He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t going to. And with her burst of adrenalin exhausted, she spun away from him, preparing to leave the room.
Only his hand curved around her wrist, holding her where she was, and then he pulled, lightly, spinning her back to face him. Her throat felt thick and aching.
“Are you saying you don’t want to sleep with me?”
Her body surged in denial of that. She dropped her gaze, staring at the thick column of his throat. “I don’t want you to use me when you’re bored,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to be one of many women you’re going to bed with. I don’t deserve that.”
“Do you think this is what either of us wants?” The words were exasperated. “Do you have any idea how hard I fought this? God knows I wish I was strong enough to keep you out of my mind, my bed, out of my life, but I want you every bit as much as you do me.” He moved forward, bringing their bodies together. Three more steps and he’d ushered her against the wall, so she was caught between it and his muscular chest.
Desire was hot between her legs, and the only sound in the room was the rush of her breathing.
“Do not pretend you can walk away from this,” he groaned, kissing her, and she surrendered to it, and him, even when her heart was aching and twisting.
“I have to.” Her kiss was a complete contradiction to her words. “I just can’t let you do this to me again.”
“Again?” He stilled, lifting his head up and pinning her with his dark, watchful eyes.
She swallowed, ignoring the warning siren blaring in her head, ignoring everything except how he made her feel. Her hands lifted his shirt from the waistband of his pants, connecting with the warm flesh at his hips. But he continued to stare at her, his expression serious. “Do what, Elodie?”
“To be just some other woman, on the periphery of your real life.”
A muscle flexed in his jaw, and then he took a step back, away from her, out of her hands; the separation was agony. “You were never that.”
Her eyes flashed with hurt. “You were married.”
“I don’t need to be reminded of that.”
“And you walked away from me like I meant nothing. You treated me like I was meaningless then, and you’re doing it again now. I’m here in Rome and yet you’re living your life like nothing has changed,” she bit down on her lower lip to stem the unwelcome tide of tears that was threatening.
“I’m sorry you feel that way. Believe me, I am very conscious of how much my life has changed.” He stared at her but offered nothing by way of reassurance, nothing that eased the ache in the pit of her stomach. “I want to find a way to make this work, for Jack, but you shouldn’t misunderstand me, Elodie. For your own sake, you must remember what I said in the hospital.”
Remember it? The warning was burned into her brain.
“And that’s how you feel? Despite…” she couldn’t finish the sentence.
Sympathy briefly flashed in his eyes. “Yes. It’s how I’ll always feel.” And then, running his hands through his hair, he moved closer, as though he were going to touch her again. But he didn’t. He closed his eyes for a moment and then turned, leaving the room.
He shut the door quietly behind himself, but he might as well have slammed it, for how she jumped.
Christo. He glared at Rome as though it had personally wronged him.
Fire ran through his veins – fury too.
He’d been completely blindsided when she’d accused him of sleeping with someone else. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might construe his evening out as that – a date – and yet, naturally she had. If she’d done a recent google search of him she’d know he was no stranger to the company of women – though his exploits were generally over exaggerated by a scandal-hungry media.
It wasn’t unreasonable for her to presume he was still dating.
No, that wasn’t why he’d reacted the way he had.
It was in response to his instincts – instincts that had wanted to reassure her, to explain, to tell her he wasn’t seeing anyone else, that he had no interest in seeing anyone else.
The fact that was true was all the more reason for his panic.
He slammed his laptop shut and stood up. It was past eight – he’d chosen to work late rather than face the music, but now it was time to undo the mistakes of that morning.
Elodie showered and changed into a simple cotton nightgown, but she didn’t go to bed. She moved to the little balcony that overlooked Rome, she stared out at the city and tried not to think about herself, or Fiero. All day long she’d had him on her mind, weaving in and out of the grey matter of her brain, making her question everything, making her doubt, making her wonder what the hell she wanted from him.
She was sick of it. Sick of thinking about him in a repetitive loop; sick of the way he could take over her mind so easily.
She looked out on beautiful Rome and thought of the city’s origins, the ancient lives that had hummed between these hills, the lives that had been lived fully and long ago extinguished, lives that were a part of the fabric of this city’s memory. She was a part of that now too, her pain and ecstasies weaving into its ancient consciousness. There was consolation in that, somehow. As though knowing she was just a thread in an enormous fabric being stitched over time, it somehow lessened what she was feeling in that moment.
She stared out at Rome and studied the golden lights that shaped the city against the inky black sky, she listened to the far away hum and drone of traffic, so she didn’t hear the knock on her door at first.
A second later, it sounded once more, and this time, she spun around. “Yeah?” Her voice was soft, but he must have heard it because the door opened and Fiero walked in holding two glasses of wine. Her heart began to thump.
She arranged her features carefully, wiping any hint of emotion from them.
“You were right this morning. We do need to talk,” he said quietly, his eyes roaming her face in a way that spread goose bumps across her skin. Her chest felt a little like it had been cracked open to reveal her rib cage.
