There’s nothing to see. If there is, he won’t recognize it anyway. Relax. Nothing to see.
That was one of the most restful things about Fox, that he knew nothing about her world. Maybe that had been one of the problems between Henry and her, that they’d worked together, lived, breathed and created all in the same pond. All her post-marriage friends had been shared. Many of the ones from college too. Being with someone like Fox, who worked in an entirely different field, would likely be better for a long-term relationship.
Not that Fox would be that guy, but maybe she could find someone after all. For the first time in years she envisioned a life for herself where she didn’t have to be so alone.
“What’s that smile for?” Fox turned back from surveying her bedroom and snaked his arms around her waist, pulling her in for a kiss. She liked that about him, too, his freely affectionate ways, how much he seemed to enjoy touching her.
“Just happy that you’re back.”
“Me too. I missed you.”
“So you mentioned in the hallway.” She laughed, recalling how considerably less sweet that moment had been—and just as amazing.
Fox returned the smile and laced his fingers with hers, looking at her hands. “You cut your nails already?”
“They were bugging me,” she replied, feeling a bit of a guilty pang that she didn’t explain why. He seemed to know it, too, his grin dimming ever so slightly. Even worse. She wanted him happy and relaxed again.
“What’s this room—office?”
Relax. “Yes. For the computer.”
He prowled around, a slight smile on his sexy lips. “Who has three monitors?”
Yeah, about that... “Oh, I’m trying out some digital art.” That actually sounded pretty good. “Triptychs,” she added. Excellent invention, but he only nodded vaguely, his gaze landing on the voice modulator. It didn’t look like much—basically a black box. He frowned slightly but didn’t ask about it. Whew.
When he turned back to her, she felt like she’d finished running a gauntlet of trolls. No injuries. She’d made it through. “Want a soak in the hot tub?”
“There’s one more room I haven’t seen.”
Her office had passed the test. What could he—Fox gave her that look of his, as though he’d seen through one of her lies. “Your painting studio. Or do you not like people to see your work in progress?”
Shit! Of course he’d want to see that, because she’d mentioned painting, hadn’t she? “Sure, you can see it,” she told him, leading the way, though her stomach coiled with more unease. Stupidly, because the paintings functioned only as a cover hobby, because she’d thought she needed something to show for her time and reclusive ways. Now, however—dammit, her pride hated for him to see the truly awful things.
She opened the door she kept closed mainly to prevent Dinah from knocking the jars over or chewing on the nicely puncturable paint tubes, and waved Fox in. He took his time, as he had with surveying all her things. Learning her, the way he liked to do, and as she was trying hard to let him. But this wasn’t her and the worm of guilt, of being exposed as this hack, squirmed in her gut.
“Dusty in here,” he commented.
“Yeah, um—I’ve been in a slump lately.”
“Hmm.” He made a noncommittal sound and circled the room. Surely painters encountered some version of writer’s block? She cringed inwardly, seeing the paintings as he must be. Most of them she’d painted in the first few weeks, to create an inventory. She’d done them as fast as possible, anxious to get back to the computer and rebuilding her career.
“It’s just a hobby, really,” she blurted out when he spent overly long studying lime-green portrait of Anansi, with truly reprehensible perspective.
“I’ve seen your work before, at the coffee shop.” He’d tucked his hands in the pockets of his jeans and now glanced sideways at her, the light catching the line of his cheekbones and glinting off his coppery hair. She waited for him to tell her he liked it, to mouth the standard platitudes, but he wasn’t the kind to lie. “Have you been painting long?”
Ah, the careful alternative question. Feeling her out for the right thing to say. For an unhinged moment she wanted to show him her real work, to wipe away his perception of her as an untalented dabbler at best and a completely delusional hopeless case at worst. How did Clark Kent bear it, having Lois drip contempt for his bumbling ways, when he could have dazzled her instead. As Phoenix she shone, a star in her limited universe.
“No. Just since coming to Lyra.”
He tilted his head, listening. Waiting for more. What would a normal person say?
“I’ve never taken classes.”
“Didn’t want to?”
“Well, it’s fooling around, you know. Therapy.”
“Oh.” He nodded, seeming to understand. Relieved to find an excuse for her pitiful efforts? “Of course you went to therapy after the stalking incident. I should have realized. Did it help?”
God, she hated every minute of this conversation. Probably she should have gone to therapy. Maybe would have if she hadn’t been trying too hard to leave Lisa White and her debacle of an existence behind. She reached up to tighten her ponytail and remembered belatedly that Fox had taken her hair down and she’d totally forgotten to put it back up. He tracked the gesture, gaze glittering with intent, and it hit her with unshakeable certainty that he knew she’d lied. More, it pissed him off. That seemingly indolent pose, the deliberately relaxed posture—all to cover that he’d gone from lazily interested in seeing her house to being incandescently angry that she was lying to him.
Well, fuck him—she’d never promised him the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Still, he stood there, waiting for her answer, watching her stew and daring her to make something else up.
