Chapter 13
While Sarah didn’t have anyone she would call a “friend” in New York, she saw a plethora of familiar faces when she stepped into the club Saturday night. Staff, like the bartender who knew exactly what she liked and the bouncers who always kept an eye on her, nodded their heads or heaved a sigh of relief that some sort of party had arrived. A few locals who frequented the place as often as she did waved before going back to their cocktail conversations. A Spanish shipping magnate gave her a knowing look as she walked by to pick up her drink. The man did not touch or speak to her, but his presence was instantly discernable. Thinking about the good times, Pedro? Eh, he was an all right lover. Self-absorbed, involved, not about to put his mouth where he put his dick…
“Anything wild happening tonight?” Sarah asked the bartender. Her blond wig threatened to get into her drink, and considering the amount of grenadine in it? Gross. Sarah tossed the fake blond locks over her shoulder, enticing Pedro even more.
“There’s some business meeting going on in the back. They’ll let you in, I’m sure. Just don’t hold your breath regarding the pickings. A lot of women here tonight.”
Maybe that’s what I need to not think about Lucas for a night. Sarah did not consider herself bisexual, but she was not above fooling around with a woman if that’s what Angel fancied. Perhaps tonight would be an excellent night for finding a frisky couple looking to spice up their marriage. When was the last time she got involved in a threesome? Five months ago?
Or maybe it was a lesbian convention for all she knew. Whatever. As long as Mr. Blackbourne was out of her brain by the end of the night, she didn’t care who she fucked.
Well, maybe I’ll pass on Pedro tonight. He had stopped paying attention to her, anyway.
“Thanks.” Sarah grabbed her drink and headed deeper into the club.
She found some prime real estate within twenty seconds. Three young, handsome and well-dressed men crowded around a table and laughed at some end-of-the-week joke. At least one of them had to be game for some fun with a strange woman that night. Maybe two of them.
“Gentlemen,” she interrupted with a slight sway of her hips. “Can I interest any of you in another drink? I’ll be more than happy to go get it for you and bring it back. Maybe with one less article of clothing, if I think you’re cute.”
The three men were more than happy to accept a beautiful woman into their midst. At first. But, as Sarah discovered, they soon declined her offer to get them drinks and join them in their after-business celebrations. The leader of the group politely brushed her off by suggesting another group of young rabble-rousers might enjoy her company instead.
Except the next pair likewise took one look at her and turned around again. A man and his younger wife looked her up and down before passing on her as well. Sarah huffed her way deeper into the club, where the men might be more likely to give up some time.
They certainly took longer to turn her down. Some of them would engage in conversation long enough to catch her face in the light, only to pale in sickly shock and find some excuse to get away from her. Others pretended to be interested in her only to disappear into the bathroom, never to be seen again. One woman flat out told Sarah to stay away from her, because “she didn’t want any trouble.”
Did Sarah have some undesirable sign hung around her neck? Had she developed a pox on the train? Was she bleeding from her eye sockets? Did the Angel of Death haunt her steps?
She didn’t get an answer until she went back to the front of the club, where the well-lit bar welcomed her to sit down and have a drink.
How unfair was this? Here she was, ready to party and move on from some asshole who had consistently lied to her – and dared to pry into some of the most personal matters a woman carried in her heart. Angel was here to let go on Sarah’s behalf. To release the pent-up frustrations consuming her ever since Lucas walked into her life. Why did I ever sleep with him? I should have left well-enough alone the last time I was here. Sarah folded her arms on the bar and buried her face in their depths. Her wig was more than happy to choke her.
She needed it.
“Excuse me, Miss. Care to have another drink, this time with me?”
The man was young and unfamiliar. Well, maybe Sarah had seen him around before, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember him. He had the face of an intern, but to be here by himself, he must have been an heir or new, rich blood of means. Either way, he couldn’t have been much younger than Sarah. While such men may lack in certain finesse, they made up for it in all-night stamina.
God, who cared anymore? This night was shot enough as it was. Sarah better cling to whatever she could get. As long as the guy was hot and a decent enough flirt, she was ready.
