by Anna Durand
"Retract the story." I ground the words out between my teeth. "Or we will sue your ass off and you won't have one penny left to your name."
"You can try, sweetheart."
His smug smile made me grit my teeth harder, shooting a pang through my jaw. I bent so far forward I all but climbed onto the desk, and grabbed a handful of his shirt. Our faces inches apart, I snarled, "Tell me who it was."
Though he kept his smug expression, his lower lip trembled. "Your husband should be more careful what he leaves lying around in his office. The almighty Rory MacTaggart doesnae keep his home very secure."
A chill shimmied down my spine. Graham had intruded on our home twice. We had a gate these days, but it hadn't existed when this creep sneaked onto our property with a family gathering as his cover. The gate had been open on our wedding day, making it easy for him to sneak inside.
I had to call Rory, to tell him about the mess my past had made for him. My shit had hit the fan and splattered all over his life.
"You'll get yours," I said. "Count on it."
I stormed out of the office.
As the door swung shut behind me, Graham's cocky voice called after me. "Everyone you see from now on will know exactly how bonnie you are. And how depraved."
I rushed back to the car, but once I got behind the wheel I had to take several minutes to calm down. My hands were shaking. My breaths were short and shallow. A ringing started in my ears, and little black spots speckled my vision. While I drew in long, slow breaths, I rested my forehead on the steering wheel.
What if Rory invoked the morality clause in our contract? He could boot me out—of his home and his life.
He wouldn't do that. He loved me.
I'd warned him about the photos, but this…He was an object of public ridicule because of me. When Lachlan interrupted us in the kitchen, Rory had been embarrassed. How would he feel about his wife's indiscretions adorning the front page of a newspaper?
My deep breathing had banished the dark splotches in my vision, but my hands still trembled. Waiting until I got home to call Rory would leave me plenty of time to get more wound up about it. Time to suck it up and do what must be done.
I dialed Rory's number.
He answered with a cheerful, "Emery, I was going to call you in a bit."
"Yeah, well, something's happened." I clenched the steering wheel with my free hand. "Trouble on the home front."
"What's happened?" His tone had sharpened, concern a knife's edge in his voice. "Are you all right?"
"Fine, physically." Tears spilled down my cheeks, and my voice came out quavery when I said, "This is all my fault. I'm so sorry, Rory. I wish—God, it's all my fault."
"Emery…" His voice had softened, the tenderness in it almost too much for me to take. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it was not your fault. Tell me, please."
I blubbered the whole awful story, tears streaming down my cheeks in hot little rivers of misery.
"I'm coming home," he said, his voice decisive. "Immediately."
"No, please, I don't want to ruin your vacation from me. There's nothing you can do." My tears had stopped flowing, but I sniffled from the runny nose they'd caused. "I thought you should know, that's all."
I desperately wanted him to come home, to comfort me and to beat the crap out of that sniveling weasel Graham. I didn't want him to come because he felt a responsibility to do it. I wanted him to…Shit, I had no idea what I wanted, because I couldn't control my mixed-up emotions.
"There's nothing you can do," I repeated.
His voice became a dangerous growl. "There bloody well is."
"Rory—"
"I am coming home." Noises followed, as if he were gathering his things and stuffing them into a suitcase. "I'll call when we're in the air."
"Okay." My voice sounded so weak and pathetic I hardly recognized it.
"Try not to worry, love," he said. "I will handle this."
We said goodbye, and I drove home.
That evening, Rory came back from France. I met the car in the driveway, flinging my body at him as soon as he stepped out of the Mercedes. He clung to me as fiercely as I clung to him.
"I missed you, baby," I said.
He pressed his lips to my neck. "I missed you too."
My heart stuttered, like it couldn't believe he'd admitted to missing me. He'd said he loved me during sex, leaving me to wonder if he meant it, but this new confession had no such ambiguity.
"I will deal with Graham in the morning," he said, a flinty edge in his voice.
Maybe Graham was right about my predilection for perversion, because I took pleasure in imagining how my husband would deal with the toad.
