“Lady? Where you wanna go?”
To a hotel, but not to the one she’d stayed at with Chay. Still, it was the only name she could come up with.
So she told the cabby to take her there, and when she got to the front desk, she asked for a room. Not the kind she’d shared with Chay. She couldn’t afford that, and she didn’t want to be assailed by memories.
The clerk smiled. Nodded. Checked her in.
“Have a pleasant stay, Ms. Wilde,” he said, and smiled again. “I remember you from a couple of weeks ago, and it’s my pleasure to have given you an upgrade.”
• • •
Oh, God! It was the same room.
The exact same room. The room she’d shared with Chayton.
The bellman hoisted her suitcase onto the luggage stand. Played with the blinds, the lights, the thermostat, until finally Bianca tuned in, took out her wallet and handed him a five dollar bill.
Then, mercifully, he left.
And she was alone with her memories. With Chay.
And wasn’t that foolish? Any number of guests had stayed here since then. The room had been dusted. Cleaned. Vacuumed. There was nothing of him in it.
She sank down on the edge of the bed. The bed where they’d first really made love.
He was still here. If she shut her eyes, she could see him. That beautifully masculine face. That hard, work-toned body. She could hear his voice, feel his hands on her…
A choked sound burst from her throat.
“Chayton,” Bianca whispered, and that was when the tears finally came.
• • •
By the time she showed up at the office Monday morning, she’d made a lot of progress.
She’d left a message for the head of the psych department explaining, briefly and succinctly, that she would be happy to come in to meet with him to determine whether she needed to arrange for a new adviser or not.
She’d gone online to StreetEasy and to Craigslist and found at least five apartments that looked as if they might work.
She’d found a moving company, also online, with a price list for packing and moving. Even at the room rate the hotel clerk had given her, she wouldn’t be able to stay here more than a couple of weeks. She needed an apartment, and a job.
Finding a job would be harder.
In fact, it might be really hard. Who knew what the people in her tight little academic world were saying about what had happened to her? None of it was her fault, but she knew that didn’t always matter.
In that same way, she had no idea how she’d be greeted at East Side Associates.
With caution, was the answer.
Lacey hugged her and led her into the conference room. There were cupcakes and bagels on the side table, coffee and tea. Someone—probably Lacey—had put up a sign that said Welcome Home! Her colleagues applauded and cheered and said things like We’re so happy to see you and What a terrible ordeal for you to have gone through. They used words like shocked and stunned and they all said they were so, so sorry this had happened, that no one could have possibly anticipated it, that they were sure it must have been devastating…
Then the room fell silent.
People looked at each other. At the walls. The table. The ceiling. At the new guy in charge, who kept moving his mouth as if he were chewing on words he knew he had to spew, sooner or later.
Bianca decided to make things easy.
“Well,” she said briskly, “I want to thank you for this lovely welcome. And to tell you that I hope you’ll understand when I say I think it’s important for us all that I move on.”
Nobody even tried to say Please don’t, although Carl, the new man in charge, said he’d be happy to give her the highest possible recommendations.
Life in the fast lane, she thought, and then she told herself to keep it polite and pleasant, to shake the eagerly outstretched hands of her colleagues—her former colleagues—and exit stage left before she said something she would end up regretting.
• • •
By the following Monday, she had a job.
It wasn’t exactly what she’d have chosen if she had the time to choose, but it was a good job. She’d be working in a school. A private school, where she figured most of the kids’ problems would be the kind that involved unhappiness over having to drive an Audi rather than a Sting Ray, but you never knew.
School started in another few weeks. Until then, to tide her over financially, she’d taken a job as a waitress. She’d waited on tables as an undergrad and she still remembered the right moves. The restaurant was not a fancy one, but it was near Times Square, so there was lots of tourist turnover and the tips were good. Between the tips and small, cautious withdrawals from her savings account, she figured she’d be okay until her job actually began.
She still needed an apartment.
She’d seen the places from Craigslist and StreetEasy. Three had been disappointments unless you were into having mice as roommates, but two others seemed fine—if she could snare one.
One landlord was away on vacation, but as soon as he got back, he’d let her know if she could have the place, or so his office said. The other landlord had a problem going, a “little” tenant eviction issue he was working out.
So she was still living at the hotel.
Still sleeping in the bed she’d slept in with Chay.
Still showering in the stall they’d showered in together.
Still having her meals at the table near the window, except her meals were from a Chinese takeout down the block and the McD’s around the corner. She came home after work, changed into jeans or sweats or shorts, then headed out, bought her meal and smuggled it in—this wasn’t the kind of hotel where you felt comfortable doing fast-food or takeout—but she couldn’t afford room service, and besides, there just was something depressing about ordering from a fancy menu and having a server wheel in a cart when you were eating all by yourself.