“Sure,” she said with a quick flip of the hair. Time to turn the charm back on and stop feeling sorry for herself. If she blew this like a quick-tempered hurricane, she’d regret it. “I’m having a martini.”
“So I see.” The man nodded to the bartender and ordered Sarah another martini. For himself, he asked for a whisky highball, no wedge. The drinks were there moments before Sarah batted her eyelashes and cranked up her fervent seduction.
“What brings you here, stranger?” Her shoulder grazed against his. “It’s been a slow night around here. About time the wind blew someone in.”
“Honestly?” the man grinned over the rim of his glass. “I’m looking for a good time.”
“As it so happens, so am I.”
Finally. Sarah was starting to wonder if she lost her touch when it came to getting men into bed. Or into a private room. Whichever. She’d do this guy in the back of a cab if it sealed the deal for the weekend.
She fully intended to walk into the office Monday morning, look into Lucas’s lying eyes, and comment flippantly on her activities that weekend. The least she could do was make him jealous before stepping on his balls to drive home the point that they were never, ever going to be a “thing” again. (Not that they were much of one to begin with, mind!)
Oh, Sarah had so many intentions. So did this guy, who clearly arrived too late to receive the same message everyone else in the club had when it came to Sarah making the rounds. Because once she glanced in his direction again, intent on turning up the seduction a few more notches to make this happen as quickly as possible, a firm hand slammed down between them.
Sarah leaped back, almost landing on the empty stool behind her. Her prince of the evening likewise widened his eyes and gaped up at the large, overbearing man interrupting their tryst at the club bar.
The thing Sarah hated the most? How her heart fluttered when she recognized Lucas’s aura before his face.
“You have no idea what you’re getting into here, kid,” Lucas said, never once taking his blue eyes off Sarah’s shocked face. “This woman is nothing but trouble.”
“Um…”
Lucas barely glanced at the younger man before moving to sit on him. The guy took the hint. Within two more seconds, Sarah’s would-be prince scrambled off the stool and took his chances elsewhere.
Sarah wanted to say something. Anything. Yell at him. Scream in his face. Tell him to mind his own fucking business for once in his God thrice-damned life. But she was too busy making sense of the evening to immediately lash out at him. Ah, yes, there was his bodyguard now, hovering a few paces behind them, keeping watch over the increasingly drunk patrons. He didn’t… he did, didn’t he? Sarah didn’t have to ask what was going on to realize Lucas had sent word for nobody to mess with his woman. That’s why everyone was willing to talk to her until they recognized her. “That’s Blackbourne’s girl,” the room practically screamed. “Touch her and he’ll kick your ass. You don’t mess with another man’s woman, no matter how much she makes you think she wants you. Maybe she does, man, but you don’t fucking dare.”
So she did have a sign hanging over her head. A sign that said “Property of Lucas Blackbourne. Fuck only if you want to lose your life.”
Sarah swallowed the rage building in her throat. “The fuck are you doing here?”
He leaned against the counter, his bespoke suit fitting so well on his broad body that Sarah would become enthralled if she didn’t watch herself. Remember, we hate this guy. Easy enough to think when the man wasn’t in the room with her. But when Lucas Blackbourne put up that protective shield around them, the only thing Sarah could think about was how much she wanted to curl up in his arms and listen to his heart beat in his strong chest.
No. He was a liar. A cheater. The type of man she wanted to stay far away from outside of one-night stands she refused to regret.
“I should ask you the same thing.” His voice was obnoxiously soft. It was the kind of tone Nigel would take with her, not the voice of a man who wanted to bang her brains out. “What are you doing, Sarah?”
“None of your damn business. Leave me the hell alone.”
The bartender approached to ask if Lucas wanted something to drink. He shook his head so curtly that the woman had no choice but to retreat to the other side of the bar for the remainder of the private conversation. “I’m in town because of you. I heard you were heading up this way and knew you were coming here to make mistakes.”
“So what if I am?” Sarah snapped. “I’m not yours. I do as I please.”
“You sure do, Angel.”
