Chapter 6
Avery’s bright smile fades the moment her eyes land on me.
Whatever joy she’d been feeling is gone in an instant, snuffed out and cold. For the brief second she pauses on the sidewalk outside Vendange, all I see in her beautiful face is pain and confusion, suspicion.
I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, I’m the one who’s done this to her.
Not only that morning in Paris, but more recently too.
She doesn’t even attempt to conceal her displeasure as she turns away from me without so much as a word. She starts heading up the sidewalk in the opposite direction of me.
“Avery, wait.”
Her pace doesn’t slow at all. I bite off a curse as I cut the M6’s engine and close the door. There’s no parking on this section of the street, but the last thing I’m worried about is a paltry ticket or a tow. Rounding the front of the vehicle, I catch up to her in a few determined strides.
“Avery.” I step ahead, then turn to face her. My body blocks her immediate path, the only thing that seems to make her stop. “Goddamn it, don’t go.”
My voice sounds too raw, enough to make her gaze snap up to mine in alarm. I rein it in with a scowl. It’s astonishing how quickly she can rattle my self-control. Then again, it shouldn’t surprise me. This woman has twisted me into knots from the first moment I laid eyes on her.
Gritting my teeth against the urge to physically hold her in place, I try again. “Don’t run from me. Please.”
She doesn’t try to, but she glares in defiance, her lips flattened into a tight line. “What are you trying to do, Nick?”
“I want to talk to you.”
A thin scoff escapes her. “I can’t imagine why.”
“I think you can.”
She’s pissed off, and as much as I hate being the target of her loathing, I can’t help wondering if last night at Gavin’s restaurant has anything to do with it. The question kept me awake for hours after I left the place. More than once, I had keys in hand, half-tempted to seek her out no matter the time. Instead, after pacing the penthouse like a caged animal until the sun rose, I wasn’t about to go the entire day without seeing her.
“How did you know where to find me?” There is challenge in her voice, and in the narrowed stare that searches my gaze. “Don’t try to tell me you just happened to be in the neighborhood.”
“No. I wasn’t.” At my admission, she folds her arms, her expression perturbed but far from shocked. “I wanted to see you. I drove by your place in Forest Hills this morning, but you were already out. I checked for you at the studio in Harlem too. Lita said she didn’t know where you were—right before she told me to go to hell and slammed the door in my face.”
Avery’s stare remains stubbornly militant. “Good to know someone’s got my back.”
I don’t doubt that all of her friends despise me. They have every right to. They’re protective of her, the way people who care for one another are supposed to be. They’re loyal and true. All the things I wanted to be for Avery, tried to be, but failed.
It’s too late to take anything back. I can’t undo any of it. The wounded look on her face warns me not to even try, but I’ve never been good at taking direction.
“Since you weren’t anywhere else I looked, I assumed you might be with Tasha at Vendange.”
She exhales sharply. “You assume a lot. What if I was on a date?” She tosses the suggestion out at me like a volley shot over my bow. “Would you have come after me there too?”
I don’t reply because there is no need. She can probably read the answer in my hot, unflinching stare. “Fortunately for both of us, you aren’t on a date.”
As she frowns up at me, I consider the eager, ruddy-faced art history professor who’d been her escort at the university reception earlier this week. Although I hadn’t known anything about the congenial bastard until that night, I am considerably more informed now.
Brandon Snyder is a hardworking, decent man from a solid, middle-class family upstate. Stellar academic and public records. Not a single blemish on his character anywhere to be found.
Because damn it, I’ve looked.
After realizing he was dating Avery, I made it my next day’s mission to unearth every piece of data I could find on him.
In the end, all I found was a man far better suited for her than I ever could be.
Hell, if I’m keeping score, there are countless men in this city who deserve Avery more than I do. But not any one of them will ever love her the way I did . . . the way I still do.
They’ll never please her the same way.
They’ll never hurt her so deeply, either.
I lift my hand before I realize what I’m doing, needing to touch her. She steps back as if I mean to strike her instead of caress her.
“No. Don’t.” A firm shake of her head sends her loose blonde hair sifting around her shoulders. “You don’t get to do that anymore, Nick. You don’t have the right. Not that you ever did.”
“I suppose I deserve that.”
“And then some.”
Apparently, she’s had enough. She moves to the right as if to step around me. I counter, cutting off her escape. “Have you eaten yet?”
“What?”
“Lunch. I’m starving, and there’s no point in standing here trying to have a conversation in the middle of the sidewalk. So, what do you say? Let’s go somewhere more private and talk.”
