The Perfect Woman (Rose Gold Book 2)

by Nicole French

Eric shrugged. “Penny was tough. She took it on the cheek most of the time.”

  “I shouldn’t think suicide as taking it on the cheek,” I said more bitterly than I intended.

  “Doll,” Matthew hummed a warning under his breath.

  “Oh, Nina…” Jane murmured, shaking her head.

  But Eric wasn’t angry. Instead, he just looked up in surprise. “Nina, do you think that Grandmother was responsible for Penny’s death?”

  I blinked. “Of course it wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t holding the knife or whatever the poor girl used, but—”

  “It wasn’t her fault at all,” Eric cut in. “And Penny didn’t kill herself. Jude Letour murdered her. He was sent by John Carson, a nasty fucking power play when I was first initiated into the Janus society. He confessed it this spring.” His voice was short and curt. He obviously didn’t like talking about any of this.

  As the truth washed over me, I felt just as quickly like I was drowning in it. “But she—I thought—didn’t they—”

  Slowly, I melted, head into my hands, like a candle whose core was sinking in on itself. All my misconceptions revisited at once. Terror at being alone and pregnant and nineteen. Walking down the aisle with Calvin, seeing potential murder in my grandmother’s eyes rather than the disappointed truth. Peppe, dead in Florence, and all the fear I had carried with me since.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered into my hands. “What…did…I…do?”

  “Did you—is that why you married Calvin?” Jane asked in a kind, quiet voice. “Because you were afraid of what might happen if Celeste found out that you were pregnant?”

  I looked up. “You knew?”

  Jane shrugged. “I wondered. I can do math. Olivia was pretty early, and Calvin has never said a thing that indicates he has ever spent an hour in Italy, much less the month or two you claim he did.” She turned to Eric. “Last week I asked him if Marcus’s Negronis measured up to the ones he had in Florence. He said he didn’t drink Greek beverages there.”

  Eric snorted. My mouth felt dry. Matthew had stilled completely, his only movement the meditative swirl of his brandy snifter as he watched the revelations unfold.

  “So, Grandmother didn’t…the family didn’t…they weren’t responsible for Penny’s death?” I finally managed.

  Eric swallowed, then scooted forward in his seat. “Look. I’m not going to pretend our family is full of saints, because it’s not. Our grandmother in particular was a conniving, power-hungry, narcissistic old bat. But she wasn’t a murderer. And in her fucked-up way, I think she tried to make amends for her disapproval of Penny by bringing Jane and me back together.”

  I frowned. “Eric, she blackmailed you into getting married. You and the rest of the family would have been disinherited otherwise, isn’t that right?”

  But Eric, to my surprise, just laughed. “Nina, I had already disinherited myself. Do you really think I gave a good goddamn about the family fortune? I had my own business. I was doing fine. And I never once believed she would have followed through on the other half of that threat.”

  “Then—well, then why?”

  “The truth is, I would never have said yes if it wasn’t going to get me what I really wanted in the first place. She knew she was going to die, and in the end, Jane and I think she just wanted to see the family together and me happy.” He reached behind him for his wife’s hand and squeezed it, then ran his knuckle up the inside of her arm. “As much as I hate to admit it, I think she pressured me to get married because she knew exactly who I’d choose.”

  He gave Jane a look that squeezed my own heart in response, then raised her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.

  I ruminated on these revelations in silence for several minutes. Perhaps he was right. Grandmother had been the definition of manipulative when it came to doing what she thought was right for her family. She had also made no secret that while Eric thought he was a “free man” here in Boston, she had been keeping track of his whereabouts the entire time. Eric and Jane had met in law school and burned out there too. Undoubtedly, she was aware. Perhaps he was right, that at the end of her life, her ambitions for him were more altruistic than she let on. Perhaps her dying wish, then, was only to bring Eric back into the family and help him find happiness at last.

  But then another question remained.

  Celeste de Vries had two grandchildren. So why hadn’t she done the same for me?

