A Debt Paid in Passion

by Dani Collins

  Without saying a word, she set her hand on their daughter and looked straight ahead. Funny how after all this time of aching for forgiveness, she didn’t care what he believed. She only wanted him to be with her, but he walked away.

  As she watched him depart, everything in her was mute and bereft. Minutes later the plane was climbing and the delicate silken ropes binding her to him stretched, thinned and finally snapped.

  * * *

  Forty-eight hours later, the only good news in her life was that her father’s surgery had gone well and he would recover in time.

  On the other hand, she had a baby who cried if she so much as thought about putting her down. As if the awkwardness of reacquainting with Faye wasn’t hard enough without the buffer of her father to smooth the way, her sister insisted on returning to school on the other side of Sydney to be with—don’t tell Mum—her boyfriend.

  “This way you can use my bed,” Ali insisted in front of her mother, putting Sirena on the spot. It was Ali’s way of being helpful. She was oblivious to the undercurrents.

  A cot for Lucy had already been borrowed from the neighbor and Sirena didn’t want to appear churlish, but it only took one remark from her stepmother to put Sirena squarely back into her broadly criticized childhood.

  “I imagine she’d be sitting up if she wasn’t so fat.”

  Lucy was going to have a figure like her mother’s. Not everyone thought that was a problem, Sirena bit back retorting. Ask my husband.

  Her chest burned as she wondered how long she’d be able to refer to him that way.

  He stunned her by contacting her at that moment, through her smartphone.

  Highly conscious of her stepmother listening in, she bounced the baby on her hip and tried not to reveal how put out she was that the Wi-Fi she’d scrimped to pay for all those unemployed months, so she could contact her father and sister as often as she liked, had been canceled. Ali’s gone to school. What do we need it for?

  The phone screen was a poor substitute for her tablet and this conversation would cost her a fortune. She felt her scowl and Raoul gave her a forbidding look right back, killing any remote hopes she entertained that they weren’t on the skids.

  He was in his New York office, the dull sky behind him. His queries about her father and hope for his quick recovery were delivered in a strained rumble that was barely audible over her stepmother bashing dishes.

  Sirena could only swallow, such deep emotions were accosting her, and she didn’t know what to say with prying, critical ears a few steps away.

  “You’ll be there until he’s released?” Raoul presumed.

  “Yes, I—” She was aware of the temperature dropping to arctic levels as Faye absorbed the notion of unwanted houseguests for the indefinite future. “I have a lot to figure out. I’ll call you once I know what I’m doing.”

  “Very well.” He sounded about as friendly as Faye.

  Ending the call, she endured an oppressive evening where it took everything in her not to reveal her misery and sense of failure to a woman who would dance a jig over her suffering. She barely slept, but when she woke, it was with a fresh sense of purpose.

  She was not the unwanted stepchild any longer. Maybe her marriage was a disaster, but she was still a woman with resources and skills. After popping by the hospital to photograph her weak but proud father holding his granddaughter, she called a real estate agent.

  It would be a fresh start in a place that wouldn’t remind her of Raoul. An hour later, she was shown into a building under redevelopment.

  “This is available immediately?” she asked, thinking that trading on her husband’s name had its perks.

  “As soon as your credit is approved, hopefully later today,” the agent told her.

  Money would be tight. She doubted Raoul would continue her allowance if they separated, but she hadn’t let on to the agent that a breakup was in the cards. She was using her London flat, which was solely in her name, as leverage. She’d have to rely on transcription to make her payments until she found a decent job, but Raoul had said she had executive potential. She wouldn’t sell herself short. None of this would be easy, but living with Faye and her father was not an option and neither was returning to her husband.

  She needed her own space. Her heart was breaking into little pieces to match her marriage. She’d always known it wouldn’t last, but she still needed solitude to come to terms with it.

