by Julia James
If I’d never warned her about her insanely unachievable political ambitions...! If I’d never thrown in her face just why they were so impossible...! Then Celeste would never have known why I ended it with Madeline...
And if she had never known then she would never have told me about herself. The punishing logic tolled through his head. He felt his stomach clench. And if she hadn’t—?
I would have never walked out on her. And she would still be with me.
Pain stabbed at him. He knew what he had lost.
But if she had never told him about herself—never confessed her past to him—then they would have been living a lie...a lie of silence by her. After wrenching Madeline out of his life, as he had made himself do, there had been times when he’d cursed her for telling him about what she had done—just as he was now so torn about Celeste’s confession to him.
But what he had felt about Madeline, about ending everything with her, was nothing to what he felt now. How could it be?
For, whatever he had once felt about Madeline, never at any time had he felt anything at all of what he had come to feel for Celeste.
I never fell in love with Madeline...
The words formed and shaped and burned in his head. Burning through his flesh...burning through his heart.
Lucien had finished his speech and the audience was breaking up, the proceedings becoming informal now. Rafael watched Lucien being approached by two influential fashion directors who were smiling enthusiastically. Rafael started to mingle, doing his bit, but a few minutes later Lucien was at his side.
‘I was so sorry to find that Celeste was not here,’ he said. ‘I had hoped she would be.’
Rafael gave a reply that he hoped was not too clipped—something about her working in Europe at the moment.
‘I was hoping she would be here,’ Lucien went on to say, ‘so that she could take her pick from the collection. I wanted to give her whichever she liked best.’ He looked at Rafael. ‘I will not forget her kindness to me when Madeline Walters gatecrashed. It is so rare to find kindness and beauty together.’
‘Yes,’ said Rafael, ‘it is.’
Saying more than that was not possible. He moved the conversation on—away from the dagger in his heart that was Celeste.
But as more people came up to Lucien, keen to speak to him, and Rafael stepped aside to let them, Lucien’s words echoed in his head.
‘I will not forget her kindness...’
In his memory he saw the scene again—Celeste going up to Lucien, intervening, diverting him from Madeline’s scornful boasts of sales and profit. She’d seen his distress and taken action.
Another memory played inside his head. Just as she’d taken action when she’d seen the hapless Louise in Karl Reiner’s toils. She hadn’t hesitated—just marched straight up, got Louise out of the danger she was in. She’d cared enough about someone she hardly knew to risk making a scene, risk the anger of a powerful and influential man in her industry.
Madeline wouldn’t have done that. Madeline would have laughed—found it amusing to see Louise’s drink spiked. Or she would have simply shrugged and said the girl was an idiot. Rafael’s eyes darkened. Or she’d have said she was smart—doing the right thing. Getting on the good side of a man who could help her career.
But she would no more have dreamt of intervening, of rescuing Louise, than she would have dreamt of caring a cent for the feelings of a man whose company she had bought out from under his nose, then trampled on his pride and kicked him scornfully into the dust.
Words sounded in his head. Celeste’s voice...
‘I am just like Madeline!’
His eyes blazed. Fists clenched suddenly. She was nothing like Madeline! He had hurled that at her and she’d refuted it, spewing out the sordid, unbearable reason for their alikeness...
His face contorted.
And is that it? Is that all she has to prove their similarity?
Memory of that hideous evening stabbed again—memory of him trying desperately to argue that she had been too young...that she’d been exploited and taken advantage of...that she must surely regret what she had done...
But she’d refuted that, too.
‘No—I don’t regret it.’
Her voice—so very clear, so very insistent.
His voice now, in his head, just as insistent.
It doesn’t make sense!
The words forced themselves into his head, repeating themselves. It doesn’t make sense!
Because it didn’t. It couldn’t. What Celeste had told him about what she had done—that she had just wanted quick, easy money and had no regrets about how she’d got it!—matched nothing else that he knew about her!
She’d turned down renewing her lucrative contract with Reiner Visage because she’d refused to give Karl Reiner what he wanted—sex in exchange for another year’s contract! She’d refused to prostitute herself for her career—for easy money...
How did that match with what she had confessed to him?
Nothing he knew about her matched with her confession!
Memory blazed through him like a forest fire, igniting the undergrowth, ripping through his consciousness. Nothing in any memory of her until that last painful confession bore any indication at all that she could justify that insistence of hers! It was the one jarring note in everything he knew about her!
Making no sense at all.
He stilled. Like an unbearably slow gear wheel turning, his mind worked. The cogs of logic twisted, bringing up into his consciousness the one blazing truth that proved beyond all things just how much her insistence that she was like Madeline simply made no sense. How much it was a lie—must be a lie!
If she has no regrets for what she did, then why was she living a celibate life? Why had she cut herself off from all relationships with men? Why was she so obviously haunted and traumatised by her past? Why was it so painfully hard for her to come to trust me—to give herself to me—to accept me in her life?