One evening, she got back to the hotel, kicked off her shoes, changed into her sweats and decided it was time she did the thing she’d been avoiding.
She had to phone her sister.
Alessandra was surely trying to reach her on a phone that no longer existed.
Okay. No moo goo gai pan tonight.
She called room service and kept her order simple. It was a logical way to avoid overspending and feeling down about eating alone, and all in one easy action.
Bianca ordered a tuna salad. Tomato juice. And a pot of coffee.
“Twenty minutes,” room service said.
Bianca said that would be fine. Then she took a deep breath and called her sister.
Alessandra’s reaction to hearing her voice was close to explosive.
“Bianca! Where in hell have you been?”
“Hello to you too,” Bianca said, but the touch of sarcasm was lost on her sister.
“Did you fall off the face of the earth? When I could not reach you on your phone, I telephoned your office.”
Bianca sat down and rubbed her hand over her forehead. “And?”
“And what? The receptionist told me that you had taken a vacation. A vacation? But you took one only a couple of months ago, when you met us in Texas. Bianca. What is going on?”
“Nothing is going on,” Bianca said. “I am fine. I merely took a vacation. Must I inform you each time that I…” She groaned. “Mannaggia, A! Listen to us. Both of us speaking in stilted English as if we got off the boat only yesterday.”
Alessandra laughed. “You are correct. Merda! What I mean is, you’re right. We’re both upset. B. The truth. Did you really just go on vacation?”
Bianca thought about her answer. Tell Alessandra that she’d been the victim of a stalker? That a mentally ill man had terrorized her? That he’d tried to kill her?
That was not a conversation to have
over the phone.
“B? Tell me the truth! I know something is wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Bianca said. And then, because she knew Alessandra wouldn’t give up until she had an answer, she took a breath and said, “I went away with Chayton Olivieri.”
She could almost hear her sister’s jaw hit the floor.
“You did what?”
“I went away with him.”
“But—but—but—”
“You sound like a motorboat. Is this so difficult to understand? We were attracted to each other that night in California. He came east. He contacted me. We went out. And, you know, we got together.”
“Does Tanner know? He couldn’t, or he’d have told me.”
“Dio, what does your husband have to do with this? Honestly, Alessandra—“
There was a knock at the door.
“A. I have to go.”
“Go where? I want to know more. This makes no sense, Bianca. You said you didn’t like Chay…”
The knock sounded again.
“Alessandra, I’ll call you tomorrow. Right now, I have to go.”
Bianca ended the call. Grabbed her tote bag, fished in it for her wallet. Charging the meal to her room was one thing, but she knew tips were shared by the service staff and she always felt bad about that, so she liked to give whoever delivered the meal something for him or her alone.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Mannaggia! “I’m coming,” she called out. “Just one second!”
Except, when she flung open the door, it wasn’t room service.
It was Chay.
• • •
Great.
Bianca was staring at him as if he were an apparition.
Or a bad dream.
He couldn’t blame her. He’d caught the first flight he could and, dammit, that meant changing planes not once, not twice, but three times. Three fucking times. In three fucking time zones. The last plane, he’d ended up in a seat so cramped his knees had been up around his chin until one of the flight attendants took pity on him and quietly moved him into an empty seat in first class.
And he probably looked like shit.
No shower. No shave. Not today, or whatever constituted today after all those hours in the air. Not yesterday, either. Probably not yesterday.
By yesterday, he’d pretty much given up on anything to do with being civilized or, hell, anything to do with being human.
Now he was here, and crap, this might have been the worst idea he’d ever had. The way she was looking at him…
God.
He didn’t want her to look at him that way. As if he were the last man on earth she’d ever want to see.
“Chay?”
Her voice was soft. Full of bewilderment. Why? How come she hadn’t thrown herself into his arms? All the way here, he’d imagined her doing just that…
Hell.
No.
Not all the way here.
Only last night. Or, fuck, the night before. Or whenever it was he’d finally said Enough, climbed on his Harley, done better than ninety getting to the airport.
She loved him.
She had to love him.
One week and three days or whatever it was of rethinking what had gone down when she left him had convinced him that she’d been wrong to leave him.
Or maybe, okay, maybe he’d been wrong to let her go.
Whatever. She loved him.
At least that was what he’d figured until he was jammed into that last little seat, until he’d moved out of that little seat, stretched out his legs, had time to think, and that was when the doubts had set in. Maybe he’d read everything wrong, the way she used to look at him, touch him, kiss him, even the way she used to say his name, Chayton…
The possibility was more than he could take. It was agony, and the only way to survive the pain was to turn it into something else.
Anger.
“Goddammit,” he growled, “did you really just open this door without checking to see who was there?”
She swallowed. “I—I thought you were room service.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not.”
“No,” she whispered, “no, you are not.”
