She’d made her choice and he wouldn’t fight it. She deserved better than him, anyway. Of course, the fact that she’d seen him at his weakest and walked away hurt for reasons he couldn’t have explained to himself.
Probably injured pride. That’s all it was. He’d never liked being weak and her seeing him bleeding like that, and then afterward, his pathetic breakdown . . .
Pain shifted in his heart, inescapable, and his hand was reaching into his pocket where he kept the knife—he liked it close by these days-—before he’d quite understood what he was doing.
He shut his eyes, breathing deeply. No. He wouldn’t give in to the need yet. Perhaps a bit later, when everyone had gone home.
Easing his hand out of his pocket, he made himself turn around and go over to the desk to take a look at what Gen had brought him. An envelope sat on the desktop with his name printed neatly on the front of it.
Strange. Why had whoever sent this not texted him? Or emailed? Or even called on the phone? Especially if it was urgent?
Frowning, he picked up the envelope and ripped it open. A piece of card slipped out into his palm. It looked like an invitation to . . .
His heart stopped. His whole world stopped.
A one-off ballet performance of Little Red Riding Hood, at the theater in Hell’s Kitchen that Ella’s company used. Tonight. Eight o’clock sharp.
No. It couldn’t be her. It couldn’t.
His hands shook as he turned over the card, searching for a name, a signature, any clue as to who’d sent it, but there was nothing. But he knew it was her. He knew.
A sudden terrible rage swept through him and he ripped the card into a thousand tiny pieces, scattering them all over his desk. How dare she walk away like that then send him this invitation, without a word. Without even talking to him. How dare she walk away and then reach out to him. How dare she give him hope.
You were the one who drove her away, remember?
Yes, he did, but that didn’t seem to matter to the rage inside him. She had gone, and that’s what hurt.
He turned away from the desk, striding over to the windows, trying to find the calm he’d had earlier watching the clouds race across the sky. But there was no calm to be found. The sky was dark and so was the city outside.
So was his heart.
He left the windows, pacing over to his desk and then to the door. Pacing around and around, rage flowing through him along with that terrible, terrible hope, not knowing what to do with himself. His hand was in his pocket again, his fingers curling around the knife, but he didn’t take it out.
You don’t want to get all bloody if you’re going to a ballet tonight.
No, he wasn’t going to any fucking ballet. He wasn’t.
But he didn’t take the knife out. He kept on pacing, around and around.
The rest of the day passed and even though he’d told himself he wasn’t going to do anything about that invitation, he found himself in the limo at seven thirty heading to the theater all the same.
He wouldn’t get out. He’d simply watch to see who went in, because a one-off performance? Ridiculous.
Yet when he arrived, there was no one going in, none of the usual crowds he’d seen around for other performances. The theater was definitely open though, which was odd. Perhaps he should check it out, see just what was going on.
So he got out of the limo and approached the doors, and found an usher there waiting for him.
“Good to see you, Mr. de Santis,” the man said, as if Rafe had been expected. “Come this way.”
And then he was being led into the theater and into the stalls where he was shown to a seat right in the middle of a row directly in front of the stage.
There was no else there. Absolutely no one.
The music started and the house lights dimmed, and he knew then. He knew that this was for him.
Everything hurt—his head, his heart, his soul. The scars on his wrists throbbed and he suddenly wanted to get up and run from the theater and never set foot in it again.
But just as he’d begun to curl his hands around the arm rests to push himself up and out of his seat, she appeared. In a white tutu, red satin shoes, and a red cloak, and he couldn’t move. He was pinned to his seat as surely as if a sword had been run right through his chest, out his back, and into the seat behind him.
Ella.
She moved lightly across the stage, full of bright joy and hope. Leaping, turning, floating. Every movement controlled and powerful and passionate, her hands outstretched, delicate fingers curled. Little Red Riding Hood off to visit her grandmother, enjoying a walk in the forest.
He couldn’t breathe. He could do nothing but sit there and watch as she danced the dance he’d seen already many times. But this time it was new and he didn’t know why.
What was she doing? Why had she invited him and him alone to watch her dance?
The music changed, becoming darker, and he found himself on the edge of his seat, because the music was for the wolf and soon he would appear, and the chase would begin.
As Ella turned in a slow pirouette in the middle of the stage, facing her audience of one, holding her pose, he waited for the wolf to come leaping up behind her.
But the music stopped, plunging the whole theater into silence. Ella stood on the stage and looked straight at him.
A long, aching moment passed.
She didn’t move, the expression on her delicate, lovely face taut. Her eyes were dark, looking at him, waiting.
And he knew suddenly what she was waiting for. That was his cue.
He rose to his feet without thought, moving along the row of seats to the aisle, and walking down it. She never took her gaze from his, never moved. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly, and her arms, arched above her head, were trembling slightly.