  “The best thing I ever did was leave, though.” Eric broke through my thoughts. “It showed me I could be my own man.”

  “It’s good you were able to do that.” I couldn’t quite keep the resentment from my voice. It was difficult, when I considered how much I had needed him myself.

  “But, Nina?”

  I looked up and was surprised for once to find myself a target of Eric’s penetrating gaze. This kind openness was something I had caught directed at his wife several times, but never anyone else in the family. And that included me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Not for leaving. I can’t—I can’t be sorry for that, considering everything it’s given me.” He squeezed Jane’s hand, and it was clear what he meant. “But I’m sorry I left you behind. We were close once. I hope we can be again, you know.”

  I remained quiet for a long time, trying and failing to process everything he had said. I didn’t know what to make of any of this. Not Eric’s apology. Not his revelations before that.

  “Thank you,” I said numbly, keeping my eyes trained on the fire as my mind swam with confusion.

  “It’s not too late for you, coz. Not if you really want.”

  The conversation died, and for a moment, I could feel the other three pairs of eyes fixed on me—all of whom, it was clear, were eager to help me however they could.

  Would they still feel that way, I wondered, if they knew all I had done to help Calvin?

  It must have been clear I wasn’t going to say anything, because after a moment, Jane turned to Eric and whispered something in his ear. My cousin’s expression, which was generally unreadable, assumed a peculiar heat that I also wasn’t used to seeing in my family, but which I knew somehow, his wife managed to produce regularly. It might have made me uncomfortable if I wasn’t so happy for him.

  And so very riddled with envy.

  “If you’ll excuse us,” Eric said as he stood up to follow Jane. “We’re, ah, tired. I need to put Jane to bed.”

  And without waiting for any response, they left Matthew and me to watch the final flickers of the dying fire. And each other.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “What are you thinking?” Matthew asked after Jane and Eric escaped to the house.

  I was hypnotized by the embers left from the once-crackling fire. I wanted to watch the flames grow high again. Maybe throw myself into them.

  But the embers just glowered with a soft, slow burn.

  “What am I thinking?” I repeated as if in a trance.

  The tips of Matthew’s black sneakers shone on the other side of the fire, and like a magnet, my vision was drawn up his long legs, past the belt around his taut waist, past the chest just bared through a few undone buttons, and to his face, with those sooty eyes always cast with desire. The kind that echoed so deep in my bones, I could hardly breathe for want.

  And then my reality came roaring back.

  It wasn’t Celeste’s fault that Penny died.

  Eric’s voice was another echo, but instead of fading away, it only grew louder and louder. Along with another thought in the back of my mind.

  If she didn’t kill Penny…maybe she didn’t kill Peppe either.

  Suddenly, it wasn’t just a thought, but a full-blown certainty. And the force of it broke me.

  “What am I thinking?” I said again, now unable to keep the shaking from my voice. “I’m thinking…you really don’t want to know what I’m thinking, Matthew.”

  “Yes, I do.” His voice was strangely calm, almost choked. “Don’t hide from me, doll. I want
to know it all.”

  “Why?” I swallowed, feeling like a massive lump was stuck in my throat. Everything felt wrong. My skin was starting to crawl.

  She didn’t kill them. Oh, God. Was it really true?

  “Because,” Matthew said. “You need to spit it out, baby. I’m here. I’ll listen.”

  “I’m thinking I’ve been the greatest, biggest fool on the planet.” I choked, the words like fire in my mouth. “I’m thinking that all the reasons I gave up my entire life for ten whole years didn’t exist.”

  “You mean what Eric said about Penny?”

  I nodded miserably. “I thought…God, I can’t believe I ever thought this. But I swear, Matthew, when I came home from Florence, pregnant with Olivia, I truly believed there was a chance that my grandmother would do something terrible to me. And then, a year later, when I was just thinking of leaving Calvin and going back to Italy…he was dead.”

  “Who?” Matthew leaned forward, tense with interest. “Who was dead, Nina?”

