by Sarah Morgan
‘I know that,’ Luke answered steadily. He was so steady, even when she was doing her best to push him away and pull him closer both at the same time.
‘I have to go back to the beginning.’
‘I told you I am a patient man.’
‘I know.’ And now all there was left to do was begin. At the beginning. ‘You remember I told you I was discovered at that karaoke night in Kansas?’
‘Yes.’
‘The man who discovered me was named Pete.’
‘Pete Myers,’ Luke clarified, and Aurelie realised that he’d heard of him, of course he’d heard of him. Pete was famous. He’d managed several major bands, had judged a couple of TV talent shows. He was practically a household name.
‘Right,’ she said, and continued. ‘Well, Pete was amazing back then. He came up to me, told me he could make me a star. He took my mom and me to dinner, told us his whole plan. How I’d become Aurelie.’
‘So he was the one behind your image.’ Luke spoke tonelessly, but Aurelie still felt the censure. She stiffened.
‘I went along with it. Innocent siren, those were his words.’
‘You were only fifteen.’
‘Almost sixteen. And I thought it all sounded incredibly cool.’ She sighed, hating that already she was having to explain, to justify. Luke’s arm tightened around her.
‘I’m sorry. Continue.’
‘Those first few months were a whirlwind. Pete took us all over, to LA, New York, Nashville. I met with agents and songwriters and publicity people and, before I knew what was happening, I was recording and releasing a single, and it was huge. I felt like I was at the centre of a storm.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘She disappeared a couple of months after Pete discovered me. I think she realised people didn’t really want her around, that she was just getting in the way. When she left, Pete offered to have me stay with him. I was still a minor, and he had to make some kind of legal guardian arrangement with my grandmother—’ She stopped then, because her throat had become so tight. That had been the last time she’d seen her grandmother alive. She’d given her the guitar, begged her to stay the same. And she hadn’t.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, trying desperately for briskness, ‘Pete was great about it all. He gave me my own floor in his house, treated me like—’ the word stuck in her throat ‘—a daughter. At least, he felt like a father to me. The dad I’d never had. He gave me a lot of good advice in the early days, how not to take any of the criticism to heart, how to stay sane amidst all the craziness. He even remembered my birthday—he got me a cake for my seventeenth.’
‘A paragon,’ Luke said flatly, and she squirmed in his arms to face him.
‘I told you not to make judgements.’
‘I’m not. I’m just wondering where this is going.’
‘I’ll tell you.’ She took another breath, let it out slowly. ‘I’d been living with Pete for a little over a year. He’d seen me through some tough times—my grandmother dying, being diagnosed with diabetes. He was the one who found me, you know. I’d passed out in the bathroom, and he took me to ER. Stayed with me the whole time, made sure I got the proper treatment and counselling once I was diagnosed.’ She felt Luke’s tension; his shoulder was iron-hard under her cheek. ‘I’m telling you all this just to...to explain the relationship. How close we were.’
‘I get it.’ His tone was even, expressionless, and yet Aurelie sensed the darkness underneath. And she hadn’t really told him anything yet.
‘So fast forward to my eighteenth birthday. He took me out to dinner at The Ivy, told me how happy he was that I’d made it, how much he cared about me.’ She paused, tried to choose her words carefully. She needed the right ones. ‘I look back on that as one of the happiest nights of my life.’ Before it had all changed.
She fell silent, the only sound in the bedroom the draw and sigh of their breathing. ‘And then?’ Luke asked eventually. ‘What happened?’
‘Pete took me home. I went to bed. I was just changing into my pyjamas when he...he came into the room.’ He hadn’t, she remembered now, asked to come in. Not like Luke. She still remembered that ripple of shocked confusion at seeing Pete standing in the doorway. Staring at her.
‘And?’ Luke asked very quietly. Aurelie realised she’d stopped speaking. She was just remembering, and she hated it.
‘He told me he loved me. He’d always loved me, and then he...he kissed me.’
‘Not,’ Luke said quietly, ‘like a dad.’
‘No. Not like a dad.’ She still remembered the shocking feel of his mouth on hers, wet and insistent. The way his hands had roved over her body, with a kind of tentative urgency. He’d been crying a little bit, and he kept begging her. Let me, he had whispered over and over again, and she had.
‘What did you do?’ Luke asked. He was still stroking her hair, still holding her. Aurelie blinked back the memories.
‘I let him.’
‘Let him?’
‘He kept saying that. Let me. And I did, because...well, because I didn’t want to lose him. He was the most important person in my life at that point, the only person in my life. And, looking back, I can see how I got it wrong. He never wanted to be my dad. I was the one who wanted that.’
Luke’s hands had stilled. ‘So he...he kissed you?’
‘We had sex,’ Aurelie said flatly. ‘That night. It was, if you can believe it, my first time. That whole innocent siren thing? It was pretty much true.’
Luke swallowed, said nothing. ‘I didn’t enjoy it,’ she continued. She felt weirdly emotionless now, as if none of it mattered. ‘I hated it. It felt...well, it felt gross, to be honest. But I knew it was what he wanted and so I made myself want it too.’
