“Your English friend?”
“Not Zach,” she said. “Have you ever heard the name ‘Kingsley Boissonneault’?”
He frowned. “Never. Why would he help us?”
She didn’t answer.
“You’re being mysterious again,” Nico said. “It’s not as funny as it was before.”
“I know. This is so hard.”
“Difficile?” he teased.
“Très difficile.”
She wanted to scream, cry, grab him by the shoulders and shake him, shrieking You are Kingsley’s son! That would have been seriously impetuous. Even for Nora.
“You don’t seem like the kind of woman who would let something très difficile stop her.” He grinned at her, eyes gleaming. He was letting her see a glimpse of the Nico he’d been before his father had died—playful, self-possessed, a little wicked. Then, like someone blew out a candle, the light went out of his eyes again and there was nothing to be seen but grief incarnate. But she had seen the light in his eyes now and wanted to shield that flame, to keep it safe, to stoke the embers that would allow it to keep burning.
“I can’t lie to you. But I can’t tell you the truth. So all I can do is…say nothing. First time for everything.”
“Please talk to me,” he said. “Tell me something.”
She knew that she owed him something, some sort of explanation, even if she wasn’t able to give him a full answer, not yet. “Nico, what would you say if I told you that I knew something about you—something that you might not want to know?”
“How do you know that I don’t want to know it?”
“I don’t know, but I would predict…you don’t want to know this.”
“And I would say, you don’t know me well enough to predict what I would or would not want to know.”
“But how could I know, without telling you?”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“Not really. But I have to.”
“Why is that?”
She paused for a moment, took one soft breath. “Loyalty, I suppose.”
“Loyalty?” he repeated. “You’re loyal to someone, and that’s why you’re here?”
“Yes.”
“Loyalty is good, if the person deserves it. Does this person deserve your loyalty?”
“He saved my life. A few different times, in a few different ways. And even if he hadn’t, I’d still be here.”
“He’s someone special to you?”
“Very.”
“I see.”
“Not like that.”
“Non?”
“Well, maybe a little like that. We’re not a couple. We’re too…weird for that.”
He laughed again, a real laugh with no irony in it. “Too weird. You are weird, aren’t you?”
She loved the way he said “weird,” somehow adding an extra syllable into it. We-ah-ard.
“You have no idea, Nico.”
“Are you here trying to save his life? Let me guess. He and I have the same blood type, and he wants my kidney?”
“He doesn’t want your kidney, I promise.”
“So it’s my liver, then.”
Nora laughed. “His liver is fine. Probably. I hope.”
“Good. I need my liver. I’m using it.”
She shook her head. “The French and their livers.”
“You have to take care of your liver, you know. My father always told me that—take care of your liver and your liver will take care of you.”
“How do you take care of your liver?”
“He never told me that part. I should have asked.” He looked out across the acres of his vineyard. Was he looking toward where his father died? “Now it’s too late.”
And that, Nora wanted to say to him, is why I can’t tell you why I’m here. Because your father is dead and you are grieving him so hard that I can feel your pain, like you’re the epicenter of an earthquake and the world is shaking under my feet from the power of your grief. You will hate me when I tell you what I came here to tell you. You will hate me, and I don’t want you to hate me. You’re King’s son. I couldn’t stand it if you hated me.
“Tell me something else, then,” Nico said.
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything you can tell me. Tell me about your books. Tell me about New York. Tell me about your editor. You two seem…close. He’s wearing a wedding ring.”
So he’d noticed that.
“I write adult novels,” she said. “Very adult novels. Some are even in French. New York is exactly like you think it is, and nothing like you think it is. And Zach’s married.” She paused. “I’m not.”
“Yet you travel alone with him?”
“Like you said, we’re close.”
“And his wife doesn’t mind?”
“She doesn’t, believe it or not. And he wouldn’t leave her for me, not in a million years. And I wouldn’t leave my someone for him, either.”
“So you do have someone?”
She nodded slowly. “I have someone.”
“And he’s not jealous that you’re here with another someone.”
“Jealousy isn’t our thing. Our relationship is sort of…open. I’m sure you understand. You French are very nonchalant about that sort of thing.”
“Meanwhile, Americans aren’t nonchalant about anything. Except how you dress.”
“Not fair,” Nora said, laughing. “I don’t wear my pajamas out in public. Not very often, anyway.”
They reached the main lane and she saw Zach standing by the car, maybe fifty yards or so away.
“I’ll let you get to work,” she said. “I know you’re busy.”
“So?” There was that shrug again, with a little toss of the hand that was so French, so Kingsley Edge, it gave Nora vertigo. “What is it?”
He must have noticed her expression.
“Nothing. You remind me of someone I know, it’s… You gave me déjà vu there for a second.”
“Who is it?”
“The other friend I mentioned,” she said. “The French one. Take it as a compliment—he’s one of the five most handsome men in the world.”
“Ah, Monsieur…Boissonneault, was it?”
