by BETH KERY
Impulsive. Impetuous. Self-indulgent.
Tears stung her eyes as she pulled out her suitcase. It hadn’t been long ago that Lucien had packed it for her there in that rundown hovel where she’d been staying. Where would she stay now? She knew she should make plans, but a pressure seemed to be pushing down on her chest, a weight of grief, making the ability to make such a huge decision seem like an utter impossibility.
She tossed item after item into her suitcase, straining to keep control, but increasingly seeing the interior of Lucien’s luxurious suite through a film of tears.
Impulsive. Impetuous. Self-indulgent. The words kept repeating in her head like a bully’s chant.
She sunk onto the edge of the bed and shuddered with grief. It was the first time she’d wept since Lucien had left Chicago. She’d even been reckless in falling in love, doing so deeply. Irrevocably. Now she’d done it, and there was no going back—only forward, into a future that looked bleak and lonely without Lucien.
But she’d learned something about herself since coming to Chicago, hadn’t she? She was a hard worker. She had a passion for cooking. And despite everything that had happened recently, she still felt that newly found kernel of strength in herself—impossible to deny or ignore.
She wouldn’t fold. She would endure. No matter how difficult that might be.
Wiping off her face with the back of her hand, she stood and continued with her packing, determined to proceed one minute at a time. One second, if need be. Plans needed to be made, and they would be. No matter how hollow she felt on the inside.
* * *
The penthouse had a flat, lifeless quality to it when Lucien opened the front door the next day. It was early in the morning on a Sunday. He hadn’t slept except for a few hours on the plane, and his eyes were gritty from exhaustion. It’d been a heart-wrenching past few days, watching Ian and his grandparents at Helen’s side, seeing her fade from this life ever so slowly.
He’d left as soon as he’d assured himself he’d done everything he could. He had an overwhelming desire to look upon Elise’s luminous face . . . to find solace in her vibrant presence.
If he had to guess, he’d say the penthouse was empty. Perhaps she’d gone for a run?
Anxiety built in him as he walked back to the bedroom suite to check and make sure his assumption was correct. Sure enough, the large bed was empty and made—a very depressing sight after his increasingly frequent fantasies of finding Elise in it, warm, soft, and pliable from sleep.
His brow furrowed as he examined the master suite. It looked entirely too neat. Elise wasn’t messy by any means, but she usually left signs of her presence—a magazine or book on the bedside table, a scarf tossed across a chair . . .
. . . her grand-mère’s brush on the vanity cabinet in the bathroom.
He strode to the bathroom in search of that telltale evidence. He saw no brush, nor did he see Elise’s bottle of perfume that used to sit next to his cologne. None of her personal belongings to which he’d become accustomed were there.
Alarm rushed through him, potent and jarring.
“Elise?” he bellowed. He quickly checked the living room, kitchen, dining room, extra bedroom, and den. All empty.
She was gone. An icy chill went through him. He’d half worried that she might be disgusted by what she’d learned at Ian’s penthouse the other night. She’d certainly seemed awkward and uncomfortable when they had briefly spoken on the phone, and she hadn’t called him once while he was in London. He knew they needed to talk, but he felt the uselessness and hollowness of doing it via the phone, so he’d just sent her messages to keep her updated. They’d talk face-to-face once he returned.
He hadn’t believed things were so bad that she’d leave. But maybe it wasn’t her discomfort about Trevor Gaines? Maybe she was angry because he hadn’t confided the full truth to her?
He’d always preached to her about honesty after all, he recalled grimly.
He pocketed the keys he’d set on a table in the living room and headed for the front door, already drawing his phone out of his jacket. He’d find her, he thought, his moment of panic giving way to grim determination. If she didn’t answer her phone, Francesca probably knew of her whereabouts . . . or Denise and Sharon were good possibilities, although Fusion was closed today . . .
His hand was on the front door when he glanced aside at an entryway table and paused.
Elise’s purse rested on it. A powerful feeling of relief swept through him, stealing his breath. Trepidation was close on its heels.
He realized fully for the first time that he was colluding with Elise in their distant, impersonal communication. He wasn’t sure what to say to her.
He thought of how he’d encouraged her to be honest, how he’d told her he’d never be disappointed in her if she was. She’d deserved the same courtesy, but he’d deprived her of that. Yes, he’d had a good reason. The truth about Trevor Gaines was not only his ugly story, it was Ian’s. Lucien had decided it was only right that Ian be the first to hear the facts. He truly believed in that decision, but his secrecy had come from more than just respect for Ian. He knew that now. His rationale had given him the excuse he needed to keep a distance from others for years. The women he’d dated, his adoptive mother, his foolish adoptive father . . .
From Elise.
It’d been Lucien who had been too insecure about the truth. He’d been so disgusted by it, he’d guarded the ugliness of it even from her.
Especially from her.
Which was the same thing as putting up a wall against his own heart.
* * *
Elise stood at the east-facing parapet, a cool, pleasant, early-morning lake breeze brushing against her cheeks and fluttering her hair. Scattered clouds occasionally blocked the sun, so that she stood in bright light one moment, shadows the next. She was on the roof terrace, but she had the strangest feeling she was at a symbolic crossroads.
