Beautiful White Lies Duet

by K L Clare

  “Get that dog something to eat,” I called after him.

  I turned back to the art gallery’s open door and watched Ellie reveal her painting to the woman who had joined her. Her fingertips followed the wet brushstrokes in demonstration, the movement of her wrist was graceful, and the smile on her lips suggested that she had a secret she would never share.

  The sun would set within the hour, and she would soon walk home alone.

  And I would follow.

  * * *

  Ellie’s face and that secret thrill on her lips as she had admired her work the night before replayed in my mind, and even my punitive workout earlier that morning did nothing to suppress my desire to see it again. I dropped the towel I’d wrapped round my hips after showering and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt.

  Wait until she’s ready.

  There had never been a time in my life when I hadn’t taken whatever I wanted, the consequences be damned. It was a reflexive trait that wasn’t easily curbed. On top of that, and quite like my father, I had always been impulsive and obsessive by nature.

  But I had somehow found the discipline to wait Ellie out, to give her time to grow and thrive as an individual before allowing my obsession to consume all of her, though I could feel the elasticity of it contracting. My self-discipline had stretched to its limit.

  I needed to see her. I would claim one touch, maybe one kiss, then continue protecting her from a distance.

  Fucking liar. You’ll take everything from her. Don’t touch.

  I shook my head, my deliberations vacillating between what I knew was the truth and what I wanted to do, and jogged out to my car. The town celebration had already started, and this fucking liar wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to see her there.

  It didn’t take much time to catch up to her—there she was on the street just a few feet ahead of me. I would recognize her pretty arse anywhere. Stonington’s main streets were narrow, so I retreated into the crowd and crossed to the opposing curb from where I could see her face.

  Ellie soon found me and locked her eyes onto mine, and what I discovered in her gaze was staggering. It caused a sharp pain to cut through me as if a blade had pierced my heart.

  Abandonment. Loss. She believed she was alone.

  I pressed my palm against the center of my chest to ease the abrupt tightness.

  Christ, how many times had she been failed?

  She worked a second job tending bar, for fuck’s sake, and it wasn’t for the money—my father had assured me she had inherited her father’s wealth, which meant she was looking for something or someone to make her feel safe and loved. She’d lost both parents at an early age, and her grandmother visibly withheld her affection for Ellie. Ellie’s sister, Isobel, seemed to express a maternal regard for her rather than offer the kind of companionship a sibling close in age could provide.

  I had no idea how many men had passed through her life, but it was clear none understood who she was or what she needed, because she was still alone.

  She was practiced at concealing the pain, but beyond the beauty of her green irises, the suffering was there. I could see it and feel it, and in that moment, with our eyes locked, I knew that I would never find the strength to leave the States without her again.

  Unrestrained thoughts raced through my head. I opened and closed my hands, flexing my fists as flashes of anger rushed through me. I wanted to kiss away the hurt. I ached to shelter her in my arms. I wanted to bury my cock deep inside of her and show her that she had been found. I lowered my eyes to her lips and smirked at the idea of her releasing all of that pain as she screamed my name.

  I met her eyes again, my smile fading as something more occurred to me. That she dared to hold my stare for so long revealed strength, but also there was something undeniable about the intensity of her will. Ellie held the power no one before her had ever possessed, and if I wasn’t careful, one day she would wield it to put me on my goddamned knees.

  Mine.

  No.

  I didn’t deserve her. I would only cause her more pain. When she broke our connection to talk to her friend, I walked away.

  2

  Will, Now

  Elle’s kiss that morning was hot and cold, swinging between rushes of passion and indifference. She had been leaning against the white marble counter, scrolling through email messages on her smartphone, when I had pulled her out of the bathroom and into my arms.

  She allowed her lips to fall away from mine and looked at the floor, her silence making me wonder which of my sins she had unearthed.

  But the detachment in her kiss might have had nothing to do with me, and I hated that idea. I wanted everything about her to be about me—even if it hurt. Because if the fault was mine, I could correct my own missteps and make her happy again.

  I pulled her chin up with my forefinger and forced her to reconnect. “Tell me what you need.”

  “Nothing. I’m fine . . . really.” She forced a small smile to her mouth that didn’t reach her eyes. “I just can’t seem to push that dream from the other night out of my thoughts, you know?”

  She called them dreams, but they were relentless fucking nightmares and one of the few things that I couldn’t fix. I had taken the only action I could to help her. I’d hired a tenured professor from Cambridge who specialized in cognitive behavioral studies to counsel Elle in post-traumatic anxiety.

  One exercise Elle embraced was writing to her dead sister about unresolved feelings. We’d created an email address for Isobel so that Elle could send messages and feel as if she were truly sharing private thoughts with her when she wanted to.

  I released her chin and nodded. “I do know.”

  “You do, don’t you?” she said softly, lifting her fingertips to my face. “We have so much to be thankful for, Will. So much opportunity before us.”

  “We do,” I said. “How about dinner out tonight—just you and me?”