He was fucking with her, wasn’t he? He would. He recognized Sarah in her Angel persona. Knew what it meant, what she intended. She was dressed to kill and looking for hot sex. Not with him, no. He didn’t get this anymore. He lost the privilege of hooking up with Sarah or Angel when he tried to get into her head instead of her body. I can’t forget him standing there, practically naked, saying he was sorry. What kind of narcissist pulled that bullshit? A man named Lucas Blackbourne, that was who.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Would you rather I call you Sarah in a place like this?”
‘No. Don’t call me anything.”
“I have to call you something. You don’t seem like the kind of woman who wants to be called baby.”
“Rather stick a knife in my ear.” Sarah secured her wallet in her coat pocket and attempted to slip away. A stiff hand covertly grabbed her arm and held her in place.
“Spare me a few minutes. We need to talk.”
Oh, sure. They needed to talk. About many things, Sarah supposed. Like how he had a kid he never thought to tell her about. But no. He wanted to talk about her life, didn’t he? Or maybe “talk” about how everything was a huge misunderstanding and she simply needed to give him another chance. Is that what he wanted? I bet he’d love that. Asshole.
“Go to hell.”
“Suppose I deserve that.” Even so, he did not relent his grip on her. “I went poking into things I shouldn’t have. To be fair, I didn’t expect to find something as… intense as that.”
“Yeah, well, now you know. What are you going to do? Use that information to blackmail me into being your lover? Because it won’t work. I don’t care who you tell. Seriously. Tell the whole fucking world. I’m not going to let you hold that over my head.”
“Why in the world would I tell anyone?”
“Oh, I dunno. The fact that you didn’t have a problem with sticking your nose in my ass to begin with?”
“Like I said, I didn’t think it would be that dark.”
Dark. Because what Sarah needed was confirmation that her shit was dark.
“Let’s not do this here. Let’s go somewhere else. Doesn’t have to be a hotel. We can go to a café, a restaurant…”
“Fuck you. I’m not going anywhere with you.” She looked down at his hand. “Let me go. I don’t care if your bodyguard bullied everyone into staying away from me. You can’t hold me hostage. I’m not your possession.”
“I don’t think you are.”
“Then let me go.”
Lucas’s hand dropped to his side. Sarah attempted to get up again.
Yes, the attempt was made. But by the time she spun around again, she was so tired that she forgot how to stand on her own two feet.
“What are you doing, Sarah?” Lucas asked again. “What do you hope to achieve in a place like this? It’s not…”
“Don’t say it.” She knew what he wanted to say. Healthy. It wasn’t healthy. Yeah, well, who was he to tell her what or what not to do with her body and sexuality? Maybe it’s the only thing that makes me feel like I have control. “I don’t need your moralizing. I get enough from my doctor.” The same bitch who made a grand show of exhibiting how concerned she was about Sarah’s supposedly dangerous behavior.
“I’m sorry about everything that’s happened to you, Sarah. Nobody should have to deal with what you have. But…” Great. Here he went. “This isn’t how you handle it. There’s nothing for you here but more hurt.”
“What the fuck do you know?” She spun around again, so quickly that some of the pins came undone in her hair. Not that she needed the wig anymore. Angel might as well go back to sleep for all the action she was going to get that night. “So this place is good enough for you? Good enough for the rest of these people? Do they look like they’re hurting to you?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not saying the place is the problem, or what two consenting strangers decide to do with each other… only that if someone has gone through what you have, this is probably the last place she should come to try to work through it.”
“I’m so glad to hear about the shrink degree you earned at Princeton.” Sarah slapped her hand against her face. Why? Why did her body think now was a good time to start crying? No, no, no! This was not supposed to happen when she dressed up as Angel. Angel had fun. She didn’t care what people thought. She only wanted to have a good time and go back to sleep in the morning, when Sarah woke up and reclaimed the body they both inhabited. Angel was supposed to help Sarah get through life. To let her sit back and forget those horrifying memories that sometimes crept up on her as air stilled and rooms became silent.
“Sarah. I care about you. I don’t say that flippantly.”