“Fine.” She folded her arms, though the midday sun warmed the room nicely. “I didn’t go to therapy. Maybe I wouldn’t be such a mess still if I had. I don’t enjoy painting. I’m no good at it and I only picked it up because everybody here seemed to think I should be doing something with my time. It shut all of them up.” She flung the last at him like an accusation.
He turned to face her, and she self-consciously unfolded her arms. That was a defensive posture, right?
“Why does it still bother you that I want to know more about you?” Fox asked the question reflectively, almost more to himself. “You already told me your greatest secret. Didn’t you?”
It unnerved her, the way he asked the last question, the way a police detective interviewing a witness would, catching them out in covering up some crime. It also annoyed her, which felt far more comfortable.
“If I did or didn’t isn’t any of your business, Fox,” she snapped. “I haven’t promised you anything but sex, and we can call it quits any time if you don’t want the package deal.”
“Can we?” He walked toward her, moving with a silky stride that made her feel stalked. The doorway stood open on the other side of him. Too far away. Then he was on her, taking her hands and lifting them over her head and pressing her up against the wall. “Thinking of running?” Oh yes, definitely pissed.
“No,” she whispered, mouth suddenly dry, her body responding eagerly to his nearness, to the intensity of his emotion. “Why are you so angry?”
“You’re a liar.” He gave the word significance, as if it defined her. “You know who your stalker was, don’t you?”
“What?” Her mind stuttered over the question. Not what she’d expected.
“I figured.” He nodded. “Why did you tell me you didn’t know?”
How did he figure that out? Did he know who she was? No, he couldn’t know that. Also, he would have said so, if he knew her real identity and its significance. Of course she knew who they were—at least their virtual identities—and it had changed no
thing. She didn’t know what answer to give, particularly with her nipples tight against the pressure of his chest and his grip on her wrists making her go hot and wet. “I can’t think,” she replied, struggling a little, which only made her more aroused.
With an unamused smile, he kissed her ear, biting the lobe gently so she moaned. “That’s the thing, Miss Emily. Telling me the truth shouldn’t require thinking. And I’m tired of your stories.”
She couldn’t drum up a reply, but he didn’t seem to need one, nipping at the line of her throat, making her squirm.
“It kills me that you don’t trust me,” he muttered. “What have I ever done to make you think you have to lie to me?”
“It’s not you. It’s—” There she went, falling into the pat answers.
He knew it, too, because he laughed, a hoarse, angry chuckle at her expense. “No, I know it’s you. You lie to everybody, don’t you? Nobody knows who you really are.”
“This is why I didn’t want you in my house.”
“Oh, I have no doubt of that, but you let me in, remember?” He rocked his pelvis against hers, erect cock rubbing against her mound, reminding her of all he’d said while fucking her in the hallway. She moaned and he kissed her cheek. “That’s right. I don’t think you really want to keep me out. In your heart you want to let me in, but something is stopping you. Is it him? Are you that afraid of him still?”
He stared into her eyes, fiercely, the playful charm gone, dangerous now in a way she’d never seen him be, in a way that aroused her beyond reason, that made her want to please him, give him what he asked for. At a loss, she couldn’t think of an answer for him that wouldn’t be a lie. Could she tell him the truth?
Alarmingly, she wanted to. Wanted to confide the whole hairy, horrible story. Fox would understand. She knew that about him, that he’d get why she’d collapsed, that she’d had to escape it all, that she’d never stopped running, in some senses. She’d show him her work, the new stuff that he’d inspired, and he’d be proud of her, open-heartedly admiring in that way that was so natural to him, so addictive about him.
“Tell me who it is and I’ll find him, expose him—make it so he can never hurt you again.” His voice had darkened, the anger seeping through it. Not at her. Or not entirely. At this person he envisioned. “You can trust me to do it. I’ve dealt with his kind before and—”
He cut himself off, but the words were a splash in the face from the sea.
“When?” She pulled her hands free and he let her. “How does a novelist deal with exposing stalkers?”
The chill radiating through her, she put distance between them. “What kind of research were you doing on your novel?” He blanked his face. Son of a bitch. “And you have the fucking gall to take me to task for lying. Are you even a writer? Who the hell are you, Fox?”
“Of course I’m a writer,” he snapped. “I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.”
“What would you lie about?”
“I would tell you if I could—and I will—but I can’t just yet.” To his credit, he looked uncomfortable and fully aware of the irony.
“It’s the same for me then. I want to tell you, but I can’t yet.”
“Don’t give me that, Emily. It’s not even close to the same thing.” He’d bunched his fists, tension vibrating from him in a nearly palpable wave.
She could barely draw a full breath. Instead of the angry shout in her head, she gritted out the words, temples pulsing with the pressure. “How can you say that. You don’t know!” She flung the words back at him, the uneven edge of her nails biting into her palms. “How dare you say it’s not the same thing! Yes,” she hissed, “I gave you a partial truth about the stalker thing. That’s my right, because you know what? The death threats were real. So were the pictures of me mutilated. Raped. Dead. That I was terrified and humiliated—that was all too real.” 1,899,343.
He looked stricken, but the coldness settled through her, dousing all those warm, wonderful feelings. Oh my God, this is it. We’re over. And she hadn’t seen it coming. Not this soon. They should have had weeks more, but the certainty boomed through her, a steel door slamming. Fox’s eyes burned, fiery in his tense face. He knew it too.
