Knight And Play

by Kitty French

  Her husband, in an airport with his lover.

  Dan laughing in a bar, draped over his lover.

  Again on a balcony, his naked lover wrapped around him.

  Not wearing his wedding ring.

  Sophie couldn’t breathe, her lungs were suddenly too tight.

  Unable to take her eyes off the screen, her hands flew to her cheeks in shock. After the days she’d just spent with Lucien, she’d forfeited her right to play the victim, yet still her heart shattered into a million pieces at the sight of Dan’s arms wrapped around another woman. She wanted to reach inside the screen and touch his smile, to twist his head away from that woman and make him look her way instead.

  Those were the arms she’d planned to spend the rest of her life in, and his kiss was the only one she’d ever wanted on her lips.

  Tears dampened her cheeks, and a great sob wrenched itself out of her body. Knowing about Dan’s affair was one thing. Having images of it forever burned onto her retinas was another. She dropped her face into her hands and cried her heart out.

  Lucien closed the screen slowly and placed the laptop back on the table beside him. Watching Sophie cry was excruciating. His every instinct was to reach out and hold her. “Sophie… Princess… I’m so sorry.” She flinched when he touched her, and the look in her eyes when she raised her head chilled him to the bone.

  “You’re sorry? Which bit are you sorry for, exactly, Lucien? The bit where you stalked my husband, or the bit where you used my marital problems to get me into bed? Christ, you must think I’m so stupid.” Her words came out in a jumble of tears and shaky breath, but anger held her frame ramrod straight. “You planned this. You knew Dan was cheating, and you saw an opportunity to take something that wasn’t yours.”

  Lucien’s mind scrambled to keep up with Sophie’s train of thought. She’d got it all very, very wrong.

  “Sophie, no.” He reached for her hands but she wrenched them away. “That isn’t what happened…”

  “Really? Because that’s exactly what it looks like from where I’m sitting. Why, Lucien?” She dragged her hands furiously across her cheeks, smearing mascara tear tracks into zig-zags on her face. “Don’t even bother to answer. You’re no better than Dan. You’re worse in fact, because you’re fucking sanctimonious with it.” Sophie’s lip curled. “Is that your thing? Lucien Knight, honourable Viking seducer, ready to swoop in and rescue damsels in distress? Is that it?” Her fists were balled so tightly that her knuckles gleamed white. “Is it?”

  “Yeah. Because I’m a regular Thor.” Lucien’s attempt at levity fell on stony ground. He paused, sighed. “I just wanted to make it better for you, Sophie.”

  Her bitter laugh echoed around the cabin.

  “Well, guess what? I didn’t need your fucked up version of a fairy story to save me.”

  Desolation settled on his shoulders like a weightlifter’s barbell. He couldn’t tell her the truth. He couldn’t say that something about her brittle, defensive answers about her husband at her interview had rung alarm bells in his head, or that he’d been operating on pure instinct when he’d given the order to have Daniel Black investigated. He couldn’t tell her that she’d given him so much more than he’d bargained for over the last week, or that she’d changed his life just as much as he’d changed hers.

  So he shrugged instead, retreating into his habitual cool demeanour. “It’s better that you know. Best that you hold all the cards.”

  “Best?” She sprang out of her seat, backing away from him. “Best?” her voice shook as she opened the bedroom door. “Fuck off, Lucien. I don’t need lessons in love from someone who knows nothing of it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Sophie stared fixedly out of the window as Lucien eased his car to a stop outside her house. It looked somehow unfamiliar and ominous rather than like the haven it used to be. It was a little before ten, and thankfully the street seemed to be treating itself to a Sunday morning lie-in, curtains resolutely closed against the inevitably grey morning. Sophie was grateful. The last thing she wanted was an audience. Lucien in his Aston Martin stood out like a flashing beacon amongst this suburban landscape of paunchy men walking their dogs with family saloons parked on their drives.

