Once Touched, Never Forgotten

by Natasha Tate

  After spending twenty-five years proving that the Whitfields couldn’t bully him the way they’d bullied his mother, he wasn’t about to stop now. And, Lord knew, if he failed to make an appearance, his spiteful cousins would trash the hotel in the name of victorious celebration.

  Just like every other year, the event was packed with people Stephen could barely tolerate when his mood was generous. Europe’s richest businessmen, their superficial wives and catty mistresses, celebrities whose names he could never remember, and anyone else fortunate enough to claim a coveted connection to the Whitfields was in attendance. It was enough to sour any mood, and his wasn’t good to begin with.

  After not touching Colette for days, he felt like a caged tiger spoiling for a kill. Preferably something flavored with a Whitfield sneer and polished platinum hair.

  His hand tightened around the tumbler of ice and liquor as his least favorite Whitfield cousin approached him. “Still drinking like the Irish scum that spawned you, eh?”

  “What do you want, Liam?”

  “Besides everything you took that should have been mine?” he said with a scowl. “I’d be happy if you just disappeared.”

  “Much as I’d like to help you out, I can’t,” he said, before slugging back his drink in a single swallow. The burn felt good and the tumbler kept his hands busy. For now. “Who else would clean up after your mistakes if I were gone?”

  Liam’s eyes narrowed and a telltale flush of fury stained his face a mottled red. “Everything was fine until you showed up, uninvited and unannounced.”

  “I returned to keep you from driving the Grand into bankruptcy.” He kept his voice calm, though it required a supreme effort to keep his hands off the pompous bastard’s neck. “Irritating you is just an unexpected perk.”

  “You’re not good enough to step foot in the Grand, let alone run it. You’re the son of a whore, always sniffing around whores.” His face screwed into an ugly combination of disgust and jealousy. “You can’t even keep them away for Grandfather’s birthday, can you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Colette Huntington, that nobody who acts like she belongs here.”

  Stephen’s gut cinched with a sick lurch. Panic coiled in his lungs, froze the air in his chest. For a black, eternal moment his heart forgot how to beat. Then it surged back to life, thundering hard beneath his ribs, and he spun to locate Colette’s golden hair amid the knot of glittering party goers.

  No.

  He shoved the birthday guests aside without regard for their gasped outrage, leaving offended gossip in his wake as he raced toward his wife. His vulnerable, exposed wife. For a moment he lost sight of her. The ballroom was so crowded he felt as if he navigated a tumultuous sea of jewel and silk. He plunged deeper into the mass of tuxedos and ballgowns until he caught sight of her willowy neck and golden shoulders. It seemed a century since he’d drawn breath, an eon since he’d seen her safe.

  Then he saw her companion.

  They stood with their backs to him, his grandfather’s gnarled hand clutched just above Colette’s elbow as they made their way to the edge of the ballroom. Stephen lurched forward, the leaden weight of anxiety twisting within his stomach and making his legs unsteady and weak.

  “Colette!”

  They turned as one, his wife and his grandfather, and Stephen felt his vision go black on the edges. What had Grandfather said to her? What damage had he already done?

  Regal, serene, and utterly composed, Colette didn’t show any evidence of his family’s attack, but he knew she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. She was strong that way, keeping her pain locked firmly away where no one could see. Except he knew her scars ran deep. He knew her generous, wounded soul couldn’t survive the blows his family would deliver.

  If only he could breathe, he’d take her away from this place. He’d keep her safe.

  “Stephen,” she said, arching a prim brow. “Imagine running into you here.”

  He ignored his grandfather and stared at his wife silently, his thoughts heaving as ineffectively as his chest.

  “Your grandfather was just telling me what a terror you were as a child.” She smiled down at the old goat, a luminous goddess draped in gold and green. “Weren’t you, sir?”

  His grandfather glared at Stephen, his icy blue gaze communicating his disapproval as eloquently as any words. “Why didn’t you tell us you’d married this delightful girl?”