“I thought we already did.”
His smile was derisive, but it felt self-mocking. She tried not to look too hard; to wonder. His face was like quicksand – if she stared at him too long, she would get sucked in and not be able to breathe.
“Not really. Not properly.”
She bit back her instant response – that he could have stayed and talked rather than walking out on her. Instead, she focussed on her curiosity, wondering what he’d come to her room to discuss. He walked towards her and her tummy did the flippy floppy thing she was growing accustomed to. He held a wine glass out to her.
“I don’t know what this is,” he said, after a moment, moving towards the French doors and the balcony, taking up the exact same position she’d occupied moments earlier. “But I know what it’s not.”
She swallowed, moving to stand beside him but being supremely careful not to touch him. “What’s that?”
“Meaningless.” He spoke the word with no inflection. “You’re the mother of my child,” he rushed to add, even as something like hope was firing inside of her. “It’s impossible for us to sleep together and not have it mean something, for there not to be a ramification of some kind. We are parents to Jack. Sleeping together isn’t simple.” He angled his face towards hers. “It’s not meaningless.”
It’s not exactly meaningful, either, she added mentally.
“I’m not seeing anyone else.” He turned back to Rome, sipped his wine.
She ignored the strange explosion beneath her solar plexus, the sense that a part of her was flying into the heavens. “No?”
Scepticism sounded in her voice despite her state of partial euphoria and relief.
“No.” The word was heavy though with resentments.
“I suppose I find that hard to believe, given how we met.”
“Because you think I was married and hooking up with random women on the side?” He suggested, som
ething dark moving across his features.
She worried her lower lip between her teeth and lifted her shoulders, not sure how to respond. Not really sure what she believed and felt, anyway.
“You were the only one.” The words seemed almost dragged from him against his will. She risked a glance at him but his face was stern, not revealing anything more of how he was feeling. Silence shifted around them. “Despite the fact we were as good as divorced, I did take my vows seriously, Elodie. I had no intention of breaking them until Alison and I were legally divorced. The night you and I met, my marriage was already over. It had been a long time since she and I had been intimate in any way, a long time since I’d been with anyone.”
Elodie digested this, a frown etching across her face. “So you were just desperate for sex?”
The rejoinder was rewarded with a lift of his lips, a hint of amusement breaking through his mask of austere reflection as the sun pierced clouds at the end of a storm.
“No.” His smile dropped; the mask of steel returned. “If that were the case, I would have been with dozens of women. It’s not as though I didn’t have opportunities.”
“Wow,” she muttered. “Arrogant much?”
He turned to look at her then and her heart pounded hard against her ribs. “I only meant I could have sought that kind of relationship at any point after Alison and I decided it wasn’t working. I didn’t. I could have gone to nightclubs and bars, but I didn’t. As I said, I took my marriage vows seriously and until they’d been dissolved with the full force of the law, I intended to uphold them.”
She frowned. “So why didn’t you?”
His Adam’s Apple jerked as he swallowed. “I met you.” Something shuddered in her chest. “And my self-control was as non-existent that night as it is now. I knew I should have resisted you. That dinner was an exercise in restraint for me – if you knew how I felt, how long it had been since I’d been intimate with a woman, the things I was thinking about you, and yet I sat there and made small talk for two or three hours, and all the while my body was burning alive.” He shook his head in a gesture of anger.
“Still, I intended to resist you. As the night wore on, I felt relief. It was almost over. You would leave. I’d triumphed over desire. I hadn’t broken my marriage vows.”
She sipped her own wine, mainly to relieve the aching dryness in her throat. “And then I asked you to come home with me.”
“And any willpower I possessed evaporated as though struck by lightning.” He grimaced. “God, I wanted you, Elodie.” He shook his head. “I wish,” –
“Don’t say it,” she groaned. “If we hadn’t had that night, we wouldn’t have Jack.”
He nodded curtly, as if drawing himself back to the point at hand. “I wasn’t sleeping with other women then, and I’m not sleeping with other women now.”
She lifted her eyes to his, relief sagging in her belly.
“I wasn’t on a date last night. I was with my brothers. Once a week, we go to Yaya’s house – it’s a tradition we had when my grandfather was alive and we cherish it now, in his honour.” His expression grew taut. “He basically—,” then, he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. He was important to me. To us.” His voice was gravelled. “That’s where I was. Not with another woman.”
A rush of giddying relief spread across her. “Oh.”
But when she looked at Fiero, whatever pleasure she was feeling was swallowed by worry once more, because his face was forbidding, his manner tense.
“I like sleeping with you.” He shook his head. “Such an insipid expression for how I feel.” He turned to face her bodily, but made no attempt to touch her. “I crave you constantly. My body aches for yours, just as it did that night in London, three years ago.” He drew in a breath, as though preparing himself for what came next. “It’s not meaningless, but sex is all this can be.” He lifted a hand to touch her cheek then, and the softness of the contact contrasted with the harshness of his words was her undoing.