When Rory made a promise, he kept it.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Where's Rory?" I asked Mrs. Darroch the second I stepped into the kitchen, where she was scrubbing the countertops with a big blue sponge.
She paused in her work to cast me a worried look. "He went into the village to have it out with Graham."
"What?" A whip of icy panic lashed me. "When?"
"He left two hours ago."
She glanced at my stomach. I followed her gaze there and realized I'd been clutching one hand to my belly. The whip of panic had mutated into steel wires knotted around my stomach. They snaked into my chest to cinch around my heart.
Mrs. D enveloped both my cold hands in her warm ones. "It's all right, dearie. Rory willnae do anything rash."
I wished I could've been so sure. Graham had disgraced Rory with that moronic article, and Rory hated feeling like a fool. Every time he talked about his ex-wives, I recognized his shame—misplaced, but still there—and how much he loathed talking about those times. Though Graham had fabricated much of the story, he based it on a foundation of truth. Rory might've thought he wanted a trophy wife and a marriage of convenience, but to have the world know about it…That must've been the worst kind of humiliation.
What would Rory do to Graham?
He tossed cabers around like matchsticks. Would he beat up Graham? I had no idea. Like last night, though, when I imagined the possibility I discovered I liked it.
The gossip-monger might deserve a good skelping, but I couldn't stand by and let Rory get in trouble. Graham—the lying, smarmy, sleazy subterranean insect—would at least try to have Rory arrested. I had no doubts about that. The creep couldn't resist any chance to dishonor my husband.
My worry for Rory, and how this debacle would affect him, outweighed my own shame. To have his wife's nakedness splashed across a tabloid…
"I'm going after Rory."
Mrs. D nodded. "Good luck, lass."
I raced out of the house, set in my mission.
The Jag got me to Loch Fairbairn way faster than the last time I'd come here, in the Mercedes, thanks mostly to my rampant violation of the speed limit. The minutes nevertheless dragged like an eternity before I swerved into a parking space a block from the office of the Loch Fairbairn World News. I sprinted down the sidewalk and barreled through the door.
Graham stood behind his desk, that smug look on his leathery face.
Rory loomed over the desk opposite Graham, bent forward just enough to intensify the menace he projected from every inch of his body. Eyes narrowed to slits, nostrils flaring with each blustering breath, he snarled through tightly clenched teeth.
"Last chance," he said, his lip curling.
"I stand by the truth," Graham said, folding his arms over his chest and lifting his chin.
Rory walloped his fist into Graham's jaw.
The gossip-monger's head snapped back. The crack of the blow seemed to echo in the tiny office, and droplets of blood spattered both men.
Graham staggered backward. His eyes went wide, his face went ashen. He pressed a palm to his jaw as he flailed for his chair, grabbed it with one hand, and toppled into it.
My husband reeled his fist back, preparing for another blow.
Graham cringed.
I rushed forward
to grasp Rory's arm.
He startled, as if he hadn't noticed me before.
"Stop," I said. "Please, Rory. He's not worth it."
I wished I'd slugged Graham but watching my husband do it had been plenty satisfying. Still, one punch would suffice.
"MacTaggart, you've lost your mind," Graham said, but the arrogance had fled his voice. "I should tell the police about this."
"Go on, then," Rory said in his most threatening voice. "I'm a solicitor, ye bod ceann. Do ye think I'll stay locked up?"
A wicked little thrill tingled through me, but Graham slouched deeper into his chair.
"I'm the only witness," I said, "and I'll testify you started it."
Graham blinked once, slowly, his gaze on me. "You'd lie?"
"It's as truthful as your article," I said. "And you did instigate this with your made-up story about us."
Rory squinted at Graham. "No one believes your article. Retract it and apologize, or I will file a defamation lawsuit that will divest you of any and all assets you have left after the divorce."
Graham's pallor deepened. "Aye, I'll print a retraction."
Rory opened his mouth to speak.
"And an apology," Graham hastened to add.
