Seven Nights To Surrender

by Jeanette Grey

  He surprised himself when he did today.

  He stared blankly at the screen as Lexie’s voice, distant but there, came across the speaker. “Teddy? You there? . . . Teddy?”

  God, he hated that nickname. Forget that he didn’t even go by Theodore anymore, that he’d shed his father’s name nearly a decade ago. But he brushed it off and raised the phone to his ear. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Hey, Lex.”

  “About time I got a hold of you.”

  Something about her tone grated his nerves. His hackles rose, and just like that, instead of annoyed and bored, he snapped into annoyed and defensive. “What do you want?”

  Her eye roll was almost audible. “Nice to hear your voice, too.”

  He sighed. Took a deep breath. It wasn’t her fault she sounded like their mother and talked like their father—all clipped sentences, all too fast. Even as children, it was like they hadn’t spoken the same language sometimes. And somewhere along the way, they’d lost the dictionary.

  “Sorry,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “How are you?”

  “Same as usual. Busy.” She was always busy. “You?”

  “About the same as usual, too.”

  She made a huffed sound that got across exactly what she thought about that. “I’m sure bumming around Europe is terribly taxing.”

  She had no idea. He dropped his hand and rapped his fingers against the wall. “Listen, I don’t mean to be a dick, but seriously. We both know this isn’t a social call.”

  “It could be.”

  “It isn’t.” It hadn’t been. Not since he’d turned his back on the mess their father had left for them, the mess his father had told him was his destiny. Not since he’d walked away.

  She hesitated for a second. And then dropped all pretenses. “You still haven’t gotten back to Thomas about the new board. He’s been trying to get in touch with you for months.”

  Ugh. “Try a year.”

  “I don’t know what you’re running from—”

  Yes, she did. She knew all the pressures, all the expectations, because they’d both been forced to deal with them. She’d emerged from the crucible a workaholic, desperately driven to prove their father wrong about her. While Rylan . . .

  He’d worked himself to the bone, rising to the top, just the way their father had demanded. And yet with every floor he rocketed past, the walls had started to close in until he couldn’t breathe. When the bottom had fallen out . . .

  He’d looked down, only to see nothing but air underneath him, and he hadn’t been willing to spend another minute in that fucking box, trying to live up to the expectations of a criminal, of a man who had ruined lives and ruined everything they’d worked for. Even their family name had become a joke.

  So he’d gotten out, and if his sister couldn’t see why he wasn’t willing to get back in . . .

  He curled his hand into a fist and worked his jaw. “I’ll come back to New York when I’m ready to.”

  “And when will that be?”

  If the pounding in his heart and the cold sweat on the back of his neck were anything to go by, not for a while. “I don’t know.”

  A long couple of seconds passed. “We’ve only got a few months left before the board becomes permanent. If you don’t step up, McConnell stays at the helm, and you know Dad trusted him as far as he could throw him—”

  Rylan straightened his spine and widened his eyes, incredulous. “And I’m supposed to care about who Dad trusted?”

  “Look, I know you’re still angry.”

  “Damn right I am.”

  “But it’s your company now! I’m not old enough to take over, but you are. If you give a shit about our family, about anything—”

  “If Dad had given a shit about our family he wouldn’t have fucked it over in the first place. He wouldn’t have fucked us over, he—” He snapped, shoving the side of his fist into the wall, and fuck. He hadn’t let himself get so worked up about this in a year. He forced his fingers to unclench, forced his lungs to expand and contract. Between them, in the space above the center of his ribs, his father’s ring hung from its chain, searing like a metal brand against his chest.

  Why the hell had he answered the phone in the first place?

  When Lexie spoke again, her voice was measured in a way that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. “You care. You pretend you don’t. You fuck off to Europe to avoid all your responsibilities. But. You. Care.”

  He’d cared too much.

  He laughed, and the sound was shaky in his throat. “You always did like to believe the best about everyone.”

  He tore the phone from his ear, ignoring whatever else Lexie was trying to say, hanging up before he could dig himself in any deeper. When he’d blanked the screen again, he stared at it for a long, aching moment, until his vision flipped and he wasn’t seeing the empty screen but instead was staring at his own reflection in the glass.

  After all the shit he’d given Lex about her voice. He had his father’s face and his mother’s eyes. Had their faithlessness and their morals, and every single thing he’d come to resent them for.

  He turned his phone over so the dull plastic case was facing him. Then tossed the damned thing on the bed before he could throw it through the window.

  chapter SIXTEEN

  Kate was practically walking on air as she stepped off the elevator on their floor. She’d filled her sketchbook. Finished it. Images of Montmartre and Sacred Heart and the view from the top of the hill. Little cafés and giant cityscapes, and for the first time, there was this certainty buzzing through her veins. The drawings were good. More than that, they were her.

  She couldn’t wait to tell Rylan how well her day had gone. To see that conviction in his eyes when he told her she could do this after all.

  At the door to their room, she rucked her shirt up and reached into the security wallet she still kept strapped around her waist. She grasped the keycard between two fingers and slipped it into the door, pausing long enough for the light to flash green before turning the handle and striding through.