  After her and Lucy’s first night in the quiet of their new flat, they woke early for their morning visit to the hospital. They picked up groceries on the way back and, as a distraction from her misery, invited Faye to see the place. Sirena had concocted a story about Raoul wanting them to have a condo for their visits here, unwilling to confess to her imminent divorce. Unfortunately, that gave Faye carte blanche to show up with paint chips and a pile of unsolicited decorating advice.

  “It’s just been painted,” Sirena argued.

  “This oxblood is far too loud for a baby. Look at this eggshell. It will keep her calm. Book the painters to come in after you go back to London. It’ll be finished and the fumes gone before your next visit.”

  She wasn’t going back to London.

  A knock at the door relieved Sirena from having to explain. She expected the building manager. He had promised to take care of some finishing items today.

  As she reached the door, she hoped she could use this excuse to encourage Faye on her way—

  “Oh!” Her heart leaped into her throat as she found Raoul outside her door.

  He narrowed bleary eyes on her. Bleak lines were carved into his face, barely disguised by a cantankerous expression. When he raked his avaricious gaze down her simple blue capris and collared top, her pulse reacted with a dancing skip, but he looked so forbidding she could only stare dumbly at him.

  “I didn’t expect you,” she said stiltedly.

  “No?” He shouldered his way into the tiny flat, taking in the bare walls, the clean but dated furniture and the woman trying to tease a pacifier into his daughter’s jabbering mouth.

  Faye left off as Raoul approached, coming to attention in the instinctual way most did when confronted with his authoritative presence.

  He nodded at her before he set a wide hand on his daughter’s tummy. “How are you, kitten?”

  Lucy kicked in excitement, grinning toothlessly with recognition and joy, arms flailing.

  “I missed you, too,” he said, hand staying on her while he took a better look around the flat. Disapproval blazed off him, like sharp, aggressive, glinting knives. No tender welcome or affectionate nickname for her, Sirena noted with a hollow ache.

  “You must be the father?” Faye said haughtily when his gaze came back to her.

  “My husband, yes,” Sirena hurried to interject, pulling herself out of her shock. “Raoul, my stepmother, Faye.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said without inflection. “Would you be kind enough to watch Lucy while Sirena and I have a private conversation?”

  Sirena’s stomach hardened into a knot. She could practically hear Faye’s, I told you men expect to make these decisions themselves, but Faye’s opinion was the least of her problems. She hadn’t really thought Raoul would give her Lucy, had she?

  No, she might have hoped in her heart of hearts that their daughter would be a connection that brought him to her, but this didn’t feel as though they were bridging differences. A huge chasm separated them, full of mist and frost.

  “I can’t walk her in this heat,” Faye began, but Raoul negated the suggestion with a flick of his hand.

  “We’ll be upstairs, viewing the penthouse.” His tone was so much that of a confident tycoon, even Faye didn’t argue.

  Sirena took a moment to set her phone to dial his so Faye could reach them, then accompanied him into the elevator, watching nervously as he punched the P.

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Your agent called to clear your finances and within five minutes was trying to
sell me the top floor. It seemed the most expedient way to get into this building if you refused to let me up, so I took the codes and said I’d look at it.”

  The elevator stopped and her knees weakened. She steeled her spine, but her voice was wobbly. “Of course I’d let you up. We’re on perfectly friendly terms.”

  “Are we?” he rasped, holding the door while she exited, then moving to tap a code into the penthouse’s security panel. The half-renovated space was empty of workmen, the concrete floor bare but for a few paint spatters, the walls down to timber frame and the plumbing extracted.

  “I can’t live with Faye,” she blurted, arms flailing defensively. “I’ve tried to explain how she and I—”

  “I understand that,” he said with an inscrutable stare. “But you could have gone to a hotel.”

  She looked away. “That would have been expensive.”

  “And you weren’t about to ask me to cover it, were you?”

  Her throat tightened as she tried to swallow, unable to look at him because that topic was just too raw.

