“Should I be scared?” Grace asked.
“Not at all. Have I ever been wrong?” Asha grinned at Grace’s dubious look. “Don’t answer that.”
When the consultant came back with something that resembled nothing more than a white pleated sheet, Grace said, “I’m trusting you, Asha.”
“Hey, it wasn’t my pick. I’ll wait out here.”
Grace let Madeline help her into the dress, refusing to look in the changing room mirror, then walked to the dais amid a swish of fabric.
Asha gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh, Grace!”
“That bad?”
“Just look.”
Grace stepped onto the round platform and froze. For the first time, her heart gave a little twist at the sight of herself in a white dress. “I look—”
“Stunning.” Asha came up behind her and made her do a full turn. “This is the one.”
Grace could only gape. It looked like 1970s couture in white—all soft, draped chiffon that skimmed her body and made her look like some sort of ancient goddess. The gathered front was caught up in a high collar like a halter, the waist cinched by a plain satin ribbon. And the rest . . . simply didn’t exist. The back, shoulders, most of the sides were left bare to show every last bit of her body art.
She felt daring and exposed and . . . like a bride.
“I’m really doing this,” she whispered as the slow build of excitement welled up and spilled over.
Asha hugged her. “You really are.”
And then Grace looked at the price tag. “It’s how much?”
“Don’t look at that. You can afford it. It’s symbolic, Grace. A new life.”
Asha was right. It was. She looked at the bridal consultant. “What now?”
“This dress takes approximately eight to ten weeks to arrive. When is your wedding date?”
Grace glanced at Asha again. “We haven’t set one. And it might be sooner than that.”
Madeline’s smile fell, clearly seeing a sale slipping through her fingers. “You’re sample size, so if it comes down to that—”
“Can you just write down all the details for her?” Asha asked quietly.
As soon as the consultant disappeared, Asha gave her another squeeze. “Okay, so we have just enough time for tea, and then I have to go meet Jake.” Her eyes softened. “You’re going to be a beautiful bride, Grace.”
And oddly enough, Grace agreed.
Grace floated through the next four hours, first her tea with Asha, then wandering Westminster streets with a freeness she’d not felt in years. Who knew that all it took to turn her into a puddle of mush was a couture wedding gown? But not just the gown, she admitted to herself. It was the image of walking down the aisle in that gown toward Ian, while he watched her with the same sort of awe James had displayed as Andrea approached him. The promise of forever.
She still wore a stupid grin when she knocked on Ian’s door, a paper bag under her arm. “Did someone order Chinese?”
Ian swept the food out of her hands onto the foyer table and kissed her with a thoroughness that did nothing to mitigate her dreamy state. He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Someone is in a very good mood.”
“Someone found a wedding dress.”
“Am I allowed to see it?”
“Of course not! It would be bad luck. But it is stunning. It would have to be—to get me daydreaming about an actual dress.” She grabbed the food off the foyer table and took it to the dining room, where she began to unpack the little paper cartons. “I got us hot and sour soup, shrimp with lobster sauce, and . . . What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
He caught her around the waist and kissed her again. “Because I love you. And if you weren’t so set on that gown, I would drag you down to the register office tomorrow.”
“It’s a good thing it’s one amazing gown, or I might take you up on that.”
“Are you sure I can’t convince you otherwise?”
His convincing took the form of tiny, light kisses along her jaw. Just as she was about to tell him he was being a little too persuasive, her mobile buzzed in her jacket pocket.
“Hello?”
“Grace?” A man’s American-accented voice came through.
Grace stiffened and Ian stopped what he was doing, his fingers tightening on her waist. She pulled the phone away to check the incoming number. “Jim. You got my e-mail. Do you have news about Jean-Auguste?”
“Grace—”
The hesitation in his voice amped up her heart rate and slammed her with a wall of dread. “He’s okay, right? You’ve heard from him.” Ian’s arm slipped around her, but she barely noticed the support. “Jim, just tell me!”
“He went missing about three weeks ago in Kirkuk.”
“But that doesn’t mean—”
“There’s a video, Grace.”
Those three words—there’s a video—knocked the remaining wind from her lungs. The mobile slipped from her hands and clattered to the floor. She lowered herself to a seat with trembling legs, vaguely aware of Ian picking up her phone and speaking quietly into it.
From across the room, the television drew her with an irresistible pull. She snatched up the remote, clicked on the first news channel she came to. The headline banner splashed bloodred across the screen, but before she could glean any information, Ian grabbed the remote from her hand. “No. You don’t want that in your head. Trust me.”
“But I have to know! There has to have been a mistake—”
“Grace, sweetheart, he’s gone. I’m so sorry.”
She stared at him for the longest moment before the words sank in. And then came the grief, a crushing tidal wave dragging her under. “No, I don’t . . . I can’t . . .”
Numbly, she became aware of Ian’s arms around her, his hands stroking her hair as she cried great gulping sobs, sounds far more animal than human. He murmured quiet words of reassurance and held her as her emotions poured out. Over and over she thought, It can’t be true. I don’t believe it. It’s a mistake.