Her plans were in place. It was time for her to leave Lucien’s residence for good. He couldn’t want her there. He wouldn’t.
Her bags had already gone ahead of her. Instead of having to return to Paris, her tail between her legs—as she’d feared—Denise had been her savior. The chef had insisted last night that Elise stay with her.
Elise had called her mentor and told her an edited version of her reasons for needing to leave Chicago, not wanting to betray Lucien to his employee. It turned out she needn’t have worried. Being the perceptive woman Denise was, she’d already guessed at Elise and Lucien’s relationship, and was sympathetic to a breakup, wisely not taking the side of either party. Elise had assured the older woman she would pay her back the rent money as soon as she was able, but Denise hadn’t been concerned.
“With your talent, you’ll have your own restaurant very soon. You can pay me back then if you choose, but the most important thing is that you finish your training,” she’d said.
Elise inhaled the fresh breeze, praying for inspiration. Insight.
There’s a difference between asking and begging. There is no desperation in asking—only courage.
The words Lucien had once spoken to her on this very terrace beneath a midnight-blue, star-studded sky echoed around her brain. Was she perhaps being a coward by leaving? Was she giving up too early, without giving herself the opportunity to speak to Lucien . . . to ask for his forgiveness?
Was she still being impulsive, even if she wasn’t being selfish?
“You’re not leaving.”
Elise jumped in alarm at the sound of the familiar quiet yet determined voice.
She spun around, her eyes wide. He stood not ten feet away, wearing a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, his scarlet button-down shirt flapping slightly in the wind around his lean torso. Stubble surrounded his usually neat goatee, his cheekbones looked more prominent than us
ual, and there were shadows beneath his eyes.
Yet he’d never looked more beautiful to her.
“Lucien,” she mouthed.
“Why are none of your things in the penthouse?” he asked, his face rigid, his eyes blazing as he stepped toward her.
“Because they’ve been sent on to Denise’s. She’s said I could live with her while I finished with my stage. That is”—she licked her lower lip nervously—“if you allow me to finish my training at Fusion.”
“Why wouldn’t I allow you to finish your training at Fusion?” he asked, his nostrils flaring slightly, his eyebrows slanting in a dangerous expression.
Elise shrugged and gave a desperate, gasping laugh. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I betrayed your trust, and made you tell Ian Noble the truth before you were ready? Maybe because it blew up in not only my face but Ian’s and Francesca’s? Maybe because as usual, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, and screwed everything up. Even if I never mean to harm, it seems I’m fated to do it inadvertently.”
He gave her a long, searching look and shook his head slightly, casting a wild glance to the lake.
“You didn’t do anything that isn’t in your character, Elise. It was me who shouldn’t have kept you in the dark. If I had opened up in the beginning about why I was in Chicago . . . well. Things would have been different.”
A car horn beeped in the far distance. The wind rushed past her ears.
“Why didn’t you?” she asked, not at all certain she wanted to know the answer. “Is it because you didn’t trust me with the truth? Did you think I was going to hold it over your head somehow or maybe . . . blurt it out the way I did?” she finished hopelessly. “You ended up being right about that.”
“No,” he said scornfully. “That’s not it. At least that hasn’t been a concern for a long time now. And besides, you didn’t blurt anything out. You may have set the stage, but I was the one who decided to tell Ian the truth that night in his office. You didn’t force me into anything. It just seemed . . . fated or something, me telling him at that moment. I’m not the only one who has said so. Ian mentioned something about it as well.”
“He must hate me, for bringing it all to the surface when he was so vulnerable.”
Lucien shook his head. “He doesn’t. Not in the least. He told me that the whole experience had an uncanny feeling for him, as if he’d been waiting for a good part of his life for that moment. He dreaded it, but he longed to know the truth about his origins. About himself.”
She just stared at him, speechless.
“I thought you were angry. When I apologized and said I didn’t do it on purpose, you said, ‘Of course not. You never do.’”
His brows slanted as if he tried to recall exactly what she meant. “I wasn’t being sarcastic.”
“What?” she asked, bewildered.
He closed his eyes briefly and exhaled. “I know I was distracted. Ian was a wreck and he wasn’t far away while we spoke. I only meant that while it’s in your nature to speak from the heart, I know you never intend to harm. You’re very kindhearted as a rule. I know you aren’t capricious. You’re never more yourself than when you speak the truth.”
“Oh,” she said, eyes going wide and warmth flooding through her. She recalled Francesca saying something similar about her motivations. It seemed too good to be true that Lucien had felt similarly. “Capricious, no—foolish at times, perhaps.”
He shook his head. “No. I felt it too that night. It happens sometimes in life, when you feel a moment unfolding and you see your path clearly, when you understand that the time has come. That’s how I felt that night when Ian got that phone call. As I said, Ian felt the same way.”
She recalled the random thought she’d had that night that Ian seemed like a dream walker.
“Is he all right?” she asked after a moment.
