Chapter Twenty-eight
He’d let her in, which was a start. And if she’d used the Trojan horse of her job, well at least they were breathing the same air. Sort of.
He’d retreated almost immediately to the library and Elizabeth sat in the conservatory messaging him via her laptop. She sent a couple of easy questions arising from the first draft and Zander—eventually—messaged clarification.
At some point, he’d realize she didn’t need to be on the premises to work together, so she made her questions innocuous and nonthreatening.
When he could talk again—she glanced at her laptop clock—at eight tonight, they would have another conversation. That’s what he’d said. For now, she’d bide her time.
Which didn’t stop her knocking on the library door at lunchtime. “I made sandwiches.”
He opened it, mouthed “thanks,” took them and closed the door.
“Actually,” she called, “I brought enough for two.”
The door reopened. Taking one of the sandwiches, Zander handed her the half-empty plate and closed it again.
Hmph. Well, she’d known this wouldn’t be easy.
When she returned to the conservatory, she saw he’d messaged her. “Dinner. Eight. Dining room. I have things I need to tell you.”
Biting into her sandwich, Elizabeth chewed thoughtfully. It didn’t sound like “I love you and I can’t live without you” were among those things. Even now he was fortifying his reserves, coming up with a plan to save her from herself. By eight tonight he’d be chugging full steam ahead on the “my way is the right way” track.
Fortunately, she’d arrived with a big stick of dynamite. Her challenge lay in timing the detonation. Zander might yell and jeopardize his vocal recovery, so she had to give him time to cool down before they talked. At seven, she took a leisurely shower and covered killer underwear with the camouflage of an understated bronze sheath dress.
At precisely seven forty-five, she scouted out Zander’s location—the library—and returned to her room, unlocked the French doors to the outside balcony and texted him.
I had lunch with your publisher in New York yesterday. You’ll be pleased to hear the Zander Freedman project is still very much alive. In fact, we shook hands on a new contract.
While she waited for his response, Elizabeth chose jewelry, her grandmother’s amethyst beads and matching clip-on earrings. They pinched her lobes, but gave her courage. Her grandmother had been a feisty woman and she needed a reminder that she shared those genes.
Her cell beeped a text.
Then his word is not his bond. I had another request for the return of the advance today.
Elizabeth delayed her reply until she’d applied lipstick, dabbing the excess with tissue and surveying the results in a mirror. Nice. Since Dimity had lent her a watermelon shade, she rarely wore any other color. She tilted her head, admiring the glow of the amethyst earrings as they caught the light and the copper sheen of her straightened hair. Picked up her cell and texted Zander.
Max probably needs it to pay my advance.
High heels or flat? She needed to walk too fast for stilettos. Ignoring Zander’s prompt response, she pondered for a few minutes and compromised with mid-heel pumps. After spritzing her pulse points with lily of the valley, she read his response.
So they rethought the biography idea? Kudos to your negotiating skills. I couldn’t get them interested on your behalf.
Elizabeth lost some of her composure. He’d tried to salvage something for her? Blinking hard to stop tearing up and ruining her mascara, she sent a brief prayer heavenward. Thank you for reminding me why I’m fighting for this man. Checked her watch. Seven fifty-five. Now to traumatize him.
Not biography. Memoir.
Zander’s reply was immediate. But they’re not interested in my memoir.
She took a deep breath. No…but very interested in mine. Working title: In Bed with a Rock God.
Dropping her cell beside the note on her bed, she left via the French doors, disappearing into the dark as the sound of a slamming door rattled the house. He’d moved faster than she’d expected.
Hurrying down the external stairs, Elizabeth wended through the garden and stood under an oak, waiting. She’d left the light on in her bedroom and through the French doors she watched Zander storm into her room and look around wildly—yep, really mad—before seizing the note she’d left for him. She’d labored over it so long, she knew it by heart.
