“Not necessarily, but we can only deal with the present. And at present, I suggest you start taking your prenatal vitamins. I can also recommend an excellent obstetrician. She’s a classmate of mine. You’ll like her.”
She handed me some paperwork regarding diet and vitamins and other information that soon-to-be-mothers needed. Soon-to-be-mothers…I suddenly felt queasy. After taking the name of the OBGYN she recommended, I left her office. As I walked out, I couldn’t help staring at my stomach––my mind struggling to connect the dots because it was still deceptively flat.
When I hit the street, I looked up and around, confused. It must have been the shock because I felt dislocated, outside of myself, watching life zip by as if looking through binoculars. How did it all come to this? I knew I should be happy, overjoyed…but I wasn’t. I was lost.
“Vera.” The voice calling me turned the blood in my veins to ice. I looked over my shoulder and found Paisley staring back at me, her eyes shooting poison arrows. She stood with her arms crossed under her ample breasts, wearing platform espadrille Louboutin’s that made her look seven feet tall.
“What are you doing here?” I asked in a drone-like voice.
Her eyes assessed me shrewdly, then turned scalding with contempt. “I see he took you shopping.”
“What do you want, Paisley?”
The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. I turned and caught Bear craning his neck, watching us with pointed interest from the Mercedes. When I turned back around, Paisley stepped forward aggressively, forcing me to look up to meet her virulent gaze.
“This is what’s going to happen you gold digging whore. You’re going to leave Geneva. You’re going to go away and stay away. You won’t say a word about any of this to Sebastian. And you’ll do it by Sunday.”
A cruel smile tilted the corners of her mouth up. Blood rose up my neck and spread over my face. A thousand emotions took turns bubbling to the surface. I don’t know how I found the strength to measure my words.
“And if I don’t?”
“I was hoping you’d say that. In that case, I’ll go to the tabloids. Tell them about the dirty, illegal immigrant that got knocked up on purpose and manipulated her way into Sebastian’s heart. It’s leading him to make poor decisions that put the bank at risk. Investors will jump ship and you’ll be completely responsible for bankrupting one of Switzerland’s most prestigious privately owned banks…I’ll make sure there’s nothing left by the time I’m done.”
That was a sucker punch to the gut. She had struck with the precision of a heavy weight champ, right to the solar plexus. And I had walked right into it. She knew I would do anything to protect him.
“How did you find out?” For some reason, I needed to know.
“That dumb redhead that works for him, Ingrid, Irene…she overheard you talking on the phone with your doctor and couldn’t wait to tell his mother.”
That was the meaty left hook to the jaw that left me bleeding.
“His mother?”
“Were you under the impression that Diana approved of a filthy peasant like you shacking up with her precious son?”
…and the knock out punch.
“I’ll be gone by Sunday,” I said in a defeated voice.
“Good choice.” She smirked and slid her dark Tom Ford sunglasses back on. “Bon voyage,” she said, laughing as she walked away.
In the Mercedes, I sat in the back seat, arms crossed and chewing on my lower lip while Bear studied me in the rearview mirror. I was doing a lousy job masking the anxiety that gripped me by the throat with long, slender fingers. He didn’t buy my explanation that I had run into Paisley by accident, the suspicion conspicuous in his eyes.
On the drive back, the countryside sped by in a blur, time and objects having lost their shape and meaning. Wandering the labyrinthine alleys of my predicament, I searched frantically for a way out that would cause the least amount of damage, but everywhere I turned I walked into dead ends. Because one truth was absolute––Paisley was not bluffing. She would destroy him if she couldn’t have him.
I couldn’t blame Isabelle entirely, the mistake was mine in equal measure. I should have been more careful from the beginning. I should have…no, I wouldn’t let that bitch make me regret loving him. Nothing would ever make me regret that. He was the best thing that had ever happened to me. But I couldn’t dwell on Sebastian, or I would turn hysterical to the point of madness.