  “Hey!” She dropped her bag on the bed and skipped across the carpet. Rylan was at the little desk in the corner, his back to her. She tugged at the chair to spin it around. But when she saw his face, she paused, drawing her hand back. “Are you okay?”

  There was something haunted to his eyes—a weariness she’d caught a glimpse of in the past, but not like this. Shadows under his cheekbones and a tightness to his jaw. A coiled anger, an old anger.

  For the briefest fraction of a second, he reminded her of her dad.

  She blinked and it was gone, but she was already backing away. He reached out, wrapping his hand around her wrist before she could retreat any more. With what looked like effort, he twitched the corners of his mouth upward, but it wasn’t a real smile. She knew what those looked like on him now.

  “I’m fine,” he said. The sharpest edges of his expression bled away, but now that she’d seen them, the signs of his agitation were everywhere, in the corners of his eyes and the set of his lips. His thumb stroked across the bone of her wrist. “Sorry. Was just thinking about some things.”

  “Things?” She arched her brows, but something inside her was shaking. She fought to push it down. To joke with him the way she normally would. “Like what? Torture?”

  He laughed at that, and it made a little of the tension in her shoulders ease. “Close.”

  Touching his face felt like a risk, like pushing past some kind of boundary. She did it anyway, wary, half expecting him to flinch. He did, a little bit, but allowed the contact. She swallowed to try to slake the sudden dryness in her throat. “Really, though. You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  She almost believed it.

  He turned his neck, shifting to press a kiss to her palm, lips lingering there for a long moment. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they seemed clearer. He let go of her wrist to settle both hands on her hips.
“How about you? How was your day? Get everything done you wanted to?”

  She took a deep breath, the tremor inside of her melting away.

  The dark look in his eyes might have echoed an expression she’d seen before, one that had haunted her for years. But it had only been an echo. Her father. Aaron. Any of them. Their bad moods didn’t end with them getting a hold of themselves and focusing on how she was doing.

  She was safe here.

  She slid her palm down past his neck and collarbone to rest against his heart. “It was good. I drew a lot.”

  “Yeah? Can I see?”

  A nervous flutter fired off behind her ribs, but she nodded.

  Slipping out of his grasp, she headed over to the bed. She opened her bag and pulled out her book, planning to flip it to the work she’d done today, but before she could, he plucked it from her grasp. He sunk down to sit on the bed and opened to the very first page.

  It wasn’t just nerves anymore, beating inside her chest. “There’s a lot of old crap in there.”

  Old crap she’d put so much time and energy and dedication into, and letting them be seen like this . . . It was like letting him see all the unfinished edges of her. A work in progress, and he’d already witnessed her naïveté in other situations. In his bed and with her hands between her legs.

  She fought the instinct to rip the book from his grip.

  Oblivious to how she was churning up inside, he turned the pages slowly, gazing at each with an appraising set to his jaw. Her face went another shade warmer with every amateurish imitation of another artist’s style, every mistake in perspective. Every sketch that betrayed exactly what a mess she was and how little she knew.

  “Really.” Her voice was rough. “Some of those are ancient.”

  He lifted up a single finger and shook his head, asking her to be quiet without saying a word.

  She resigned herself to her fate. Picking at her fingernails, she moved to sit beside him, close but not quite touching. He’d told her he liked the couple of drawings she’d shown him before, and he’d expressed such confidence in her ability to hack it in grad school. But he hadn’t really known, then, had he? He hadn’t seen enough to make that kind of statement, and the idea that he might take it back now, after having seen more, made her stomach clench. It hardened further about halfway through the book, when the quality of the images changed. That had been about when she’d started thinking about what she was going to do after college, a hundred futures spinning out in front of her. Grad school and office jobs. Huge risks and life sentences.

  And then the image she’d drawn the day Professor Lin had pulled her aside. Told her that if she didn’t define herself, she’d never make it as an artist. That she’d never sell.

  He paused, hand hovering at the corner of the page.

  “You were angry,” he said. It was the first comment he had made.

  “Scared,” she corrected.

  “I can see that.”

  He flipped past the pictures she had already shown him from the day she’d sketched outside of Notre Dame, and then he was looking at the first one she’d done today. His brow furrowed, and he turned his head to look at her. “You went back to Sacred Heart?”

  “Yeah?” She didn’t mean it to come out like a question, but it did.

  The way he was staring at her, it was as if he could see right through her. He didn’t look angry or exhausted anymore, not the way he had when she’d come through the door. But he didn’t look like the confident, oversexed guy she’d taken a chance on, either.

  His gaze held for a moment that felt like it went on and on. Then he lifted a hand, the tip of it stained gray from the charcoal on the edges of her sketchbook. He cupped her cheek and leaned in. The kiss, when it came, was a simple, chaste press of lips on lips, but there was a weight to it. An unspoken moment of connection, of understanding. She’d seen what he’d seen on that hilltop. Had tucked it away and treasured it, and when she’d most needed to recapture some sort of inspiration, some impetus to make something with her hands . . .

  That’s where she’d gone.