  The sarcastic edge beneath his grandfather’s words made Stephen’s chest cinch more tightly. Did Colette hear it? Did she hear the signature Whitfield disdain beneath the saccharine sentiment? The hint of battle lines being drawn?

  Stepping away from his grandfather, she approached him with a strained smile curving her lips. “Yes, dear, why didn’t you tell your family we were married?”

  He watched her mouth move, but for some reason he couldn’t process her words. He couldn’t hear above the thundering roar of his pulse. But he could see the muted evidence of her hurt within her hazel eyes. He could see the sheen of tears welling deep behind her wall of unaffected detachment.

  “Colette tells us you have a daughter,” said the old man in a dangerous, threatening voice. “A lovely little child named Emma. Did you intend to keep her from us as well?”

  Yes, you sick bastard. I did.

  Behind them, the Whitfield vultures circled, his uncles and cousins and their wives inching closer, with malice in their expressions and venom on their tongues. They’d waged their social war for decades and honed their weapons to a sharp, cruel edge. They would cut Colette to ribbons and she didn’t even realize the danger.

  Somewhere low in his gut, beneath the resting place of all his childhood fears, panic began to build. He’d been here before. He’d seen the terrible effects of the Whitfield poison on innocent women. He’d seen the havoc his family wreaked. Get her out of here, a voice in his head clamored. Now.

  He reached for Colette at the same time his most vitriolic cousin did.

  “Colette,” Stephen said, pulling her forward, away from his descending family. “Come. We’re leaving.”

  She pulled her arm from his hand, her pleasant party façade immediately overtaken by fury. “Thank you, but, no. I’m having a lovely time.”

  “Trust me,” he warned, reclaiming her wrist. “You don’t want to be here.”

  “Don’t you mean you don’t want me to be here?” she bit out, yanking free and stumbling back a step. “Why don’t you tell me the truth for once, instead of hiding it behind this ridiculous pretense of caring?”

  “You want the truth?” he roared. “Fine. I’ll give you the truth.”

  Stepping close, he banded one arm about her waist and dipped to loop the other around her knees. Before she could shriek her protest, he’d bent to swing her up into his arms.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped, twisting within his arms and shoving her slim hands against his chest and shoulder. Her floor-length gown, a dizzying blend of champagne and green that matched her eyes, draped over her canted legs while one high heel clattered to the floor. “Put me down!”

  “Not a chance,” he whispered hoarsely as he strode toward the nearest exit. “I’m taking you out of here before you get eaten alive.”

  “Stop it,” she hissed, her face flushed a ruddy pink. “You’re embarrassing me and making a fool of yourself.”

  “For you? Always,” he muttered as he elbowed his way through the doorway.

  A shocked murmur of gossip followed them before the ballroom door closed, plunging them into the relative silence of his hotel’s lobby.

  Within another minute he’d carried her to the relative safety of his private elevator. When the doors slid closed, he gently lowered her to her feet and then punched the button for his office.

  He turned back to his wife just in time to see her hand arcing toward his cheek. Her palm cracked against his jaw and fire lit her beautiful eyes. “I hate you,” she told him, the cres
ts of her cheeks blazing and her hiked chin quivering. “I wish I’d never met you.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said.

  “Then why are you doing this?” she bit out, swiping a knuckle beneath her eye. “Because—”

  “Forget it,” she snapped. “I’m angry as hell and I don’t want to talk about it!”

  If his brain had been functioning properly he’d have stepped back and tried to deal with her rationally. He’d have donned a mantle of dignity and control. But for some reason his body wouldn’t move away from hers. He was acutely aware of everything about his wife, so close and yet still so damnably far away. Her golden hair, swept up in a glorious, glossy mass. Her breasts, displayed to perfection within the tight bodice of her designer gown. Her mouth, glossed a kissable pink and slightly parted despite her fury.