I won’t survive it. I won’t… His words kept echoing. And by the look in his eyes he had meant it, believed it with all his heart. After I reached Milan, I would write him, email him, explain what had happened––that I had to leave to protect him. I couldn’t let him believe that I would betray him in any way. I would’ve rather died than allow him to believe that.
Two nights. That’s all I had left. Two night to say goodbye forever to the man I loved, the only man I would ever love this way again. The father of my child. My best friend. I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood, trying to push back the tears glistening in my eyes. Tears, I suspected, that Bear had already noticed.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“The market slows down at the end of July. I’m planning a long vacation for us.”
“Sebastian––” His bed had become a small island the two of us were marooned on. I only wished it were true. We were both lying on our stomachs, facing each other. His fingers traced my shoulder blade and skated down the rungs of my spine, making me shiver and smile.
“Hear me out. We can sail from Cap Ferrat to Sardinia.”
“What’s it like––Sardinia?”
“Wild and beautiful…like you,” he murmured.
“I’m not wild,” I smirked.
His expression transformed from playful to thoughtful, his eyes two bottomless pools of love. “You are when you’re making love to me.”
My smile slipped.
“Sometimes I think I’m dreaming,” he murmured, speaking so quietly that I had to read his lips. “I wake up just to watch you sleep…sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and I’m still in ICU.”
My jaw clenched painfully. The heartfelt confession killed me. I couldn’t even reassure him because I knew I would be disappearing very soon. I wanted to take away all his pain––I had never wanted something so badly. “You’re the dream I never allowed myself to have.” I didn’t realize I had said it out loud until his eyes flashed and squeezed shut, capturing those words forever. He knew what that monumental declaration from me meant. I rarely expressed my feelings verbally. I’m just not built that way.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I thank God every day for delivering you to me,” he said softly. “Everything makes sense now.” I bit my trembling lip, held his gaze and swallowed back words that wanted to explode out of me. Words like… forgive me, I’m sorry. I’ll love you forever, my very best friend. “You’ll love Sardinia. The sun seems to shine more golden there. The water runs from emerald green to powder blue. The coastline––” drawing a map of it with his finger down my back, “is jagged. I found this small, hidden beach last time I was there.” His kiss turned into a smile on my shoulder. “I want to make love to you with the sun on my back and your dark hair spread out on the white sand.”
I could picture it in my mind’s eyes. “Sounds wonderful,” I replied, lost in that amber gaze full of love and hope. “Although not the part where I get scratchy sand in my bum––and may I remind you that if I attempt to leave the country, I will be deported back to Albania so fast my head will spin.”
“I’m working on that.”
Huh? My skin prickled with awareness. My head lifted off the pillow. “What does that mean?”
There was a smile in his eyes when he said, “I wanted to tell you over a nice dinner with a good bottle of champagne, but it appears I’m going to be nagged until I cough up the goods.” Chuckling, he turned over onto his back, and I pounced on his chest, unable to contain my excitement.
“Ooomph––I think you broke a rib.”
“Out with it. What did you mean?” I shrieked.
He held me steady, cupping the cheeks of my rear end, while I attempted to shake the information out of him. “My lawyers are in the middle of negotiating with the Albanian Ministry of Justice.”
He might as well have dropped a piano on my head. “Will you ever cease to amaze me? Since when?”
“I hope not,” he murmured, a shy smile growing on his face. “A couple of weeks. They’ve been amenable to our attempts to reconcile the situation as expediently as possible.”
“In other words?”
“In other words, I’m ready to write them a check as soon as they clear you of any wrong doing.”
My jaw went slack, couldn’t feel my own lips as I began speaking. “Are you insane? Write them a check? For how much??”
“The full amount,” he replied casually.
“Three million dollars?!!! But…but I had nothing to do with it! This…this is absurd!” He flipped me onto my back, pinning me to the mattress, and licked my nipple before tugging it gently with his teeth. My back arched, my eyes slammed shut. The devil had a better relationship with my body than I did. “You can’t do that when we’re having a serious conversation. It’s not fair,” I moaned.