His face the picture of grim satisfaction, Rory nodded. "Good. You can start your apologies."
Graham swallowed hard, wriggling in his seat. He studied the mess of papers on his desk and muttered, "I'm sorry for what I've done to you."
Rory glanced at me as if waiting for my response.
I shrugged. "Great, he apologized. Can we go now?"
His brow furrowed, but he said, "If you're satisfied, I am."
Though I had no idea why he cared if I was satisfied with how Graham had apologized to him, I let Rory usher me out of the office with a hand on my back. While the door swung shut behind us, Rory stopped to scan the street.
"How did you get here?" he asked, his voice as emotionless as his face.
"In the Jag."
Rory spotted the vehicle and hustled me down the block to where I'd parked. Without a word, he pulled the driver's door open and waved for me to get inside. I did not move. He waved again. I stared up at his face, baffled by the instant switch from anger to vacancy. It was like his personality had separated from his body.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Fine."
No emotion. No inflection. Not even his eyes gave a clue to his state of mind.
"Go home," he said. "I'll follow in the Mercedes."
He pointed over my shoulder, and I tracked the line from his finger to the Mercedes parked a few spaces away from the door to Graham's office. I hadn't noticed the car before, what with a massive SUV squatting in front of it.
"How did Graham know about our contract?" I asked. "How did he find the pictures?"
Rory turned his face away. "I was careless, left papers on my desk on our wedding day. Graham slunk into my office before he hounded you, before the ceremony even began. The papers included the contract and a report from the investigator about Sebastian."
"Not your fault." No, it's my fault. "Why did you have the contract out?"
Rory jerked his head toward the Jag's open door. "Go."
I wanted to argue, to pester him until he told me what the hell was going on here, but I sensed he wouldn't respond well to my questioning. Something had flipped his switch from human mode to Rory the Robot.
So I climbed into the car.
He shut the door and trudged back the way we'd come, toward the Mercedes.
That old thread of panic wound around my heart. I'd been the ultimate source of his humiliation, the reason for Graham's article. Rory had every right to blame me.
We got home in the usual length of time, since I obeyed the speed limit this time. Once we walked into the house, weariness blanketed me. I sagged against the wall in the ground-floor hallway.
"I'm sorry," I said, "about everything that's happened."
My robot husband stayed silent for a moment, then said, "Go to bed."
"Shouldn't we talk? I mean—"
"Go to bed, Emery. It's been a trying day."
Too tired to argue, I trudged up three flights of stairs. Rory accompanied me as far as the first floor but veered off in the direction of his office, leaving me to mount the last two flights alone. In the hallway of the top floor, I hesitated. The bedroom I'd been sharing with Rory lay to my left, but to the right lay the room I'd slept in before I'd forced him to sleep with me.
I shuffled into my old room.
Give him space, let him decompress. Sounded reasonable, didn't it?
Without bothering to undress or remove my shoes, I curled up on the bed on top of the covers. The room was tomb-like—chilly, dark and silent, devoid of life. I lay on my side, knees pulled up, arms hugging them. My body trembled. My teeth chattered.
The door swung open. A wedge of light slashed across me.
Rory's silhouette appeared beside the bed. "What are you doing in here?"
"Trying to sleep."
"Why aren't you in our bedroom?"
I stared numbly at the rug under his feet and hunched my shoulders.
He slipped his arms under my body and lifted me off the bed. "This is not where you sleep."
My husband lugged me down the hall and into the other bedroom, where he lay me down on the bed. A pillow cushioned my head. The covers were thrown back in haphazard fashion, so unlike Rory to do. Neither of us spoke as he stripped my clothes and shoes off, and pulled the covers up to shield my naked body. Once he'd undressed, he crawled under the covers too, nestling me against him.
"Sleep," he said.
I tried to obey, but sleep eluded me. Long after his breathing grew shallow and slow, signifying slumber, I lay awake with his arm around my shoulders and relived the day in my mind, over and over, an endless loop of pain and dread. One fact kept taunting me, louder than all the rest of my whirling thoughts.