  Damning her for putting him in this position, and himself for not being able to keep her safe, he couldn’t force himself to back away. He couldn’t force himself to act reasonable and calm.

  “You said you wanted the truth,” he said, “and that’s what I’m going to give you. But not with the whole of England watching.”

  “You’re incapable of telling the truth,” she snapped. “And I wish I’d never married you.”

  The words clawed at his chest, scoring deep wounds he doubted would ever heal. “I’m sure you do.” The elevator chimed and the doors slid open, revealing the muted darkness of his vacant office. “Shall we?” he asked, sweeping his arm toward the empty space where she’d rejected him so long ago.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  COLETTE stalked into his office, her legs trembling with fury. Tears hovered so close to the surface she could taste their salt in the back of her throat. She’d never been so humiliated in her life. After the way that awful, awful old man had looked at her when she’d told him about her marriage to Stephen, she’d wanted to crawl into a hole and simply die. And to have Stephen witness it while she pretended not to notice their obvious rejection of her? It was too much.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” she said, the moment Stephen touched her. “I want a divorce.”

  He withdrew as if he’d been stung, but then braced his shoulders before stepping toward her again. “All right,” he said with a grim nod. “I’ll grant you your divorce. After you hear me out.”

  She sucked in an inhale that felt like shards of glass, her heart clamoring for her to recant the rash words. But she couldn’t. It was what she needed to survive. Like ripping off a bandage, it had to be done. Short and swift was better than the agony of seeing his resentment grow by slow, cancerous degrees.

  Stephen hadn’t turned on the lights, and she was glad of it. She was glad the mellow moonlight slanting through the wide windows cast her in shadow and him in a pale white glow. It illuminated his skin and the startling white edges of cuff and collar, painting him in a wash of silver and glittering blue within his black hair. He was beautiful and she loved him. But tonight had taught her that she could never have him.

  “I took you away from my family for a reason,” he said, inching close enough for her to catch his scent.

  Her body reacted on a visceral level. Wanting. Yearning. She wanted him to touch her, to trail his fingertips over her flushed skin and to taste the seeking warmth of her mouth. She wanted him to make her forget. But she was done dreaming for things she could never have.

  “Oh? And what reason’s that?”

  “It’s not what you think,” he said. “It’s not that you aren’t good enough for me.” He stepped closer, until his face tipped mere inches over hers. Until his dark mouth hovered so, so close over hers. “Or that you aren’t good enough to be a Whitfield.”

  She gulped a shallow breath while her pulse thudded in the hollow of her throat. Hearing her fears put to words, true though they might be, didn’t make them any easier to accept. “I don’t care. I never wanted to be a Whitfield anyway.”

  “I know.” He tucked a stray tendril of hair behind her ear, his fingers grazing the skin along the side of her neck. “And I knew it would be even harder to convince you to change your mind after you met my family. I knew they’d make you hate us all.”

  She stiffened beneath his fingers, though she didn’t withdraw. She couldn’t make herself abandon the sweet torture of his touch. Not yet. “Only because they hate me.”

  “They hate me, too. They’ve hated anything and everything that was important to me since the day I was born.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Do you want to know the real reason I haven’t seen Mum’s family since her death?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “They hate the Whitfields, all Whitfields, because of what they did to Mum.”

  She didn’t speak, waiting for him to elaborate.

  He inhaled. Exhaled. Then inhaled again, as if trying to rearrange memories he’d buried a lifetime ago. “Mum didn’t quite fit the Whitfield mold of what makes a proper wife. She was Irish, she was poor, and she was a barmaid before she married my father.”

  Stunned, Colette could only blurt, “What?”

  “The O’Fallons owned a string of pubs in London’s east end, and Mum was their only daughter, born twelve years after their sixth son.”