Fuck it. She wasn’t going to sit there and take his hypocrisy any longer.
“If you care about me so much, why didn’t you tell me about your kid?”
Lucas sat back with a start, but did not say anything. He took Sarah’s untouched martini and swirled the olive around the rim of the glass. “You found out about that, huh?”
“You’re not going to deny it?”
“The last thing I want is for my son to find out one day that I denied his existence.”
“Fuck you, Luke.” She laughed in resignation. “You harp about my secrets, my terrible history, the way I choose to handle things… and you’re hiding a kid from me? Who’s the woman I saw you with, huh? Your wife you’re not actually divorced from? The main squeeze you keep in the spotlight when you’re not fucking me on the side? I knew that this,” she gestured to the narrow space between them, “was shallow, but Sarah is not some man’s affair.”
“It’s good enough for Angel?”
“You’re not going to deny that either…”
“You know,” he said, leaning against the counter, “I thought that was Alice’s car I saw yesterday. You were in it, weren’t you?”
Like he wouldn’t deny anything, neither would she.
“So you saw me and Victor. That’s my son, by the way. Victor. Bouncing baby five-year-old. Hmph. Guess that means he’s not really a baby anymore. My, where does one’s life go?”
“And the women?”
Lucas pondered the rows of bottles displayed before them. Spirits from all over the world. The Caribbean. Europe. Japan. Argentina. Morocco. “The woman you saw leaving in my car is my ex-wife. I never lied about being divorced, or when it happened. That was our son together, from our marriage.” He drank Sarah’s martini. “The older woman was her mother. She and Victor live with her parents since the divorce.”
Sarah didn’t respond. Not audibly, anyway. Yet in her head she screamed at herself as loudly as she could. You expect me to believe that? To coddle you because you have a son you never told me about? And a hot ex-wife who gets to take your car everywhere? How ex are you two, exactly? Why did you divorce?
Lucas turned on his stool, motioning to the bodyguard a few steps away. “There’s a lounge down the street from here. It’s quieter. Less… charged, if you catch my drift.” He glanced Sarah up and down. “We’re dressed well enough for it. Shall we go? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“How many of it will be lies?”
“I haven’t told you a single lie yet, and I’m not about to start.”
For all she knew, that was a lie.
***
Sarah – for she was wholly Sarah again, her blond wig folded up and in a spare paper bag someone handed her – sat in the corner of the quiet lounge Lucas thought so highly of. He sat across from her, jacket removed and necktie askew. His five o’ clock shadow was more prominent now. She had barely noticed it back at the club.
Mr. Blackbourne’s bodyguard stayed a respectful distance away at another table, on his phone but cautiously alert. The closest table of guests was far enough away to give Sarah and Lucas the illusion of true privacy. Subdued jazz music playing over the speakers helped bolster that effect.
They shared bourbon and house made garlic bread. Sarah didn’t care about fitting into her tights or dress any longer. She took a hearty bite of bread and washed it down with Lucas’s favorite brand of bourbon.
She had no idea why she was entertaining him. Curiosity? The knowledge that her night was over? That she had wasted a trip to New York when she could have stayed home all weekend and had the same amount of fun?
Whatever her reason, she knew she didn’t want to do much talking. So she let Lucas yap all he wanted once the drinks were down and they were left alone by the staff for the hour.
“I met Jill at Princeton. She wasn’t a student, though. She was the granddaughter of one of the department chairs and often stopped by to visit him. Lunch, mixers… stuff like that. Didn’t think much of it at the time. I only happened to meet her when we crossed paths at one of those mixers hosted by her grandfather. The man didn’t even head a department I had anything to do with, but Damon was interested in it, and convinced me to tag along.”
Sarah drank more. I care about this, why?
“You’ve seen her. She’s beautiful, but she’s also charming to a fault. Within five minutes I was intrigued by her. Within fifteen I was in love.”
My head itches. Damn wig. Sarah pulled one of her hairpins from her wallet and used it to scratch an ornery spot on her scalp.
