Is this what it would be like every day? I wondered as we collapsed on the bed after the fourth time.
No. Of course not. No one could spend a lifetime together without getting at least a little sick of each other.
Right about now, though, it seemed fucking impossible.
“I missed you,” she murmured. She floated a hand over to my cheek and traced the line of my jaw with her finger. “Every day I missed you.”
I stroked her back, memorizing the way her spine curved gently down, down, down. “Is that why you came? Because you missed me?”
Stupid fuckin’ words. They didn’t even come close to covering this kind of yearning.
“Believe it or not, I came here to tell you I couldn’t see you again. Not as friends. Not as anything. We didn’t get to finish our goodbye at the museum before you were called away.”
“How’d that go for you?” I was joking, but the truth was, I couldn’t quite register the heaviness in her words. I was still half-dazed from sex.
Nina was serious. Her big gray eyes welled up before she buried her face into my shoulder. Immediately, I gathered her to my chest. “Hush, doll, hush. Talk to me, eh? I’ll make it better.”
“I meant it, you know,” she mumbled into my skin. Her fingers clung to my biceps fiercely. She wasn’t letting me go. “I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“Couldn’t do what, baby?” I murmured as I stroked her hair. Lord, it was so smooth. Like silk. Satin.
“Couldn’t s-stop this.” With a tiny grunt, she pushed herself up, letting her hair fall over one shoulder while she wiped away one last tear. “I couldn’t stay away from you. I can’t fight us, Matthew, though God knows I tried. It’s simply…”
“Inevitable?” I suggested as I brushed the hair out of her face.
“It’s something.”
Her voice was quiet. I knew then she was thinking beyond this room. To the effects our relationship—if that’s what I could call it now—would have on other people. Her family. Her daughter. Even her cheese fuck of a husband.
Doubt crept into my heart like a vine. Ready to strangle the new hope that had bloomed.
“What is it?” she wondered, watching my face as closely as I watched hers.
I sighed. Maybe it should have been a comfort to know she could read me just like I could read her. But it wasn’t. Not when I had to say what I had to say.
“Did you really mean what you said before? That you want me? You want us?”
I had said we were past the point of no return, but even I knew you couldn’t trust what people promised during sex.
And besides…something was still missing.
Her forehead crinkled adorably. “I—well, yes. Yes, I did.”
I cocked my head. “Maybe I need to hear you say it.”
“Say what?”
“I think you know.”
She took a deep breath. Then another. And another. But she didn’t look away. Her silver gaze locked with mine, and I had the strange feeling that if I dared look away, it would be like I was physically tearing off my own limb.
“I love you,” she said in voice that was strong. Unshakeable.
My heart exploded, but I didn’t move an inch. I sensed somehow that she needed me to be as solid in this moment as I needed her to be.
“And it won’t—Matthew, it won’t stop,” she continued. “Sometimes I feel it so intensely I’m afraid I will drown in it. Like a flood or a tidal wave. Other times it’s more like a creek or even just a trickle—usually when I haven’t seen you for a long time. But it’s always there. Matthew, it’s always there.”
By the end of her speech, her voice had risen again. Fearing hysterics, I pulled her close.
“I know, baby,” I murmured as I covered her face with kisses. “I know.”
“Do you?”
She sighed, sounding almost as content as I felt in that moment. Because Nina loved me. Nina Evelyn Astor de Vries loved me, no good, lifelong sinner, grade A son of a bitch Matthew Zola.
“I love you,” Nina said again, softer. Like a poem. “But, Matthew…do you…Matthew, do you love me too?”
I released her and then moved so that we were lying face to face on my pillow. Then I cupped her face like I was holding a precious piece of art. Which, I supposed, I sort of was.
“Nina,” I pronounced clearly, “I wanted you the moment I saw you sitting at the end of that bar. I needed you the second I kissed you. But I loved you…baby, I loved you the moment you opened that beautiful mind of yours and let me in. You say you belong to me? Well, you own me, Nina. That’s just all there is to it.”
