No Longer Forbidden?

by Dani Collins

He made himself leave, but felt her gaze follow him all the way down the hall.

  “You’re saying Legal is holding you up?” Nic paraphrased a week later, barely listening to the litany of excuses being offered to him.

  “Yes, that’s exa—”

  “Learn to say more with less, Graeme. That’s how this corporation has grown to where it is. Have Sebastyen call me.” He ended the call, telling himself to quit acting like every self-important bastard in need of anger management classes he’d ever worked with. He was going on a week without sleep, his appetite shot despite Rowan leaving him hearty stews and tender souvlaki and chocolate brownies that melted on his fingers. He wanted an end to this unbearable tension, but the clock ticking down on his time with her frayed his temper a little more each day.

  His laptop burbled with an incoming call. Sebastyen got to the heart of the matter immediately. “We’re dragging our feet on several initiatives, waiting on the signing of the petition and the reading of the will. Did you receive the revised documents? Any word on when you’ll see forward movement on that?”

  Nic glanced at the date on his screen’s calendar. He’d been putting off talking to Rowan, knowing it would upset her, but time was running out on that too. He ended the call with Sebastyen and went looking for her.

  She was in the breakfast room, where abundant windows around the bottom of the south-eastern turret caught the morning sun and French doors led onto the front courtyard. Bins from the island’s thrift store were stacked next to sealed boxes adorned with international courier labels.

  “Rowan?”

  She jerked, and the look she cast him was startled and wary. They were only speaking when they had to, and every conversation was stiff and awkward. They stared at each other, face-to-face for the first time in days.

  Nic wanted to rub at the numb ache that coated his scalp and clung like a mask across his cheeks. His facial muscles felt locked in a scowl. He’d been trying to put her back at a distance, but all he could think was that he’d let her inside him and now there was no way to get her out.

  He’d been devastated by her infertility. She wanted a family and something in him desperately wished he could give her one, even though he’d heard her qualifications loud and clear. The right man. Not now. His entire being was hollow with the knowledge that even she knew he would ultimately disappoint her.

  He took in the growing fretfulness in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he lied, with a pinch on his conscience. “I just need to talk to you about the papers I asked you to sign.”

  Her back went up immediately. Her knuckles on the pen she clutched glowed like pearls. “I said I’d do it tomorrow. I will.”

  “That’s not it. Legal had to make a change.” He took a breath. “After I explained that your parents were still married.”

  Her brow pleated, but her confused expression quickly gave way to dawning comprehension.

  Rowan distantly absorbed what had never occurred to her. The relationship between her parents had been so minimized the last thing she would have called her father was Cassandra’s next of kin. She was her mother’s closest relative. But that wasn’t actually true and of course Nic was way ahead of her on that.

  “Don’t—please don’t go to my father with those papers.” Waiting to sign the papers tomorrow was her one excuse to stay here with him. For him to yank that away would cause a huge fissure to open in her.

  “I was only going to offer to do it if you prefer not to,” he assured her gently. “But he does have to be the one who signs.”

  Her heart gave a hard beat. Of course he did. She should have seen that ages ago. But her mind hadn’t been on anything but tomorrow—and not for the reason it should be. She was leaving and her heart was breaking. She shook herself back to reality.

  “You caught me off guard. Of course I’ll take them to him. I should have realized.”

  He shrugged off her stilted promise with stiff negligence. They couldn’t seem to overcome the intimate revelations of a few days ago. It had drawn a line beneath their relationship, leaving it summed up as unworkable. He wanted children. She couldn’t give him any. He thought he was incapable of love. She couldn’t prove him wrong when he couldn’t love her.

  Did she love him? Yes. Her girlish crush had deepened and matured into something abiding and strong. But so what? She had thought an affair could bring them closer, that she would touch him, draw him out, but she had turned into yet another person who had raised his expectations and then dashed them. He’d never trust in her love.

  “While I have your attention …” she began, and then had to clear her throat.

