But her mind was stuck on that kiss. That celebration of a lifetime of love. Her mind rushed back to the gentle way Henri had cupped her head in his hands before kissing her. She tried to remember exactly the way his lips felt against hers—that gentle pressure of their kisses. The way his tongue had explored her mouth, leaving her breathless and ready for more.
And as she thought about him, the broadcast shifted to a close-up of her quarterback husband.
Soon-to-be ex-husband, she corrected herself. More ice cream.
Her gaze raked over him in his shoulder pads and away-game jersey, his features visible even behind the bars of his face mask. He was barking orders after the huddle, waving his arms toward the strong side of the field, reading the defense and making adjustments right up until the last minute in the way only he could.
He was one of the finest in the league and this season could be his best shot at finally earning the Super Bowl ring that he deserved to wear. She regretted not being a part of that. Even more, she would regret it if their breakup distracted him from that goal in a year when Dempsey and Gervais both agreed the Hurricanes had all the right pieces to win a championship.
But this was the business of breaking up. It was painful—the undoing of a person.
Suddenly wrought with grief—for her husband as much as for herself—her soul needed some reassurance. She reached for her cell phone and thumbed through the contacts, pulling up her father’s new number in his retirement beach community in Florida.
One ring. Two rings. With each successive ring, she felt more uneasy about calling her father. What if he didn’t answer?
She’d almost decided to hang up and abandon her idea to reach out to him. But on the fourth ring, as her heart pounded in her chest, she heard the phone pick up.
“Daddy?” She elbowed the pillow to nudge herself up higher on the bed.
“Fiona? Is something wrong?”
“Why does it have to be bad news for me to call my father?”
The lie slipped off her tongue. For a moment, she felt bad about being so damn practiced at lying about this terribly scary aspect of her life.
“Forgive me, let’s start over. Hello, dear. How are you doing?”
Not well, and of course he was 100 percent on target that she’d only called because she was upset, but she had no intention of admitting that. “I just had some time on my hands and thought I would give you a call to catch up.”
“Why aren’t you at the Arizona game?”
Panic gripped her. She needed a reasonable excuse. Pushing the chocolate into the ice cream, she stumbled toward a feasible explanation. “I, um, have a cold, so it was better for me not to fly. Sinuses and all.” Lame excuse. But better than the truth that would undoubtedly freak her father completely out.
“The game is a close one.”
“You’re watching? I don’t mean to keep you.”
“I can hear the game playing at your house, as well. Strange time for us to talk.” His gravelly voice revealed nothing. Her father had always been tight-lipped. Well, at least since her mother had passed away.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. If you need to go...”
“No. Still plenty of time left in this quarter. I can watch this part on replay. So tell me. What’s the reason for the call?”
Leave it to her practical accountant father to cut right to the point. Although that had made his meltdown over her mother’s illness and passing all the more difficult to take. “Dad, what did we do for vacations before Mom got sick?”
“What makes you ask that?”
She was feeling her mortality? “Her birthday is near. I’ve been thinking about her more than normal. But the memories are starting to fade from when I was a kid.”
The sigh coursed through the phone. “We’d take you to Disney. All you wanted to do was go there when you were small. Your mom would plan the whole trip—character breakfasts and character lunches. She loved Disney because it made you glow from the inside. Your mom would always take a bag of glitter with us and she’d sprinkle it on you before we’d walk through the main gates. Called it pixie dust and told you if you believed enough, your dreams would come true.”
“I barely remember that.” A sad smile played on her lips as she gripped the phone with a renewed intensity.
“Fiona? I’m not good about remembering to phone, but I’m glad to hear your voice. I’ll miss your mother for the rest of my life. It was nice to enjoy that memory with you.”
Sometimes, Fiona was struck at the way the memory of her mother elicited so much emotion from her father. He was normally so stoic, so practical. It always caught her off guard when he fell into telling stories about his bride, who’d been called back to heaven far too young.
Fiona hung up the phone not feeling any more assured about her life. Her heart swelled with the knowledge of too many deaths and too many people who had to deal with the memory of loved ones claimed by cancer.
Rather than feeling comforted, Fiona felt a new kind of sadness settle into her veins. Hearing the strain in her dad’s voice as he recalled his late wife affirmed the logical reason that she had to leave Henri. If she left now, he wouldn’t be hurt the way her dad was.
But that also meant she had to face this alone. Selfishly, that scared her to her core.
* * *
Henri had a lot of reasons to feel out of sorts. The Arizona game hadn’t panned out for a few reasons. Though the one that continued to be the real source of agitation was the fact that Fiona had been states away from him.
Grabbing his duffel bag, Henri left the chauffeured car and headed through the front gates and up the walkway toward their Garden District home. The old three-story Victorian loomed ahead of him, jutting against the storm clouds brewing in the background.
Clicking open the door, he was greeted by silence.