  I hiccupped back a dry sob. “P-Peppe. Giuseppe. My—Olivia’s father.”

  “You thought she killed him?”

  “I don’t know what I thought anymore.”

  I rubbed my face hard. Everything seemed to be stuck. I felt like I had been living inside of a house of mirrors that had just been smashed, but I was still buried under the shards.

  “She didn’t do it,” I whimpered into my hands. “Oh God, she didn’t do it. None of it was ever necessary. Not my marriage. Not any of it!”

  “It’s still not,” Matthew said gently. “Or it won’t be. Hopefully soon.”

  “As if that matters now,” I said bitterly. “Look at me. I’m so lucky to be here. On this beautiful property. With these lovely people who also so clearly love each other. And I’m here with the man I want, the man I l-love more than anything too…”

  My voice cracked over the words as several large tears spilled down my cheeks into my palms.

  Suddenly, through the lingering ashes and charcoal, filtered the scent of light fresh cologne, paper, and man. I looked up to find Matthew crouched beside my chair, waiting patiently for me to breathe again. Funny. In my anguish, I hadn’t even heard his footsteps on the gravel. He was a cat, slipping through my life and my heart with such feline grace.

  In this state, I was more like a bull in a china shop.

  “I’m thinking about how cruel fate is,” I whispered. These emotions, they were all too much. Regret, remorse, anger, desire. “Because I’ll never love anyone like I love you, but I c-can’t have you. Not now. Not…not ever. And it’s all my own fucking fault.”

  If my sudden profanity shocked him, he didn’t show it. Instead, Matthew slipped a hand around my shoulder and threaded his fingers into the hair at my nape, massaging lightly. Comforting.

  The effect was immediate. I sagged toward him, seeking more.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said quietly, his deep green eyes demanding mine in return.

  “Of course it is. It’s completely my fault. It’s my ignorance that’s to blame, and no one else’s.”

  Matthew leaned in and pressed his forehead to mine. “Nina. You didn’t know. It’s. Not. Your. Fault.”

  I didn’t respond. I felt as if all the life I’d ever had, what little of it was left in me, had been sucked out by Eric’s revelations. Matthew had no idea what I had given up to keep the peace. To keep my daughter safe. To keep my family happy.

  And it was all for nothing. Nothing.

  “Tell me one thing,” he said, eyes closed, as if he were almost scared to see the response in mine. “Is it—would it—” He took a deep breath. “If you had to make a choice, which would it be? Your husband behind bars? Or me?”

  I blinked through a lace of tears. “You, of course. But to be honest, Matthew, I—I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I’m so, so tired of all this pain. For everyone.”

  I found that it was true. Matthew, however, didn’t seem to agree. In an instant, he went through a transformation similar to the one in Newton. His tenderness vanished, replaced by a steely edge I had only seen directed at me a few times before.

  “Is it because you actually do care about him?” he asked. “That you love him?”

  My lower lip trembled. “What? How can you ask me that?”

  “You’ve been with him for a decade. It’s not out of the realm of possibility. You might feel loyal after everything he’s done.”

  “Loyal?” The word felt foreign on my tongue. “To Calvin?”

  Matthew sighed, then stood up and returned to his chair. Picked up a stick, tapped it viciously on the ground a few times before hurling it into the woods. Then he glared at me.

  “Do you still fuck him, Nina?”

  I gaped. Where had this conversation gone? What was happening? “I’m sorry, what?”

  Matthew’s eyes glinted like a knife’s edge, all sparkle of kindness gone. “I have to know. You fuck me. You fuck me every chance you get—”

  “I’m sorry, but I do not fuck you every chance I—”

  “But I never asked, did I?” he rattled on. “I didn’t think I had the right.”

  “You still don’t,” I seethed, despite the fact that I would have been equally upset—and had been—about his sexual partners.

  “I don’t care. I want to know. Do you fuck that simpering, lazy, no good son of a bitch?”

  “He’s my husband,” I said, though the word made me ill. “What do you think we do?”