  Her abdomen tightened with foreboding. She told herself to quit being so nervous. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been mentally preparing herself for this. She had been working nonstop on arrangements, determined to finish by Nic’s deadline as a matter of pride. She had talked to Frankie, booked travel, and even begun packing her things. She still found herself beginning to shake.

  Get a grip, Ro. You knew the end was coming.

  Which was the part that was making her fall apart. Dispensing of things was sad, but they were just things. Even the house was something she was gradually letting go of as she accepted that the people she loved would no longer be there to welcome her into it. There was one thing she couldn’t face letting go of, though: Nic.

  She tucked a strand from her ponytail behind her ear. Her hand was shaking and she saw his gaze fix on it. She folded her arms.

  “I’m almost finished, so I should tell you where everything stands. These boxes are going to a theater manager in London who wants to set up a dedicated display in his lobby. A courier is coming tomorrow.” Rowan jerked a look to the ceiling. “Mum’s gowns are being auctioned. I gave the auction house your PA’s details. They’ll set up a convenient time to send a team to inventory and pack those properly.”

  “You’re not keeping any?”

  She understood his surprise. He knew as well as she did that designers had lined up to custom-make haute couture for Cassandra O’Brien. They were gorgeous one-of-a-kinds—but they were Cassandra’s style, not Rowan’s.

  “Where would I wear them?” she dismissed. “No, they’re works of art, so I’ll let them benefit an artist by using the money to set up a trust for my father.” She glanced warily at him, bracing against his judgment, hurrying to clarify. “So I won’t have to resort to tasteless appearance fees or anything like that again.”

  If she had hoped for an approval rating she was disappointed. He scowled, seeming both thunderstruck and filled with incomprehension.

  “You’re not keeping any of it?”

  It being the collection of her mother’s possessions, she assumed.

  “Well, a few things, of course.” She shrugged, pretending it didn’t bother her how judicious—ruthless, even—she’d had to be. The boxes for the thrift store were filled with chotchkies that had no value but had been in her life as long as she could remember. She would have kept them for her own home if she had had one. “I kept some snapshots and Mum’s hand mirror. The dish she put her jewelry in at night. Things like that.”

  “What about her jewelry?” He leapt on the word. “Auction?”

  Rowan pressed her lips together. “I wanted to ask you about that.”

  “I’m not going to contest ownership, if that’s what you’re worried about. Olief would have given those things to Cassandra without any expectation of getting them back. If you want to auction them to give yourself a nest egg, do.”

  “I don’t.” She tried to suppress the testiness that edged into her. “I’m not interested in profiting from gifts that marked important occasions in their life. Besides, we won’t know if they’re mine or my father’s until the will is read. I just wanted to ask you to take responsibility. I don’t have a safety deposit box or anywhere else secure.”

  His stare grew inscrutable.

  Rowan was hugely sensitive t
o the air of intensity gathering around Nic like dark clouds—especially because she didn’t know how to interpret it.

  “I’ve sorted Olief’s things as well,” she prattled on. “Just recommendations, of course. He has some gorgeous tuxedos that would fit you with a minimum of tailoring.” She couldn’t help stealing a swift tallying inventory of his potent physique, turned out professionally for telecommuting in a striped button shirt and tie. “I’d love to include the vintage one with those things going to London if you’re okay with that?”

  “Rowan, I told you to take what you wanted, not …” His jaw worked as he scanned the neatly stacked bins and boxes. “I expected you to identify and keep what amounts to Cassandra’s estate—not disperse everything to charity and …” He shot his hand into his pocket where it clenched into a fist.

  “I can’t take much. Where would I store it?”

  “But you could sell things for a down payment on a flat and tuition for a degree. Why would you keep yourself as broke as you were when you walked into this house? Are you thinking about your future at all? What do you intend to live on?”

  She frowned, not liking how defensive he made her feel for a choice she’d already made. It was a risk, yes, but one that actually gave her a sense of excitement.