He didn’t look particularly flattered at being compared to another man, even favorably. In fact, he looked apprehensive, like he wanted to say something but couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. She hoped he would screw up the courage to just ask, demand an answer, force it out of her right now and get it over with. But he didn’t. Maybe he sensed what she wanted to tell him and wasn’t ready to hear it yet.
“See you at eight?” she said.
“Of course. Eight.”
They exchanged numbers and said their goodbyes. She almost went in for a hug, but caught herself—this wasn’t King.
Nora watched him walk away, watched until he transformed more fully into Kingsley again at a distance—his height, his build, the set of his shoulders, the confident stride.
Nora returned to the car and Zach wrapped up his pretend phone call. “I don’t see any bullet holes,” he said. “He didn’t shoot the messenger?”
“The messenger chickened out.”
“Nora.”
“I know. I know. But there were people around. I couldn’t tell him and have him fall apart in front of his employees. He’s coming to the hotel tonight. I’ll tell him then.”
“It’s not like you to be this…careful with people.” A cruel comment, but too true for Nora to argue.
“His father died last month. Last month, Zach.”
Zach winced, looking genuinely pained.
“Exactly. And he’s a wreck over it. I don’t blame him. His father was your dream father. Nico showed me a picture of them together. He almost started crying.”
“Did you tell him anything? Or just ask him to supper?”
“I said I needed to talk to him about something important. So he knows something’s up. What do I do?”
“Let’s get back t
o the hotel. We’ll figure it out there.”
“I have a better idea,” she said. “Take me to the sea.”
“You want to swim in December?”
“No,” she said. “I want to drown in December.”
Zach, for some reason, refused to drown her in the sea, and called her melodramatic for suggesting it. When they returned to the hotel, she said she was going to drown herself in the bathtub instead. He told her he would miss her when she was gone.
The man had no respect for her feelings at all.
Nora ran her bath, filling the large claw-foot tub with the hottest water she could stand.
She stripped naked and sank into the steaming bath. When she resurfaced, Zach was in the doorway, one eyebrow arched, looking amused, bemused, and annoyed all at once. His default expression around her.
“You were going to let me drown?” she asked.
“No sex in the afterlife. I knew you’d rally.”
Nora sighed, grabbed the nearest towel, wiped her face. “Are you going to watch me take a bath like a creep or are you getting in?”
“Room for two?”
She lifted her wet legs out of the tub to display to Zach how much room there was.
“Haven’t taken a bath without a baby in my arms in the last three months,” he said. “Sounds luxurious.”
Nora laid back in the water and watched with pleasure as Zach stripped. He stepped into the water and sat down. He looked so inviting wet and naked, that she had no choice but to glide over to his side and lay back on his chest.
“That’s a very cute image, you taking a bath with Fionn.”
“Technically, he’s taking a bath with me. I’m in charge of the bath. I just let him join me.”
“He likes it?”
“Loves it. Loves being splashed. Loves to float. Loves pissing three feet straight up in the air.” Zach mimed a water spout.
“Three feet?”
“The joys of baby boys.”
Nora giggled. Zach wrapped his arms around her. “Did you know? From the beginning, who his father was?”
“I knew there was a chance. Grace told me right away. Before she even knew she was pregnant, she told me. And when he was born, I couldn’t see any of me in him.”
“Were you angry?”
He exhaled, hard enough she moved like a wave on his chest. “Hard to explain what I felt. We were already talking about using donor sperm at that point, or adopting. We’d even met with an adoption counselor. The doctors were all so convinced the problem was with Grace, because she’d had the ectopic pregnancy years before. They thought it was scar tissue or some other kind of damage. Took months before they even bothered testing me.”
“What was it? Sorry. That’s a personal question.”
“We’re naked in a bath together. Under such circumstances, personal questions are allowed. To answer your question, I have an ulcer. Had one for years. Named it Nora.” She splashed him for that. “Been on drugs for it for years. Turns out, one of the side effects of the drugs is infertility.”
“It killed off your swim team?”
“Precisely.” Zach ran his wet hands up and down her arms. “I’m not getting any younger. And Grace was so desperate to have a baby… You know, I just read an article in The Guardian about British women getting donor sperm from Danish men. Apparently one of Denmark’s more unusual exports.”
“Grace went straight to the source.”
“Skipped the middleman. Very efficient.” He laughed a little, then stopped. “If you had seen her suffering…” And there he stopped, as if to collect himself. “She tried so hard not to let me see how it was killing her, not being able to get pregnant. But I’d hear her through the bathroom door, sobbing as softly as she could. I’d find the towels later, with her face imprinted on them from where she tried to muffle her crying. To not be able to help your wife when she’s in that sort of agony… It got so bad that I started to understand why some women kidnap other mother’s babies.”
“So you weren’t mad when she told you it might not be yours?”
He sighed again. “If I was…and I’m not saying I was, but if I was, if there were any hard feelings at all, they evaporated the second the nurse put Fionn in my arms. And I knew then that I had been given a gift I could never hope to repay. So I finally have one reason to like that priest of yours. But just the one. That, and he let me have you this week. Two reasons, I suppose.”