“You sound pretty sure of that.”
“I am.” A muscle jerked in his jaw. “Every time I look at you, I see what you took from me.” So simple. So sad. “And I can’t forgive that. I can’t look beyond it, even when I can see that you thought you had your reasons. Christo, I wish I could.” He lifted a hand, curling it around her cheek. “Don’t you think I wish I could just forgive and forget?” He shook his head, the futility of their situation landing against her like a boulder. “I’m so sick of being angry about this. You are a wonderful mother – our son is lucky to have you. But you kept him from me, Elodie. You kept him from me.” His voice cracked a little and her heart smashed into a billion pieces.
She opened her mouth to explain but he lifted a finger, pressing it to her lips, his eyes dropping to her mouth so her chest felt like it was going to explode. “I know why. You’ve told me. But that doesn’t change the facts. You tried to tell me once, two years ago. For two years you have raised our child, every day making that choice again and again to keep him a secret from me. I believe you tried to tell me, and I believe you thought you were making the right decision, but it doesn’t change how I feel. I wish I didn’t, Elodie. This is driving me crazy.”
Tears filled her eyes but she blinked them away.
“If you hate me so much, how can you bear to touch me?”
“I don’t hate you.” The words were hoarse.
“But you don’t like me either.”
He was quiet, his eyes scanning her face.
“I wish I could make sense of this,” he promised huskily. “I wish I could give you the answer you want. But I won’t lie to you Elodie, my conscience won’t allow that. I won’t sleep with you and pretend it changes what’s in here.” He pressed a hand to his chest.
“How can you say that? As though sex is somehow completely separate from everything else?”
“It is,” he insisted. “If we agree that it is,” as though it were so simple. “You were right to address what’s happening between us. I was letting my anger about Jack cloud my behaviour. I don’t want to hurt you, Elodie. You’re the mother of my child and regardless of what you’ve done, and regardless of the decisions you made, we are bound together in a way that matters to me. I would lay down my life for yours, because of Jack. I will fight for your happiness because Jack deserves his mother to be happy.”
He moved closer, just a tiny bit, but enough for his masculine fragrance to tease her nostrils. “If you say you can no longer sleep with me, knowing how I feel, then I will respect that. This is your decision. I am telling you now what I want – and you must decide for yourself.”
Her heart jerked. “What do you want?”
“I want to be with you.”
“To sleep with me?”
He dipped his head forward in silent agreement. “But I can make you only one promise: it is, and always will be, just sex.” A determined glint shone in his eyes. “Not meaningless,” he stroked her cheek.
“But not meaningful either?”
He was silent.
Her stomach squeezed. “And then what?”
His eyes roamed her face enquiringly.
“When you no longer want to sleep with me? What do we become?”
“What we are now.” His voice was gruff. “Parents. And for Jack, we’ll find a way to make that work.”
It was beyond depressing. She pulled away from him, looking out to Rome. It was so easy for him, easy for him to compartmentalise their physical intimacy from the other facets of their relationship. As though one day in the future, distant or otherwise, they could flick a switch and no longer desire each other in this way. It was fraught with difficulties. She could foresee heartbreak at every turn.
“You have to decide what you want,” he said throatily. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to feel as you obviously have been. I want to be clear about what we are, what I want, what I’m offering. And you can decide if it’s also what you want.”
9
> HE WATCHED HER PLAYING with Jack across the terrace, a rock in his gut. He’d been so sure, last night, that he was doing the right thing. Clearly spelling out where he was at and what he wanted. He’d been so sure she’d see the sense in what he was proposing and agree to keep things as they were.
Simple. Satisfying. Pleasurable.
She hadn’t.
“I need to sleep. And think.” Her smile had been tightly dismissive. “Let’s talk tomorrow.”
What could he do? He’d put the ball in her court and she was holding on to it. He’d nodded curtly, resisted the impulse to kiss her goodnight – knowing a kiss would inevitably lead to her curling her hands around his neck, pulling his head lower, to her wanting more and him needing more.
So he’d shrugged and smiled and walked from the room, wondering at the sense of misgiving in his belly.
“Count with me,” she smiled at their son, a natural smile that reminded him of the first night they’d met, when she’d laughed so freely. He ran a finger around the top of his glass and pushed the newspaper aside.
“One,” the little boy placed a block on the tiles of the terrace and Elodie nodded encouragingly, taking another block and placing it on top of the first.
“Two,” they said in unison.
Her grin widened. Something in the region of Fiero’s heart opened up.
“Three.” The next block found its place.
“Four.”
He wanted their son to know Italian, too. That would come, surely, being surrounded by Italian speakers, here in Rome. Elodie would need to learn the language too.
The idea had him sitting up a little straighter, the sudden movement drawing Elodie’s quick glance, her eyes resting on his face, a frown tugging at her lips, all of the joy of a moment ago gone.
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