The contract has a morality clause. He can boot you out anytime.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I woke alone in our bed. No sunshine gleamed through the windows, and the dull gray of the sky recast the bedroom in a murky gloom. I had become the princess imprisoned in an ivory tower. Christ, I'd gotten maudlin. A night without much sleep would do that to a girl, particularly when I'd lain awake wondering if my husband loved me or simply tolerated me.
After washing up and dressing, I pelted down the stairs to the first floor and Rory's office. When I pushed the door open, I found the room empty. It was after eight and Rory wasn't at work. Bad, very bad. Nothing could take Rory away from his office in the daytime.
Not quite true. I'd lured him away from work on several occasions. Sex in the kitchen, that was his idea. Sex on his desk, that was all me. On our three-day honeymoon, he hadn't done any kind of work.
Those things had happened pre-scandal. Now, he probably wanted nothing more than to escape me. I couldn't blame him, but I needed to talk to him. To get him to talk to me. To figure out if our marriage could survive this.
Rory's ordered world had been destroyed by a landslide from my past.
I searched the entire house and finally located Rory in the sitting room.
Seated in the chair by the window, he glanced up from contemplating his hands when I entered the room.
"Good morning," I said, loitering near the doorway, swinging my hands because I had no idea what the hell to do with them. "How did you sleep?"
"Not well." His voice was flat, his expression too. "Did you sleep?"
"Uh, not much." I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my fleece pants. "Could we talk?"
His remote gaze lingered on me for a moment before he directed it out the window, at the lowering gray clouds. "Nothing to discuss."
I edged a few steps closer and noticed the papers balanced on his thigh. Not a newspaper or a magazine. White sheets of paper with typed paragraphs on them.
"Rory, come on," I said. "We need to talk about things. A lot of
things."
He blew out a frustrated sigh.
I planted my hands on my hips, which made my sweatshirt flap and the zipper go chink. "Listen, we need—"
Rory erupted from the chair. The papers flew off his lap to flutter onto the wood floor. He spun toward me only to freeze into Robot Rory, his back straight and stiff as a caber, his face blank even as his gaze drilled into me. The abruptness of his movement made a stark contrast to his indifferent attitude.
"Talk," he said in a crisp monotone. "If you must."
Fine. I'd talk, and he could listen.
I rubbed my arms, suddenly unsure where to start. "I'm sorry, this is all my fault. The scandal Graham cooked up, he invented a lot of it but the truth gave him a head start. You were humiliated because of me, because of my past, because I was stupid enough to say yes when my boyfriend asked me to pose for nudie photos. And I was stupid enough to believe him when he said the pictures would stay private, for his eyes only."
Rory stared at me.
My eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, but now they burned with the threat of tears. "I never imagined my mistakes would hurt you. I wish I could fix this, but those pictures may never go away." I scratched my arms, but the itch originated inside, not out. "I wish I could erase all of it, so you never have to go through that. You were so upset you punched Graham and made him apologize to you, but that's not enough. How could it be? I brought this shame on you. It's my fault."
He said nothing, moved nothing.
I walked up to him, bent my head back, and met his gaze. "Please know I never wanted you to be hurt because of me. I love you, Rory."
His lips tightened so faintly I wondered if I'd really seen it. "I understand."
"Do you?" I searched his eyes for a sign of…anything. I found nothing. "I love you, but do you even like me? Or do you put up with me for the sex? On Skye, you said you loved me, but we were having sex and I don't know if you meant it. Did you? Do you?"
No response.
I ached to touch him, but I had no idea how he'd react to that. Instead, I chewed the inside of my lip while I debated how much to say. "Do you want me? Or would you rather get rid of your annoying American wife? I'm in breach of that morality clause in our contract, for sure, what with naked pictures of me—" I choked on the last word but gulped in a breath and kept going. "Naked pictures of me in a newspaper, for everyone to see. The contract says if I shame you in any way, then you can end this and I won't get your money. Not that I want it, I never did, but I'm not sure if you really believe that, if you want me around anymore or what."