And for the third time in her life, because of this work they felt compelled to do, her world stopped spinning.
It must have been hours. It felt like hours because she couldn’t remember how it had gotten this late, the bit of sky she could see through the windows a deep navy. Ian had turned on some soft music and covered her with a blanket and pressed a cup of tea into her hands, but for all that, she still trembled with a bone-deep cold.
She was in shock. She knew she had to be, because she was thinking slowly, reacting like she was underwater.
Ian sat down on the sofa beside her and rubbed her arms, his face concerned. “Grace, I’m so sorry.” He slipped an arm around her.
She sank into him. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I knew something was wrong. I felt it. Why didn’t I watch the news? He’s been missing for three weeks and I didn’t even know it.” Three weeks in which she had been focused on herself and Ian and her own happiness while one of the people she loved most in the world was being held captive. Probably tortured. Brutally killed.
“You couldn’t have done anything, Grace. It seems they weren’t even sure he was missing.”
He was right, but it didn’t assuage the guilt. She closed her eyes, the grief falling heavily over her like a curtain.
Ian took her cup and set it on the table, then repositioned her on the sofa so she could lie against a stack of pillows with her feet in his lap. “Just try to sleep now, Grace. It’s the best thing. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
She wanted to protest, but her eyes were too heavy and his hands on her feet were too relaxing, and despite her best efforts to put the words together, they got lost on the way to her lips. So she slept.
She woke with a gasp, clutching at her surroundings like a drowning man grasping for land.
Instantly, Ian was kneeling beside the sofa. “Are you all right?”
She blinked for a moment and then nodded. For a second, she wondered if she�
��d had another episode, but she remembered nothing of her dreams. No flashbacks, no nightmares. The nightmare was real.
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “Thirsty. What time is it?”
“Near midnight. You’ve slept for almost two hours.”
Only two hours? It felt like a decade.
Ian disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared with a glass of water and two aspirin. She took them gratefully and drained half the glass in one go. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” He transferred a book and his reading glasses to the table so he could sit again, and she automatically shifted into the shelter of his arms. “Just tell me what you want to do. Do you want me to take you back? Is Asha home?”
Asha. She couldn’t think clearly enough to remember her work schedule. The hours before were all a blur. “I don’t know. Can I just stay here for a while?”
“Of course you can.” Ian didn’t seem to know what to say. She didn’t know what to say. It all seemed like a horrible dream, an ache in her chest that just wouldn’t go away. It was like Jean-Auguste’s death had left a hole in her universe, somewhere way out there. Even if she couldn’t see the star, she felt the dark hole in the sky where it might have once been.
Ian pressed a kiss to her temple, a comforting touch, and it just seemed to widen that gaping spot in her middle. It felt like hunger and thirst and pain and longing and love, hollowing her out, pleading to be filled. She lifted her face to his, an unspoken invitation. When his lips brushed hers with such tenderness, she softened into him, breathing in the scent of his cologne and soap and skin, and sank deeper into that ache. In the furthest parts of her mind, she knew he offered comfort and understanding and love, and for the moment at least, it soothed the broken places.
Her hands were doing things of which she wasn’t entirely conscious, sliding over the fabric of his shirt, trembling on the buttons. And then his soft voice in her ear: “Grace, love. Not now. Not tonight.”
“Yes. Now. Tonight.” She rose up again to capture his mouth, her heart fluttering in her throat like the fragile beat of bird’s wings, unable to put voice to the desperation welling up inside her. A tear seeped from the corner of her eye, but she refused to brush it away, refused to break contact with him. In this whole broken, awful day, this was the only thing that felt right. His lips, his hands, his body—they were the only things holding the wildness at bay, that fearsome part of her she couldn’t let consume her again.
He caught her wrists and tilted his head back to look at her. “Sweetheart, stop. You’re not thinking clearly.”
He was too principled to take advantage of her grief, but he underestimated how well she knew him, the strength of their shared memories. She kissed him softly and murmured the words she knew he wouldn’t resist.
“I love you, Ian. I need you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
IAN STARTED AWAKE IN THE dim gray light, momentarily disoriented. He glanced at the clock by the bedside, getting another jolt from the glaring red numbers: 5:32. He should have been out of the flat thirty minutes ago if he were going to make his Saturday morning outing.
Then he turned his head and the events of the previous night came rushing back to him. Grace lay beside him, sleeping peacefully with the sheets twisted around her legs, clad only in her T-shirt and knickers. The enormity of last night hit him in the chest and sucked the air from the room.
Oh, God, what have I done? She had been the one to initiate it, true, but this hadn’t been a reasoned, mutual decision. It had been born out of grief and pain and helplessness. It had been the only way he knew to fix anything for her in the moment.
He reached for his phone on the nightstand and realized it was still in the pocket of his trousers, which brought on another rush of regret. Had he taken advantage of her? He slid from beneath the covers, gathered up his clothing, and removed fresh kit from his drawer.
Then he halted. What was he thinking? He couldn’t just slip out, as if this had been a one-night stand. This was his fiancée. He wanted her to wake in his arms, wanted to kiss her softly, to tell her he loved her. To apologize for his weakness. To assure himself he hadn’t ruined their chances together.
