One Night to Risk It All(29)

“Not at all. Love isn’t in the cards for a man like me, Rachel. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. But a family... I thought I would like to try.”


She swallowed hard. “But I need more than that, Alex. I need more than just you trying. I’m not going to be your happy family experiment, it’s not fair.”

“You don’t have a happy family, experimental or otherwise at the moment, so why not?”

She tried to ignore the punch to the gut his words delivered. But it was impossible. Because she’d lived the past eleven years holding her family together. Being what they needed. And now it was gone.

It was gone and she didn’t know what to do without it.

It was like realizing that pieces of her armor had been stripped away. Threatening to expose her. Vulnerable. So soft and easily hurt.

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, as if that might hold what was left of her armor close to her skin. As if it might protect her.

Suddenly she was very aware of the baby inside of her, and that, in spite of the fact she had a human in her, she’d never felt so alone or frightened in all of her life. As if everything, inside and out, had turned completely alien.

She would take pictures of herself being intimate with her former almost-lover hitting the news any day over the feeling that had grabbed her by the throat just now.

“I...I need to go,” she said. “Send the plane. I’ll pack.”

“No. Lucy will pack for you. You rest here and I will see to all the arrangements.” For Alex, he seemed almost contrite.

“You don’t have to come.”

“You don’t want me to?” he asked.

“No.”

“You can’t always get what you want, agape.”





CHAPTER EIGHT


“SHOW-OFF,” SHE SAID, looking around the penthouse and walking toward the window, looking out at the ocean below.

The flight to Cannes had been quick and uneventful. The uneventful part he credited to the fact that Rachel had ignored him the entire time.

“What? The hotel room you put me up in was very nice. And the room service was excellent.”

Something flashed in her eyes that he didn’t like. Pain. Shame. “You aren’t authorized to joke about that night,” she said. “I don’t like the reminder that you used me.”

“No more than you used me. You were engaged to another man, after all. You were hardly blameless.”

“You knew, though. I didn’t trick you.”

“Can we not have this fight again? The one where you tell me all the things I did to wound you? I felt...guilty, after it happened, Rachel. That’s why I didn’t call. That’s why I didn’t storm your wedding. It’s why I came to see you and not him.”

She frowned. “You felt guilty.”

“It turns out that when you seek revenge on someone you hate...because of the way they treated women—the way they treated people in general—and you use someone in order to do it, you come out feeling a lot like the thing you despise.”

It was the truth. He’d never allowed himself to fully form the thought. To examine exactly why the whole incident with her left him feeling dirty. Empty. It was because it was another piece of evidence for the trial being conducted over his soul.

Innocent or guilty. Victim or predator. Which was he?

He didn’t even know the answer. And it burned.

“A conscience, huh?” she asked.

“I’m maybe not as bad as you think. I’m maybe not as good as I think, but...also perhaps I’m not completely amoral, either. Which is good to know.”

“Do you want to be...good?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. I know what I don’t want to be.”

“So you really... You really think you grew up in a brothel with Ajax.”

“I did,” he said, his chest tightening. “He wouldn’t remember me. I was a boy when he left. Maybe eight. But I remember him. And his father.”

A leaden weight settled in his chest. As it did whenever he thought too much about...everything. When he had moments of wanting to call Ajax’s father “my father.”

He swallowed past the bile that was rising in his throat. Bad blood, right? That’s the way it works.

It must. Except it didn’t seem to work that way for Ajax. Ajax, who’d acquired a family when he’d left the compound. Ajax, who’d had no trouble finding love.

He couldn’t think about it. It gave him a headache. It was too complicated. Too hard.

“He never told me about his life before he came to work for my family,” she said. “I mean...nothing. He never said a thing about it and now...now I think it’s a bit strange. But honestly, Alex, if you knew him...he’s so serious. He never does one thing out of line. I can’t even imagine the man you’re describing.”

“He was little better than a boy,” Alex said, his voice rough. “I suppose I imagined he hadn’t changed much as a man. That when I met you you would have stories of him in excess, and that he would be the same.”

“He doesn’t even drink. He’s the most outrageously decent man I’ve ever known, and no, he doesn’t inspire great passion in me. But he’s a friend. He’s not a bad person.”