“We started dating, of course. I was in Heaven. If you ask Damon, he’ll tell you I was the most insufferable lovesick fool at Princeton. What’s sad is that he didn’t even go there anymore. He was doing grad school in Oxford, and I had decided to stay at Princeton. But he visited often enough to see how I had changed. He was also the first person I told when Jill announced she was pregnant. He told me to make something right about it, because when you’re men like us, you can’t get away with lovechildren in your twenties.”
“Only in your sixties, right?”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking when I said that.”
What was with this guy and all the apologizing? Lucas said sorry more than most live-in help. “So you married her.”
“Or offered to pay for… you know.” Lucas was suddenly incapable of eye contact. “But when she told me she intended to keep it, I planned a celebratory getaway and proposed to her. We got married three months later. I finally bested Damon at something, and it was having the biggest pregnant bride at my wedding.”
“She’s gotten bigger since then.”
“My ex has become skinnier.” Lucas shrugged. “Wish I could say that we got married and gradually fell out of love from there, what with my career taking me back and forth between two, sometimes three countries and suddenly having a kid to take care of, but things didn’t go quite that smoothly.”
His voice quieted. Sarah shifted uncomfortably in her seat, as if he were about to tell her about wicked conspiracies.
Close.
“I had always known that Jill is… ill. She’s not well, let’s put it that way. Part of the reason she visited her grandfather so often was because of her own tumultuous past. She was mercilessly bullied at her boarding school growing up. Said it started because she was late to develop, and from there it spiraled until she was the class whipping girl. She coped by drinking.”
“I see.”
“She was in recovery from a lot of things when I met her. Her grandfather paid for her treatments since he was the one who paid for the boarding school and felt responsible for her trauma. He was a good man. I was upset when he died a year ago. Anyway…” Lucas continued to search for more bourbon in his glass. He would have to order another, but that required summoning a server, and he was too deep in his personal story to bother. “I don’t know what triggered it. Might have been motherhood, or the fact I wasn’t around that often. All I know is that one night I came back and she was in the middle of a bender.”
Kind of ironic to be talking about this while they drank alcohol, but here they were, and Sarah seriously considered getting drunk to deal with this.
“I put up with it for two years. Two years too long, Damon said. He had the misfortune of coming over to our place in Copenhagen and seeing how bad she had become. Our son wasn’t even being looked after by her anymore. Her mother came over to take care of things.”
“That’s messed up.”
“But you know what? Because I was an idiot and still in love with her, I tried everything. I hired the best doctors, tried to get her to go to the best programs. I wanted her sober for Victor’s sake. And for mine, of course, but by then I was realizing that our marriage was over. We would never be able to recover from it, because during one of her benders she cheated on me with a rival family’s oldest son. It was a giant fuck you to me and my family. When I confronted her, she called me the most vicious names. Claimed I had done things I never did. Threatened to take my son to a place I would never be able to see him again. Then she had the gall to say that she had gotten pregnant on purpose. Just stopped taking her birth control, because her grandfather had gone into debt paying for her life and she needed to make sure her family got money. Why she didn’t wait for me to propose to her naturally I have no idea. Maybe she felt her demons coming back and wanted to seal the deal before I found out the truth.”
“That she was an alcoholic?”
“Among other things. I don’t know how much of it was her trauma and how much was her actual personality, but the more she drank, the more violent she became. I finally left her after she attacked me during one of her rages.”
“Jesus.”
“I took Victor with me. I couldn’t stand to think what she would do to our son. He’s a baby, for God’s sake. Not that any child should have to deal with that, but one as small and helpless as that? I didn’t want to think about what she could do to him, and I didn’t want to think about what I could do to her if she ever did lay a hand on him.”
Sarah didn’t want to imagine that, either. I’ve seen men in that protective mode. Nigel had done unspeakable things in the name of his sister’s safety. What was a man capable of when it came to his own child? “Obviously she cleaned up her act if she’s living here with your son.”
