It was lonely.
As lonely as this house—this behemoth of a house that lodged two people, and perhaps an employee or two.
Donovan had told me he'd spent most of his time growing up in the city, but that his parents preferred the country home because of the space it provided them. And standing outside in the cold, alone, after the most unfriendly dinner of my life, all I could think was—how much space do three people who barely even talk need?
What a lonely way to grow up. What a lonely life Donovan had growing up.
As if summoned by my thoughts, the door behind me opened, and Donovan stepped out onto the balcony. "Two cigars and a glass of whiskey and I still didn't hear all the highlights of his stock picks this quarter." He came up next to me and held his hand out in my direction.
I looked down at his offering. A tumbler of scotch.
I accepted it and threw back a large swallow, enjoying the instant warmth that it provided.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, swirling the liquid in his own matching tumbler.
“That my amazing, loving, supportive, understanding parents both died too young. And yours are still alive. And that it’s not fair.” I regretted it as soon as I said it. I turned to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry. That was terrible.”
“Raymond and Susan are terrible,” he said, doubling down on my statement. He took a swallow from his drink and looked out over the distance. “I wish I could have met your parents.”
God, I missed them. So much sometimes that my insides felt raw.
And sometimes I barely thought about them. That's how life went.
But wouldn't that have been something, for them to have met Donovan? For Donovan to have met them. “I don't know what would've happened if my father hadn't died—what would've happened at Harvard when I returned. But I wouldn’t have made it to Harvard at all without the life insurance from my mother’s death. So I suppose I can’t wish that she’d never died and still have you.”
He turned so that his back was to the railing, and he could face me better. “Do you still want me after tonight? After meeting them?” He nodded toward the house, as if it were a stand-in for his parents.
“I do.” Maybe even more than I did before.
“You know they aren’t me, don’t you? I would never ask you to give up any part of who you are to fulfill some outdated societal role.”
I sighed, because he couldn't understand how many times a day I was asked to do just that. How many times a day a woman in a world of men was asked to fulfill some outdated societal role—it was too many times to count, too many to know, too many to solve between the two of us and two tumblers of scotch.
“It could be kind of fun though, if you pretended that you might.” I peered over at him and let him imagine the filthy kind of ways we could play 1950s housewife.
“You’re such a dirty girl.”
“Come on inside and let me prove it.”
I put my hand in his and, together, we walked out of the lonely night.
Seventeen
"Damn. That's some yard.” I stood with Donovan on the terrace that ran along the length of the back of the house. And I was in awe. It was the highlight of Pinnacle House—the views. No doubt about it.
Our morning had started late. We’d eaten breakfast in bed. Donovan had brought it up on a tray, egg casserole with gourmet coffee and orange juice, and a side of roasted potatoes. He hadn't said it was the reason, but I presumed we stayed in our room in order to miss his parents. Which we did.
After our meal, we dressed for the day. I bundled up in layers with a warm sweater over my T-shirt and jeans, as per Donovan's instructions. Then he gave me the tour.
We started inside, walking from one room to the next, Donovan pointing out the use and function of each. But despite the size of the house, there was nothing very remarkable about it. Most of the rooms were rarely used, but were acted as showcases instead. The second living room had a Christmas tree that had been professionally ornamented, he’d told me. The guest rooms were all decorated with impersonal taste, as though being staged for a house sale. Even a bed and breakfast had more personality. The master suite on the lower floor was closed off, so I couldn't see if it was more lived in, and Raymond had locked himself away in his study so that room was also off limits.
I did get a glimpse into Susan's life in the country house. Her personal space, as the family called it, was located on the other end of the top floor, as far from the study as possible. She'd gone to spend the day in town at some local antiques fair, so we snuck a peek into her room. It was good sized, large enough to hold a desk and sitting area as well as a bed and dresser. Like the guestrooms, it hadn't been personalized. I did notice a few items lying around that indicated an actual human spent time here—reading glasses on the desk. A glass of water on the nightstand.
"Does she sleep here?" I asked. Even if she didn't sleep with her husband, there were plenty of other rooms in the house available. She didn't have to fit her entire life at Pinnacle House into her office.
Donovan shrugged. "I'm not even sure she really sleeps."
How strange to not even wonder about the people that you live with, to share a roof and a table with walking mysteries.
Though I supposed it had been a long time since he had lived with them for real.
"What about your things?" I asked when we'd gone through the whole house and I’d seen nothing that reminded me of Donovan. "Are the remnants from your childhood stored away somewhere here?"
"Whatever I didn't take with me when I moved out, they threw away."
"Saves on storage, I suppose." Actually, I was wondering why the Kincaids even had a child. Between the lack of warmth and the erasure of his existence here, it was hard to imagine they’d really wanted him in the first place.
"I didn't have anything I wanted to keep. There wasn't anything here that I was attached to. What I like about this house is outside."
And that is how we ended up on the terrace looking out over the endless property beyond.