He stood stock-still, feeling winded by the realisation. All around him people seemed to be moving like an inchoate sea, but he was alone in it. Slowly, clankingly, the wheels of logic turned again.
Madeline had no regrets—and she lived a life that showed it! A life that gave her her fill of affairs, of revelling in her sexual appetites!
Yet Celeste had withdrawn totally from that side of her existence. Shown extreme reluctance—every sign of trauma...
And that could mean only one thing—
She must regret what she did! She must! Or she would be as brazen as Madeline!
But why would she lie about it?
It can’t be the truth—it can’t! If she had no regrets, if she didn’t care about what she’d done, then she would not have lived the lonely, passionless life she has...
Yet what reason could there be for lying about something that had destroyed everything they had together? Smashing to pieces all that was between them?
With infinite slowness the wheel inside his head made one last turn. If Celeste were not lying about regretting what she had done, even though what she had done had so clearly traumatised her, then there was only one other explanation for her insistence...
Only one.
Without conscious awareness he started to walk out of the crowded room. His hand slid inside his jacket pocket. Took out his mobile. He had calls to make. Urgent calls upon which his entire future happiness depended.
I have to be right about this! I have to be!
Desperation filled him. Mingled with the most precious quality in all the world. Hope—to which he clung with all his strength.
* * *
Celeste was packing. Not for another modelling assignment abroad, but to leave London. For good. She didn’t know where she was going to go. She wa
s just going. She’d let her flat, furnished, and tenants were moving in after the weekend. An agency would deal with them—deal with everything that came up. Her clothes and personal effects were locked away, and she’d cleaned the flat scrupulously. Now she just had to finish packing the case she was taking with her. Summer clothes, for somewhere warm, because she was cold to her very bones...
She wasn’t going to stay in the UK—not even now that spring was finally approaching. She’d done the fashion weeks for this time of year and then had quit her agency.
Her last act had been to leave an encouraging card for Louise, to wish her luck in the career that was taking shape for her. Not that she needed any luck—she was doing well and, Celeste had been glad to see, was dating someone from outside the fashion world. Someone who was six foot two and played rugby—quite enough to take on the likes of Karl Reiner or similar, who might be intending to exploit Louise. Louise had wised up fast, and was pretty good at taking care of herself now.
She’d be OK from now on, Celeste knew.
And so will I—somehow!
How, she didn’t know, because right now it was impossible to imagine being ‘OK’ by any definition of the word—unless it included ‘functioning like an automaton’. But at least she was functioning, she thought. Functioning sufficiently to have done everything required to get to this point, where all she had to do was close her suitcase, pick up her handbag with her passport in it and head for the airport.
Where she would go precisely she wasn’t yet sure. She might try Spain—it was cheap enough to live there prudently for a while, on her savings and the rental income from her flat, and it was warm. Then she frowned. No, of course she wouldn’t go to Spain. She would hear Spanish spoken there, and that would remind her of Rafael...
There must be somewhere else. She ought to have thought about it earlier, but she hadn’t wanted to. Thinking about it would have required planning, commitment, envisaging the future. And she couldn’t do that. The future had stopped. Stopped when Rafael had turned his back on her and walked out through the door...
So where else is warm this time of year? Warm and not Spanish-speaking?
She made herself think, because thinking of somewhere warm to go at this time of year was better than thinking about Rafael turning his back on her and walking out of her life...
Where was it warm now? Where did people go to get away from the UK?
Dubai was popular—and very warm—everywhere in the Gulf was warm...
The guillotine slammed down in her head. She would be dead before she ever went to the Gulf again...
Frantically she thought of somewhere else. Where was it summer now?
Australia?
The guillotine slammed down again.
With a smothered cry, she seized up her bag. She would find somewhere warm to go when she got to the airport. Who cared where? She didn’t. She would never care about anything again.
Or anyone...
Pain clamped around her heart, but she ignored it. She always ignored it. There was nothing else to do but ignore it. And keep functioning. That was important.
And finding somewhere warm, even though her bones were cold...so very cold...
The entry bell to the house sounded. Her taxi had arrived. She picked up her suitcase. Her keys. The agent already had keys to give to the tenants. She looked around her bedroom one last time but could feel nothing. She was too cold to feel anything. Carrying her suitcase, she went into her little hallway and buzzed open the front door, to show the taxi driver she knew he was there. Then she put on her coat, busying herself doing it up because it would be chilly outside. Then she opened her flat door, casting one last look around, in case there was something she had missed.
But there was nothing. Nothing left of her.
Nothing left of her anywhere.
She stepped out onto the landing, moving to pull her flat door shut behind her.
And stopped dead.
Rafael was coming up the last flight of stairs towards her.
* * *
She couldn’t move. Could not move a muscle. This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening. It could not be happening...