But he wouldn’t say so.
She found herself already shaking her head sadly. “This is it. I’m pulling the plug. Firewall in place.”
No, he’d been kidding himself, because he looked genuinely pained. “You’re joking. You can’t do that.”
“Yes, I can. That was the deal from the beginning. We’re over. I’m sorry, because this has been amazing, but we can’t go on this way.”
“This is a bump!” He nearly shouted it, a sprinkle of freckles standing out against his rage-pale skin. “So we both told some lies. I had good reasons for it.”
“Don’t you see, Fox?” Tears pricked her eyes, hinting at a pain that had yet to make its way through the cold shock. “It’s everything. We don’t even know each other. We have amazing chemistry and the sex was incredible, but we’ve foundered on the rocks. There’s nothing else between us that’s real. Time to walk away.”
“That’s not true. Don’t you say that. In the hallway, not thirty minutes ago, I very nearly told you that I think I’m falling in love with you. You can’t turn your back on that.”
So, her instinct had been right. Damn, damn, damn. “It’s good you didn’t say it. I didn’t want to hear it.” Cold. So cold inside.
He gaped at her in pained disbelief. “How can you say that?”
“Because you don’t know me!” The words ripped out of her, a comet trail of disappointment and betrayal following behind. She’d created this trap. Like the arrogant hero who foundered in the labyrinth of his own falsehoods and arrogance. Finally she found something—someone—she really wanted and it wasn’t even real. Fox had fallen for her avatar while her real self—twisted, emotionally crippled, every horrible thing the trolls had ever called her—crouched behind the curtain, weeping. “You said it yourself,” she choked out. “We both lied, for reasons more important than trusting each other. I’m not sorry I lied and neither are you, clearly. That’s not a relationship. Not love. That’s just fucking each other, which we agreed on from the beginning. And now it’s over.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Something inside him shattered, the sharp edges of the broken pieces lodging in his heart, making it thump laboriously, unable to pump blood to his extremities. That was why they’d gone numb.
Emily’s eyes were black hollows in her cold, white face, her hair a cape of shadow around her slim body. She seemed to be made both of steel and glass, resolute yet ridiculously fragile. Even as the hurt bloomed, as the rage rampaged through his brain—she was dumping him, just like that?—he absurdly wanted to comfort her. The early taste of bitter regret filled his mouth with bile.
Way to go, Sparky. Just like Dear Old Dad.
“I guess there’s nothing else to say then.” He felt stiff, suddenly old and worn out.
Emily nodded, a jerk of her chin, staring at the floor in utter misery. He’d hurt her. Then he called himself a chump for thinking it. Hell, she’d hurt him. Here he’d been about to hand her his heart when he’d known she didn’t want it. What a fucking idiot he’d been.
“Have a nice life then.” He felt mean, saying it. Which was a hell of a lot better than the kicked-in-the-gut sensation. “I’ll wave at you in the grocery store.”
She didn’t reply, not looking at him, clearly wanting him gone.
He left her there, in her room full of sham paintings. It would have been one thing if she’d been proud of them, but she’d radiated shame. She hadn’t even tried to make them good, so why paint the fucking things at all? The Emily he knew—and dammit, she was all wrong on that, because he did know her—had pride at her core. She couldn’t be sloppy if she tried.
Everything about her, about her home, revealed her intense personal energy, the perfectionist zeal she’d brought to every moment they spent together.
Consumed with furious regret, he drove to the rental house and slammed inside, leaving his bags and purchases in the car. He’d been so gaga, so fucking lovesick, picking those things out for her, and she’d cut him off. It wasn’t as if he’d built a whole house of cards, a tower of lies the way his father had. The way she had. So, he’d said he was a novelist. One small shading of the truth.
She’d lied far more. But, God, the way she’d looked when she said those words. Pictures of me mutilated. Raped. Dead. He’d well and truly fucked up.
He should focus on finding Phoenix and putting this dim, depressing backwater island behind him, but he pulled up Emily’s files instead. All those transcripts, reflecting her mediocrity. Nothing about her marriage. Not a whisper about the stalker. Was any of it true? It had to be. The emotional truth had reverberated in that fraud of an art studio like a bell tolling.
The early stuff was real, yes. Deep background confirmed the birth certificate, her family. The debutante photo in the paper had to be real, because he confirmed the page from the paper through several sites. The high school transcripts, the various awards revealing her dazzling early promise. All real.
Then she’d earned the full ride to Brown and flamed out. Mediocre grades, no extracurriculars. Left without graduating, perhaps to get married.
Or did she?
With grim determination, he spiraled out the search, checking the papers around the time frame she apparently quit college. Where had Silar Stillwell gone? She couldn’t possibly have dropped off the map entirely, because Emily Bartwell didn’t show up for another six months, and then only sparingly, bits of information that easily could have been added in later. Sloppy, sloppy.
But it had been enough to fool him, hadn’t it?
He checked the marriage license registries, not in her home town, but near the college, following his gut. And hit pay dirt.
Going Under Page 24