There was no reason for him to go to her. No reason at all. She’d walked out on him and he’d told himself that was for the best. That she was too good for him, that she deserved better. Yet he walked to the stage all the same and found the stairs that led up beside it. And he went up those stairs, walking across the stage to the dancer in the middle of it. And he stopped right in front of her.
She took a soft, ragged breath that sounded like relief, then said, “Will you dance with me?”
“I can’t.” His voice sounded strange. “I don’t know how.”
“It’s okay.” Her mouth curved in a smile that reached inside his chest and put back something that had been taken from him. “I do.”
And she did, as the music started up again—dancing around him, whirling and leaping in circles, moving right up to him and putting her hands on his shoulders, wrapping one leg around him, laying her head on his chest. Stretching out his arm and laying her hands on it for balance. Then holding his palm to her stomach and turning around and around, winding that arm around her waist, bringing her right up against him.
She was right in front of him now, facing him, up on her toes, looking directly into his eyes. Trembling, her chest heaving.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I left you. I’m sorry I let my fear get the better of me. I should have been strong for you and I wasn’t. I was afraid. But it wasn’t you I was afraid of Rafe, it was me. My feelings for you.”
He held her slender, supple body close, staring into her eyes, overwhelmed by the familiar scent of her, the familiar feel of her. Because after two weeks of not having her, he felt like a man dying of thirst seeing an oasis in the desert.
“What feelings?” He didn’t want to know, not really. He didn’t want that fragile thread of hope to wind itself around his heart. What he wanted was to say something cruel, something hurtful that would push her away for good. Yet she was in his arms and she was trembling, and he just couldn’t.
“I think . . . I’m in love with you.” Her voice shook. “And I should have been there for you. I should never have walked away. I shouldn’t have forced you to tell me things you weren’t ready for, but I w
as just so scared. And not of being alone.” She took a breath. “I was scared of loving you. Losing my parents was so hard that I didn’t want to care about anyone like that again.”
He could see the fear in the darkness of her eyes, could feel the shudder of it in the tension in her muscles. She was still scared and yet she was looking right at him, telling him she loved him.
She loved him.
After seeing him with a knife and blood running down his wrist. After hearing the truth of everything he’d done, all the lies he’d told and the plans he’d laid, she loved him.
He was broken all the way through, and she loved him.
“You can’t,” he said. “I won’t ever be fixed, Ella. I won’t ever be right. There’s nothing about me that’s good, nothing about me that’s even sane. I cut myself because I need the pain, because it makes me feel like I’m in control. What kind of fucked-up man does that?”
Her hands lifted to cup his face, her delicate fingers against his skin making him shudder. “The kind of fucked-up man I love. You gave me your strength when I needed it, so now let me give you mine. Because you’re right, I am strong. Strong enough to love you the way you should be loved.” Her eyes were full of tears, but they didn’t fall. “You don’t have to tell me about what happened with your grandfather. I’m not going to make any more bargains with you. In fact, you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. Just know that I am here for you and I’m not ever going to leave.” She stroked him with her thumbs. “My heart was right about you from the beginning, Rafe. It knew what kind of person you were when I was only two years old. And for years I thought it was trying to warn me away from you, but it wasn’t.” She trembled. “It was trying to tell me that you were mine, but I was too scared to listen.”
He was hers . . .
Had he been anyone’s before? Had anyone ever claimed him like that? Had anyone ever said it to his face? No, no one ever had. Just like no one had ever told him they loved him. Oh, his grandfather had told him that he cared, but his grandfather’s caring had been a belt. A hot poker on his skin. Suffocation and pain. A knife in the darkness.
Ella’s caring was delicate fingers on his skin. Tears on her cheeks. Grace and beauty as she danced for him and him alone. Passion as she took him into her body. Strength as she looked into his eyes and told him he loved her.
His chest ached and he hurt, but for the first time in weeks, he didn’t feel the urge to go for the knife. Instead, he kept his arms locked around her, his gaze on hers. “It was the lasagna,” he said quietly. “I’d been in the cellar three days without food and when my punishment was ended, my grandfather cooked me lasagna. I ate too much because I was starving and then I got sick. And he beat me for it.”
Ella said nothing, holding his gaze, not looking away, giving him her strength, and he felt it flow into him, holding him up the way he’d held her up.
“But that’s not the only reason I went into the bathroom and used the knife, Ella. When I saw you standing at my stove, cooking, humming a little song, with your hair hanging down your back, I just felt . . . something big. Something heavy. And I didn’t know what it was. I thought pain would help me feel more in control, help me deal with whatever it was I was feeling. But then you came in and saw me . . .”
“You were angry.”
