by Nalini Singh
"I know a place."
Sarah's toes curled deeper into the carpet, her battered heart skipping a beat. "I..." Shaking her head, she reminded herself how this had ended the last time around and knew what she had to say. "I think it's better if we aren't seen together."
That gorgeous smile faded as if a cloud had passed across the sun. "Right."
"I don't want to be sucked back into the media storm that surrounds you," Sarah found herself saying, hating that she'd stolen his smile, regardless of whether that was the only sensible decision she could've made. "They'll start saying we're getting back together and following me and..."
"Yeah." Abe pushed off from the doorjamb, dropping his hands to his sides. "You're right. I'll go before the bottom-feeders sniff me out here--just wanted to make sure you were okay."
Sarah fought the part of her that so badly wanted to ask him to stay, to say that they could just hang out at her place. Those words she could never say--because one thing had become clear to her: Abe was her deepest weakness.
He still held the power to hurt her more than any other man on this planet.
ABE MANAGED TO KEEP HIS DISTANCE FROM SARAH for the next seventy-two hours. That didn't mean he didn't think about her. He damn well did. He dreamed about the smooth beauty of her skin under his hands, the way her breath turned ragged when he stroked her just right, how her thighs tightened around his hips when he thrust into her.
He'd been waking hard as a rock and having to jerk off in the shower to take care of it. But their sexual chemistry wasn't what kept him awake at night. It was the memory of her laughter during the wedding and afterward. She'd glowed with happiness as she danced, her eyes sparkling.
Abe hadn't seen such joy in her smile since the first months of their marriage, and he knew he was responsible for snuffing out her light. No fucking wonder she didn't trust him anymore. A woman like Sarah rarely gave her trust, and he'd shit all over that precious gift.
Plowing his gloved fists into the punching bag in front of him on the morning of the fourth day, he blocked out the other sounds in the gym and attempted to lose himself in the rhythm of the mindless action. It worked for about a minute before his mind filled with Sarah again. Her shy smile when he gave her a compliment. The way she'd sit curled up under his arm and read to him on lazy summer days.
Hard on the heels of that memory came one of him throwing her books in the pool in a drug-fueled rage. She'd been sobbing as she tried to save them.
"Fucking bastard," Abe muttered, talking to his past self. He punched the bag so hard that it threatened to swing back right into his face. He didn't care. He deserved to have his face beaten in.
Ripping off his gloves afterward, he showered, then went straight to a bookshop.
It was too little too late, but now that he'd remembered his asshole behavior, he couldn't just leave it. Ball cap pulled low, he wandered the aisles... then realized most people here didn't care who he was; they were more interested in the volumes that lined the shelves. He spent an hour inside the murmuring quiet of the store, searching for the titles he remembered seeing on their bedside table. She'd definitely read him Jane Austen.
He couldn't remember which one though, so he bought the entire set.
And there was this one romance novel she loved and had read over and over again. He'd teased her it would fall apart in her hands one day. She'd just smiled and read him a paragraph that she'd told him was part of her favorite scene. What the hell had it been? Yes, that was it. In the end, it turned out the store didn't have that book in stock, so he bought her a bunch of new releases featuring people with dogs or puppies on the covers. He definitely remembered seeing covers like that in their home.
After spotting it in a display, he added in a nonfiction book about a woman who'd set up her own company while nearly flat broke and who was now a millionaire. At the counter, he paid extra to have the books wrapped up and packaged.
He'd called his car service earlier; the driver shot him a funny look when he put the package in the passenger seat and gave him Sarah's address. "I'm a courier now?" the stocky middle-aged man asked, having worked long enough for Schoolboy Choir that he was a friend. They'd all missed his calm demeanor and total trustworthiness when he broke his leg recently and had been out for a while.
"Best in the business," Abe responded.
The other man snorted. "I'll get it to her now."
