Chapter Ten
The next day, Elena's delivered Luna's supplies, which against her wishes, Tucker had paid for. However, they delivered more than that, and Luna stared at the fully equipped jewelry bench that Tucker had to direct them to place in a small sunny room on its own.
"But there must be some mistake," she protested, and he smiled briefly at her.
"No, no mistake. I thought you were being a bit miserly, so I took things into my own hands."
"This is too much," she protested, but she could already feel a familiar itch to explore her new tools, to really see what they could do.
"It really isn't," he said dismissively. "I figured it would keep you occupied while I need to work for the rest of the week."
She wasn't sure why that line rankled. Perhaps it was because he was speaking as if she were a toddler that needed to be handled while he was busy, but she didn't feel she could say all that much when he had gotten such a beautiful gift for her.
"Well, thank you," she said, smiling a little at him. "It's very beautiful."
"It's nothing at all," Tucker said, glancing at his phone, and somehow, she realized that that was really the truth. A jewelry bench that she could have worked for a year or more to afford was absolutely nothing to him, and Luna couldn't put her finger on why that stung a little.
"Well, I do think it's wonderful," she said. "In fact, I might try it out right now, as long as you don't mind?"
She realized that Tucker was already frowning over work messages, and instead of bothering him further, she put on some of her old clothes and went to investigate her new supplies.
The new bench put her old setup to shame, she realized very quickly. Her own tools had been purchased haphazardly as she could afford them, and many of them were second- or third-hand. These tools were all brand-new and of a quality that she could use them the rest of her life if she were careful.
It was a gift that could make a career, and he had given it to her as if it were a cheap plastic ring.
Luna brushed the thought away, because she felt it was unkind and unworthy. No matter what his reasoning, no matter how little he understood what he had done, there was a kindness to it that she had never encountered before, and that meant something, after all.
How in the world can I thank him for this? she wondered, and then she smiled, looking at her new tools.
A ring, she decided. Tucker might not be a man who wore much jewelry, but there was a trend recently for men wearing rings, especially in Europe. Luna might have been hopeless when it came to clothing, but she studied the magazines like a hawk, pinpointing new trends that might serve her business.
The rings that were being worn by men in the modern era had a few things in common with the rings of the Renaissance, she reflected. They were thick, and often contained a single expensive gem at the center. In construction, they were almost brutal compared to the clean and delicate lines of women's rings, and as she pulled up research photos on her phone, she started to have an idea of what she wanted to create.
It would be expensive, it would be extravagant, but it would be gorgeous, she decided. She wondered for a moment if it was a gift he would want, but perhaps that was less important than the fact that she had made it for him.
She couldn't think of a better way to tell him thank you for a gift than to make him something that only she could make. Luna glanced towards the door behind her. For a moment, all she wanted was to go to him and tell him about her plan, to get his help in designing something that was specifically for him, but then she pushed the thought away with a pang of guilt.
He's got his own life, and he entered into this arrangement specifically to avoid... probably the exact thing I want to do. I should leave him alone.
She knew very well that fashionable people did not live in each other's pockets, and she settled in to start designing the ring she wanted to make him.
***
Tucker managed to work for a few hours, but soon enough there came a lull, and he found himself drifting towards the room he had already started to refer to as Luna's studio. There were perhaps a dozen other things he could have been doing and one or two things he should have been doing, but she pulled at him like a magnet.
Luna had left the door ajar, and he could hear the strains of something light and classical drift out. He realized with a bit of surprise that she was using her phone to play the music and reminded himself that she would probably appreciate a sound system in her space.
He pushed the door open just a little bit and found himself strangely breathless about the scene in front of him.
The room was now filled with a gorgeous natural light, and seated at her new bench, Luna's red hair was set aglow. She sat with surprisingly good posture at her tools, humming along with the music and utterly absorbed in her work. She had taken off the new dress that she had started the morning in, and now she was in an ancient pair of jeans and a dark green camisole, her arms bare as she fiddled with tools whose names he didn't know.
It's strange, Tucker found himself thinking. I have made love to her several times now, but I think this is Luna at her most natural, at her most graceful and lovely.