Take deep breaths and calm down. Saving your voice is YOUR TOP PRIORITY. When you think you can talk as softly as you need to, go to the dining room, where we’ll discuss this like adults. But to save your breath—I know you can only talk for ten minutes—you need to know three things.
1. I honor my contracts.
2. You did once tell me to do something I could never take back, before I preached to you about courage.
3. So technically it’s your fault.
She’d hoped for at least a hint of a smile for the funny part, but Zander threw down her note and stalked out of the room.
Elizabeth followed his progress through the house as he snapped on lights and searched one room after another. Eventually, he went into the dining room and sat down, folding his arms. Waiting. She gave him ten more minutes to calm down, then walked across the lawn and quietly opened the French doors.
Eyes blazing, Zander said very softly, “Why the hell would you do something so fucking suicidal?”
Relieved that he was protecting his voice, she joined him at the table. “Because I knew your newly developed sense of nobility would screw this up for us. Former smokers, new converts, reformed rakes, you’re all so inflexible immediately after conversion. Meanwhile, who suffers until the pendulum swings to the middle? Me.”
“Suffer. Jesus, Elizabeth, you have no idea what you’re in for.”
“Actually, as someone who does their research, I do.” She lit the candles; they flickered over his beautiful face and tortured eyes. He stole her breath away, always had. She longed to kiss his weary lids, to cradle his head on her breast and tell him everything would work out but he wouldn’t let her. Yet. Instead, she poured herself wine and filled his water glass.
At her request, Constanza had left dinner in the kitchen for Elizabeth to serve later. “It’s going to be tough,” she continued. “I’ll lose professional credibility in some circles. I’ll probably lose friends. And in the short term at least, I’ll lose all my privacy.”
“Then what is this,” he said, bewildered, “a martyr complex?”
“All this time,” she said quietly. “I’ve been building preconditions, stipulations and escape clauses into our relationship. When this happened, I realized something. I could be safe or I could have you.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “And I want you, Zander. I love you. You’re flawed and magnificent and our life together will be scary and exhilarating. But the alternative—living without you—is bleak at worse and bland at best.” Terrified by her admission of vulnerability, Elizabeth tried to strike a light note. “The truth is, you’ve ruined me for other men.”
“Oh Doc,” he murmured. “Doc.” She’d never seen him look so grave and her heart sank. “You can’t love me because you don’t know me. I’ve never let you. I’ve pretty much justified every shitty action through telling myself I’m so fucking talented. Most of my adult life I’ve been tranquilized with drugs and alcohol. Only I woke up and discovered myself a reckless, selfish egotist. Sooner or later the world was always going to see me for what I am. Wise up and do the same.”
She shook her head and he said, anguished, “Listen.” Taking a sip of water, he repeated more softly. “Listen. I’m the guy so obsessed with funding his comeback that he defrauded his own brother by skimming royalties on our early hits.”
Elizabeth recoiled. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I planned to refund the shortfall after the tour, but Dev found out and the shit hit the fan. He forgave me on condition I legally acknowledged his contribution, so he could stop me pimping our songs for commercial purposes. And made me promise to visit our mother regularly. But let’s be clear.”
His expression was dark with self-disgust. “The only reason I overcame my deathbed phobia was to avoid jail. Not for Mom, not for Dev. And that’s only the second worst thing I’ve ever done.”
Her brain whirled with a dozen questions, her heart homed in on one. “Why did he forgive you?”
Zander gripped his water glass. “Because he’s a better man, a better son and brother.”
“Or he got sober and became a better man. You may have begun this tour as a selfish egotist, but you’ve ended it trying to protect everyone working for you. Now you’re hoping to run me off by creating a disgust for you.”
She leaned forward, her gaze intent. “Tell me the worst thing you’ve ever done, Zander. Lay all your cards on the table and if I leave, then I leave. But if I still want to stay? Then dammit, you let me.”
* * *
Elizabeth sat on her bed, knees drawn up, blanket pulled over them, nervously watching the inbox on her laptop. Since Zander had used his talking allotment, and neither of them had any appetite, he’d shut himself in the library to e-mail his last, dark secret. Partly, she suspected, because he was convinced she’d reject him.