‘And what happened then? After?’
She shrugged. ‘We started dating.’
‘Dating?’
‘A relationship. Whatever. I was already living with him, so—’
‘Are you telling me,’ Luke asked, and his voice shook slightly, ‘that Pete Myers was your serious relationship? The one that lasted three years?’
‘Yes—’
‘God, Aurelie.’ He sank back onto the pillows and when she risked a look at his face she saw he looked shocked. Winded, as if she’d just punched him. Maybe she had.
‘I thought you kind of knew where this was going.’
‘Well, when you started talking about Myers, I figured he’d...he’d taken advantage of you somehow. But you’d said you weren’t abused or raped—’
‘I wasn’t.’ She stared at him in surprise. ‘I told you, he asked.’ Let me. ‘And I said yes.’
Luke stared at her. He still looked dazed. ‘You remember when we talked about semantics?’
‘Yes—’
‘Yeah. That.’
She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t a victim. If I’d told him to leave, he would have.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know it. Luke, you weren’t there. You didn’t see how...how pathetic he looked. I felt sorry for him.’ Almost.
‘Yeah, I’m sure he could look pathetic when he wanted to. He’s also one of the richest, most powerful men in the music world, Aurelie. You don’t think he might have been taking advantage of you?’
‘Maybe,’ she allowed, ‘but I allowed it to happen.’
‘For three years.’
‘It was a relationship.’ She didn’t like the tone Luke took, as if she’d been used. Abused. A victim.
‘A secret relationship. I’ve never seen this mentioned in the press.’
‘Pete didn’t want the tabloids to trash us. He was being protective—’
‘Very thoughtful of him.’
‘Don’t,’ she said furiously. ‘Don’t make this about me being
used by him. I was not a victim.’
Luke just gazed at her. ‘Go on,’ he finally said quietly. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘When?’
‘How did it end?’
‘He ended it. He said it wasn’t working, that I was too clingy.’
‘Too clingy.’
‘Yes. And I was, I can see that now. The fame had started to get to me, and I felt like Pete was the only person who knew who I really was. My mom was still out of the picture, my grandma was dead, and I’d never stayed in one place long enough to get to know anyone.’
‘So,’ Luke said slowly, ‘he was all you had.’
‘It felt that way. But he started losing interest and my music started slipping, the media noticed, and when he finally ended it—’ She took a breath, plunged. ‘I went off the deep end.’
‘You weren’t,’ Luke said, and she almost heard a sad smile in his voice, ‘a Girl Scout.’
‘No. I pretty much did what the press said I did. I drank, I did drugs, I partied hard and slept around, and my career tanked.’ She swallowed, sniffed. ‘So there you have it.’
Luke said nothing, and Aurelie felt condemnation in his silence. She’d done so many things she wasn’t proud of, the first one being that she’d given in to Pete that first night. That she’d been so clingy and needy and starved of love, she’d taken what she could get. And then when he’d decided he didn’t want her any more, she’d spun out of control because she’d felt so horribly empty.
And she was so afraid of that happening again.
‘Which part of all that,’ Luke finally asked, ‘did you not want to tell me?’
She let out a wobbly laugh, surprised by the question. ‘All of it.’
‘But which part in particular?’ He shifted so he was facing her, his gaze intent, his eyes blazing. ‘The part at the end? About how you went off the deep end? How you partied and slept around and lost yourself?’
She squirmed under that gaze, those pointed, knowing questions. ‘Yes, basically.’ Lost yourself. That was exactly what had happened, yet even now she couldn’t admit as much to Luke. Admit that she was afraid of it happening again, and worse this time. She’d finally found herself again, thanks to Luke. But what if she lost herself once more because she couldn’t handle being in a relationship? Being hurt?
What if he grew tired of her like Pete had, like the whole world had?
‘And what about sex?’ he asked quietly. ‘Enjoying it? Why do you think you don’t?’
She swallowed, wished he didn’t have to be quite so blunt. ‘I suppose because of my experience with Pete. I was never attracted to him, and being with him like that for so long...it just killed that part of me.’
‘And when I’m with you? And you freeze? Why do you think that is?’
‘I don’t know.’ She felt herself getting angry again. She hated him asking so many terrible questions, stripping her so horribly bare. ‘I suppose I remember that first time. It was awful, okay?’ Tears sprang to her eyes and she turned her face away from him. ‘Awful. I couldn’t breathe. He was so heavy. And it...hurt.’ She gasped the last word out, tears pooling in her eyes. If she blinked they would fall, and she couldn’t have that. If she let those first tears out, too many more would follow, and she was afraid she would never stop crying.
‘What about with other men?’ Luke asked quietly.
Aurelie sniffed, her face still averted, her voice clogged with all those mortifying tears. ‘They were all pretty much the same. They only wanted one thing from me, and I knew that. I was a trophy. I got it, and I used it because—’ She stopped, and Luke finished for her, his voice so soft and sad.
‘Because it was better than being used.’
She said nothing. Words were beyond her. She wished she’d never told him, desperately wished she hadn’t opened up this Pandora’s box of tawdry memories. ‘Don’t judge me,’ she finally whispered, a plea, and Luke shook his head.
