The Saint

He noticed her the second after she noticed him. They stared at each other in silence. Søren held something in his hands, a black cloth that looked like nothing more than a silk handkerchief. And yet somehow she knew it was something so much more than that.

From the bedroom she’d escaped came Lachlan wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, only halfway buttoned.

“Bite-size?” Lachlan asked.

Lachlan looked at Søren. Søren glanced at Lachlan before looking at her.

“Eleanor?” Søren asked.

“Fuck you …” she breathed. And before Søren or Lachlan could say another word, she ran from them. She flew down the stairs and stopped abruptly when a man appeared in front of her. He blocked her path and for a moment she could only stare at him. He had dark eyes, olive skin and shoulder-length black hair with a roguish wave. In another time and place she would have stared at him for an hour he was that handsome.

He gave her a smile, but not a friendly one. A slow, cold, dangerous smile.

He raised one finger and shook it in a classic tsk-tsk motion.

“No children allowed.” He practically purred the words, but she heard the underlying threat. For one brief moment she envisioned clawing his beautiful face off. Instead she pushed past him, fleeing the house like it was burning to ashes behind her. She was awash with grief and shame and embarrassment and fury—utter aching, biting fury. She’d never felt like a bigger idiot in her life. All this time she’d worshipped the ground Søren walked on. She’d offered him her body and he’d turned her down because of that collar around his neck. And it was all a lie. He wasn’t some sort of saint. He was another sinner like everybody else. And he’d f**ked that beautiful woman because why not? Who wouldn’t? Eleanor felt so stupid she could almost believe her father had been right about her.

Although she didn’t know what to do or where to go, Eleanor kept walking. She might freeze to death between here and Wakefield but what did it matter? She almost didn’t care if she froze. Her father had hit her, slapped her right in the face. And then she’d seen the one man on earth she trusted with her life in a bedroom with a beautiful woman in a house that hosted an orgy.

She wanted to cry, needed to cry, but she was too cold. Her body shook so hard she thought she’d chip a tooth from how brutally hard her teeth chattered. Maybe she could find a police station and some cop would take pity on her and help her get home. She almost laughed at the thought. Nine months ago she hated the very sight of cops. Now she’d hug one if he so much as stopped and asked her if she was okay. The temperature had dropped in the past hour sending everyone fleeing indoors. She had the street to herself.

“Eleanor?” She heard her name but ignored it. Then she heard it again and didn’t. She stopped and turned around. A silver Rolls-Royce had pulled to the curb, and next to it stood Søren.

“What do you want?” she demanded from fifteen feet away. She refused to take a step toward him, was too cold and too scared to take a step back.

“Get in the car. We’ll talk about this.”

“Go away.”

“I’ll take you home. You don’t even have a coat on and it’s twenty degrees out.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine, Eleanor. You’re risking hypothermia and whatever you think of me right now, I’m not worth hurting yourself over.”

He opened the back door and waited. She took a step toward him and stopped. Her pride and anger wouldn’t allow her to take another step forward.

Søren came to her, shedding his coat as he walked. When he wrapped it around her, she didn’t even acknowledge him. With his arm around her shoulders, he guided her to the car.

“Hypothermia?” she said. “You’re not worth getting a tan over.”

She got in the car and refused to look at him, even when he sat opposite her on the bench seat.

He leaned forward and dug through the folds of his coat until he found her hands. He took them into his and chafed them, warming her skin with his own.

“Stop,” she said. “I don’t want you to touch me.”

“I’ll stop when you’re warm. Your teeth are still chattering.”

He pulled the coat tighter. All she wanted to do was close her eyes, fall asleep and never wake up again.

“Can you tell me what you were doing at Kingsley’s house tonight?” Søren asked.

“I went to see Dad,” she confessed. “He called me and said he was going to be sentenced and he’d be in prison for years. This was my last chance to see him.”

“I see,” Søren said.

She took a shuddering breath. Her whole body hurt.

“But he was lying,” she said. “He doesn’t love me, and he’s not going to miss me. He was trying to get me to recant what I said. He said he might get a new trial and if I lied for him …”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him he was an ass**le. We fought and I ran for it,” she said, leaving out the part about the slap for some reason. It was too embarrassing to admit her own father had hit her like they were some family on Jerry Springer. “But I left my coat in his apartment and it had my money in it.”

“I’m sorry your father did this to you. I ordered you not to see him or speak to him.”

“I tried to call you.” Eleanor felt her body warming and relaxing. She pulled her hands away from Søren’s and tucked them against her stomach. “I called the church. You were supposed to answer my questions tonight. But Diane said you were gone until Sunday. You forgot about me.”