Despite her brave throwing of the gauntlet, she was terribly afraid she might. This was a man who’d done everything, seen everything. If Zander said it was bad, then it was bad. But they couldn’t build a future on festering secrets.
She’d been shocked when he’d confessed to cheating his brother, chiefly because she couldn’t imagine Zander doing something so heinous. Regardless of what he believed about himself, he had changed.
When his e-mail finally hit her inbox, she had to hold the mouse with both hands to steady the cursor and open the attachment.
Zander hadn’t bothered with preamble.
I committed my worst sin at sixteen. Mom phoned me at work to tell me to hurry to the hospital to say good-bye to Dad. I borrowed the boss’s car and ran a couple of red lights in my panic to get there in time.
I ran up six flights and stopped outside his room to catch my breath before I went in. I guess I didn’t want him to know he was dying.
The door had one of those glass viewing panels, crisscrossed with wire squares. Mom sat with her back to me holding Dad’s hand and Dev was slumped forward with his face buried in the blankets. I’d made it, though. I could see Dad’s chest rising and falling, except it seemed to snag at the top of every breath.
He’d always been such a big man, now he barely made a mound under the sheet. His head was turned toward the door and when he saw me his eyes lit up, though he was too weak to smile.
I planted my palm on the door’s metal plate to push it open and all the strength left my arm. I remember looking puzzled at my hand and then at Dad, thinking maybe the door was locked. But there was no lock. There was no handle. I told myself to get in there, to push harder, to man up, but all I could think of, staring into Dad’s eyes, was that if I went inside I’d have to listen to his last breath.
I backed away, then turned and ran flat-out down the stairs and to the car. I drove off, not with guilt, not with grief, not even with shame, but with an overwhelming sense of relief.
Only later, when I heard his time of death, did I realize that the last thing my father saw was his firstborn—the son who’d promised to look after Mom and Dev—running away from his responsibilities.
Mom has always been so sad for me that I didn’t make it to Dad’s deathbed. I have never told her or anybody the truth until now. This miserable coward is the man you think you love.
Elizabeth deleted the e-mail and cleared it from her trash folder. Then she curled up on the bed, pulled the blanket over her head and wept.
She cried for his father, his family, for the boy Zander had been; she cried for his loneliness and the years he’d wasted keeping his mother and brother at arm’s length.
And she cried because when someone you loved hurt, you hurt and this was her baptism by fire. She’d fought so hard to protect herself against this depth of vulnerability.
How did you come back from being a sixteen-year-old boy, needing to be a man and unable to manage it because you were burnt out with responsibility and grief? Because you were still a child desperately needing his father.
How would you live, going forward? How would you punish yourself? If you saw yourself as irredeemable when you were a teenager, what point was there in trying to be good? Convinced you couldn’t be relied on, you’d perpetuate that every day.
Born with a big heart, you’d fill the void somewhere and public adulation had replaced the personal relationships Zander didn’t believe he deserved.
It was forty minutes before Elizabeth was composed enough to go find him, first washing her face and brushing her tangled hair. Conscious suddenly of the agony he must be feeling waiting for her reaction, she didn’t apply fresh makeup.
The library was in darkness when she opened the door and her stomach fluttered in panic. What if Zander had left the house and driven somewhere she couldn’t find him? Then she caught the movement of a chair swinging around from the bay window and as her eyesight adjusted she glimpsed his shadow, one side etched in moonlight.
Her whole future depended on the next few minutes.
“I’m sorry,” she said to his silent figure, “for so many things.” Elizabeth prayed for the right words. “I’m sorry you didn’t get the support you needed around your father’s death. I’m sorry you never got your good-bye and I’m sorry you’ve been blaming yourself for something you couldn’t help.”
She took a few tentative steps closer. “I’m sorry you won’t believe me when I tell you that your dad would have understood why you left and forgiven you. Because everything you’ve ever told me about him suggests a compassionate man.”