  She had no clue what to say to him. The latter part of the flight home had been hellish. After she’d seen the photos of Dan with his mistress, all she’d wanted to do was to run away and scream: instead, she’d been trapped. Lying huddled on the bed, she’d turned the events of the last week over and over in her mind. Everything she’d come to think she knew about Lucien had been wrong. He’d used her. He’d identified her as a vulnerable target and taken advantage of her to get his own sexual kicks.

  “Sophie, I really am sorry.” Lucien’s voice was low and loaded with regret. “Upsetting you was the last thing I wanted to do.”

  She closed her eyes against his empty words. How could he have expected those photos to do anything but hurt her? Except it wasn’t just the photographs of Dan that had hurt. Now, the fresh pain of Lucien’s deceit hurt like hell on top of it all. She’d been a prize fool to let him flatter her into bed. Any last vestige of self-esteem she’d managed to hang onto had dissolved at the thought of how easily she’d been corrupted, of the things she’d allowed to happen.

  “I thought it would help you.”

  “Help me?” She repeated his words slowly, turning them over in her mind. Because they made no sense. “Tell me, please - because I’m dying to know - how did you think showing me pictures of my husband with his mistress would help me, Lucien? Don’t you think that knowing he’s been seeing someone else hurts enough already?”

  He sighed heavily and scrubbed his hands over his face. “I made a mistake.”

  “No, I made the mistake, and I’m sorry.” Sophie heard the quake in her voice but she couldn’t hold it steady. “I’m sorry I ever laid eyes on you.” She shook her head in disgust. “As if it wasn’t bad enough that my husband is having an affair. Now I’ve lost the only advantage I had. I’m as bad as he is.”

  A bitter laugh rattled through her chest. “And you know what makes it even worse, Lucien? At least Dan looks as if he has feelings for her. He might even love her for all I know.” Her voice cracked and fresh tears tumbled uninvited down her cheeks. “What I’ve done is far, far worse. I’ve let some cold, calculating stranger screw me out of revenge.” She choked the words out. “Screw me over, more like.”

  Lucien stared at her, dull-eyed, his golden skin paler than she’d ever seen it.

  “You didn’t do this out of revenge Sophie, you’re so much better than…”

  “Don’t tell me what I am, Lucien,” she cut across him. “You don’t really know me at all, not in any way that matters. I did this to hurt my husband. It could have been anyone. It just happened to be you.”

  “That’s a lie and you know it,” he said, quietly.

  “No, it isn’t. Why pretty it up? You saw me as easy pickings, and I saw you as a way to get my own back. No more, no less.”

  She reached for the door, but his hands clamped around hers.

  “Okay, Ms. Black. You’ve had your say. Now I’d like mine.”

  She stilled because he left her no other option; his hands held her, vice-like.

  “Believe it or not, I really am sorry for showing you those pictures, but I’m not one bit sorry for having sex with you. You are fucking beautiful, Sophie Black, and you needed someone to remind you of it.”

  Sophie met his eyes in silence. Fierce frustration turned his blue irises smoky, and his body angled towards hers was rigid as stone. Only his thumbs moved, sliding over the pulse points of her wrists.

  “You had sadness written all over your face the first day you walked into my office,” he said softly. “I wanted to take it away. ”

  She wanted to look down but his eyes demanded hers. How did he do that? Sincerity came so easily to him, but after this morning she had no way of telling if he was just a damn good liar. Lucien h
ad a way of looking at her that made her want to fall back in to his arms again, but wasn’t that exactly what his clever words were designed to do? To reel her in then make a fool of her?

  “Newsflash, hero. You haven’t made things better. You’ve made them ten times worse.”

  She saw him flinch and tried to pull her hands from his, but he held her fast.

  “Can you tell me you didn’t enjoy all those things we did? Because I know better.”

  He leaned closer, and Sophie stiffened.

  She didn’t want him near her.

  She did want him near her.

  “’I know because I watched your eyes, Sophie. I watched them every time you came, and I didn’t see sadness any more.” His massaging thumbs were driving her crazy. “I saw joy, and I saw beauty. I saw you shine.”