‘I’m not judging you. Not at all.’
He sounded so weary, so resigned, that Aurelie felt her spirits plummet, and they were already pretty low. He was disgusted by her. Of course he was. How could he not be, after all the things she’d told him? She’d known this would happen. She’d been expecting it. She slipped away from him, rolled out of bed and hunted for her dress.
‘I should go back to my room.’
‘Why?’
‘We’re going to Hong Kong today, right? I need to shower and get dressed.’ She didn’t look at him as she slipped her dress on, tugged on her boots. Her hair was a disaster, but all she needed to do was walk down the hall.
‘We’re not finished here, Aurelie.’
‘I’m finished.’
‘You’re scared.’
Hell, yes. She glanced up at him, hands on her hips. ‘Oh, you think so? Of what?’
‘A lot of things, I suspect.’
Luke sounded so calm, so relaxed, and here she was feeling like a butterfly pinned to a board. Unable to protect or hide herself, just out there for his relentless examination. ‘Well, I’m not scared,’ she snapped. ‘But I don’t particularly like talking about all that, and since we have a full day I’d like to get on with it. That all right by you?’ She spoke in a sneering drawl, the kind of voice she’d used so many times before. The kind of voice she hadn’t used with Luke since they’d started on their second chance.
Well, so much for that.
‘It’s all right by me,’ he said quietly and, without another word, Aurelie whirled around and stalked out of his bedroom.
* * *
Luke lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, too dazed to do anything but try and process what Aurelie had told him. Pete Myers. A man who had to have been at least fifty when he’d first started with Aurelie. A man who had abused her affection, used her body and her trust. And Aurelie didn’t see it that way.
She saw it as a relationship. Hell, no.
Sighing, he ran his hands through his hair, pressed his fists into his eyes. He had no idea what to do. He was still so afraid of failing her. Failing her like he had last night, when he’d gone about it completely wrong. He’d been trying to ease Aurelie into love-making gently, sweetly, but he’d been the one in control. Hell, he’d told her that before they even started. Anything that happens between us, happens at a pace I control... Got that?
He winced at the memory. He’d thought it would help her, to know they would go slowly, but now he saw how it must have accomplished the opposite. He’d been just another man controlling her, using her body. Luke swore aloud.
He saw now that Aurelie needed to feel in control. To be in control. That was, he suspected, why she insisted on believing Pete hadn’t taken advantage of her, that it had been a willing, committed relationship—because then it was something she could control.
And last night, in an utterly misguided attempt to help her, he’d quite literally taken all the control away from her. Groaning aloud, Luke dropped his fists from his eyes and stared at the ceiling once more. It was time, he knew, for a third chance. Time to earn her trust once more.
By the time he’d showered and dressed, eaten and answered emails, he was near to running late. He’d knocked on the door of Aurelie’s room but there had been no answer and he felt a flicker of foreboding. Was she trying to avoid him? Well, that could only last so long.
His mouth firming into a determined line, he headed downstairs.
Aurelie was waiting in the lobby, dressed in a mint-green shift dress, her hair tucked behind her ears, her arms folded. She was fidgeting and she didn’t meet his gaze as he came towards her. Clearly now was not the time to have some kind of emotional discussion, and maybe he needed the time—the break—too.
‘All ready?’ he asked lightly, and she nodded tensely, her gaze fixed somewhere around his should
er.
They didn’t speak in the limo on the way to the airport, or as they boarded the jet that would take them to Hong Kong. Luke pulled out some papers, thinking to work, but then he decided he wasn’t that patient after all.
‘Aurelie.’ She turned towards him, still not meeting his eyes. ‘You’re doing a pretty good job of avoiding me even though I’m right here.’
She lowered her head so her hair fell forward in front of her face. ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’
‘Maybe you could tell me what you’re thinking.’
‘That.’
He sighed and slipped his papers back into a manila folder. ‘What else?’
She shook her head, bit her lip. Luke just waited. ‘I’m thinking I wish I hadn’t told you everything I did this morning.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because...’ she lifted her gaze to his, and he saw the storm in her eyes ‘...because you think of me differently now, and I can’t stand that—’
‘I wouldn’t say differently.’
‘What, then?’
‘More sympathetically—’
She shook her head, the movement violent. ‘I don’t want your pity.’
‘It’s not pity to be able to understand you—’
‘I am not some kind of psychological specimen—’
‘I never said you were.’ Luke felt his temper start to fray. He would never say the right thing. ‘Aurelie, you’re going to tank us right here and now if you keep fighting me like this. I’m just trying to make this work.’
She hunched her shoulders, her chin tucked low. ‘Maybe it can’t.’
‘Is that what you want?’ he asked evenly, and she didn’t answer for a moment. Fear lurched inside him. Already he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her.
‘No,’ she finally said, her voice so low he had to strain to hear her. She sighed and rested her head against the seat, her eyes closed. ‘Look, I know I’m making a mess of this. But I told you in the beginning that I don’t know how to let my guard down—’