Nora laughed softly.
Zach ran warm hands full of hot water over her arms. “What are you going to do tonight?”
“I have no idea,” she said. “You tell me.”
“You have to make this decision yourself. But I will say one thing—you aren’t telling him who his ‘real father’ is. He has a real father. Had, before the man died and broke his son’s heart. You need to understand that you aren’t doing the boy any favors. You’re telling him his mother had an affair with another man. You’re telling him his parents kept a secret from him his entire life. You’re forcing him to make choices he never should have had to make. Don’t lie to yourself or him—you’re doing this for Kingsley, and for yourself, not for Nico. The very least you can do for him when you blow his family apart is to be honest about your motives.”
His words hit her harder than Søren’s whip ever had, but just like the lash of a whip, she took it without complaint. “Thank you, sir. May I have another?”
Zach’s chest rumbled with his laugh. “You asked my advice. You didn’t ask me to cheer you up.”
“Fine. Now cheer me up.”
He tugged her wrist, turning her to face him. They were both wet and slick. She turned and pressed her breasts against his chest, her mouth against his mouth. As they kissed more and more deeply, his hands found her hips and he rocked her against his cock. The water sloshed in the tub and onto the floor.
Zach didn’t waste time, bless him. He reached out of the tub and into her make-up bag for the lube. He also picked up a towel.
“What’s the towel for?” she asked.
He laid it over the rim of the tub. “You,” he said. He didn’t say anything else or give any orders. He just moved her into place, her stomach on the pillow of the towel, her hands on the floor. Her hips were out of the water, with Zach behind her. She closed her eyes and let the heat of the water seep deep into her skin as his fingers sank deeply into her body. One finger. Two. A little lube, then more, more. Then it was nothing at all but him pressing his tip against her hole and waiting for her to push backward, eagerly taking him inside her. No shoving. No rushing. Slow, easy thrusts. The water barely splashed as he worked his way deeper into her. She lowered her head, chin to her chest, as he tunneled in, carefully, his hands on her shoulders and back, calming her, caressing her.
In the bathroom door mirror, Nora could see Zach’s head leaning back, his throat bared as he worked himself into her. She watched the tight pulses of his hips. That’s all that moved. No other part of his body but his hips—an obscene sight. And then, to make it even better, if that was possible, he bent over, resting his chest flush against her back, wrapping his hand around her thigh to find her clitoris with his fingertip. He’d barely touched that sensitive aching knot before Nora flinched with pleasure.
“Good?” he asked.
“Please do that again.”
He did. He stroked her while fucking her. Slow strokes. Slow fucking. Zach’s fingers slipped into her, and his fingertips found the hollow just inside her. He rubbed it, kneading that tender spot in concentric circles that set Nora moaning. All the while, he kept up his slow steady thrusts, the long deep pumps into her.
“Come on my hand,” Zach said softly. “Let me feel it.” He worked her hard with his fingers, rubbing in widening spirals that opened her up to him and made her tense at the same time. All sensation in her body was concentrated in her hips, her stomach. The tension grew unbearable. She bore it anyway, holding off, breathing shallow breaths to make it last, but she couldn’t make it las
t long, not when Zach pushed a third finger inside of her vagina, opening it, spreading it. Faster he worked her with his hand until she was out of her mind. His fingers went deep at the same time his cock did and she couldn’t hold back any longer. Her head dropped down and her back bowed; she thrust her hips into his hand as she came, the orgasm ripping through her hard enough that she splashed half a gallon of water onto the floor.
She was finished, done for.
Zach wasn’t. He took her by the waist with both hands and pulled her onto him, burying himself fully in her and coming with a ragged gasp that reverberated in her ears like a bell.
He eased out of her and sunk back into the water. Nora was so hot from the sex, she turned on the cold water and splashed her face with it.
“Hit me,” Zach said. She tossed cold water on his face and chest. “Thank you.”
Nora giggled mindlessly. After all, how could she giggle any other way after Zach had just fucked her brains out? But slowly, rational thought did return to her.
“Wait,” she said. “Didn’t you say you weren’t going to fuck me again until I accomplished my mission?”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“And didn’t you just fuck me, with my mission still unaccomplished?”
“Yes, but I have a good excuse.”
“And that is?”
“I wanted to.”
“Very good excuse.”
“But now I really won’t fuck you again until your mission is accomplished.”
“Unless you want to. Right?”
“Right.”
She knew she and Zach were friends for a reason.
Chapter Seven
Nora was sipping coffee in the hotel dining room when Nico arrived a fifteen minutes ’til eight. He furrowed his brow when he saw that she wasn’t alone—Zach was sitting with her.
“I’m early,” he said to her. He turned to Zach and, with infinite politeness, said, “Sorry to interrupt.”
“No need. Just finishing my dinner,” Zach said. He tossed his napkin on the table. “Back up to the room to get some work done. She hasn’t eaten yet.”
“We were talking about work,” Nora said, putting her cup down and waving the waiter over for more coffee. “So I’m thrilled you’re early.”
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