Setting his keys down on the kitchen counter, he noticed the lilies he’d sent were in the middle of the kitchen island, card askew next to the vase.
While he had no idea what he was walking into, he was certain that he had to see Fiona. The need to be there for her—no matter how hard she pushed against the idea—gave him purpose.
He took the minimal amount of texting between them as a good sign. Though they didn’t talk on the phone, they had still communicated. For Henri, as long as a line of communication was still open, he harbored hope for them. Believed they could work this out.
To allow his mind to wander to the alternative was absolutely not an option. It admitted defeat, made him a quitter. And Henri was not about to do that when it came to his wife.
Quietly, he made his way up the stairs to her room, hoping to find her lost in a good book.
Instead, when he gingerly nudged the door open, he saw she was asleep. Out cold, really.
Something about her sleeping form seemed off. She was paler than normal, wearing a loose nightshirt and couched by pillows on both sides. Her bare leg was thrown over one of the pillows, which made his thoughts wander back to their night together. How damn amazing it had been to be back in bed with her again. It had been even better than before, because now there was no way in hell he would ever take for granted the gift of being with her.
Inside her.
Except then his mind hitched on the fact that something was off in her position, the way she lay with all those pillows. Her inexplicable paleness struck him as deeply odd. It registered in his brain, but he didn’t know what to do with the information. So he tucked it away, saved it for later. He was too tired to analyze that now.
Unable to pull himself away from her, he slumped into the fat wing-back chair by the fireplace. The cushions were comfortable and he relaxed. His eyes grew heavy, until he was barely able to keep his lids open. And then they closed completely, and he drifted off.
His dream took him t
o a memory of when they’d just met. He’d whisked her away to watch him play a game in Philadelphia. The Hurricanes had had their first major win, and all he’d wanted to do was celebrate with her.
In the hotel room postgame, the passion that had danced between them was a palpable energy.
“How about a double victory?” she’d breathed coyly into his ear, hands traveling slowly down his chest and stopping at his waistband. Her hair had been longer then, wilder. There’d been an unquenchable desire in her eyes, and he’d wanted to do his damnedest to give her everything, all of him. They were young—lives and potential sparking before them.
The next day, they’d made themselves at home in Philadelphia, ducking in and out of museums and art galleries. While most people assumed Henri was incapable of appreciating culture due to his occupation, Fiona had simply rolled with his interest. Being an art major, she could have easily made him feel inferior or assumed that he was showboating.
But Fiona would never do something like that. The appreciation of art, she’d always said, didn’t take a degree—it took appreciation for the human soul. And so, they’d stolen hours in that city, getting to know each other, body and soul.
On that trip, he’d known there was something that bound them together, a passion that twined them together. Yes, there was an undeniable physical component, but that was only half of it.
They’d returned to the hotel after debating the meanings of paintings and other fine points of culture. Back in the hotel, he’d begun to learn the way she liked to be touched, exploring the fire that burned beneath her skin. He needed to capture her as she was in this moment. And so, in the dream, he began to brush paint over her, to make her immortal on canvas. And what a muse she was for a man who’d never even considered himself an artist.
But then the dream shifted, as they often did. Fiona’s surety and fire had been dulled, replaced by a self-consciousness he understood but couldn’t fix.
He watched her fade in his arms, become ashen. The paint he’d used to capture her beautiful lines and curves ebbed away. In their stead, her body on the canvas was covered in scars.
Sweat pooled on his brow and he woke up with a start. Eyes adjusting to reality, he came to terms with the fact that he was dreaming.
He stayed in the chair because if he moved closer he wouldn’t be able to resist touching her, making the dream a reality.
Casting a glance at Fiona, he was relieved to see her there. In the moment between sleep and alertness, he’d been afraid that she might be gone, fading away even now.
She tossed to her side, facing him now. His eyes roved over her, and he wanted to reach out and hold her. There had to be something—anything—he could do to win her back. So she missed a game. In the grand scheme of things, that didn’t have to make or break this.
Maybe he’d take her to the new exhibit at the art gallery.
His thoughts on the gallery were short-lived. As he studied her, he noticed something dark against the white nightshirt.
Something that looked an awful lot like blood.
* * *
Fiona found it hard to stay asleep. The pain medicine had worn off, making it impossible to find a comfortable position.
Eyes fluttering open, she blinked into focus. Out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed a man in the wing-back chair. Momentary panic flooded her mind until she was fully awake.
Henri. He was back and in their room, his face stoic and hard.
Very slowly, she sat up. Pain pulsated. Fiona did her best to hide the wince that tore through her.
“Welcome back. Congratulations on a good game.”
“We lost,” he said briefly, curtly.
She understood how upset he could be over a loss. She leaned back against the pillows. The pain meds had her so woozy she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to walk. “Defense wasn’t at their best. You can only do so much. You threw two touchdown passes and ran another. But then you don’t need me to recap what happened. I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” Crossing his arms, anger throbbed in his voice.