  “Frankie has—”

  “Do not let Frankie exploit you,” Nic said, cutting her off. “I’ve cleared your debts with him so don’t let him bully you. And don’t worry about owing me. Forget that. Forget the credit cards from before. I was being a bastard because I was angry. That’s in the past. We know each other better now.”

  “Do we?” He still thought her capable of selling off possessions for rent the way her mother would have. But she was taking a real job—one that was temporary, but paid a weekly wage and would get her on her feet. She was trying to act like an adult while an unrelentingly immature part of her clung to a rose-hued dream that her efforts at showing maturity would raise her in his estimation, that somehow he’d begin seeing her with new eyes. Eyes that warmed with affection.

  “I know your love for Olief was genuine, Rowan. I believe he was looking out for you in every way he could because he felt as protective as any father.” Nic rubbed the back of his neck. Suffering angled across his face as he added, “I think you helped him become capable of experiencing and showing those sorts of feelings because you draw things out of people in a way I never could. I wouldn’t even know how to try.”

  Tenderness filled her. You do, she wanted to insist, because he provoked intense feelings of many kinds in her. But her throat was filled with the breath she was holding. Was he saying that she’d taught him to experience deeper feelings than he’d ever expected? She searched his troubled brow.

  He tensed his mouth, broodingly. “I’m convinced Olief would have made provision for you and your mother. If he didn’t he should have, and I’ll honor that. What you had before—accommodation, living expenses—I’ll go back to covering them.”

  Her heart landed jarringly back to earth. Rowan reminded herself to draw a breath before she fainted. It came in like powdered diamonds, crystalline and hard. It took her a moment to find words.

  “Let me guess. You’ll even let me grace your bed while you pay those expenses?” The bitterness hardening her heart couldn’t be disguised in her flat, disillusioned voice.

  “That’s not how I meant it.” His shoulders tensed into a hard angle.

  “You’re going to pay my expenses and not want to sleep with me?” she goaded.

  His bleak gaze flicked from hers. “I can’t say I don’t want you. It would be a lie. The wanting doesn’t stop, no matter what I do.”

  And it made him miserable, she deduced. No mention of love or commitment either.

  Rowan told herself not to let his reluctant confession make a difference—especially when he was standing there not even looking at her, his bearing aloof and remote, but her heart veered toward him in hope anyway.

  She lifted a helpless palm into the air. “It’s constant for me, too, but—”

  “Then why can’t we continue what we started?” He pivoted his attention to her like a homing device.

  “Because I don’t want to be your mistress!”

  He rocked back on his heels, his jaw flexing like he’d taken a punch.

  “I don’t want to be any man’s mistress,” she rushed on. “I want a relationship built on equality. Something stable that grows roots. Even if—” Her words were a long walk onto thin ice. She looked down at the pen she had unconsciously unwound so the center of its barrel fell open and parts were dropping out. “Even if it doesn’t include children, I still want something with a future.”

  She looked up, silently begging for a sign that he wanted those things, too.

  His eyes darkened to obsidian. His fists were rocks in his pockets.

  “You’re right, of course,” he said, after a long, loaded minute. “All we had was a shelter in a storm, not something that lasts beyond the crisis. I’ll never again judge Olief for caving in to physical relief during a low point.”

  The words impaled Rowan. She nodded jerkily, because what else could she expect him to say? That he had miraculously developed a deeper appreciation for her place in his life? At best he was nursing a sense of obligation toward her. It was the last sort of debt she wanted to make him feel.

  “I’m going for a walk.” She needed to say goodbye to Rosedale. It was the final item on her to-do list.

  “Stay back from the water.”

  A bitter laugh threatened, but Rowan swallowed it and left.

  Rowan caught a lift with the courier in the morning, giving Nic about three seconds to react to her leaving. She walked into his office, said she could save him a trip to the landing and asked where were those papers that needed signing.