  He let her go, drawing back, but the heat of his gaze lingered even as he returned his attention to the page. He flipped to the next and then the next, and she held her breath. This was the one she’d felt so good about, after her first set of false starts. The one she’d done with the memory of his presence flowing from her fingertips, imbuing every stroke and shade with life.

  Ghosting his fingers over the dark, black marks, tracing without touching or smudging, he followed the swooping arcs she’d mapped onto the paper. For a long time, he stared at it.

  Finally, he started moving through the pages again. She watched from over his shoulder, her breath coming more easily now. These pictures didn’t give her that cringing feeling she got looking at her own work sometimes. She was proud of these. When he reached the last one, he flicked back through them, stopping on the one she’d drawn from the top of the hill.

  “These are incredible,” he said.

  The urge to demur stole over her, even as she flushed with the praise. He’d believed in her before, and he believed in her now. It pushed away the doubt that always plagued her. Made the spark of her inspiration ignite. “I was just playing with something. An idea.” She pointed to the web of lines he’d been drawn to before. “Tying everything together.”

  “It’s great. Really.” He shifted to look at her. “It’s really, really great.”

  And what could she say to that?

  He shook his head, as if he could sense her discomfort at taking a compliment. “I love the way you see things. And these . . . Not that the rest of your stuff wasn’t good, but the stuff you did today. It’s something different.”

  Her lungs felt tight, a warmth and an excitement fit to burst behind her breast. These images had felt different. Still, it hadn’t just been her and her skill. “It’s the city. Paris. It’s beautiful.”

  “No.” There was such certainty to his voice. It stopped her cold. “It’s you.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how you can possibly even consider not going to grad school for this. You’ve got this . . .”

  He trailed off. Don’t say talent, don’t say talent. People always said that, and she hated it. It demeaned all the work that went into what she did.

  His mouth curled up into a soft, sad smile, and suddenly he wasn’t talking about her future anymore. “It’s how you see things, Kate. In these pictures, the ones you made today . . . It’s like I can see through your eyes.”

  And there was an aching note now. She glanced up to meet his eyes.

  All the edges of him were on display again. Not as jagged as before, not as tired. But they were there, and it struck her: She had no idea who this man was. What had happened to him to put those shadows in his eyes. How he felt or where he’d come from.

  She wanted to, though. Desperately.

  His gaze burned. As if he could hear her thoughts, he closed the book. He grazed a single fingertip along her temple beside her eye.

  And then he asked her, “How do you see me?”

  The strangest part was, it sounded like he actually wanted to know.

  She blinked, once, then twice. With trembling hands, but with a surety she didn’t know how to name, she reached for her bag and the supplies that it contained. For the fresh sketchbook she’d picked up on her way back to the hotel.

  Because she had wanted this. From the very first time she’d laid eyes on him, she’d been itching for this.

  “I don’t know.” She turned it to the blank first page. “But I’d like to find out.”

  Rylan glanced between Kate’s face and her hands. What she was offering was clear, and it was what he’d asked for, wasn’t it?

  God, but his mood was twisted right now. He wanted to be here, enjoying their last couple of days together, but after Lexie’s call, all he could think about were his shirked obligations. His mother’s face and his father’s betrayals and everything he was missi
ng back home. Everything he’d run away from.

  All he could see was his own reflection staring back at him, and it was ugly. He didn’t even want to look into his own damn eyes.

  And there was a part of him, an angry, sullen piece of his soul, that wanted Kate to draw him. He wanted to look at himself through her pretty brown eyes and see the same callousness and apathy he’d been accused of so many times this year. To see it all confirmed would be a relief almost—a sign that his decision to sit here wasting his life alone was as good a choice as any.

  He set her sketchbook aside before he could crush the pages with his grip.

  He wanted her to draw him. And he wanted her to see something in him worth holding on to.

  “Okay,” he said finally, mouth dry and palms sweating. He managed a vague half smile. “What should I do?”

  “Just get someplace comfortable. Sitting in that chair maybe. Or lying down?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  She looked away, cheeks flushing.

  That was interesting.

  He ducked to put himself in her line of sight, quirking one eyebrow up. “What do you want?”

  “Well, we—” She fidgeted, fussing with the binding of her sketchpad. It seemed to take her actual physical effort to meet his gaze. “We could do a figure drawing.”

  “Which means?”

  “Drawing your”—she gestured vaguely at his torso—“figure.”

  It struck him all at once. “You want to draw me naked?”

  She fake-smacked him with the book. “Well, it sounds dirty when you say it that way.”

  “It sounds dirty if you say it any way.”

  “It’s not.” A seriousness bled into her tone. She lifted her chin. “You’re—you’re beautiful. All the muscles, and your jaw and your . . . you.”

  Some of the ugliness that had been festering in his heart all afternoon melted away.

  She shrugged, looking down again. “You are,” she insisted. And she was so brave. He’d never given her enough credit for that. “The first day I met you, part of why I took that cup of coffee was your—your jaw. You were like a statue, and I wanted to get to look at you a little longer.” Twisting at her knuckle, she bit her lip. “And then I got to touch you, too, and see you without your clothes, and you’re just— I’d like to. If you’ll let me.”