  Her thoughts reeled as her previous assumptions about Stephen did a complete one-eighty. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Because I don’t like revisiting what happened to her.” A grim frown tugged at his mouth. “Mum came from a huge family of loud, brawling men and stubborn, smart-mouthed women. She was a petite black-haired beauty surrounded by a tribe of giant freckled redheads.”

  Colette simply stared at his face, trying to reframe her perception of Stephen’s background.

  “Her parents used to claim she was a fairy left behind in exchange for a keg of their best brew.”

  “But … how did she end up married to your father?”

  “Father came in for a pint with some friends, and she served him his beer.”

  She shook her head, trying to reconcile the Whitfields’ past with what all she’d overheard the family say to Stephen. Why would they forbid him to marry someone beneath his station when his own mother had come from such humble beginnings?

  “Then why …? I’d have thought he’d choose someone a little more …” She paused, unsure how to proceed. “How does a Whitfield go from being served a beer to marrying the barmaid?”

  Stephen’s jaw flexed. “Mum was a good Catholic girl and Father wanted her. Marriage was the only option she’d consider.”

  “I take it the Whitfields did not approve?” His expression clouded. “Not at all. Fortunately, Father had reached his majority and he already owned his half of the Whitfield Grand. It was too late to take it back, so the family couldn’t do anything to stop him.” “Then that’s good, right?”

  “No. Since they couldn’t do anything to Father, they took their hatred out on Mum. Every chance they had, they told her she was working-class trash, unfit to marry into their lofty ranks of privilege and wealth. They were like sharks, circling for the kill.”

  Her stomach clenched with empathy. “Your poor mother.” “The Whitfields are a cruel, ruthless lot, no matter the age or gender of their target.” He lifted haunted eyes and the odd sheen of vulnerability she saw there made her heart do a queer little twist. “That’s why I didn’t tell them about us marrying. That’s why I didn’t want you to go to the party tonight. It wasn’t because I was embarrassed about you. It was because I was protecting you.”

  He was protecting her? “From a few nasty remarks lobbed by people I don’t care about? You know I’m tougher than that, Stephen.”

  Again his gaze shifted back to his hands. Almost as if he were afraid to let Colette see inside. “So was Mum. But she died anyway.” “What?”

  “She was at one of Grandfather’s birthday parties, a little tipsy and a little more outspoken than usual, when a whole pack of Whitfields attacked her. The things they
said to her were awful. Mean and cruel and abusive. They told her she didn’t deserve to be one of them and that she’d doomed my father to failure and mediocrity by marrying him. She ran out, crying and unsteady on her feet, and too upset to look where she was going. A car hit her before Father or I could stop her.”

  Colette simply stared at him in horrified silence.

  “Father was never the same after she died. He blamed himself for marrying her, for subjecting her to the monsters that were his family. He stopped eating. Stopped getting out of bed. He forgot he had a son and died six months later.” He sucked in a breath and braced his shoulders, appearing strong despite the wounded look in his shuttered eyes. “Fortunately I was big for my age, and good with my fists, and Father had a good lawyer on retainer who was able to protect my inheritance from the Whitfields until I was old enough to protect it myself. But it was not a happy time in my life. I spent much of it scared and alone.”

  “Oh, Stephen.” She understood now. She understood his stubborn refusal to love and be loved. He’d never known the benefits of love; he’d only known the pain. “I’m so sorry.” Her heart twisted within her chest and she lifted a hand to his upper arm. As foolish as she was, it was impossible not to touch him.

  He shook her off. “Mum had been the world to Father, his reason for living, and he didn’t know how to function with her gone. I saw how his need for her made him miserable, how losing her incapacitated him and made him weak. He couldn’t even look at me after she was gone because I reminded him of what he’d lost.” He swallowed and lifted his gaze to the glass behind her head. “I swore that I’d never let a woman do that to me or any children I happened to have. I swore I’d never be so blind that I chose a wife with my heart instead of my head.”

  Her heart sank. “So you chose me.”