“Yeah. That.” Sarah could flash him her tits and Lucas still wouldn’t be cheered up after sharing a story like that. “I filed for divorce. Part of the reason it took us so long to finalize the damn thing was because of custody. I was willing to give her whatever money she wanted, but I demanded full custody. My lawyers blew hers out of the courtroom, but by that time she had gone through rehab again and sobered up. Even I was almost moved when she claimed to be a changed woman who needed her son to stay on the right path. Since Victor is so young and we lived in different countries, the judge decided to give her custody with the most ridiculous visitation rights you’ve ever seen for me.”
“Hardly seems fair.”
He thought she was being sarcastic, but Sarah meant every word. Lucas probably didn’t have evidence of his wife’s rages and the possible danger to their child. He was a man who traveled all around the world for business, and she was a stay-at-home woman who hinged her recovery on taking care of her son. Bullshit.
“I’ve born it for the past year. Made sure they were well taken care of. I hold no animosity toward her family, and I don’t hold much against Jill, either. She’s stayed sober so far, but what if she slips again? Besides, Victor is going to be old enough for school soon, and quite frankly, I want him in Denmark. Unless I can convince my wife’s family to move back to Copenhagen, however, I have no choice but to fight for custody again.”
Sarah could be as discerning as Mr. Blackbourne. “That’s why you’re here. Working with Mr. Monroe is a convenient cover.”
“Damon’s doing me a favor. He doesn’t need my help or expertise. Nor do I need to be ignoring other business matters back in Europe. But I need to be here to build a case. I need to be near my son. When we end up back in a courtroom, I need him to be able to say that he knows me and loves me. I can’t do that if I’m in the middle of Europe most of the time.”
Sarah let out a low whistle. “Good luck with that. Seriously.”
They were quiet for a few minutes. Lucas ordered another round of drinks and pondered his life in the bottom of his bourbon glass. Sarah combed her flattened hair with her fingers and wondered what she would do if she were in his shoes. Guess I’ll never know, will I? The thought forced her brows to furrow.
Life was such bullshit.
Lucas reached across their table and lightly placed his hand on hers. A friendly gesture. Nothing more, she supposed. “You’re not the only one trying to make sense of things. Forgive me for thinking dating you might be a nice reprieve from everything going on my life.”
Was that an honest apology? Because Sarah had been thinking the same thing. “Sorry for using you as an escape to empower myself.” Now she couldn’t say something like that. Oh, well.
“I’m sincerely sorry for snooping where my nose didn’t belong. I honestly didn’t think I would uncover what I did about you.”
“You mean the affair I had with my boss’s father and getting knocked up with his baby?”
“And the other stuff that happened after that.”
“Yeah, well…” God, what should she say? “Shit fucks you up.”
“I’m still missing quite a bit of details, of course. Not that I need you to tell me them.”
“After you told me about your drunken ex-wife smacking you around?” Ouch. She probably shouldn’t have put it that way, but it was already out there. “Seems unfair to not share my own toxic drama.”
“You don’t have to.”
But she was already thinking about it. The casual sex with a man she was only somewhat attracted to. The dawning realization that she was pregnant. Telling the father that he might be having a second son when the first was thirty years old. Waking up to blood and fear. Being told she would never have children again. Going to her mother’s house for a month and feeling so empty that she wondered if she would ever reclaim her soul again.
That was when I first felt like a completely separate entity from my brother. He could never get pregnant. He could never know what it was like to lose a child growing inside of him. He couldn’t be taken advantage of like that. The sexism Sarah faced in the world had felt so miniscule when she had her brother to lean on for most of her life. A fact of reality. A “oh, yes, that exists, doesn’t it?” state of mind she could no longer embrace.
Sarah was alone in that. Her thoughts, her fears, her crippling feelings… only she could overcome them, if she chose to live that long.
When she slowly opened up about those experiences, she felt like she was talking about someone else. Some other Sarah who went through unspeakable tragedy and pretended nothing happened, because what could she do? She couldn’t shut down. She couldn’t retreat from the world. Her brother lost his job trying to protect her from the man who hurt her. She had to keep working in a highly competitive job. Mr. Monroe had already fired her once. It was Mrs. Monroe who re-hired her.