Blowing out a breath after the gleaming black town car pulled away, Abe went to where he'd parked his SUV and got in. He didn't want to go home to his empty house, but he didn't want to barge in on his friends either. David and Thea, Noah and Kit, they needed time alone. As for Molly and Fox, while the newlyweds were back home after a short wedding trip, having postponed their honeymoon until later in the year, Abe wasn't about to bust up their love nest.
Gabriel and Charlotte probably wouldn't have minded the company since they'd been doing the sightseeing thing, but the other couple had flown back to New Zealand twenty-four hours earlier--after inviting all of them to their own wedding.
His phone buzzed right then.
Picking it up, he saw a message from Fox. Molly and I are at that Thai place with the noodles you like. We saved you a seat if you want to join us for lunch.
Fuck, he loved his bandmates. On my way, he messaged back.
Starting the engine, he tried not to obsess over if Sarah would call him after receiving his long overdue gift. Hell, he'd be content with her throwing the books at his head. All he wanted was for her to talk to him, to let him show her he wasn't that guy anymore, the one who'd destroyed them both.
CHAPTER 16
SARAH SAT ON THE FLOOR of her living room, books spread out all around her.
Having worked nonstop for days, she'd given herself the afternoon off. First, she'd gone to see her son. The anniversary had rolled around again, and though she hurt, this month wasn't one of the bad ones. She'd talked to him, told him about her day, left him with a kiss.
Her plan for the rest of the day had been to get into her pj's and curl up on the couch with Flossie to binge-watch a favorite television series. Then had come the buzz at the gate that made her heart thunder and her skin flush... and the delivery of a most unexpected package.
I hope you're doing okay today. Say hi to Aaron for me. I'm sorry I threw your books in the pool. I was a dick. - Abe
Sarah stared at the note card again, still not certain she was reading it right. The first two lines, they turned her throat thick, but the rest... He'd been so high that day that she'd have bet her business he had no memory of the ugly incident. Sarah had never forgotten it: she could still feel the wrenching ache of the sobs that had overwhelmed her as she tried futilely to fish out books that had been well and truly drenched.
Abe, meanwhile, had moved on to throwing the pool furniture into the shimmering blue water.
Her fingers trembled as she picked up a leather-bound copy of Jane Austen's Persuasion. It matched the other Austen novels he'd sent her, the set a lovely reissue packaged for collectors. Beside the fancy collector's editions lay cheerful paperbacks with laughing couples and/or dogs on the covers.
She stifled a wet laugh. He'd clearly chosen those at random, but it was cute that he'd remembered she liked romances with animals in them. Half the time when she'd read to him or talked to him about her favorites, she'd thought he was mostly asleep. It hadn't mattered--she'd just liked being with him.
The most surprising book in the package was the one about the entrepreneur who'd gone from rags to riches on stubborn grit and sheer determination.
It gave her a funny, fluttery feeling in her tummy to realize Abe really did take her business endeavor seriously. It wasn't mockery, not when he'd gone to the effort of choosing these other books with her likes specifically in mind. He'd thought she'd like the book because she was an entrepreneur too.
Her eyes burned.
Putting down the book in her hand, she took another look at all of them, then got up and put the books
neatly onto the "to be read" section of the bookshelf in her living room. Like so many booklovers these days, Sarah read a lot electronically--she loved being able to inhale a few pages on her phone while she was stuck in a queue or waiting room, loved even more that she could download a book any time of day or night--but she still also cherished printed books, always bought the print editions of her favorites, adored curling up with a paperback on a Sunday afternoon.
Maybe because to her books represented education and comfort. Security.
She loved walking into the room and seeing her favorites, complete with spines broken from how often she'd read them. Her books held so many memories--this one, she'd first read while her stomach was in knots the night before she went to sign the papers that would officially create her company. And that one she'd been given by Lola on her last birthday.
Today, as she arranged Abe's gift to her satisfaction, she patted the spines of the leather-bound editions, smiled at the paperback covers.
Picking up the torn wrapping paper and the note card afterward, she put the paper in her recycle bin before returning to the couch and to Flossie. One hand lying on the warm bulk of her dog, she turned the card over to look at the image on the front. She hadn't paid much attention to it earlier, more focused on Abe's strong black scrawl on the other side.