  “We’ll be mobbed—the press never misses our date nights—but yes, I’d like that. Let your assistant choose the place. Sean’s recommendations are always spot-on.” A genuine smile hit her lips, touching her cheeks and those eyes. “You have another busy day, I’m sure, so why don’t I come to the office at seven?” She whispered her next words in a tease. “I’ll be the girl in the red dress.”

  “Keep that up, and I’ll skip my first meeting and tie you to the bed.”

  I hadn’t ever done that—tie her up for sexual satisfaction. She submitted to me in a way that was perfect for us. Submission wasn’t something she’d known before me, and she’d been rather inexperienced in bed on the whole—thank Christ—but she had caught on quickly and realized how well it soothed us both. She had tenderly whispered more than once that giving herself over to me was like finding her way home.

  Even so. I had drawn an important line that I would not cross with my angel.

  I needed only for her to be submissive, not to be a submissive. Her sensual surrender was all it took for me to find a genuine sense of ecstasy—because she was the true source of my desire. From the moment I first touched her, sex became about loving her and feeling her rather than dominating her as I had other women in the past. But in order for me to feel all of her and not miss the euphoric vibrations she was capable of sending deep into my soul, control and submission had to exist between us.

  Possessing her body and soul when I was inside of her was that control.

  “Hold that thought,” she said. “I promise it’ll be worth your wait. I don’t want to be late for my first visit to the academies this morning, and I still need to get dressed.”

  Our first project as a couple after we returned from the US was the development of a charitable foundation. It was the perfect business venture in which Elle could get her feet wet, and my firm would benefit a great deal from the tax relief.

  The mission for the Hastings Group Foundation was to provide disadvantaged and at-risk children a refuge in the arts, although the board smartly positioned the nonprof
it for future expansion into other areas of support. We’d granted the Queen’s request to announce our patronage to the public as the Earl and Countess of Sussex, a show of compliance to demonstrate our commitment to my pact with the Crown to let all things past pass.

  “Making me wait again . . .” I gripped her arse and pulled her against my erection. “How’s that working out for you these days, Wife?” I winked.

  “I married you sooner than later because I love you madly, Will.” She ran her hands up my jacket lapels and pushed her fingers into the back of my shirt collar, lifted onto her toes, and kissed my lips. “You waited for the dress as I asked, but making you wait any longer would have added nothing to who we’d already become.”

  Just as Elle finished her sentence, Joe Taylor knocked on our open bedroom door, signaling that he’d prepared the Bentley sedan I’d given her and that it was time to leave.

  Taylor had been an infantry lieutenant for the Royal Army before becoming the lead personal protection officer on the security team assigned to my wife’s safety. Six former soldiers were on my payroll, two of whom had enlisted in the Met Police AFO ranks—authorized firearms officers—so they could legally carry a gun. I’d rendered the Order dormant once again by strategically releasing the details of the former leader Jack Lewis’s death, but Elle’s new title as a British countess and our financial status created additional security needs.

  Elle and Taylor got on quite well. He had become like another brother to her, and I hoped like hell he never wanted to leave our service, because it would crush her.

  As we had prepared for our marriage in the weeks before our late December wedding, she had asked me for one more thing apart from her original conditions: a solid commitment to family first. She longed for a large family, a family that was safe and secure and that she could fall into, with truths that she could never doubt. After Elle learned that Isobel hadn’t been her biological sister, blood no longer defined family for her. She insisted we also choose family members based on love and loyalty, not only for the protection of our bloodline. And when Elle made a connection with someone, she anticipated the bond would last as long as she lived.

  I directed a dismissive nod at Taylor and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear as he retreated downstairs.

  Her head was small compared to mine, her face classically beautiful, and those green eyes of hers were mesmerizing. She rarely closed them when we kissed. Long layers of her chestnut brown hair painted with shades of blond fanned over the sleeve of my jacket, and her natural beach scent overwhelmed my senses. My blood vibrated, and the ever-present craving for her intensified. I needed her. I needed to absorb her into my soul to soothe the madness that lived in me.

  I let my hand drop to her silk dressing gown and glide along the curves of her body, caressing the soft beauty I would never deserve. I had tried to walk away in the beginning, but in the end, I was too fucking weak to stay away and instead took everything from her.

  I cursed beneath my breath.

  “Don’t,” she whispered. “I know what you’re doing.”

  I nodded and, shoving away the darkness of self-reproach, drew her bottom lip between both of mine. Her body responded to my tender kiss, and she melted into my arms the way she always did when we found the strength to let go of the past.

  “You’re amazing, Elle. I’ll soon have everything in order so we can leave for Paris. I want you to understand that this travel isn’t only about business—it’s for us. This is time we need, time you deserve, so I’m making it happen for us.”

  She smiled again, and pure sunshine radiated from her. “That’s beautiful, Will. I’m looking forward to it. Would you allow me to sit in on a few of the start-up meetings? Oh—and I would love to do some painting. I can’t imagine a more inspiring place than Paris.”