“Darlin’, I never fight fair. That’s a strict rule of mine,” he drawled in a lazy, seductive voice.
“Now you’re really cheating.” Two can play that game. He gasped when my hips hitched up and pressed into his erection. “There’s no way I’m letting you do that. I’ll go back before I let you spend that kind of money on me.”
Turning serious in a heartbeat, he grabbed my face and tilted it so we were nose to nose. “Listen to me, baby,” his eyes boring into mine, “that’s pocket change for me. I won’t even know it’s gone. I’d give everything I have to protect you.”
That was the thing with Sebastian––he never boasted or exaggerated. He said what he meant, and he meant what he said. Always. I bit my lower lip in a feeble attempt to stop it from trembling. “I love you so much. It scares me that you don’t have an ounce of self-preservation sometimes. Do you know what this could do to you if it ever got out? I won’t be responsible for harming one hair on your precious head.”
His eyes softened, love and awe shining openly back at me. “Without you, nothing else matters,” he mumbled, and placed a brief kiss on my nose. “I have a team of lawyers that will protect the bank, ensure total anonymity. I want this to go away. There are so many things I want to share with you. Besides, I didn’t get to where I am today by being careless.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that. I’m embarrassed…and worried for you…and it’s a lot of money.”
“There’s nothing for you to worry about. Trust me when I say that it will be the best money I will ever spend.”
A tear ran down my temple as I swallowed the guilt choking me. I was going to hurt this wonderful man, maybe irrevocably. How was I going to live with myself? I understood him better than ever at that moment, understood what had led him down that dark path of self-destruction for so many years. I kissed him, pouring all the love in my heart into that one tender touch, and whispered ‘I love you’ over and over again in the hope that when he was hurting the most, he would remember this moment.
* * *
I folded some of my old clothes and placed them in a plastic bag. I certainly couldn’t walk out of the house with my valise when I had Gideon watching me as attentively as a prison warden. I mentioned to Sebastian that I was going to Sunday mass that morning, after he woke me at dawn and made love to me until I begged him to stop, soaked in pleasure, sated beyond imagination. He smirked and said he would join me but he didn’t want the church to catch on fire, said he would go for a swim instead.
There was a new level of abandon in his lovemaking. I saw it in his eyes, felt it in the way he touched me. He had taken down the last brick of his protective wall. He was all in––his heart placed in my safekeeping…and I was going to break it.
I was in a state of high anxiety all morning. I turned on every faucet in the bathroom while I puked my guts out, praying he wouldn’t suspect anything. When he went downstairs for breakfast, I did my best to pretend it was a routine morning on my day off and dressed for church in the slim, cropped pants and the white cotton shirt. I was brushing my hair when he snuck up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. Curving his tall, muscular body around mine, he pressed his hips against my rear end and a warm glow spread from my hairline to my toes. I closed my eyes and rocked back into him.
“What time will you be back?” he asked, placing a string of kisses on my throat. I leaned my head to the side, giving him unfettered access, and watched in the mirror with a sense of detachment, my mind shutting out the pain threatening to crush me.
“Around noon.”
“I want to take the boat out on the lake. Marianne is packing lunch for us.”
When I didn’t respond, his warm, inquiring eyes met mine in the mirror. “Do you feel up to it?”
“I’d like that,” I replied, smiling weakly. I turned in his embrace and threw my arms around his neck, encouraging him to lower his head.
“I love you more than anything. Always remember that…promise me you’ll never forget.” His mouth perked up and amusement appeared in his eyes. “Promise me,” I repeated, more sternly this time.
“Okay, I promise.” He smacked my lips loudly and slapped my rear end. “If I don’t get going I’m gonna have to take a cold shower,” he mumbled.