She paused because she wanted her next words to ring very strong, very clear. “But I’m not sorry I love you, Zander. I’ll never be sorry I love you.”
He didn’t speak and it took her a moment to remember he had to protect his voice. But he didn’t move either and suddenly afraid, she moved forward and swung his chair to the window so the moonlight illuminated his face.
* * *
Zander watched Elizabeth’s eyes widen as she registered the tears streaming down his cheeks. The last time he’d cried was when his father was diagnosed as terminal, before he’d put childish things behind him. He hadn’t allowed himself tears when his dad died; he’d had no right to them.
All he could do was look at her helplessly, this woman who saw him clearly and still loved him.
She choked, “Oh Zander,” and pulled him close. He pressed his face against her breast, wrapped his arms around her and held on, crying silently to protect his voice, fighting to control the maelstrom of grief and love and regret and gratitude.
He’d been sitting here for so long, every passing minute weighting him with the certainty that Elizabeth felt as he did—he was irredeemable.
He was still finding it difficult to process her words, they were so opposite from those he’d expected to hear.
But the gentle hands smoothing his hair, the fervent kisses on the top of his head as she wept with him, those were real. “I love you.” She murmured the words over and over again until he believed them, until they became his new reality.
He tugged her into his lap and kissed her wet cheeks passionately, then her mouth, but their noses were blocked and they had to break apart to breathe. Elizabeth laid her forehead against his and chuckled and he thought, wonderingly, so this is what peace might feel like.
She switched on the desk lamp and they blinked at each other in its glow. “I never thought you could be ugly,” she teased, stroking his jaw, “but—” She jerked her head around to check her reflection in the windowpane and gasped.
“You’re beautiful,” he mouthed, but she was already scrabbling for the box of tissues on his desk like a squirrel diving for the last nut of autumn. Frustrated, he accepted some Kleenex, blew his nose and then, while Elizabeth blotted her eyes, grabbed a clean tissue and scrawled, I love you, and presented it to her, as shyly as a schoolboy.
“Thanks.” She blew her nose hard and Zander smothered laughter.
That’s my girl. If he couldn’t talk, he’d have to show her how infinitely precious she was by other means. As she finger-combed her hair, he pulled her hands away and cupped her face, letting everything he felt for her show in his eyes.
Elizabeth stopped fidgeting. “You really love me.” He nodded and she blinked hard.
Oh no, Doc, we’re not stopping to blow our noses twice. Zander kissed her. Slowly. Reminding her of the magic between them. She sighed and leaned into him and they kissed a long time. And when she was boneless, languid in his arms, he put her away from him and slid down the zipper on the side of her dress, stopping often to caress the smooth skin he uncovered.
Impatience humming under her skin, Elizabeth tried to take over and he kissed her again, drugging her with lust before returning to his leisurely removal of her clothes. The sexy underwear tested his resolve, but Zander held strong.
He knew what he wanted—every kiss tender, every caress reverent and every touch an homage to how beautiful she was to him. It was a gift he could give her, learned over years of loving too many women and deployed now in her service. He found the minutest detail fascinating—the location of every freckle, the luster of her copper hair in the lamplight, the hitch in her breath as he worshiped her flesh, and the pale gold of her lashes closed in ecstasy. And when she trembled to a climax against his hand, he was overcome with a humility he’d never experienced before, a gratitude that she allowed him this intimacy.
“Elizabeth.” Zander only realized he’d spoken aloud when her lashes fluttered open and she smiled at him. And then nothing could stop him saying it. “I love you.”
“Then take off your clothes.”
He grinned. Guess I’m the romantic in this relationship. Throwing cushions onto the rug, he tumbled her to the floor with him, enjoying her soft nakedness against his clothed body.
This time when she started tugging at his clothes he helped her, rolling on his back to provide a buffer against the hard surface. And when she sat astride him, and guided him inside her, he surrendered everything to her, his literary Valkyrie.
And it was good.