“Home first. Want to come?”
“No thank you,” she answers primly in response to my innuendo filled drawl. Childish, but some habits are hard to curb. “If it’s not too much problem, you could drop me off somewhere on the way.”
“Tell me where you’re going, and I’ll take you straight there.”
“No need.” Her gaze dips to the orange juice momentarily. “I wouldn’t like to inconvenience you. The traffic—”
“It’s Sunday. The traffic won’t be so bad.”
She pauses but can do nothing but acquiesce. “All right, then. The Cadogan, please.” I’m certain she just plucked the name of the hotel out of her head. It’s not where she’s going. I’m as sure of that as anything as I watch her attention return to the window and the clouds.
“Are you in town for the night?”
“No.” Her attention is fleeting. “I’ve booked a late afternoon flight back.” She crosses her legs, her wrap dress parting and offering more thigh than she realizes.
“Time to do a little shopping after your meeting?”
She shrugs, neither a yes nor a no.
“Why didn’t you come back downstairs last night?”
“I was tired,” she retorts as though ending that line of conversation.
“Nothing to do with avoiding the continuation of our conversation?”
“There was nothing else to talk about.”
“We could be so good together, Isla.”
“That’s not going to happen, Van.”
“Ah.” I shake my head. She uses my name like a knife.
“I don’t deny I have feelings for you,” she says, sliding her dress over her thighs. “I dare say I’ll have them for the rest of my life.”
“Why can’t you let me make you happy?”
She shakes her head. “I tried that once. I ended up feeling… the opposite.”
“I wish I could turn back the clock, but I can’t. What I can do is make it up to you, if you’ll let me.”
“What’s done is done. I fell in love with you when you told me not to. But love makes fools of us in the end.”
“Always?”
“The only love that matters is the kind that makes a person selfless. Love is family, and nothing else.”
I don’t argue with her, because how typically Isla. I can’t deny she’s right. To her love is service. It’s sacrifice. She doesn’t know how I’d suffered for her. What I’d sacrificed in her name—in the promise that she would be mine when the right time came.
“Love is doing the right thing,” she adds quietly.
And there we disagree. The right thing isn’t always the answer. Being moral and upright won’t always get you what you need. And what I need is her. On her knees in front of me. On my arm. In my bed. I need her as part of my life, now and forever. Mine irrevocably, safe from harm.
“Always the good girl.” My quiet taunt brings me her flashing gaze, but no glance of hurt. Another for her alphabet. P for praise. She does so love to be good. Almost as much as she loves to deny me.
23
Isla
THE BEGINNING – FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
“Fallen in love with me yet?”
“Of course,” Niko murmurs without lifting his head from his laptop. “My heart grieves when you’re not here.”
“Liar,” I retort, pressing a kiss to his head. Throwing my purse and my lunch tote to the sofa, I bend to slip my shoes from my work-tired feet.
“Hard day at the office, dear?”
“Boring. Want to go out tonight?”
Through the darkened window, I watch his fingers still over the keyboard as my mouth runs on. “I noticed there’s a cute new Italian place opened on the corner. We could walk there and—”
“I’m not in the mood for pasta,” he answers before I can finish.
“Okay.” I keep my answer even despite a swell of frustration, dropping to sit on the arm of the sofa. “How about a few cocktails at The Ned?”
“It’s been a hell of a week.” He glances over his shoulder, sending me a tired smile. “I’d rather stay home.”
Home.
Home isn’t Scotland, where I’d intended to go before that fateful weekend. And it’s not the huge house Niko owns in Kensington. It’s not even the flat I still pay my share of rent and bills, though I’ve been there only twice in two months to collect mail and a few clothes. Since the evening Niko made me come so hard in the photocopying room I saw stars, since I promised him the weekend, I’ve slept here, in his bed, every night.
I’m not living with him, because that would suggest some form of permanence. No promises have been made. I’m still moving to Scotland, I lie when he wants me to, I just haven’t made it as far as the train station yet.
So home right now is a penthouse apartment overlooking the Parliament building and the River Thames. The apartment is gorgeous and very private and is situated in the kind of building you’ll never accidentally meet a neighbor, never mind hear one.