  “I don’t know!” Matthew shouted, causing me to jump in my seat. “You live with him. You do whatever he asks. You don’t argue, you play the good little wife, even check on his pro—”

  He cut himself off suddenly and rubbed his face hard, like he was trying to rub out a stain on a piece of tarnished silver.

  “I don’t know,” he said again, this time more quietly, but no less dangerously. “That’s why I’m asking. I don’t know.”

  We glared at each other across the fire. The light was so dark here at the edge of the orchard, Matthew looked more like some shadowy devil than the polished attorney. But, strangely, no less himself.

  As angry and confused as I was, I had never wanted him more.

  “We are married,” I said, inwardly begging my jaw not to quiver.

  Just tell him, an inner voice said.

  Tell him what? I asked it right back. Tell him that at first I fought it, but after years, he wore me down to the point where it seemed easier to let him have his way than to risk cracking my ribs again? Tell him that since January, I hadn’t been able to numb my body that way anymore? That once again, I allowed my husband to hit me and shove me and kick me like I was no better than a stray dog because I would rather he did that than cross that final line with my body, which now, after Matthew’s touch, somehow felt sacred again?

  I closed my eyes as memories came back unbidden.

  A hand between my legs.

  Hair torn from my scalp.

  Body slammed into a mirror.

  Do not fight me on this, princess.

  You’ll lose, princess.

  You frigid bitch.

  When I opened them again, I was swimming in shame. Years ago, I had made myself a promise, and then broke it so many times. Turned myself into a ghost of a person until I was revived by the man in front of me.

  How do you tell a man who brought you back from the dead that the price of your love was also your life? How do you face the possibility that he might hate you for it?

  “Nina.” Matthew’s gaze felt like fire. “I said don’t hide from me.”

  “Then stop looking at me like that,” I said. “Stop it.”

  But he did not. That blackish-green gaze. That face like a pirate’s. That soul of an artist.

  God, I loved him and hated him so, so much. For everything we were. For everything we couldn’t be.

  “I could never stop looking at you,” he said. “Not in a hundred years. Not in a thousand.”

  That was wh
en I knew I believed everything Matthew had ever said.

  And I knew he loved me.

  Because I knew that if he ever discovered the true nature of this marriage, its mercurial faces behind closed doors, its real costs…he would crash through every barrier stopping him from protecting me. He’d throw away his job, his career, everything he had ever worked for if he thought he could save me from pain.

  And it would ruin everything for him.

  The only problem was…I loved him too.

  Just as fiercely. Just as much.

  So I did as I’d always done.

  I told the truth I could. And kept the rest to myself.

  “No,” I said quietly. “No, I do not…sleep…with my husband. Not—not since I met you.”

  Matthew sucked in a tortured breath, almost like he was afraid that my response wasn’t actually real.

  I stared at my hand, suddenly shaking.

  “Nina,” he called quietly from the other side of the fire, which had died now into a soft orange glow.

  “Yes?”

  “Baby. Will you please just look at me?”

  “I can’t,” I whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” I replied. “Every time I have to stop, it hurts that much more.”

  Lord, even just to say it was a knife through my heart.

  “Nina.”

  His voice was a siren’s call, male or not.

  “Nina, don’t hide from me,” he said again. Softer this time. A request, not a demand. “Please.”

  The simple, kind, frank courtesy undid me completely. I looked up, and found that guileless love back on his face. And I knew I couldn’t fight this anymore.

  Like a woman in a trance, I rose from my seat. Matthew’s gaze didn’t break as I walked around the fire toward him. I felt like a fish being reeled on an invisible line. Called by a song I couldn’t hear to push him back into his chair, carefully sitting astride him until my skirt was bunched around my hips. I placed my hands on his shoulders, so I could be closer, as close as I could get, to this man who owned my heart.

  “So it’s like this, is it?” he asked quietly, almost sadly, as I settled in his lap. His warm hands slipped over my bare thighs as the skirt bunched up, the broad span of his palms fitting naturally atop my skin.