Lucien shrugged, his expression bleak. “He says he is, but to be honest, I think he’s wretched. I wish I understood what’s going on in that brilliant brain of his. He shares very little of himself. You can imagine how surprised his grandparents and I were when he suddenly declared he was leaving for Germany on a matter of business.”
“Francesca is worried sick,” Elise said.
His hooded glance gave her a sinking feeling. Oh no. Francesca had a right to be worried.
She studied every detail of his face. It seemed so amazing he was standing there when she’d just been longing for him with all her heart and soul that it was hard to think about anything else. For a moment, they just looked their fill of one another. She eventually swallowed thickly. “Lucien, if it’s true that you didn’t keep the truth from me because you didn’t trust me, why didn’t you tell me?”
Again, he glanced out at the lake, his eyes looking brilliant from the muted light.
“Don’t you know?”
She shook her head. Elise sensed how uncomfortable he was . . . how much he was struggling.
“I didn’t know until I stood there in Ian’s office how much I’ve been avoiding telling him because I didn’t want to share the pain. The burden. The shame,” he added after a pause.
“Of what would you be ashamed? You never did anything,” she said heatedly. “Neither did Ian. It was that man . . . that Gaines. He’s the one at fault! Not you.”
His eyes were bleak. “You don’t know what it’s like . . . to carry the knowledge of your father’s sickness. His depravity. You can’t escape it. It’s in your very blood. You can’t purge it.” He gave a harsh laugh. “You can imagine how stupid I felt, trying to find a place where I belonged . . . a family where I fit in . . . wanting to escape the shame of Adrien’s crimes and my mother’s self-involvement . . . only to discover my biological father’s sins were a thousand times more heinous than anything my adoptive parents could engineer.”
“Lucien,” she whispered feelingly. “You are your own man.”
A small smile pulled at his lips. “I know. Thanks to you, I have coached myself in that concept for years now. I think it’s been my saving grace. As terrible of a blow as it was for me to find out about Trevor Gaines, I think it might have been a thousand times worse for Ian, without the inoculation you and I had.” He gave her a soulful glance. “You and I had struggled on that path before. We both had to do battle with the idea that we chose our own destiny, that our parents didn’t determine who we are.”
“There has never been another person I’ve ever met in my whole life who is as unique as you.”
His jaw went tight. He stepped toward her at the same moment she stepped toward him, and then she was in his arms, her cheek pressed to his chest, inhaling his scent. It truly was a miracle, being in his embrace.
“It really is like holding on to sunlight, hugging you,” he said gruffly near her ear. “You make the shadows fly.”
“Why have you been so cold since you went away?” she asked in a muffled voice near his chest after she’d quieted the surge of emotion she experienced at his words.
“When I called once I’d reached London, I was cautious. Uncertain. And you sounded so distant. I wondered if I was correct, to worry about telling you.”
“You worried about telling me about Gaines?”
“Everything I said earlier about doubting myself in regard to telling Ian, I worried about a thousand times worse with you. I wanted to . . . but it seemed like such a toxic thing to spill. That secret along with my mission to find my mother has kept me from intimacy for years now. It never plagued me more than it did with you.”
His naked pain flipped a switch in her. She hugged him tighter, like she thought her embrace truly could keep him safe from all the shadows in his life.
“I’m sorry for not telling you the truth,” he said. “You must think I’m a hypocrite, for always encouraging you to be honest.”
She shook he
r head against his chest. “No, I understand. You’d held on to that painful truth for so long. No . . . you’d contained it inside you. It’s natural that you would worry about loosing it onto the world, onto people you care about. And as for the other, you were right to encourage me to speak the truth. We both know it. I’d lived a life of lies and provocations and manipulations for too long. You gave me the limit I needed. You knew very well I would have done just about anything—risked anything—for you, including learning a little self-restraint and loads of self-respect,” she said in a strangled voice.
She inhaled, trying to breathe past the constricting band around her chest, and looked into his face.
“I love you. How’s that for honesty? How’s that for a risk?” she asked, laughing, a tear skittering down her cheek. “How’s that for trusting in myself?”
His expression flattened; his nostrils flared. He abruptly seized her mouth with his own . . . and Elise was submerged in the truth, swimming in it, and she’d never felt so less afraid of drowning.
“Do you mind?” he asked hoarsely a moment later when he bent and hooked the backs of her legs with his forearm, and he was carrying her toward the stairs, his gaze fiery.
“I’d mind if you didn’t,” she whispered next to this throat.
* * *
Minutes later, they lay naked on the bed together, Lucien on top, their bellies heaving together. He’d pinned her wrists above her head, his gaze never leaving her face as he slid his cock into her, and they fused. She shuddered. The sensation was poignant . . . powerful . . . as sharp as a knife blade. He remained motionless, poised on the sharp edge of desire, relishing it, wanting it to end in crashing, delicious pleasure and wanting it to last forever.
Wanting to stay one with her forever.
“I love you,” he said, emotion and raw desire making his voice harsher than he intended. “I think I’ve always loved you. Not in the way I do now, but still . . . you have always been in my heart. You are the heart of me, Elise.”