Yet there he was, striding across the short outer landing right up to her door, right up to her. She opened her mouth to protest. To protest that this could not be happening, that it was impossible. That he’d walked out of her flat long, nightmare months ago and could never return...
He took her shoulders and she saw by the sweep of his eyes that he’d seen her suitcase. A flashing frown showed on his brow, but he simply manoeuvred her back inside her hallway, picking up the suitcase as though it was a feather and depositing it inside, then turned to shut the flat door.
‘I want to talk to you—’
His voice was deep, harsh. His eyes burned as they ground into hers.
She felt faint, dizzy. Heard him saying more.
‘I have to talk to you!’
There was still harshness in his voice, but there was more, too—a powerful, urgent emotion that impelled him forward so that she had to step backwards, back into her living room. She took another stumbling step away from his grip, which was burning through the layer of her coat to the skin beneath.
His rapid, sweeping glance was traversing the room, seeing its bareness—there was nothing of her there any more, no books or ornaments, only furniture and curtains. The flashing frown came again, and his eyes returned to her.
‘Where are you going?’ he demanded. ‘The empty flat, the suitcase...’
She found her voice. Finally forced her strangled throat to open.
‘I’m leaving,’ she said. ‘I’ve rented out my flat and I’m going abroad.’
Emotion knifed through him. She had so nearly disappeared again!
I got here just in time.
‘Where?’ he heard his voice demanding.
‘I don’t know...’ She spoke almost randomly, unable to force her mind into coherent thought. Because her mind was not working at all. It had been overwhelmed by emotion. Emotion that was pouring through her like scalding water.
I can’t bear to see him again—I can’t bear it!
To see him here again, in the flesh, in physical reality instead of just in the dreams that had tormented her, slain her, all these long months since he had gone, was unbearable.
‘Well,’ he said, and there was something different in his voice now, beneath the harshness that was still in it, ‘how about Australia? After all...’ and now his eyes had changed, too ‘...you have dual UK-Australian citizenship—’
She paled. ‘How...how do you know?’
But that wasn’t really the question she was asking.
Why did he know?
His eyes pinioned hers, as dark, as heavy as basalt. ‘I know a lot about you, Celeste. A lot more than I did. Which is why...’ he took a heavy, searing breath ‘...why I have to talk to you.’
She was shaking her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No.’
His hands came onto her shoulders again. ‘Yes, Celeste,’ he said. His voice was different again, and something in it made her throat constrict.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
He pressed her shoulders, not roughly but insistently, and her knees buckled. With a jerk she sat down on the sofa, indenting the cushions she’d lined up so neatly, ready for her tenant to find a pristine flat. He sat down heavily at the far end. There was empty space between them. Yet it seemed to her that there was a force field emanating from him that was holding her in a traction she could not escape. She had to try—
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a taxi coming.’
Even as she spoke the entry phone went again. She tried to rise, but Rafael was before her. He strode out to her hallway and she heard him press the intercom, he
ard him dismiss the taxi, then stride back in again. He stood there a moment, looking down at her. So tall, so overpowering...
She couldn’t breathe, but she had to. Had to go on breathing in and breathing out, even though her mind had left her body. She could not think or speak—could do nothing except sit there, like a bag of nerveless bones, on her sofa.
Slowly, deliberately, he sat himself back down. He looked at her as she sat, clutching her handbag as if it were a breathing aid.
‘You’re too thin,’ he said abruptly, his eyes sweeping over her critically. ‘Far too thin.’
She said nothing. What did it matter what she looked like? What did anything matter at all? What could it matter ever again?
He was speaking to her and she had to hear him—had to let the words reach her ears though she tried to block them. But it was impossible. They penetrated every last desperate layer of her defence.
His voice was sombre, carrying a weight in it that seemed to bow and bend his words.
‘It took me a long, long time to realise something, Celeste. But eventually it dawned on me—I realised what it was that was wrong about what you said to me. You said...’ he spoke with incised deliberation ‘...that you did not regret what you did when you were seventeen, that you had no regrets even now, as an adult.’
He took a breath. It was time to say what he had flown here to say. Time to stake all his future happiness, his very reason for being, on what he said next.
‘There are only two reasons why someone would say that.’ His eyes were on her, like a beam of laser light she could not escape. ‘Either it’s because, like Madeline, they’re perfectly happy with their behaviour—see nothing wrong in it, nothing to object to, no big deal.’ He paused. ‘Or one other reason.’
His eyes shifted a moment, gazing out into nowhere, then came back to her. ‘Tell me...how do you happen to have dual citizenship?’
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to.
‘Your father was Australian,’ Rafael said. ‘You were born there. But your mother was English, and when your father died you came back to the UK, grew up here. When you were seventeen you went back again, and stayed there for several years, only returning when you were twenty.’ He paused again—a longer pause. His eyes never left her.