The elevator gave a soft ping. Chay looked down the corridor. Shit. Room service. The guy was wearing an abbreviated version of a monkey suit. He looked foolish, but compared with him, Chay figured he probably looked like day-old dog poop.
“Leave it,” Chay snapped, when the guy reached the door.
“But, sir—”
Chay pulled out his wallet. Took out a bunch of bills. Handed them over.
“Leave it,” he said again.
The guy looked at Bianca. What could she do but nod in agreement? “Yes,” she said, “please just leave it.”
The room service guy turned away. Chay ignored the cart. So did Bianca. He stepped forward. She stepped aside. He moved straight past her. She hesitated, and then she closed the door and looked at him.
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you think I’m doing here?”
Her hand went to her throat. “I do not—I do not know. I have no conception of what you are doing here.”
“You mean, you have no concept of what I’m doing here.”
“Si. That is what I said. I have no conception of what you are doing here. I cannot imaginate a reason.”
“Jesus! It’s imagine, not imaginate…” Wait. Her speech was stilted. Her words were wrong. And she was trembling. He didn’t want to see her tremble, but for a man reduced to reading signs, that was another good one.
Maybe there was hope.
“Please,” she said. “Answer my question. Why are you here?”
He took a long, unsteady breath. The only way to deal with fear was to face it.
“I’m here to see you.”
“But why?” she said. “Why would you want to see me, Chayton?”
Chayton. She had called him Chayton.
“Bianca,” he said softly.
“Why? You have to tell me why. Because we said goodbye, do you remember? We said—we said we were done, that whatever had happened was over, that there was no more…”
He covered the distance between them in a couple of strides.
“Bianca,” he whispered and then, just as he’d dared to dream, she was in his arms.
He kissed her mouth. Her throat. Her mouth again. He clasped her face in his hands and said her name, over and over, and her taste, her sweet taste, filled him.
She was weeping.
But, Christ, so was he. Except—except, that was impossible. Men didn’t cry. They never cried…
“Honey,” he whispered, “sweetheart, I love you.”
She laughed. She dug her hands into the hair at the nape of his neck, rose on her toes and pressed her open mouth to his.
“Say it again, Chayton. Tell me.”
“I love you,” he said. “I adore you. I can’t lose you. I won’t lose you! Tell me it’s the same for you, baby. Say the words.”
“Chayton. Il mio amore. Ti amo. Ti adoro. Ti desidero.” Her eyes met his. “I love you. I adore you. I want you.”
Could you laugh and cry at the same time? “But you left me.”
“I didn’t think there was room in your life for me.”
“Baby.” Chay kissed her again. “I have no life without you.”
“Your career…”
“We’ll find a way to make it work. If you can handle me flying back and forth, you flying back and forth…”
“It would be simpler if we were both on one coast,” she said softly.
A muscle knotted in his jaw. He’d given that a lot of thought. And, hell, if it came down to that…
“Bianca.” He slid his h
ands into her hair, tilted her face to his. “I’ll give it up if I have to. STUD. If that’s what it takes—”
She put her fingers across his lips.
“Foolish man,” she whispered. “That last night we were in your beautiful house, watching that beautiful sun fall into that beautiful sea…”
He laughed. Kissed her. She smiled, though her eyes were still filled with tears.
“That night,” she said, “ I was going to tell you that I had made a decision.” She took a deep breath. Despite everything he’d just said, this—what she was about to say—might be more than he was prepared to hear. Then she thought of what he had told her, that the only way to deal with fear was to face it. And she knew that if ever there’d been a time to take that advice, it was now. “That night,” she said, “I was going to tell you that I was ready to give up my job. Move to Santa Barbara. Make a life with you.”
He didn’t say anything. He just looked at her.
Had she said too much? She could hardly breathe. Because if he didn’t love her as she loved him, if he didn’t want her forever and ever and ever…
“Bianca,” he said. His voice was gruff. Raw. But his eyes were full of tenderness, and the hands that cupped her face were gentle. “Bianca, my love, will you marry me?”
Bianca laughed.
And said, “Yes.”
EPILOGUE
El Sueño, the Wilde ranch in Texas, a late August weekend
Chay had not thought about weddings.
For starters, he was male. And he’d never even imagined himself married.
Bianca hadn’t thought about weddings either. She knew that some girls grew up planning their weddings, but she’d never been one of them. Finding a man, getting married—those things hadn’t been on her To Do list.
Not at all
So, when Alessandra said, You just let us plan everything, Bianca and Chay figured, Why not?
Tanner, overhearing the long-distance conversation, had snorted.
“Dude?” Chay had said, and after some incomprehensible whispers on the other end of the phone, Tanner had cleared his throat and said it had certainly worked out well for him and Alessandra.
Which turned out to mean the wedding was, well, kind of a production.
Privilege: Special Tactical Units Division: Book Two Page 27