He didn’t flinch. “I was ashamed. I didn’t want you to see me like that. I didn’t want you to see how fucked up and broken and—”
“No,” she said fiercely. “You’re not broken, Rafe. You never were. You were just a hurt little boy, just like I was a scared little girl. And you’re not broken now, understand me? Pain is just pain, that’s what you told me. It’s up to us how we deal with it, remember?”
His heart felt full, like it was going to burst out of his chest. Hope was a light inside him, too bright to look at and yet impossible not to at the same time. “I don’t know how to change, Red. I don’t know how to do it differently. I don’t know if I even can.”
“You can,” she whispered. “We both can. We’re strong, Rafe. We can do this together.”
No, he was mistaken. The hope wasn’t a light inside him. Hope was the woman in his arms. Hope was his Little Red.
He lifted her against him, and she wound her legs around his waist, gripping him tight. She was so light in his arms, he could carry her for days.
And he laid his mouth against hers and whispered the words he’d been waiting to say his whole life and never realized until now. “I love you.”
There was no huntsman in this story.
And nobody died.
But the wolf found he had good in him after all, and Little Red Riding Hood found that she had some wolf in her.
And together they lived happily ever after.
Epilogue
It as the wedding of the century.
Or at least it would have been if anyone had known about it outside of Rafe’s family. But no one except his immediate family did.
They were married in Paris, where they’d moved temporarily because Ella had a contract there with the Paris Opera Ballet.
Rafe hired a massive barge on the Seine, which they were married on as they floated under the Pont Neuf. Aurora was the bridesmaid, scattering flowers from her wheelchair, smoke drifting from the cigarette she held in her fingers, which no one had the heart to take away. Mercifully she didn’t smoke during the actual ceremony.
The bride was far too young for the groom, and the groom was far too old for the bride, but neither of them cared about that. What was important was that they were here together and they loved each other. That’s the only thing that mattered.
Ella stood at the stern of the barge, leaning against the rail, a champagne glass in her hand, watching the small crowd of people on the deck.
Rafe was standing in the middle of a group of tall and powerful-looking men. Three of them had blue eyes like his and one had dark brown, but all of them looked similar-ish. She liked Xavier and his pretty little wife, Mia. Who’d never been Paris and who’d told Ella that she had to keep pinching herself to make sure it was real. And there was tall, massively built Nero and his English fiancée, Phoebe. He was a still presence who nevertheless radiated an intense kind of energy, and who never seemed to be far from Phoebe’s side. Then there was Lorenzo, Rafe’s oldest brother who didn’t seem to smile much. Apart from when his wife, Kira, was around. Then, happiness radiated from him like heat from the sun.
She liked them. Rafe wouldn’t let her meet his father—-he was a prick, apparently, and Rafe didn’t want her anywhere near him. Nor did she meet his sister, Olivia, who’d decided to remain with her father. But maybe that would all change. He was slowly coming to terms with what had happened to him as a child and no, healing wasn’t coming fast or easy, but with professional help and Ella’s support, he was getting there.
The brothers were laughing about something, but then Mia ran up and took Xavier’s hand, pulling him over to the side of the barge to show him something. Phoebe slid her arms around Nero’s waist and rose on her tiptoes to whisper something in his ear, making him smile and turn to take her in his arms.
Lorenzo was already making his way up to the stern to where Kira stood, looking over the river. He bent to her, wrapping his arms around her, and she leaned back into him.
Ella smiled and turned around herself, watching the river.
She didn’t have to wait long.
An arm slipped around her waist as Rafe came to stand beside her.
“Happy wedding day, Little Red,” he said quietly.
She leaned into him, her heart full of a quiet happiness she never thought she’d find. “Happy wedding day, wolf.”
And together they watched the sun set over the Seine.
About the Author
Jackie Ashenden lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, the inimitable Dr. Jax, and their two kids and two cats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their stroppy heroines, she can be found drinking ch
ocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, posting random crap on her blog, or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband.
Jackie writes dark, sexy contemporary romance for St Martin’s Press, including the New York Billionaires Club series of novellas. You can find Jackie at www.jackieashenden.com or follow her on Twitter @JackieAshenden.
You can sign up for email updates here.
Other Novels by Jackie Ashenden
The Tate Brothers
THE DANGEROUS BILLIONAIRE
THE WICKED BILLIONAIRE
The Nine Circles series
MINE TO TAKE
MAKE YOU MINE
YOU ARE MINE
KIDNAPPED BY THE BILLIONAIRE
IN BED WITH THE BILLIONAIRE
The Billionaire Fairy Tales e-book series
THE BILLIONAIRE'S VIRGIN
THE BILLIONAIRE BEAST
THE BILLIONAIRE'S INTERN
The Billionaire’s Club e-book series
THE BILLION DOLLAR BACHELOR
THE BILLION DOLLAR BAD BOY
THE BILLIONAIRE BIKER
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
The Big, Bad Billionaire Page 21