It was a drawing of a fairground.
Sarah's breath stuck in her chest for a long second. She'd asked Abe to go to a fair once. It had been toward the end of their marriage, when her husband was home so rarely it had felt as if he was actively avoiding her. That night, he'd turned her down to party with the guys instead. She'd gone to the fair alone, had ended up sitting in her car watching other couples walk by arm in arm, laughing and excited to be together
Had he remembered? Or was this just chance, the note card grabbed at random off a stand at the counter when he went to pay?
More importantly, what did she do about it?
Her hand went to her phone, but she hesitated, the memories of her awful loneliness while she'd been with Abe holding her in place. Curling her fingers into her palm, she picked up the television remote instead.
She had to keep her distance if she was to have any chance of protecting her battered heart. Because this Abe? The one who sent her flowers and books and who dropped by to make sure she was all right? He was more dangerous than the man who'd broken her to pieces.
ABE ATE, TALKED, MANAGED TO SOUND NORMAL enough that neither Molly nor Fox saw anything amiss, but all the while he was waiting for his phone to buzz. Even after he returned home around ten that night, following a jam session that had ended up turning into an impromptu dinner at Noah and Kit's, he was poised to grab the phone.
An hour passed, two.
Sometime after midnight, he finally accepted that Sarah wasn't going to call him.
His jaw clenched as he sat on the edge of the bed, his muscles rigid and his emotions black and twisted. Before, he'd have gone for the drugs, tried to drown it all out. If he didn't feel, he couldn't hurt. Today he went to the baby grand piano that sat beside the glass doors that led out onto the patio. He stared at it, his soul aching.
Before Noah had shared "Sparrow" with them, he hadn't played it for years, not since the last day his baby sister spent in his home. She'd been healthy then, had come to stay with him while his parents went on a little vacation; he and Tessie had decided on their own vacation and gone to Disneyland three times in a week.
The rest of the time, they'd made music together, Tessie as drawn to song as Abe. After they buried her, his tiny sister who had never had a chance, he hadn't been able to bear the memories that came flooding back when his fingers touched the keys: of Tessie dancing while he played, saying, "More! More!" when he dared stop.
But those memories weren't the only ones that haunted him now when he looked at the piano.
The anguish on Sarah's face, his wife's footsteps as she ran from him.
Spinning away from the baby grand, he went to the other piano in the room, placed all the way on the other side. And he played. What came out wasn't hard and raw but soft, melancholy. A nocturne.
The one Sarah had been playing that night.
The birds outside were chirping in the predawn light and his hands ached by the time he stopped. And still there was no message on his phone.
He went to bed at last, only to be awakened four hours later by the buzzer that announced a visitor at the gate. Groaning, he put a pillow over his head and tried to ignore it. That was when his phone began ringing.
"What?" he growled into it without looking at the screen to see who it was.
"Abe?"
The husky feminine voice chased all sleep from his mind. "Sarah?" He sat up. "Is everything all right?"
"I'm here," Sarah responded instead of answering him. "Can I come in?"
Had Abe been on drugs, he'd have been sure he was hallucinating. As it was, he wondered if he was dreaming. "Yeah, sure. Give me a second." Getting out of bed wearing what he usually wore to sleep--nothing--he didn't even try to find the gate remote. He just made his way to the control panel and let her in.
He was still standing there butt naked when Sarah's car pulled up. "Shit."
Running to the nearest bathroom, he splashed water on his face, rinsed out his mouth, and grabbed a towel to hitch around his hips. He'd barely gotten it in place when the doorbell rang. Jogging over to open it, he said, "Good morning."
Sarah took a physical step back, her face blanching. "You look like you've been on a bender."
"What?" He shook his head, got his brain cells in order. "No, I was playing." He held out one hand.
Forehead wrinkling, she grabbed it. "Abe, your fingers are swollen! How long did you play?"