The land closest to the house was tiered and landscaped. The first level had a pool that had been covered for the season. The next level appeared to be a long stretch of lawn that was now just a bed of snow. A stone wall surrounded it, and beyond were trees and hills and land. Endless, as far as the eye could see.
It was the kind of yard meant to be played in. It was the kind of yard that needed children.
"It's beautiful. Absolutely stunning." I put my gloved hand in his as we walked down the icy staircase to the lawn below. "But what did you do here? Were you one of those little boys who climbed trees? Did you capture bugs and hang them on the bulletin board in your room? Did you swim? Did you have friends around here that you met in secret forts just beyond the property line?" I tried to imagine him. He'd been on the rowing team in college, so sport wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility in his background.
He shook his head dismissively. "There are no neighbors for miles. All that land is protected. No one can ever build on it."
"Then what?"
His lip lifted into a bashful smile. "I snowshoed.”
“Snowshoed?" I was taken aback. "Like those flat things that trappers used to walk on?"
"Are you making fun?"
I shook my head. "I'm just surprised. I could never have guessed that. How did you get into snowshoes? I didn't even know that was a thing people still did."
We were at the bottom of the stairs now, treading through the yard, our boots sinking into snow that had drifted two feet deep.
"Well, as you can see, the snow was very wet in Connecticut. Not like that dry powder you have in Colorado. As a kid…" He trailed off, his jaw working as he got caught in his reminiscing. "Let's just say there wasn't much to keep me in the house. Or near it. Out there in those woods it's quiet. You can hear your own thoughts. I discovered early that I could hear myself better out there than I could in that house, silent as the house is.
"But
it's not so easy to wander through the snowdrifts. You don't get very far without getting worn out." He laughed as the toe of my boot got stuck and I stumbled into him
"Yes. I see that," I laughed too, clutching onto him.
He wrapped his arms around my waist. "I would go for miles on those snowshoes. No one even noticed I was gone." He gave half a sardonic smile. "As long as I was back for dinner on time."
My chest pinched so tight. Like a fist wrapped around my heart.
He’d had so little nurturing in his life. Almost no one had modeled how to care for someone else. All the ways he’d cared for me, as misguided and inappropriate as they had been, they’d come from something truly organic. Something he'd devised completely on his own. No one had taught him how to love another person—and yet he’d still tried.
I had so little to give in return.
"If I had known you then,” I offered what I had, "I like to think I would've met you in those woods.”
“And if I had known you then, I would've schemed some way to make sure that you did."
I lifted my chin and pressed my mouth to his, hoping the heat of my body could do what the heat of his always did for me. Hoping it could erase the past and create images of a life with a vibrant house filled with warmth and love and never ever any clocks.
"You were president of your high school's campaign-finance board and the political action club?” I asked, reading the information from my phone.
"And the debate club," Donovan said smugly.
"And you were on the chess team. Figures."
After a walk around the property, we came inside to work. Raymond had gone into town to meet his wife for dinner, so it was just Donovan and I who'd sat at the long banquet table at six thirty precisely, eating a delicious meal of veal piccata and cranberry spinach salad.
When we finished, we poured ourselves some after-dinner drinks and headed upstairs. Earlier in the day, I'd received an email from Ferris containing the background report that Donovan had ordered on himself. I’d forgotten to cancel it in the craziness of the week. So now we were seated by the fire, Donovan in the armchair and me on the floor, while I read highlights from the report out loud.
"I didn't get this for you just so you could make fun of everything, you know," he said when I laughed about his letter in snowshoeing.
"I didn't know you could letter in snowshoe! I didn't know that was a school activity!" I was still laughing.
"It wasn't. I had to get special permission. It was taken to the school committee and there was a judicial hearing." He circled his hand in the air, signaling much to-do. "They voted in my favor."
"It was that important to you, huh?”
He shrugged. "I wanted to see if I could do it."
“Mm hm.” I took a swallow from my tumbler to hide my smile. Sounded like him.
I scanned further through the document. “’Businesses identified with ownership by subject.’ This is a longer list than I was aware of, Donovan." I'd known he was a wealthy man, wealthier than the investment at the advertising firm, but wow. “’Reach, Inc., Gaston’s, King-Kincaid Financial.’ You have ownership in your father's firm?"
He nodded. "Weston and I both have stock there."
I went back to the list. “‘Ex-Ore.’ That's a gas company, right?”
“Yes.”
“HtoO is that water foundation... ‘Lannister End?’” I looked up questioningly.
“A bed and breakfast in Connecticut. Not far from here. I'll take you some time.”
“I’d like that." I scrolled past the rest of the companies he held stock in and found the list of organizations he was associated with. “Did you found all these? ’A Better Day,” I read.
He seemed startled. “That’s on there?”
“Yeah. What is it?”
“Just a charitable foundation. It’s an umbrella for a bunch of other foundations.” His brows were furrowed. Then he shook his head. “It’s my father’s organization, but he must have me listed on some of the entity papers.”
“Ah.” I’d moved on. “‘MARCA?’ What’s that?”
