked the hotel desk clerk.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we have no one registered under that name.”
Zach swore under his breath. Had he heard Grace wrong? Unless…
“Try Grace Easton.”
“Ah, yes. I’ll call her room for you.”
Zach sagged with relief. The clerk dialed her room number. After what seemed an interminable amount of time passed, he hung up the phone. “I’m sorry, sir. She doesn’t seem to be in. Would you care to leave a message?”
Zach decided his course of action that instant. “I’ll wait for her.”
He found a seat in the lobby that afforded him a clear view of the entrance. He stared at the elegant revolving doors, trying not to let their endless spinning hypnotize him.
Now that he was finally at her hotel his heart was still racing as if he’d run the whole way there. Why was Grace here? What on earth had she come for? He knew her. She’d always been brave enough to deliver bad news face-to-face. But he’d already heard the bad news. So why?
It didn’t matter, he told himself. Whatever the reason he would get to see her. That was reason enough to wait in the lobby. Forever, if necessary.
* * *
Two hours after falling asleep with the combs in her hand, Nora crawled from her bed and showered and dressed in a daze. Numb from exhaustion, exhausted from shock, she entered the kitchen on feet made of lead. Wesley was there loudly opening and closing cabinet doors.
“What are you looking for?” she asked between slams.
“My coffee thermos. The blue one with the lid.” His voice sounded tight and strained.
“Did you check the dishwasher?”
Wesley stopped, wrenched opened the door of the dishwasher and yanked out the top rack.
“Dishwasher,” he said, as much to himself as her. “Right. Of course. How could I have been so completely stupid?”
Nora winced and sat down gingerly at the table. It hurt to be in the same room with him. Wesley leaned against the counter for a moment and just breathed.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked in a small voice.
“I want to be. I oughta be.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not mad at you. Just myself.”
She nodded and met his eyes.
“Are you sad at me?”
He released a cold, empty laugh.
“Yeah, I’m sad at you.” She could tell he was trying not to cry. She tried, too.
“I’m sorry, Wes. I am. God, you said you wanted your first time to be with someone who knew what she was doing. Obviously when it comes to you I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“I don’t care. There’s no one else I want to be with. But if you want to be with Zach…I just want you to be happy. That’s all that matters.”
“Listen, last night with Zach—it was about the book. I went over to his apartment yesterday to throw the book in his face, to show him it was done. I was going to leave. He asked me to stay, to help him finish editing it. We got it all done in one night.”
“I saw you when you came in. You didn’t just work on the book. I’m not completely stupid about everything.”
“You aren’t stupid about anything. I am. I’m the one who forgot to call, who forgot we had plans. I was just so shocked that Zach had changed his mind…that he wanted to read the book. Wes,” she said and Wesley met her eyes. “He signed the contract. We celebrated.”
“I thought we were going to celebrate.”
“We still can. We—”
“I wasn’t talking about dinner and a fucking movie, Nora.” Nora flinched at the sheer agony in his voice. “I wanted us to be together.”
“Wesley…” she began but couldn’t find another word to say.
“I’m sorry,” he said and ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t mean to yell. This is…I don’t know. Last Sunday on your bed, Nora, I can’t even tell you how that made me feel.”
“I never felt anything like what I felt with you, either,” she said and remembered that abject panic she felt when she and Wesley had come so close to making love.
“Felt what?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked cold and tired. She wanted to wrap her arms around him until they both felt warm again.
She laughed a little. “Performance anxiety.”
“Performance anxiety? Nora, you don’t have to perform with me.”
“I think that’s why I was so scared. I don’t know how to be with someone like you. I don’t know the rules to this game.”
“It’s not a game.”
“Then how will we win?”
Wesley didn’t answer, just stared past her.
“I guess that answers my question,” she said.
Wesley took a deep breath. “I’ll try. I’ll try to be what you need me to be. I know I’m not like you, but I can try. It’s worth it if I can be with you.”
“But it wouldn’t be you with me. It would be some version of you that was trying to be what I wanted. I won’t let you sacrifice who you are to be with me.” Wesley shook his head and headed for the door. “Wesley, please—”
She started to stand up, wanting to go to him.
“Don’t.” He raised his hand. She froze where she was. “Don’t apologize and don’t explain. I’ll live with this. I just need you not to talk about it.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
“Hey,” he said with false levity. “At least it’s not Søren.”
Nora shrugged and clenched her teeth.
“Wes…will you let me give you the combs back? I can’t imagine how much they cost and I know—”
“Keep them.” He grabbed his coffee mug and headed to the door again. He paused next to where she sat huddled in her chair. “They’ll look beautiful in your hair.”
Nora rested her head on her knees. Her stomach rumbled from stress and hunger. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon, but the thought of food only made it worse.
“I gotta go,” Wesley said. “Study group.”
“Be careful.”
Wesley left without another word. The door shut. She heard Wesley’s car start and pull away. And she knew she was alone. Coughing on purpose, Nora tried to relieve the pressure in her throat. She rose and poured a cup of coffee and half-considered spiking it with whiskey.
Sipping at her coffee, she swallowed the bitter heat gratefully. She needed more sleep, she decided, or another shower. No, she realized. What she really, who she needed was—
The doorbell rang jarring her from the dangerous trajectory of her thoughts. She set her mug on the table and went to the door.
Nora opened the front door to find a woman standing on the porch. Her hair was an elegant shade of red and her fair skin was dusted with becoming constellations of pale freckles. Lovely beyond description, she looked a year or two shy of thirty, but her shining turquoise eyes glowed with a wisdom and intelligence well beyond her years.
“Hello,” Nora said.
“Ms. Sutherlin,” the woman said and with the first lilting words out of her mouth Nora knew exactly who she was. “I’m so sorry to trouble you. I’m—”
“My God,” Nora breathed, “you’re Grace Easton.”
“I am,” she said. “How did—”
“Welsh, beautiful, freckles. I don’t see that combination much in this neighborhood.” Nora smiled at her, sensing that this meeting was somehow preordained. “Please come in.”
33
N
ora poured her coffee down the drain and replaced it with tea. She filled another cup and placed it on the kitchen table in front of Grace.