He threw one of his sexy smiles over his bare shoulder as he walked away. I held onto the edge of the counter for dear life, my willpower disintegrating under pressure as I battled the urge to run after him and confess everything.
“I love you,” I called out instead.
“Back at you, lover,” he shouted, his voice fading away.
And just like that…he was gone.
Gideon was sitting at the counter drinking his coffee when I walked into the kitchen. His eyes immediately snapped to the plastic bag in my hand.
“Oh, if I’d known you were taking clothes to church for the poor, I would have asked the other’s if they had anything they wished to donate. Next time, let me know,” Marianne said, handing me a freshly made cappuccino in a tall mug. That seemed to appease Gideon’s suspicions. His face relaxed visibly.
Thank you, Marianne.
“That smells delicious. Thank you, madame.”
I walked around the counter and hugged her. Surprised by my display of affection, her doughy arms flapped before they came to rest on my back.
Another betrayal. I would miss her terribly.
“You’re welcome, chérie,” she said, smiling tenderly.
The silence in the car was smothering, the tension palpable. I got the distinct feeling that Gideon didn’t trust me. I just hoped I could distract him long enough to make my escape.
“What time does the service end?” he asked in a cold, businesslike tone.
“In an hour.” Our gazes connected in the rearview mirror.
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Hirsch?”
He didn’t answer right away, took his time assessing me in the mirror. “I’m Israeli. I was raised Jewish…but I don’t practice.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Another long pause.
“I believe in human nature, Miss Sava. And what I’ve seen of it is vile and selfish. And, as they say, we are created in his image.”
“He also gave us free will to muck around and figure it out for ourselves.”
He shot me a long, hard stare. “Well then, that makes him a slumlord at best, a negligent father at worst––and still unworthy of all the worship.”
The acid undertone in his voice could have melted paint off a car. I finally recognized the shadows in his eyes. I had seen them before, in the eyes of the people in my country, the ones that had survived decades of deprivation or war. Something
terrible had happened to Gideon Hirsch.
“You won’t hold it against me if I wait out here,” he said with a cynical smile.
He parked the Mercedes SUV across the street from the quaint little church. I watched people shuffle in, greeted at the door by a white haired priest in his seventies. He smiled warmly and shook hands with a young lady in a wheel chair, then ushered the last of his parishioner’s inside and closed the door behind him.
I stepped out of the car and looked around absently. I was about to enter the church when my eyes landed on inspecteur Tribolet. He stood a block away, staring directly at me. His hand was suspended in midair, holding a croissant, his mouth full.
An insidious unease raced up my spine. I banged on the passenger side window and Gideon slid it open.
“Gideon, it’s that detective that was asking too many questions. You deal with him.”
Gideon jumped out of the Mercedes and jogged to intercept Tribolet. Having memorized the bus schedule, I knew I was cutting it close and this was a complication that could have blown my plans sky high. My pulse jumped around nervously while I watched to make sure Gideon was in control of the situation before I closed the church door.
Once inside, I lit a candle in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and begged her to forgive me for the sins I had committed and the ones I was about to commit. Mostly, I prayed for Sebastian, prayed for her to heal his wounded heart, to watch over him. Then I slipped a donation in the box and headed straight for the priest. Service was about to begin.
“Father, may I speak to you for a moment?” I asked in French. His gentle, blue eyes searched my face. He stepped down from the altar and met me behind one of the carved, stone pillars. His gaze lowered, falling upon my hand; the one that rubbed the tiny gold cross around my neck for reassurance. “I need your help, father. There are two dark haired men outside…standing next to a Mercedes. They’ve been following me all day. I’m frightened. My husband is a diplomat and I was doing some sightseeing…” My voice trailed off, hoping he would understand the implication. He nodded, a concerned frown hardening his gentle features. I didn’t have to fabricate the anxiety, it was all over me, as dense and dark as mud.
A Million Different Ways (A Horn Novel Book 1) Page 35