“What do you mean?” She sat against the pillows, breathing through the pain that rocked her body.
“Are you sorry?”
“Of course I’m disappointed for you. I know how much a win means to you. Just because I knew the time had come for me to stop attending, that doesn’t mean I won’t be following the team’s progress.”
“Sure.” His voice was sullen and she noticed, in the half light from the lamp by the wing-back chair, that his lips had thinned into a hard line.
“Henri? What’s with the clipped answers?” She was too foggy from pain meds that weren’t doing enough to dull the ache to sort through these mixed signals from him. “I understand you’re unhappy with my decision to not attend the game—”
“I’m not happy with your decision to keep me in the dark about the real reason you stayed in New Orleans.”
How had he found out? She followed the line of his gaze and realized he was looking directly at her left breast where...
Oh, God. Her biopsy incision was leaking spots of blood.
Nine
A jumble of emotions played bumper cars in Henri’s mind. The blood on her left breast...the way she tried so hard to push him away.
How could she keep this from him? Frustration—and, hell yes, fear—seized his jaw. He ground his teeth, feeling something that felt a bit like betrayal.
That she had kept him from knowing something major—and potentially life threatening—was too much to digest.
His fingers pressed into the arms of the chair as he tried stabilizing himself. Part of him wanted to run over to her side, to hold her tight against him. But knowing she was sick and in recovery, the possibility and fear of injuring her made him stay firmly planted in his chair.
Scared as hell.
“What’s going on?”
“I think you’ve already guessed.” She tugged at the white covers on the bed. But she didn’t look directly at him.
A lump grew in his throat. Terrible possibilities ran through his mind. “Were you even going to tell me at all?”
She tipped her chin upward. “Not if I didn’t have to. No need for both of us to worry.”
They’d fallen so far apart that they didn’t share something as huge as this? He’d been by her side every step of the way through medical treatments, and now she was trying to cut him out of her life. Completely. Excise him like cancer.
No. Not a chance. “Details,” he demanded softly, but firmly. “I want details. We’re still married. We owe each other that much.”
“It’s just a biopsy of a lump that’s likely fatty tissue dissolving. The oncologist is almost certain it’s nothing to be concerned about.”
She said it as casually as someone reporting the weather. He felt the distance spread between them like an ever-collapsing sinkhole.
Oncologist? But no, it wasn’t serious. “If it was nothing, you would have told me. This is why you didn’t go to the game. I would have understood.”
She pushed her tousled hair back, her eyes fuzzy with what appeared to be the effects of pain meds—and sure enough, a bottle rested on her bedside table. “You would have been distracted. You would have gone crazy worrying. Look at how you’re reacting now.”
“I am in control. Here for you, always.” Why couldn’t she see that?
“That’s good and honorable of you to say, but it’s not the reason I want you staying with me.”
“So if I hadn’t seen the spots of blood you wouldn’t have told me at all?”
Drawing a pillow in front of her chest, she let out a small sigh. “If the worst happens, then of course you would find out. Otherwise there was no reason to upset you.”
The way she discussed her health with such n
onchalance rubbed him raw. As if the only reason he would care to know if she was sick was bound up in some sense of honor and duty. That did him a disservice, minimized their bond. He did not stay with her merely for appearances’ sake or to come across as honorable. Dammit, why couldn’t she see that?
“Did it occur to you I would want to know, to be there to support you?”
“Thank you. But you don’t have to do that anymore.” She smoothed a wrinkle on the pillow and gave him a pointed stare.
“I’m your husband, dammit.” He reined in his temper. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Could I get you something to drink? Or an ice pack for the biopsy site?”
“You know the drill.” She slumped back on the pillows, her eyes sad.
“I do. Is that so wrong?”
“I don’t want you feeling sorry for me.”
He ignored that. Couldn’t even imagine how to make her understand his desire to care for her had nothing to do with pity.
“When will you hear from the doctor?”
“Next week.”
“I have one question. How long have you known?”
“Since the day of the pet rescue fund-raiser.”
He inhaled sharply. He pressed his fist to his mouth—he’d hoped she had only recently found out, that it had been some sort of emergency operation. That would be much easier to swallow.
“You weren’t late because your car broke down. You’ve been lying all week.”
“I’ve been protecting you and protecting my privacy.”
The bedroom started to become suffocating as he looked around, seeing the life they had jointly built. It all felt like a lie. Some kind of story he’d been telling himself.
More frustration piled on top of the old, building up inside him when he was already exhausted and on edge. He knew somewhere in his gut that getting out of this room was his only option. Before he said something he’d regret.
“Right.” Shoving the chair out from underneath him, he sprung to his feet. From the threshold, he called over his shoulder, “I’ll get you that ice pack.”
Reunited with the Rebel Billionaire Page 10