  His raw honesty melted her anger and left her defenseless. She was suddenly tired beyond endurance, and her heart ached with sadness.

  “How exactly was this supposed to end then, Lucien?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “I figured I could screw you happy, I guess.”

  It was up there amongst the craziest, sweetest things Sophie had ever heard. How could someone so devastatingly sexy and masculine be so childlike?

  “And then what? Are you planning to drop down on one knee and declare true love?” Sophie saw his jaw harden and his eyes flicker. “No, I thought not. So, let me guess… I’m supposed to go home and give Dan what for while you move on to rescue the next spurned wife?” A pulse was visible in Lucien’s clenched cheek. “Am I supposed to turn up for work on Monday as if nothing happened?”

  She looked out of the window at the spattering rain. He really hadn’t thought this fairytale thing through. In all the stories she’d loved as a child, the knight didn’t rescue the princess and then hand her right back to the evil prince.

  Lucien opened his mouth to answer when she turned back to him, but then seemed to change his mind and simply shook his head with a resigned half-shrug. It was just as well. There was nothing he could offer in the way of justification.

  “Grow up, Lucien. Life isn’t like that.”

  Lucien didn’t try to hold onto Sophie’s hands when she eased them out of his and opened the door. He stepped out of the car too, cold drizzle dampening his face as he lifted her bag out of the boot.

  He saw how Sophie’s eyes were drawn to her front door. She was obviously desperate to get away from him. He couldn’t blame her. Her cheeks were colourless and her eyes brimmed with regret so poignant that it hurt to look at her.

  “I’ll call you later?” He reached out without hope and touched the sleeve of her cherry red coat.

  She shook her head, dashing the back of her hand across her eyes.

  “Come to work tomorrow,” he tried again, unable to keep the edge of urgency out of his voice. He needed to see her soon, just to know that she’d made it through whatever she now had to face with Dan.

  “I can’t, Lucien,” she whispered. “You know I can’t.”

  He touched his fingers against her cheek, wet with tears and rain.

  “I don’t want to leave you like this.”

  “You’re not leaving me.” Her voice steadied as she took the bag from him and stepped back. “I’m leaving you.”

  Lucien shoved his hands through his hair as he watched her go.

  He’d screwed up.

  What the fuck had he been thinking?

  He should never have showed her those photographs. He’d have given anything to go back and change the last few hours. The pain in Sophie’s eyes when she’d been confronted with the technicolour truth had all but torn his heart out of his body.

  He now knew how his mother’s face must have looked when she’d walked in on his father bent over his secretary: he’d felt like a bastard watching Sophie crumple.

  A heavy sigh escaped him as he glanced at her resolutely closed door. She’d crossed back into her own world.

  He thumped his fists down hard on the steering wheel as he climbed back into the driver’s seat. He’d intended to send her into battle ready to rip her fuck-wit of a husband to shreds, but his shock-jock brand of pep talk had backfired badly. She wasn’t battle-ready. Sophie was battered and broken before she’d even stepped into the ring, and it was all his fault.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Sophie walked through the cold, silent rooms of her house, still wearing her coat and carrying her weekend bag with the air of a visiting hotel guest.

  She remembered the first time she and Dan had viewed the house, six months before their wedding. They’d fallen head over heels for it the moment they’d walked through the door. It wasn’t the biggest or the flashiest, but they could make it into the perfect nest for two - or three, given time - Dan had grinned to the estate agent.

  The black marble work surface in the kitchen was cool beneath her fingers. It had been beyond their modest budget really, but Dan had broken the bank to get it because Sophie had loved it so much.

  She paused in the living room to study the photograph of them, taken on their wedding day. It wasn’t the best photo of Sophie, but she’d awarded it pride of place because it had captured a smile of pure joy on Dan’s face. Looking at it now, all she could see was that same smile on a different photo, being bestowed upon another woman.

  In the bedroom, she dropped her bag on the end of the neatly made bed and perched awkwardly beside it. Of all the rooms in the house, this one felt by far the most foreboding.

  Had Dan ever brought that woman here?