We stared at each other for a few moments, blinking at each other across the bedding like owls.
But in the end, she kissed me, soft and long until we both relaxed.
“It won’t be easy,” she said after we broke apart. “Calvin will fight it.”
“When have I ever backed down from a fight?”
She gave me a look. Of course, the only person she’d ever seen me fight with had been her.
“Is he really that attached to this marriage?”
I fingered her empty ring finger. I wanted to ask why she’d removed it before coming. But there had been enough of hashing out the past. We talking about the future now.
“He’s vindictive,” Nina said. “And yes…he wants it. For his own reasons.”
“Let me guess. Seventeen billion of them.”
“Do you really think that’s all anyone would want me for? My family’s money?”
Guilt lanced through me.
“Shit. Baby, no. I didn’t mean it like that. I just—” I shook my head. Fuck, I really stepped in it this time. “I just meant that he never seems to care about you now. He never shows up. He’s never around.”
Was it my imagination, or did Nina shudder?
“For a long time,” she said, “I liked it that way. I didn’t mind being alone. Until I met you.”
Her smile was so sad, it broke my heart.
“Well, not anymore,” I promised her. “You’re stuck with me now. He can drag you through every family court in New York if he wants to. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s done. All that matters is us, now.”
“Us,” she repeated. “It’s a nice thought.”
“You, me. When you’re ready, Olivia too.”
I thought about telling her that I was pretty sure I’d fallen in love with her daughter too, but in a different way. That despite the fact that I’d only met the kid once, somewhere deep down, she felt like the daughter I was supposed to have.
Another time, I thought. We didn’t have to have every life-changing conversation right this moment. We had all the time in the world.
Nina sighed, this time with pure contentment. “I can’t wait until she can meet you properly. She’s going to be mad about you, I know it.” She tipped her face to mine. “Just like her mother.”
I cupped her jaw. “Do you know…that sometimes you talk like a fancy English duchess?”
Nina giggled. “I had a nanny from Hampshire when I was a girl. It must have made a difference.”
“It certainly does, duchess.” I kissed her again. “Talk fancy to me some more.”
But before she could, I smothered her face with kisses, delighting in the peals of laughter that came in response like sun-drenched church bells.
God damn. I could listen to that sound for the rest of my life.
And maybe, if I played my cards right, I would.
Anything seemed possible now.
On the table, my phone buzzed. I checked the clock. It was almost five thirty—late enough that Derek was wondering when the hell I would wake up. Plus, Frankie and Sofia would be getting home soon.
I sighed. Nothing like real life to burst the damn bubble. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. After all, the point now was to bring both our lives inside.
I answered the phone. “Hey, man. I just woke up.”
Against my arm, Nina gave a light snort.
“Sleep. Yo, that must be nice.”
“You didn’t get any?”
“Maybe a couple of hours. But I’ve been in the photo lab with the techs. They had some new stuff to look at from the photos I showed you yesterday. The two in the car weren’t recoverable, but they managed to get a decent rendering of the one on the other side.”
“Anyone we know?”
“I think you might.”
He said a name, and he was right. I did recognize it. And the moment I heard it, my blood turned ice fucking cold.
I sat up in bed, letting the sheets pool around my waist. Nina watched me curiously, though when her eyes alit on the abs I worked so hard to maintain, they brightened with a much different emotion. Greedy girl.
But I was too distracted by the bomb Derek had just dropped to think about round five.
“Are you serious? Him?”
“Yeah, man. I gotta follow up more, but you know how these people work. I’ll look into it, but he’s probably got the attorney general on his side, just like Carson did, which means none of the feds will go after him either. And I don’t know about you, but I’m still not convinced the Manhattan DA’s not on the take too.”
I sighed. Yeah, he wasn’t wrong about that.