He stood at the foot of the bed and watched her sleep, her colored tattoos stark against the white of the sheets in the dim dawn. She might not thank him for an early wake-up. She’d never been a morning person.
Ian slipped into the bathroom to dress, where he would be less likely to wake her. With a wash of shame, he realized he was a complete and total coward.
The sound of a door closing pulled Grace from sleep, an automatic warning that started her adrenaline pumping before her eyes even fully opened.
She was in bed. Ian’s bed. Alone.
The memories of the night before rushed in, making her weak, sick.
What had she done?
No, she remembered everything they had done, in heart-pounding clarity. And then she remembered why. Jean-Auguste. The call. The horrible reality she still didn’t want to believe could be true.
Twin waves of shame and grief crashed over her, battling for the honor of being the one to destroy her first. Grace swung her legs over the side of the bed and propped her head in her hands, willing the nausea to pass, willing some sort of clarity from her thoughts.
It was her fault. Ian had known she was fragile, had been afraid of hurting her, of doing something they would regret. So she’d seduced him. Manipulated him. Used him. She knew this scene all too well. Run from the reality of the danger of her chosen profession. Seek comfort from a man—though it had always been a colleague or a friend or a fleeting romance. Wake to an empty bed and the knowledge that her grief wasn’t a nightmare, all the more painful for the brief, illusory respite from it. And all it had taken was a single moment to send her running back to her old ways.
The truth was, Egypt or England, she hadn’t changed at all.
The sound of running water from the bathroom made her jerk her head up and she checked the clock: 5:35. Ian would be getting ready for his morning outing. He hadn’t left her after all. She let out a small, thready sigh of relief, which dissipated as soon as he entered his bedroom.
He gave her a sad smile and bent to kiss her. “Good morning, beautiful. How are you feeling?”
So he was going to pretend like nothing happened? Her blood echoed in her ears like the thrum of the ocean. “Well enough. Ian—”
“Don’t.” He sat down on the bed and took her hand. “Grace, I owe you an apology. You had a shock last night. I shouldn’t have . . . It probably wasn’t the right . . .”
“So you regret it too.” Did that make her feel better or worse?
“No! I don’t. I mean, I do . . .” He sighed and wiped a hand over his unshaven face. “Grace, this doesn’t change anything. We love each other. We’re getting married.”
She nodded, even though the words just hung in the air without any real meaning. She forced a smile. “Right. We just made a mistake. You should get going. You’re going to be late.” She pushed herself off the bed and gathered up her clothing on the floor.
“Is that all you’re going to say?” Now his words carried a hint of hurt, more than a little accusation.
“What do you want me to say, Ian? I forced you into it. I seduced you. I take full responsibility.”
He jumped up to block her escape. “In case you didn’t notice, there was nothing one-sided about what happened between us last night.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to tell me what you’re thinking!”
“What am I thinking?” Grace cried. “Let me see. I’m thinking I was a fool to believe I could leave my old life behind. I’m thinking about how, when my dearest friend was being kidnapped and tortured and killed half a world away, I was trying on wedding gowns. And then rather than do the normal thing like cry and get drunk on cheap whiskey, I seduce a man so I don’t have to think about how absolutely screwed up my life is.”
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“Just a man,” Ian said, his voice strangled. “Strange, I thought I ranked higher than that.”
Grace blanched. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“Grace, it’s terrible what happened to Jean-Auguste. If I had any way to change that, I would. But I can’t. Just like I can’t change what happened last night. But could we please give ourselves a break? This is not the end of the world.”
“Right. Not the end of the world. Go to the club. You’re going to be late. I’m not going to feel like you’re running out on me.”
He nodded and dropped his hands, stepped back to give her some physical room even though that wasn’t the kind of room she needed. Then he sucked in a breath. “Oh, no. Grace, we didn’t use anything. What if—?”
She shook her head sharply. “I’m on the pill. Don’t worry.”
“How? You clearly didn’t plan this.”
She let out a harsh laugh. “Really, Ian, sometimes you can be incredibly naive. It’s in case I get raped while on assignment. If you haven’t noticed, bad things happen to journalists overseas.”
He recoiled as if she’d struck him, and she took advantage of his stunned state to escape into the bathroom. After twisting the lock, she collapsed onto the toilet and buried her head in her hands. She ignored his light knock, his muffled apology through the door. Only once his footsteps receded did she flip on the shower and fill the small room with steam.
The hot water singed her skin, but even that minor pain couldn’t numb the sick feeling of helplessness that ate through her middle. When she climbed out and toweled herself dry, she couldn’t remember if she’d used soap or shampoo or if she’d just run out the water in the heater. She lifted her arm to her nose and sniffed. It was the familiar smell of Ian’s soap on her skin that did what his words hadn’t—doubled her over into racking sobs on the tile floor of the bathroom. At that moment, she didn’t know which she was grieving more: the death of her friend, the wreck of her relationship, or the realization that her new start in London was simply a fantasy.
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