Life went on. Sarah found her ways to cope in her off-time. What else could she do?
So she told him everything. The coercion, when she was so convinced that she was in control of the situation with Russell Monroe. The pregnancy. The way that man lured her into comfort and promised her whatever she wanted, aside from marriage, of course. Sarah was fine with that. She would take her baby and live a peaceful life somewhere. Maybe Nigel would come with them and be the awesome uncle he was born to be. Sarah didn’t need a husband when she had a twin brother for people to make incest jokes about.
“I thought of it as our baby.”
The tears slowly fell when she remembered what he said two nights ago.
The miscarriage. The doctor’s diagnosis. Retreating from the world and wishing her mother knew how to make it better. Finding out months later that her brother was pushing pregnant Alice Monroe down stairs because Russell was a eugenic who didn’t want her – or Sarah, for that matter – tainting his gene pool. If Nigel hadn’t agreed to do the horrible thing, Russell threatened to rape, beat, whatever he could think of regarding Sarah’s bodily autonomy. He knew how to get to Nigel. That’s what a manipulative sociopath like him did.
Only then did Sarah also find out Russell’s roll in her miscarriage and infertility.
“He drugged my drink – that I shouldn’t have even been having, but I couldn’t help myself – and had his bodyguard beat me when I was passed out. He couldn’t even do it himself.” She swallowed the last of her drink. “Sometimes I wonder how the man did it. Did he use his fists? Punched my stomach until I started to bleed from my cunt? Or did he use a small club? Did Russell watch to make sure the job was done? Or did he leave the room to go have a drink with his son? How much of a coward was he, really?”
“My God, Sarah.” Lucas looked like he was going to be sick. “I’m so sorry.”
“Do you know how painful that office is sometimes? I walk in and see the same people I did back then. It’s the same sounds and smells. Then there’s Alice, pregnant with her husband’s baby, and I think… I could’ve had my baby by now. I could’ve had him and been happy. I didn’t even think of it as my boss’s sibling. It wasn’t about that. It was about making that choice. Those people took all my choices away. They took away my ability to choose whether or not I had my baby, what I did with our lives, if I could even keep my job. I feel like an indentured servant, because if I walk away from that stressful place, my brother and I will end up on the street. What do we do? Go back to our mother? She wouldn’t understand.”
“I didn’t know it was that intense.”
“I mean, I don’t resent them. They didn’t do anything.” Sarah shrugged. “But they remind me. They trigger those memories whenever I see them.”
“If you could quit Monday morning, would you?”
“You mean hand in my resignation and walk right back out again?” Sounded like a dream. “Absolutely. But I’m not about to do that without a contingency in place.”
“So what do you want?”
“You keep asking me that.”
Lucas leaned forward, his blue eyes full of a determination Sarah had yet to witness. “Because you haven’t given me a straight answer since I first asked it. You’re holding back.”
“I’ve never been dishonest about what I want from my life.”
“Then perhaps you don’t quite know what it is you want.”
Sarah wanted to be offended, but discovered she didn’t have the energy to expend on such intense emotions. “You know what I want right now?”
Lucas didn’t take his eyes off her. “What?”
“I want to curl up in bed and pretend the world doesn’t exist.”
A small smile tugged on the corner of Lucas’s mouth. “That sounds nice.”
Nice? That’s all you have to say about it? Sarah was on the verge of inviting him back to her hotel room. Maybe not for sex. (Okay, for sex.) But some of that lying in bed and pretending that the world didn’t exist. Not beyond the two of them, anyway.
Nice, though? Come on, this was his chance to make a move. Unless he didn’t want Sarah anymore… which was preposterous. He wouldn’t have told her half his life story if he wasn’t in the market to take her home.
“Know what I want right now?”
Sarah could not contain her flirtatious glance. “What?”
She should have anticipated his answer. “You.”
“Even after all that?”
“Listening to you open up only makes me understand you more. Which makes me want you more.”
Sarah wanted to call him ridiculous, but she was too flattered to respond with anything but a brush of her hand against his skin. After that, going home with anyone but him felt sacrilegious.