Tucker twitched with the urge to go to her. He wanted nothing more than to lay a hand on her bare white shoulder and to drop a kiss down on her tousled red hair. For a moment, he entertained the thought of kissing her ear, tracing a kiss down her neck and seeing how much he could make her squirm and cry out, but then he was startled by another thought.
For some reason, for some goddamn reason, Tucker wanted to sit down next to her and ask what she was doing. He found himself intensely curious about the work she was doing and how she did it. Were her tools what she wanted, and did she need any others? How did it all come together, and could she truly make anything that she could design?
There was a kind of authority to Luna here. She was utterly in her element, and a part of him recognized that. It was, Tucker thought, like how he felt when he knew he had made an amazing deal, or when he had outmaneuvered a rival. There was grace and beauty here, and suddenly, he found himself aching to touch.
He shook his head, pulling back and walking away. In the kitchen, he splashed some icy cold water on his face. He shot a glance at the cabinet where the alcohol was kept, but he decided against it.
Luna was a strange woman. She was beautiful, she was tender, and her good heart was as much a part of her as her green eyes or her red hair. She made his heart beat a little faster whenever he saw her, and if it was only when she was wearing a see-through piece of lingerie, that would have been fine. That made sense after all, and there was nothing wrong with that.
However, to feel that way about her when she was simply making jewelry or tasting oysters for the very first time, that was ludicrous. It was worse than ludicrous, it was foolish, and Tucker knew that he was too old to be foolish. There was too much at stake to be foolish.
He had gone into this knowing that there were a few ways it could go wrong. Legally, things were as airtight as they could be. Any child that came of their union would be under his custody, and there was no way she could fight that, no matter what lawyer she hired with the million dollars he was going to pay her.
However, he knew that women were sentimental about children, and children were naturally attached to their mothers. Tucker could already feel that he was strangely attached to Luna, and he could only think that that was because he knew that she would be bearing his child. There were a lot of deep emotions at play here, and he had spent his entire life aware that emotions were problems waiting to happen.
Things had been so much easier before he had nearly died jumping out of a plane, he reflected, but that was to be expected.
Then he glanced towards the studio and had to admit that in terms of enjoyment, he had not enjoyed someone as much in a very long time, so that was something.
The pull that Luna exerted over him was exceptional already, and Tucker knew that it could lead to something exceedingly difficult. No, it was safer by far to simply maintain a distance. There were things that they could enjoy together, after all, and they could avoid being joined at the hip while they did it.
He was a little surprised by how the thought of doing things separately from Luna already gave him a bit of a pang, but that probably meant that he was doing the right thing.
In her studio, he could hear her singing, and when he thought again about joining her, Tucker forced himself to turn around and go back to work.
***
"Why is it that I think this gets better every time?" Luna gasped, lying back on the pillows. She had rolled away from Tucker to relieve some of the heat that had built up during their vigorous lovemaking, but almost instinctively, she kept her hand on his chest, wanting to maintain some contact between them.
"It's because I'm such a great lover," Tucker said straight-faced. "You are only now developing the skills to appreciate it."
"I would bop you with this pillow if I had any strength left to do it," she said with a small smile.
"If you have the strength to hit me, you definitely have the strength to be doing other things," he suggested, and she groaned.
"I'm not sure I can," she confessed, sitting up a little stiffly.
"That's fine," he said, kissing her forehead. "There's always tomorrow night. Or breakfast. Or just a few hours from now..."
She groaned, snuggling up next to his chest. There was something absurdly safe and lovely about being close to Tucker like this. She had no idea that she would feel like this about him, not this safe, not this at peace.
At least, that was how she felt until he opened his mouth to speak again.
"I would like you to sleep in your own room tonight," he said, and she jerked away, looking at him with wide eyes. She was still a little blown from their physical activities, and his words felt as if he had dropped ice cubes on her.
"What? What's the matter? What did I do wrong?"
Was she mistaken, or did he flinch just a little? Then it was gone, and she decided that she must have imagined it, because his face was perfectly smooth and reasonable again.