  Had they made love in her bed?

  Sophie stood up at the unsavoury thought and unbuttoned her cherry red coat slowly, then unzipped her bag. She needed to unpack, to wash Norway and Lucien Knight out of her clothes and her mind.

  She shook out her best dress and held it against her. It needed to be dry cleaned to remove the flecks of creamy pannacotta that stood out starkly against the black silk. Sophie gripped the dress, winded by the memory of last night in Lucien’s dining room. Had it really been less than twenty-four hours ago? It felt like a lifetime.

  When she reached down into her bag again, her fingers bumped against something she didn’t expect to find there. Something hard. She frowned and pushed the clothes aside, then gasped softly. A shallow, black box about the length of a shoebox lay at the bottom of her bag. A box with the all too familiar Knight Inc. logo engraved in gunmetal grey on the top.

  Sophie sucked in a sharp breath and sat down again. What was inside? She drew it out and balanced it carefully on her knees. It was heavier than she’d expected, and she was sure that whatever it held wouldn’t help her to put Lucien out of her head. She should hide it in the bottom of her wardrobe without looking inside. Or even better, throw it straight into the bin.

  She opened the box.

  Her fingers shook as she peeled back the crisp black tissue paper within. A card lay on top, thick, creamy and inscribed with Lucien’s bold black handwriting.

  Your three wishes.

  9am on Monday.

  Be there.

  Lucien

  Sophie knew exactly what lay amongst the folds of the tissue paper, but withdrew the objects one by one anyway.

  A wisp of black lace and silk.

  The heavy silver acorn, suddenly duller and tawdry.

  The aurora glass dildo, robbed of its rainbows and glitter by the oppressive London skies and Sophie’s mood.

  They all looked so ordinary, so mundane, here in her orderly bedroom. Maybe Lucien had been the magician whose touch had brought them to life. As she sighed and folded back the tissue to return them to their box, something else caught her eye nestled at the bottom.

  She picked up the small, gold velvet box, vintage, if the well-loved condition of the fabric was any indicator. Soft and worn, Sophie knew instantly that somebody had cherished its contents enough to hold it often.

  Her fingers curled over the edges and clutched it tightly. Warm and tactile in her palm, Sophie could only wo
nder at what lay inside, and why Lucien had wanted her to have it.

  She unfurled her fingers and lifted the hinged lid slowly. A folded slip of paper fluttered onto her lap, then she saw that inside the box lay a delicate gold bracelet, its links interspersed every now and then with a small round jewel. Each diamond flashed aurora-bright as she held it up to the light to study it. She caught her breath. It was stunning, as if someone had reached up and captured tiny flecks of the brilliant Norwegian night sky.

  But it wasn’t just the beauty of the bracelet that mesmerised her. Sophie recognised it. She’d seen it once before.

  Or rather she’d seen a photograph of someone wearing it.

  Lucien’s mother. It had been around her wrist in the photograph on Lucien’s desk.

  Sophie held back the tears that threatened to start again as she looked at the delicate, treasured jewels. The sex toys had been unexpected, but she wasn’t really surprised to have found them there.

  But this… why? It must be precious to him. She laid the bracelet carefully back in its box and reached for the note.

  Another strong and beautiful woman loved this very much. May it always remind you how big the world is, and that you always have a choice.

  Remember, Princess.

  L x

  Sophie read the words over again and shook her head gently. Just when she thought she had Lucien Knight all figured out, he turned right around and did something so unashamedly romantic that she wished he was there so she could look into his eyes and see the truth he wouldn’t have been able to hide.

  She fastened the clasp of the bracelet around her wrist, watching as the tiny stones cast rainbow shades on her skin. And then, second by second, minute by minute, Sophie simply sat and remembered.

  She remembered vast kaleidoscope skies, snow-capped mountains, and glittering fjords.

  She remembered warm fur at her back, and cold champagne on her tongue. And she remembered the dark, intricate lone wolf that slumbered across the beautiful shoulders of the man who’d taken the time to shown her how big the world truly is.