“It’s you and me on this, brother. Otherwise, no one is bringing this organization down. We need to finish this.”
I swallowed.
“Get the prints to Tiana and tell her to start drafting an affidavit and the bill,” I said. “I’ll be at the office within the hour.”
I turned off the phone. Dread lodged in my stomach like an anvil. But I had to move. With a hard, hard swallow, I slid out of bed.
“Matthew?”
I grabbed a pair of clean underwear from my bureau and put them on. My chain gleamed with the saint and the cross on the top of the dresser next to the Navy Cross. Symbols of my failed attempts to be a decent person.
I stared at myself, pressing hard on the wood. I was a bad man. A shameless man.
But for her, I had to be better.
This time, there was no other alternative.
I turned to face Nina, but she seemed to be as attracted to me in my boxers as when they were totally off.
I snapped in front of her face. “Yo, eyes up, duchess!”
She grinned, a cheeky thing that made my heart drop. “I’m sorry. It’s a bit distracting, you know. You have a very nicely shaped posterior, Mr. Zola.”
Fuck.
How was I going to do this to her now?
How could I do this to us now?
“Matthew?” Now all traces of lust and humor had disappeared. “Who was that? Do you really have to go back to work now?”
“It was Derek.”
I rubbed the back of my head, buying myself more time by digging around my closet for a pair of pants and a shirt. For once, I didn’t care about looking anything more than average. I grabbed the first tie I saw and spent much too long making the knot.
Unfortunately, by the time I turned around, Nina was staring like I was a package she wanted to unwrap. Good fuckin’ God. Was there anything I could wear that wouldn’t write sex across that beautiful face?
“Nina!” I barked, unnecessarily harsh.
She blinked, then cowered, almost like she was afraid. Shit.
“What is going on?” she asked. “You’re acting very strange. And you—do you have to go back to work?”
“That was Derek,” I repeated as I sat on the bed. “He—he found something. And yeah, I have to go in.”
She frowned. “Want to tell me about it?”
I shook my head. “I probably shouldn’t…it’s part of an investigation we were running. Part of the one with John Carson.”
She tensed. We both did. That ghost would take more than a few hours to exorcise from everyone’s lives.
“But he’s dead,” she said. “What does it matter now?”
“It matters because he didn’t work alone.” I blew out a long breath, trying to figure out what I could say. And what might get me fired. Dread hugged me like a straitjacket, so tight it strangled. “It was…” I swallowed. “I can’t believe I’m going to fuckin’ say this. But, Nina—baby—doll—”
She shied, like a horse who knew she was going to be hit. Fuck, I hated to think she could ever fear me.
“It’s your husband, Nina,” I said. “It’s Calvin. He’s under investigation for conspiring to traffick minors as sex workers through a Brooklyn safe house.”
I rubbed my face. Fuck, I shouldn’t have even told her that, but she wouldn’t let it go unless I did.
Just like I knew she wouldn’t say anything to him either.
“Calvin’s under investigation for sex trafficking?”
Was it my imagination, or was she not particularly surprised to hear it?
I peered at her. “I’m afraid so. I’d ask you not to say anything, but honestly, he’ll find out by tomorrow, most likely. We have enough to indict now as it is.”
“I see…” She blinked. “Well, obviously I won’t say anything. But what should I do? Bring my things here? I could stay here for a while, if you’re—if you’re open to it—”
“Nina,” I interrupted. “Baby, I don’t think you understand. You have to go. You have to go back home.”
Her eyes widened. “What? Why?”
“Because,” I said. “I can’t protect you from this investigation. But being married to Calvin…” I shook my head as a wave of nausea came and went. “That will. If you’re shacked up with the investigating DA, that puts the whole case at risk, including Jane and Eric, who are currently claiming self-defense against the leader of the operation. You’ll get called as a witness. You’ll be torn apart on the stand. But if you’re with him…well, you get spousal privilege. They can’t touch you.”