He shrugged, his eyes caressing the exposed curve of her nape as she bent over his hand. She'd swept her hair up into a neat little knot, was wearing a blue-green dress that had lots of panels that hugged her form. "A bit."
Sarah's lips parted as if she'd yell at him. But she snapped her mouth shut on the next breath, dropped his hand, swallowed. "We need to talk."
Abe frowned; her tone was so tight, her body held in such fierce check. But he wasn't going to interrogate her. Not when she was finally back where she belonged. In their home. "Yeah, sure. Come in."
PALMS DAMP AND SKIN FLUSHING HOT THEN COLD, Sarah walked into the house she'd fled two years earlier, hurt and lost. "Maybe you should..." She waved vaguely in the direction of Abe's body.
And God, what a body.
It was like he'd been carved out of rich, chocolate-colored marble. All ridges and valleys and glowing skin. Relief colored her blood: now that she was really looking, it was obvious he hadn't gone back to abusing drugs or alcohol. He'd never looked this healthy, this goddamn good during their marriage--and even then, he'd been difficult to resist. Now...
"Were you in the shower?" she asked when he just scratched at his stubbly jaw after shutting the door.
"No. In bed."
Her mind immediately supplied her with a hundred highly distracting images of Abe sprawled out, the sheets kicked off his bare body. Then her blood ran cold. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt--"
"Alone," Abe said before she could finish, his voice firm. "Sleeping alone." He held up his abused hands. "Crashed after playing."
"Oh." She fiddled with the strap of her simple black purse. "Um, clothes?"
Her husband--ex-husband--looked down at himself as if he'd forgotten he was only covered by a teeny, tiny yellow towel that showed off far too much of his powerful thighs and seemed in danger of slipping off at any second. That buttery yellow shade should've made him look less masculine, but it did the opposite.
It threw his maleness into stark focus.
"Right." Abe's eyes lifted to connect with hers... and a slow smile crept over his face.
If he said anything teasing at that moment, she'd throw her purse at his head. Sarah swore it. Today was not the day for Abe to be all teasing and sexy an
d making her crazy. "Clothes," she repeated in a tone that brooked no argument, and pointed in the direction of his bedroom.
He chuckled and began to turn that way. "Back in a minute. You want to make yourself some coffee?" he asked over his shoulder. "I got a new machine Fox recommended."
Sarah went to say no, then decided she might as well find something to do with herself or she'd go mad while waiting for him. "I'll make you one too." She headed to the kitchen before she could give in to the urge to watch him walk way, his muscular buttocks moving against that flimsy excuse for a towel. "That's what got you into this mess," she muttered to herself as she reached the kitchen.
It was all black marble counters and white cabinetry, the appliances steel and the windows generous. A room full of light that she'd once made even more vibrant with fresh flowers, it had always been her favorite place in the house. She had so many great memories of this room--including a treasured one with Abe. He'd been mostly naked that time too, having just come out of the pool wearing only snug, dark blue shorts.
She'd been putting together a pasta salad for their lunch, and he'd wrapped his wet body around hers from behind, making her squeal. But she'd liked it, loved that he'd cuddled her, kissed her neck, maneuvered her unprotesting body to a wall before lifting her up so he could take her against that wall. She'd expected a hard, fast quickie, but he'd kissed her so much that day, his hands petting her body, and his cock in no rush inside her.
Her lower body clenched.
Slapping at her cheeks hard enough that it stung, Sarah told herself to snap out of it, to remember that, most of the time, she'd been alone and miserable in this room and in this house. She'd eaten more meals by herself at the freestanding counter than she ever had with Abe.
Turning to the coffeemaker on that sobering thought, she saw it was an easy one to operate, using the prepackaged little pods. She found those pods in the cabinet directly above the coffeemaker.
Abe reaching over her head to grab something for her. "Here you go, Shortness."
Fighting the assault of memory, of the only time in her life when she had actually felt short, she grabbed the pods and shut the cabinet door. Then she concentrated on choosing what kind of a coffee to make for herself, and, after that, on how to work the machine perfectly.