  “And it would be too temporary,” he said in a tone that made her feel wobbly inside. “Because you’re staying here. Not coming back to me.” It wasn’t a question and the graveled way he said it made her flinch.

  “There’s no point, is there? I realize this seems like I’ve chosen the farthest place I could get from London, but my family is here, Raoul. Surely you understand why I’d prefer it?” She needed something, someone. They’d never take his place in her heart. The hole was too big, but she couldn’t live with this ashen emptiness.

  “Oh, I understand.” His harsh laugh cut through the tense air. “Run as far from London as you want. I’ll follow. If you’re adamant about living in that flat you just bought, I’ll be in this one.”

  The words struck like a burst of hot, dusty wind, choking and dry, making her eyes blink. I’ll follow, but he was following Lucy.

  She resisted the desire to rub where her breastbone rang in disappointment. It should be an enormous comfort to her that he hadn’t arrived with threats to rend their child from her arms, but all she could think was how jealous she was of her daughter’s ability to draw this man’s eternal, all-encompassing love.

  She might be selfish enough to take their daughter from her father, but he wouldn’t separate mother and child.

  She touched her brow where it was crinkled, aware of him pacing to the space under the floating staircase near the balcony doors. His footsteps were hollow, everything about this place echoing with the same emptiness she felt. His intention to live here was both pleasure and pain, but she’d had a baby with this man. Their lives would be linked forever. She’d never be given a chance for distance and space and getting over him. They would circle each other for eternity, two planets in the same solar system that never touched.

  “Every working cell in my brain is telling me I have no right to keep you from leaving me, but the thought of letting you go makes me sick.”

  Her heart took a stumbling leap in her chest. She caught back any jumps of joy. It was Lucy he was worrying about losing. Lucy, and maybe a passionate bedmate and a scrupulously organized life.

  “I...” She trailed off, realizing she’d been so focused on how anguished she felt, she hadn’t noticed how broken he looked. If he’d slept since they’d been in Paris, it hadn’t been much. He looked as if he’d aged and his shadow of stubble gave her that same old desire to smooth her hand on his rough cheek.

  “Miranda had the bracelet,” he spit out, as though the words were so bitter he could hardly keep them in his mouth. “I went to New York to confront her. When you threw her name at me in Paris, I realized immediately it was something she would do. She borrowed it for a night out and forgot to return it.” He added in a mutter that his stepsister was a “bloody scatterbrain.”

  Sirena winced, glad to have the question answered, but in the big scheme of things, what did it matter? He had said he didn’t think she’d taken it, but he’d had to go all the way to New York to have it confirmed. That hurt. Blinking, she fought back the burn of head-to-toe agony, willing her mouth to stay steady and the constriction in her chest to ease, but she didn’t know what to say.

  “No more nightmares, all right?” he said gruffly. “It’s resolved. You’re not in danger of going to prison. I’m never going to try putting you there and I won’t let anyone else do it. Do you understand that, Sirena? That threat is gone. Forever.”

  His implacable tone and the way he tried to impose his will on her was so endearingly familiar she wanted to cry. She shrugged a fake acceptance, because what did he know about it? She woke up crying because the bed was empty beside her. He wanted to live apart. Her life was missing a giant, ornery, wonderful piece and she could barely stand here absorbing his closeness, knowing they’d never again be close.

  “I’ve caused you so much pain, haven’t I? And why? Because I was afraid to feel any!” He knocked his fist into his chest with self-disgusted violence, making her start. His ragged voice held her very still, frightened, but not of him. Of how angry he was with himself. He was deeply agonized and it both startled and shook her.

  “You were right when you said I was looking for every reason to keep you from affecting me. Your nightmares are my punishment. Tell me they’re over now, Sin, because they’re beyond anything I can stand. Every night I’m confronted by what a thoughtless, cruel bastard I was to you. How I let you down so grossly. When I think of what I tried to do when you were so fragile, killing yourself to keep our child—”

  “Don’t,” she urged, rushing forward a few steps, anguished by how tormented he was. His remorse was too intense to witness.