  No prolonged goodbye. Just a closed door, the fading hum of an engine, then silence that closed around him like a cell. Her scent lingered in a wisp of almond cookies and sunshine, dissipating and finally undetectable.

  Nic stood up in disbelief, drawn to the window where the vehicle had long since motored up the track on the side of the hill and disappeared. He had been girding himself for an awkward leave-taking, expecting something uncomfortable in front of the passengers waiting for the ferry. He had thought they’d have a quiet day today, but he’d been sure she’d spend it here. With him.

  His limbs felt numb as a graveled weight settled into his abdomen.

  Unconsciously he found himself searching the grounds for her lissom silhouette. But she wasn’t at the gazebo, or in the swing under the big oak, nor among the rows of grapevines or even taunting him from the rocky outcropping at the beach. Yesterday he’d watched her wander the estate for hours, often looking back at the house. He’d thought she was waiting to see if he’d join her, but he’d been too disturbed by their discussions in the breakfast room. Too stripped of his armor.

  “I don’t want to be your mistress.”

  He hadn’t planned any of that: either the offering of a settlement or a continuation of their arrangement. It had come out of the situation as he’d realized she was setting herself up to be destitute. Shame had weighed on him for his arrogance in cutting her off. Rowan wasn’t a superficial user. She was too sensitive for her own good, putting other’s needs ahead of her own—even people who had deep flaws like her mother and father.

  Pushing away from the window, he strode from his office into her room—only to be brought up by the neatly folded sheets on the foot of her stripped bed. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t that.

  The night table and dresser top were clear. The closet held only hangers. All the drawers were empty. Even the shower had dried to leave no trace of her. The wastebasket was fresh, the long dark hairs shaken from the floor mat and swept away.

  A wild insidious thought occurred that he’d imagined her presence here. The rock music while she had worked, her burbling laugh after a leading remark, the feel of her naked skin against his
… His breath turned to powdered glass in his lungs.

  She’d given her virginity to him. That meant something, didn’t it? She had said she wouldn’t forget him, yet …

  “Damn you, Rowan!” he squeezed out, instantly needing proof of her existence.

  He dragged drawers from their rails and in his impatience tossed their hollow shells to clatter across the hardwood floor. Empty. All empty. With nothing else to throw, he impulsively launched a drawer at the wild-eyed man in the mirror.

  His image shattered in a jarring smash that disintegrated into a glinting pile of shards on the floor.

  He was losing his rationality, but this was more than a man could bear. He’d dealt with the confusing pain of his father shutting him out and his mother walking away without looking back. He’d even met unflinchingly the gaze of his real father when Olief had looked up from smiling with pride at the girl who wasn’t his into the eyes of the man who was.

  All of it had devastated him, but this pain was worse.

  Driven to the master bedroom, he began overturning boxes. One of them must have photos of her. But they held only Cassandra and Olief, nothing of Rowan. No warmth, no affection, no laughter.

  No Rowan.

  She had left him.

  He’d been abandoned. Again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  NIC’S PA blipped into his computer monitor with a message that the auction house was on the phone. He instructed her to tell them to call back next week, not missing the subtle pause before her assent that silently screamed, Again?

  Pushing back from his desk, he moved to the window, where he rubbed the back of his neck. His whole body hurt from long work days and harder evenings in the gym. Blinking to clear the sting from his eyes, he tried to take in the view of Athens, but nothing penetrated.

  He was too aware that if the auction house was calling the week was up for the demolition team, as well. They’d get the same answer, since he couldn’t let anyone into the house while it was in the state he’d left it and he couldn’t face going back to clean up.

  Nicodemus Marcussen, the man who had looked into the wrong end of a rifle twice, not to mention coming face-to-face with a jaguar and surviving a bout of malaria, couldn’t find the courage to do a bit of housekeeping and get on with his life. These days he had a lot of compassion for men like Rowan’s father, who drowned in alcohol to numb the pain of being alive.