  Thomas and I were moving forward with the expansion plan our brother had written before his death. Ethan and I had dreamed about it. We hadn’t realized back then that our younger brother’s mathematical genius was the key to getting it done. Thomas and I were in the process of settling details for formal operations in Paris, New York, and Madrid. Elle and I planned to travel to the European cities while Thomas would handle New York and the transition of current home operations into the London headquarters of our new, much larger organizational structure.

  “Of course. You should come and go as you please,” I said before pressing my lips to hers again. “I’ll see that you have the materials to paint whenever you desire. And now . . . I must go to work before you think to remove this robe in my presence.”

  “Go then, savage,” my wife told me as she twisted out of my arms and giggled.

  I rushed down the staircase, gripping my side when a spasm reminded me of the gunshot wound that had caused permanent damage there. The bullet had annihilated the muscle mass as it passed through, and a secondary infection had set in. No matter how hard I pushed myself in the gym, that part of my body would never again be the same.

  Taylor and three additional men were waiting in the foyer for Elle.

  “No reporting back?” he asked.

  I promised Elle freedom, and I needed her to know my word was good. I needed her to know she wasn’t a prisoner in this marriage. I’d lose her if that were the case.

  “It’s not necessary, Taylor. Take two cars. Give her the autonomy to do as she chooses, but you do not leave her side for even a minute.” I cuffed him on the shoulder on my way out the door. “She trusts you. Don’t fuck that up,” I added.

  She Began to Fly

  From: Ellie

  To: Isobel

  I’m compelled to touch my neck as I write this message to you. I drag my fingers along my throat and allow the tips to rest near my birthmark for a moment. Dreams continue to haunt me. You haunt me, Isobel.

  Your image faded again briefly last night, but as you disappeared this time, I heard a faint rushing sound, like the fluttering of a butterfly’s soft wings. I could see you again as you finally broke free from your chrysalis prison.

  We were both free. You took flight, your new wings soaring gracefully, and my spirit drifted on a calm sea, bathing in its peace. I was wrapped in a blanket of light, free of fear and pain. I saw my father then. His smile was gentle and familiar, and his arms opened wide to receive me, but your watery image—your abruptly dark and expressionless face—appeared behind him. You were not love in this vision, though we had always loved each other. My father was not safe. I was not safe.

  You both disappeared at once.

  Another presence overwhelmed me, a soul extending itself, reaching out to anchor mine. I no longer wanted to be free—no longer wanted to drift through the sea alone. I opened my eyes, and Will’s name touched my lips.

  You see, Isobel, my mind paints you as a villain while I sleep, but in my waking hours, I won’t allow my anger to take me there. You were protecting me. Even after all the lies, you were a good person—a good mother to Lissie.

  I’m confused now more than ever, but I will find your truth.

  3

  Sean sat at his desk behind the glass wall that protected the audible privacy of the goings-on in my office. He handled sensitive matters for me, and I didn’t want others at the firm listening in on his conversations.

  Beyond his furniture and a quaint sitting area was more glass. Wall-to-ceiling windows faced south, with a view of the Tower Bridge that stretched from one side of the Thames to the other. Elle loved that view. She insisted that the sight of the bridge’s Gothic towers combined with the sleek skyscrapers in the foreground drew the past into the present in the most beautiful way.

  It was my wife’s mind that was beautiful. Elle’s conceptually driven brain showed her magnificence and purpose where I often saw disappointment and pain. She saw joy when I could see only gloom. Her mind and the way it worked was one of the most attractive things about her. It allowed her to easily accept and forgive, and that was
a clear advantage for me because without it, she would never have been able to love a man like me.

  “Good morning, sir,” Sean said. “There are several urgent messages in your inbox. Never mind the unlabeled folder on your desktop. I’m uploading investor files into Thomas’s new format, but it’s not ready for your review. It’s quite a lot of work to turn round, but once the tech changeover is complete, I agree it will be more efficient.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, tugging at my collar.

  “You’re distracted. Is the countess all right?”

  My executive assistant was one of the many people who had quickly embraced the use of Elle’s title. For Sean, it was not only a term of respect but also of endearment. He was quite taken with her.

  “Elle’s fine. She’ll pop in about seven this evening. You don’t have to stay, but make dinner reservations for us. . . . You choose, she said. Move forward with extending that offer we discussed. I want her private secretary in place before we leave for the Continent.”

  He nodded. “I’ll ask Ms. Smith to report to me until you indicate otherwise.”

  “Good. Train her to serve my wife well, Sean. Elle has no desire to spend much time here, so confirm with Ms. Smith that she agrees to work from Kensington when we’re here in London. And run the NDA through my personal lawyers. Be sure the scope isn’t so broad as to invalidate the agreement.”

  “Yes, sir. And I’ll set up the library at Kensington myself.”

  Kensington was how we referred to our London home. It wasn’t Eastridge, the majestic family estate Elle and I preferred, but it was elegant and comfortable and necessary. The three-story period house was located on the west side in an affluent neighborhood in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.