“Let me guess,” she replies, sarcasm lacing every syllable. “Somewhere private as in back to your place? Maybe you think we should have this conversation in your bed?”
Christ. It wasn’t my intention to bring her home with me today, but my cock and everything else male in me responds with swift approval. “I’m definitely not opposed to the idea.”
The frown creasing her forehead deepens. “You’re unbelievable. If you want to share a meal and some conversation with someone—or anything else—I’m sure you have plenty of other options available to you. In fact, why don’t you start with the blonde you had dinner with last night?”
I scowl, if only to cover the satisfaction I feel in seeing Avery’s jealousy spike even after all this time. Even after everything that stands between us. “You mean Simone? What do you know about her?”
She scoffs under her breath. “I guess I should thank you for not attempting to lie to my face about it. I saw you with her at Gavin’s restaurant, not that I care. You’re free to fuck whoever you want. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Really?” I study her, reacquainting myself with every nuance of her face, every emotion that plays across her delicate features no matter how hard she tries to conceal it from me. It stung her to see me with another woman. It still does, all these hours later.
Just as it burned me to think of her with another man.
“As I recall it, you were with someone at GC last night too.”
“So, you did see me.” She says it with resignation, as if she’d be more shocked if I hadn’t noticed her presence inside the crowded restaurant. Perhaps even disappointed.
The fact is, I would sense this woman anywhere. There isn’t a place I’ve gone in this city where I haven’t been acutely, painfully aware of her.
I am drawn to her now as I have been from the beginning, even though I know I’ve forfeited the right to act on it.
No, as she said only a few moments ago, I never had that right.
Regardless, I see no reason to play games with Avery. I’ve done enough of that already. And I know that if she believes she’s right—that I screwed the woman she saw me having dinner with just a couple of nights after I asked Avery to leave her art event with me—our conversation would end right here.
“Simone Emmons lost her husband last month.”
Avery tilts her head, far from convinced. “She didn’t look the part of a grieving widow to me. Especially when she was pawing at you across the table and batting her lashes.”
I shrug, unable to offer any defense for my dinner companion. “Simone is a flirtatious woman who married a wealthy man old enough to be her grandfather. She’s also my newest client. At dinner last night, she agreed to sell one of her deceased husband’s companies to me.”
Avery snorts. “I’ll bet she did. I’ll bet you were one hard negotiator too.”
“It was just business, and it went no further than dinner.” I pause as a cluster of pedestrians moves past us on the concrete. “Do you really want to talk about Simone Emmons?”
“No.” I see some of her suspicion diffuse, but not enough to persuade her to stay. “I don’t want to talk about anything with you, Nick. I’m on my way to the studio. Or, rather, I would be if you weren’t standing in my way.”
“Let me drive you there.”
“No, thanks.” Something brittle flashes in her gaze. “I don’t accept rides from people I don’t know.”
It’s a low blow, lower than anything else she’s said to me, but a deserved one. If I were a better man, I’d let her aptly delivered jab stick and head back to my car alone. For the past year I’ve managed to resist a confrontation like this, but after seeing her a few nights ago she’s all I’ve been able to think about.
I have things to say to her.
Things I should have said back in Paris or months before.
There are things she needs to know. Things she needs to see. Ugly things that may make her hate me even more. Or worse, pity me.
“All right, Avery. Then walk with me for a while. If you decide you still don’t know me, then I’ll escort you to the nearest subway station and I’ll go. You’ll never see me again.”
She stares at me, a trace of confusion in her searching gaze. I see doubt there too. When she speaks, her voice is quiet, hesitant. “You really mean that?”
Fuck, do I? As difficult as it would be to keep a promise like that, I know I owe her the choice. The choice I didn’t give her before. I owe her the truth . . . and the why.
“Yes, Avery. I mean it. You have my word.”
For a long while, she says nothing. Doesn’t so much as blink as she weighs my promise in unbearable silence. She can break me right here and now, but I wonder if she truly understands her power. Watching her leave the first time was hard enough. Knowing how deeply I’d hurt her was a torment that’s eaten at me like a cancer ever since.
She doesn’t trust me. She doesn’t believe that I can be held to any promises, nor should she. But I would do this for her now. Not only because I know it’s the best thing for her, but because I also know the shame that’s waiting at the end of the path I’m asking her to walk with me.
I haven’t opened that door since the moment Avery entered my life.
I’m not at all certain I want to do it now.
She watches me too closely, already far too aware of the fissures in my soul.
“Okay, Nick,” she says softly. “Lead the way.”