I took a deep breath, then said the single hardest thing I’d ever said in my life.
“You have to go home, Nina. For your sake, you have to remain another man’s wife.”
Epilogue
Nina Evelyn Astor de Vries Gardner sat at her vanity in a cream silk dressing gown, hair tied back at the base of her neck while she removed the diamond earrings. Heavy, gaudy things. She’d always hated them, the way they pulled at her earlobes and waved around like flashlights. Calvin had been so proud to give them to her for their second anniversary. Back then, she had been barely twenty-two. Too coy and shy to ask him where she might return them for something more tasteful.
So now she wore them, most often when she knew the sight of anything else would enrage him. They didn’t, however, mask the new cuts and bruises flowering at the base of her neck, where he had grabbed her.
She had never seen him that angry. Or that willing to take it out on her.
“It’s your cousin,” Calvin had snapped as soon as he had been released from the local precinct.
As Matthew had promised, the arrest had happened quickly. It also happened in public. Ten NYPD officers had stormed the private offices Calvin rented in midtown. They had handcuffed him roughly and brought him to the local precinct, where he was held while a Brooklyn Executive Assistant District Attorney named Matthew Zola had presented a case to the grand jury.
The indictment had been swift and immediate.
Charges of racketeering, trafficking, and bribery.
Nina had been the one to post bail.
It had been all over the news. Page Six was going to have a field day for weeks.
But it wasn’t until they arrived home that Calvin snapped. He had seen her in her finery for the benefit she had left to bring him home. Another red dress, a Vivienne Westwood she had purchased almost immediately after leaving Matthew’s house.
Calvin had taken one look at her in her scarlet couture and completely snapped. Accused her of mocking his current condition. Shouted that she had never had any respect for him in the first place, so he’d have to teach her some.
He had dragged her into her suite, thrown her against the eighteenth-centu
ry armoire, and proceeded to slap her silly until her ears rang for another hour.
It might have been over if she had just given him what he wanted. Sex. Tears. Both.
She simply couldn’t.
Not for him. Not anymore.
Perhaps that was why, for the first time in ten years, Calvin had broken his only promise. Not the face. Never the face.
Not, apparently, anymore.
Nina touched the bruises forming just under her jaw and under one ear. There was a small cut there from Calvin’s ring, but the rest would cover up well with concealer. She removed the jar of stage makeup from one drawer and started to dab on the heavy mask.
“Mommy?”
Nina jerked around to find Olivia standing in the entrance of the room, watching her with big, dark eyes. Her daughter was heading back to school after Memorial Day weekend.
She looked so much like her biological father sometimes, Nina was honestly surprised no one had yet asked if the child was even Calvin’s. Of course, most people saw the identical blonde hair, long limbs, and slightly too-long de Vries nose and looked no further. But a closer inspection would have revealed the girl’s chocolatey dark eyes circled in shadows, as opposed to her mother’s gray and Calvin’s blue. They might have noticed the olive tone of the girl’s skin, compared to Nina’s peachy cream complexion. They might have noticed that neither the shape of her lips nor the arch of her brow looked a thing like Nina’s or Calvin’s.
She looked like her father. And really, she looked like Matthew.
There had been times, of course, when she had imagined the two of them together. The first time was when they had actually met there on the street. Nina wondered if Patricia, the nanny, had noticed the resemblance at all. After that, when she had seen enough of him with his niece and nephews to know he would be an outstanding father. And then when she had confessed her daughter’s parentage, the queer look on his face when he suggested shyly that in another world, she might have been his.
Since then, Nina had allowed herself to imagine the three of them the way she had always dreamed for her daughter.
A family.
Maybe one day.
“What—Mommy, did someone hurt you?”
Olivia crept into the room and pointed at Nina’s cheek. Nina turned to the mirror and found that, yes, she had missed a spot.
The Other Man (Rose Gold Book 1) Page 38