He swirled his glass and watched the liquid dance around the bottom, as though it were more interesting than his answer. “It’s, uh, it’s an organization. Against rape. Men against rape culture and abuse.” He let that sit, let me absorb the enormity of it.
Then he explained more. "It's geared at education. Teaching youth, especially—about consent, about women's rights.”
“And you're the founder?"
"Yes."
"And you did that because of me?" I had a swell of pride and sentimentality. He was trying to be modest. I wasn't going to let him.
"Yes."
I set my phone down and stretched my feet out in front of me. The report hadn't been such a bad idea after all. I’d learned a few interesting things about him. But I’d learned just as many interesting things spending time with him this weekend.
And if I was going to learn more, I'd rather just ask.
"You graduated from Harvard with a Masters in business and stock in your father's financial firm. You already had an interest in finance and politics and ethics. You obviously felt compelled to start organizations that help people. Why did you choose to follow that by opening an advertising firm?"
He rested his elbow on the arm of the chair, his chin in his hand. "Why do you think I chose to open an advertising firm, Sabrina?"
"I don't want to sound narcissistic, but based on the pattern of things you’ve told me so far? I can't help but wonder if you chose it because I chose advertising as my emphasis."
"Go on."
Like I had tried to imagine him earlier in the day as a little boy, I tried now to imagine him as the young man he’d been in Cambridge. Intense and haunted. At the time, I thought he'd still been haunted by Amanda.
Now I reframed it, imagined him haunted by me—a woman he believed he shouldn't have, even when I was there in front of him. Even when I was in his arms.
"You chose advertising because that's what I chose," I said, my eyes fixed on my toes. "And you knew the irony of it because you never intended for me to work for you or with you. You just wanted to feel near me. Even when you were half a world away. Am I close?"
"It always felt like I was running away from you and running to you at the same time.” His voice was low, the same timbre as the crackle of the fire behind me. "I'd lose myself in women—so many faceless women. Women who would let me treat them in terrible, terrible ways, just so I could forget you. And I never could."
I felt like he must've felt then too—like I wanted to run into what he was saying and run from it at the same time. I didn't want to know about other women. It hurt to hear it. But I wanted to hear how they would never be me.
And I also needed to know, just for my own peace of mind…
"I hate to ask this, but when you say you treated them terribly…" I trailed off, hoping he would fill in the blanks.
He did. "Most of the time I was in Tokyo, I was part of the underground BDSM scene. I never had relationships. Just sex with women who wanted to be dominated, mostly."
Now a new anxiety was building inside me. I sat up straighter. "You are a... Dominant? But we don't. I'm not." I didn't really know how to say what I was trying to say. We did some kinky stuff, but I wasn't about to be collared. "Don't you need that? I'm not a submissive. Not really, am I? Why are you laughing?"
He wasn't laughing so much as chuckling. "You are submissive enough, Sabrina. Trust me. I do need it. But it's not about the sex for me. I get what I need from you in other ways." He meant by taking care of me. By interfering and bossing and scheming to make my life the way he wanted it.
That’s how he dominated me. That was what turned him on.
It was simple, and yet I had to process it. Had to let it sink in.
“Does that bother you?” he asked when I’d stayed silent for perhaps longer than he’d expected.
I tilted my head. “I’m just taking it
in.”
It was stirring something in me—something bigger, that I couldn’t quite grasp yet.
Donovan tried to grab at the strings, tried to pull the something bigger into place. “It doesn’t mean I’m not into what you need too, Sabrina.”
That wasn’t it. I wasn’t worried about our sex life. He’d been fully present there. “I think that’s been kind of obvious that you’re into that.”
“I’d hope so.”
But that was close to it, sitting right next to the bigger thing. Because all those years that we were apart, I'd held onto Donovan through this kink that I needed. This fantasy that he would do unspeakably filthy things to me. Thinking all the time that I was crazy and sick and wrong. I'd run from those thoughts, and if he'd been in my life, I would've run from him. I did run from him when I first saw him again. I ran right into Weston's arms, a place I never belonged.
All the while, he held onto me through this kink that he needed, watching me, saving me, taking care of me. He probably thought he was crazy. I knew he thought he was sick and wrong. He tried to run from me. He hoped I'd never find out. He ran across the ocean, to a place he never belonged.
It slammed through me then, like a gale force wind, taking my breath away and taking any doubt that lingered with it.
I looked up at him sitting in the chair gazing down at me. "I love you."
He was still, silent. He blinked in natural time.
"Did you hear me?"
His lips curved up ever so slightly. “I’m just taking it in.”
I abandoned my tumbler and crawled into his lap, straddling him. His arms came around my hips. “I love you,” I said again.
He searched my eyes, studied my features as though he expected to see doubt etched in my expression.
My doubts were gone, and he had to already know, had to know exactly how I felt about him. He always knew everything about me before I did. Didn't he know this too?
Dirty Filthy Rich Love (Dirty Duet #2) Page 17