  “It was worse being away from you, not there to wake you,” he said with a dazed affliction. His voice was like someone whose spirit was dead. “I only left because I wanted the mystery solved once and for all, so you’d finally sleep peacefully again. I was arranging the flight, anxious to get here and ease your mind, when your damned agent called and I learned you never intended to let me share your bed again.”

  “The dreams weren’t that bad—”

  “Don’t downplay what I did to you!” His near shout made her jump again and he ran a hand over his face, visibly trying to bring himself back under control. “Damn it, do you ever think of yourself? That generosity of yours is exactly what gets to me and makes you necessary in my life every second of every day.” His hand came out in a plea. “I’ve always been aware of it, but I never valued it the way I should have. It’s why you risked your job to help your sister. I should have seen you’d never do something like that for personal gain. I didn’t need protecting from you. It was the other way around.” His face twisted with agony. “Don’t let your soft heart forgive me. I don’t deserve it. Make me live six floors apart from you and suffer like a soul in hell.”

  For all the jagged pain in his voice, there was a shred of hope in his eyes. He was looking at her as though she were a lifeline just beyond his reach.

  She began to tremble, so confused and shaken she could only blurt, “I can’t. I want to live with you. You’re the one who brought up divorce. You’re the one who put me on a plane and sent me away! The nightmares are about you not loving me and I love you so much I can’t bear it!” She had to bury her face in her hands then because she was revealing too much. This swell of emotions was too much to hold inside.

  Hard hands bit into her arms and she was crushed into his chest. His ragged groan vibrated through her as he held her so hard she thought he’d splice them into hybrid branches on a single trunk. A moan of relief from pain escaped her and she let her hands close on his back in pinching handfuls that had to hurt, but she was ravaged by such deep emotions she needed this embrace to keep from splintering into pieces.

  “I love you, Sin. I’ve been sick without you and all I could think about was my father feeling this way and how deep his pain must have been at not having the woman he loved. It’s even worse when I had her and ruined
everything...”

  “No, you didn’t,” she moaned and cradled his stubbled face to bring his mouth to hers, cutting off his self-recrimination with a tender kiss, wanting to taste that glorious word he’d used.

  He opened his mouth on hers with a groan of greed. Their chemistry flared, but it was so much more. They kissed with aching hunger, shuffling to press tighter, thighs weaving, hips rubbing with shiver-inducing friction.

  Cupping her head, he drew his own back, hissing a breath at the ceiling. “I’m not taking you on a damned concrete floor where anyone could walk in.”

  The landing at the top of the stairs caught his gaze and for a second he considered... When he glanced at his wife, she was bringing her sultry gaze back from the same direction. Her body leaned with heart-swelling pliancy against his.

  Tempted nearly to breaking point, he hugged her close and reminded himself how incredibly lucky he was to have this second chance. No way was he screwing it up.

  Pressing a kiss to her temple, he said, “I don’t deserve you. Let me try to do something right, rather than repeat Oxshott.”

  Her gaze fell and he feared she took it as rejection, even though he wasn’t able to quit stroking her, filling his hands with the reality of her when he’d been sure they were over.

  “I liked Oxshott,” she murmured, pouted lips nearly touching his breastbone.

  “I loved Oxshott,” he said softly, stroking her hair back from her face and looking into her eyes, so moved, so bewildered she could love him, he could barely find words.

  “I love you,” he repeated, even though it was an inadequate description of the depth of regard and adoration he felt toward her.

  A misty look came over her face, but a specter moved behind the gaze she lowered. “You don’t have to say it if it’s not true. I still want to live with you.”

  “It’s not a conscious choice, Sin,” he snorted softly. Looking back on how hard he’d fought against feeling this way put a chill in his blood.