"Nothing wrong at all, but these last two nights have been a little different. I hadn't gone back to work yet, and of course that meant that I could sleep and wake up as I pleased. Things are going to be a little busier for me over the next little while, so I am going to need to sleep alone."
"Oh, I see," Luna said woodenly.
Her brain raced through all the compromises they could make, but then it ran flat into the brick wall that was Tucker's bland resolve. This was what he wanted. If he had wanted something different, she was sure he would have said so.
Luna had to quash the childish urge to ask if she could stay and cuddle for a little while, but surely that was not something that a sophisticated woman said to her lover. Anyway, she might risk falling asleep cuddled up next to him, and then he would have to wake her up to send her on her way. That would be frankly humiliating.
"Luna?"
With a hot blush of embarrassment, she realized that she had simply been staring at him. Luna covered it up with a bright smile that felt about as brittle as glass and nodded.
"Oh, I totally understand! That's fine," she said.
She fumbled for a little, looking to see where her clothes had gone, but Tucker was kind enough to offer her a robe. It was obviously his, dark blue and velvety, and she wrapped it around herself as if it was a protection of some kind.
"Good night," she said, and when she glanced back, she could see that he was already getting ready for bed.
"Good night, little one," he said, and Luna knew that his mind was already on other things.
His indifference left a hot coal in her throat, one that only seemed to get brighter and hotter the farther she got away from him. There was a small voice inside her telling her to run back and demand more, a better explanation at least, or some kind of compromise, but she pushed it down again. She was not going to do that. She was not going to act like some idiot who couldn't live without the attention of the man she was with.
Besides, she thought, I am not even with him, am I? We're not dating at all. We're just... that is, he's just using me to get the child he wants. As soon as he has that, he's going to send me away. Don't forget, this is a limited time engagement.
She got back to her room. She had been using it as a dressing room for the last few days, but now she was faced with the reality of actually sleeping in it for the first time. It was large and quite beautiful, but in that moment, it felt ridiculously cavernous to her, too big, too many echoes. Reluctantly, she stripped off the robe and hung it up before reaching for one of the ivory silk nightgowns he had purchased for her. The bed was perfectly comfortable, but it felt lonely, so ridiculously lonely that Luna couldn't stay in it for more than a few minutes. She tossed and turned, and every moment, she expected to reach out and to be able to touch a man who wasn't there.
I can't sleep like this, she thought, and she rose up from the bed.
He had bought her a robe as well, but she ignored where it hung in her closet. Instead, Luna fetched his robe instead, even if it nearly touched the floor when she shrugged it on. She knotted the belt firmly around her waist, and wrapped about with what felt like a vestige of his scent and his warmth, she sighed. It was better. It was not the real thing, but it was better than nothing.
Luna padded her way down the hall to her studio. There were strong lights in there that made it as bright as day, and she spent a few hours going over her designs, trying to find the perfect combination of features that would make the ring that she wanted to make for Tucker truly sing. She wasn't there yet, but she was getting close. She realized that it might be one of the most ambitious pieces she had tried yet.
I am not sure he deserves something this nice, Luna thought mutinously, but with a shrug, she knew that there was no one else she wanted to make it for. Tucker was wrapped up in the ring's design, and by the time she finished it, he would be the only one who could wear it, who she would feel right about wearing it.
She worked until her eyes started to water and her hands started to shake. Luna knew that if she pushed it much longer than that, she was going to find herself making stupid mistakes, and there was no reason for that. She dreaded the thought of going back to her large and empty bedroom, but there was a long chaise lounge pushed against her studio's wall. It was too short for Tucker to stretch out on, but it should be perfect for her. There was even a folded throw tossed over the end that she could spread over herself for a blanket.
In the end, it was far from the most uncomfortable bed she had made, and no worse than some of the better ones. In the dim light, she finally felt herself drifting off, her eyes closing almost reluctantly. Despite the comfort of the chaise and throw, she found that her dreams were thin things and ugly. In the morning when she woke up, she had memories of people she liked mocking her viciously and leaving her behind, though afterward she could not make a great deal of sense of any of it.