Crash Into Me(71)

I'd considered asking him about the calls, but something told me I shouldn't. Maybe it was the stressed look on his face every time the phone vibrated, but I didn't want to know what made him unhappy. And I didn't believe he wanted me to know.

When he didn't return for nearly thirty minutes, I began to get worried. Had he left on some emergency he couldn't tell me about? After roaming around the house for ten minutes more, I finally found him down near the indoor pool just sitting on one of the chaise lounges. Leaning back with his eyes closed and a slight frown, he looked very much like he always did after his daily phone call.

"I think people generally take off their shirt and pants in this room," I joked, hoping to cheer him up.

He said nothing, but the tiny beginnings of a smile formed on his lips. They never really got to a full grin, but for a moment he seemed happier.

"Is everything okay, Tristan?"

Opening his eyes, he sighed and sat up. "I need a drink." Before I could say anything in reply, he was up and gone from the pool leaving me standing there alone. When I caught up to him, he'd poured himself another double scotch and was doing his best to get the alcohol into his system as quickly as possible.

I stood in the doorway of the living room and saw the sadness in him. It hit me in the middle of my chest and made me want to take him in my arms and never let him go. His posture screamed that he was dealing with something that weighed on his mind. He sat in a chair in the corner of the room, his shoulders drooped and his head tilted back. He watched me approach him, but I had the sense he was far away and looking right through me.




"You can talk to me, Tristan. I'm more than just your in-house art expert," I said sweetly as I ran my fingertip over his closely cut hair. "I hate to see you so unhappy."

Those deep brown eyes looked up at me and he said, "It's nothing I can't handle, Nina. Don't worry about me."

I was worried, though. The drinking, the frown, the phone calls that seemed to affect him more and more. Bending down, I kissed the top of his head, loving the feel of his soft hair against my lips. "I don't like seeing you like this, Tristan," I whispered.

He caressed my arm and gave me a forced smile. "It'll be fine. Once we're in Venice, everything will be better."

I hoped what he said was true, but I feared there was something slowly coming between us—something that he wanted to keep hidden but was gradually separating him from me. Later that night as he held me in his arms after we'd made love, nearly all traces of whatever was troubling him were gone and he was the sexy and charming man I'd fallen in love with. He played with my hair as he always did when I laid my head on his chest, wrapping it around his finger and then releasing it again and again, while he told me about his first time visiting Venice years ago as a teenage boy, long before he was the owner of Richmont hotels.

"You sound like you had a great time."

"I did. It was one of the best times I had with my father. It was just the two of us that time. Taylor and my mother stayed behind because he got sick at the last minute, so for one of the few times in my life, it was just me and my father."

There was something unsettling, something darker in his voice as he talked about how his father had spent the entire week in meetings as he'd wandered around the city alone. His words were all about how much he enjoyed Venice and the freedom to explore it at the age of sixteen, but beneath them was an emotion I didn't think even he knew was there. I listened as he recounted stories of late nights on the Piazza San Marco with girls he barely knew and his first night of drinking while he laughed at his youthful foolishness, yet all the time his left hand rested on the bed balled into a tight fist.