“No, I do.” It made her nervous for some reason. As if giving him a way to contact her crossed a line. Ridiculous, considering all the other lines they’d merrily waltzed past without a second glance. Fighting down the fidgety feeling, she rattled it off to him.
He typed it in and nodded. “Ta-da. Sent.”
“So now I’ve got your address, too.”
“Yup.”
She hadn’t checked her email since she’d left the hostel. She should probably make a point of doing that soon, just in case. Without really thinking about where she was going, she started walking again.
“So.” He fell into step beside her. “Anything else you want to see here?”
She hadn’t particularly wanted to see anything here in the first place. “Not really.”
“May I make a suggestion?” His usual cockiness had simmered down a notch. It sounded like a real question.
“You may.”
“I say we catch a train back to Paris. Have dinner. My treat.”
He’d offered to treat enough times this week. She’d practically lost count.
She was counting again now. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.” He nudged her shoulder with his own. “Come on, let me apologize for . . . this.” He waved his hand around.
This. Which he had also paid for.
Her heart was in her throat. “What did you have in mind? Dinner-wise?”
Shrugging, he steered them toward the main gates. “I haven’t taken you to a real French restaurant yet. What do you say? Escargot? Cassoulet? Foie gras?” His voice lilted up, his flawless accent kicking in.
The one he’d acquired following his parents around Europe when he’d been a kid.
God. The itch of a suspicion turned into a tide of realization, her heart thumping hard against her chest. All that stuff about hostels and splitting the cost of a hotel room—had it all been a trick? If so, she’d fallen for it. He must think she was such an idiot.
“Can we just head back to the hotel first?” She needed to get her legs back under her.
Concern crossed his features. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
But when he tried to put his arm around her again, she couldn’t relax into it.
All day long, ever since she’d slipped out of his bed this morning, she’d been thinking she had to protect her heart.
Maybe she should have been protecting more than that. Maybe she should have been protecting it from the start.
chapter TWENTY-TWO
Rylan managed to wait until the door of their hotel room was closing behind them before he rounded on her. And shit, he could actually feel his father’s boardroom training taking over. Making him keep his distance. Making his face hard.
Just like his dad, when Rylan or his siblings or his mom had disappointed him.
What the hell else was he supposed to do, though? Kate hadn’t exactly refused to touch him the whole way home, but fuck if it hadn’t been the longest train ride of his life. Her, sitting right beside him, hand held loosely in his until she took it away to fidget with her nails, her hair, her bag. She forced him to reach for her when he wanted to touch her again—never offered contact herself. The entire time, they’d spoken maybe a dozen times.
Regret was eating at him, but it was slowly shifting into something angrier. He never should have pressured her into spending the day with him. He definitely shouldn’t have suggested Versailles.
He should have put the tickets someplace other than his wallet.
It didn’t seem like it could be that simple, but she’d gotten all closed off right after he’d flashed the damn thing in front of her. He didn’t need to be a detective to figure it out.
He closed his eyes and curled his hands into fists, taking three deep breaths before staring across the room at her. Last night, everything had seemed perfect. And now it had come to this.
Fuck it.
“Say it.” He tore his jacket off and tossed it in the corner with the rest of his things. “Whatever you’re thinking. Just say it.”
She’d been facing away from him, rummaging through her bag, but at the harsh sound of his voice, she shoved the thing aside, sending it clattering to the floor. The violence of it startled him, and his heart squeezed as she set her hands on the edge of the desk. Dropped her head and drew her shoulders up.
“Who are you?” She didn’t look at him until the question was out of her mouth, and even then, she didn’t turn. Just twisted her neck to gaze at him with dark, sad eyes.
His heart rose up into his throat. “What do you mean?”
The whole thing was choking him, the irony making it hard to breathe. Yes, he’d hidden the details of his life from her. But in these spare handful of days, he’d shown her all these other things. Parts of himself that people who knew a lot more of the facts had never seen. Parts he’d never shown to anyone before.
“I mean,” she said slowly, “who are you?”
“You know.”
“No.” Her mouth drew into a tight line. “That’s the problem. I don’t.”
For a moment that felt like an age, he stood there, waiting for the blow.
Finally, Kate turned around, her gaze level. Her voice quiet but strong. “Let me see your wallet.”
And there it was. Not a physical impact, but a punch to the gut all the same. “Kate . . .”
Negotiate. Dodge around the subject. Turn the tables.
She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
He tried to joke, “If you needed money, you could have just said—”
“That’s not what I need. That’s the last thing I want from you.” Her throat bobbed, and her eyes were far too bright. “Don’t you know that?”
There wasn’t any negotiating with that—with the way she was looking right through him. She’d seen his heart; all these days and nights, he’d showed it to her again and again. But she didn’t want that. She wanted the shell.
And it was all his fault. He’d set himself up for this right from the start.
“I can explain everything,” he tried, but she shook her head.
“Just let me see.”
He wished he’d gotten a chance to kiss her one last time.
Resigned, he reached into his pocket and pulled the damn thing out. Really, if she’d been paying attention, just the brand and the suppleness of the leather gave him away. A hundred tiny details all gave him away, from the watch he’d been wearing that very first day to his patterns of speech to the shape of his father’s ring. But she hadn’t wanted to see. Hadn’t wanted to hear.
And now he had to tell her the truth.
“It’s funny,” he said, handing his wallet over. The world seemed to shiver, a low sense of vertigo making everything sway. “I told you my last name when we were at the Musée d’Orsay. You didn’t flinch.”
“Should I have?”
“A lot of Americans do.”
She opened the billfold and counted out the five hundred odd euros he had left in there. Then with unsteady hands, she pulled out the Black Amex. The membership to the VIP fitness club attached to his mother’s apartment building. Each card as damning as the last, and when she looked up at him, her expression was bereft.
“Theodore Rylan Bellamy the third,” he said, like he were introducing himself for the first time. It was a weight lifting off his shoulders and an anchor sinking him to the bottom of the sea. “Firstborn son of Theodore and Felicienne Bellamy.”
She repeated the name, pronouncing it slowly, recognition a distant but approaching hollowness to her eyes. “Theodore Bellamy.”
“I’m surprised you don’t remember it, if you go to school in New York. It was in all the papers last year. He embezzled half the earnings out of Bellamy International.” He couldn’t help grasping the ring through his shirt. “Within five years, it went from one of the biggest IPOs of the decade to a cautionary tale.”
Her gaze followed the motion of his hand as he tightened
his grip on that little slip of gold. “Your father who went to prison.”
“Currently starting the second of a fifteen-year sentence.”
“I don’t remember—” She cut herself off. “I was in school. I didn’t pay that much attention to the news.”
“There’s not much more to tell. Well, unless you skip to the gossip pages. Then there’s his society wife who was having dalliances with half the young men in Europe. She had her own assets, so when Dad went away, she started over again. Somewhere. I imagine she’s doing well.”
“And your assets?”
“My father lost almost everything, but we each had trust funds predating the crimes. The courts couldn’t touch them.”
Looking faint, she sunk down to sit on the edge of the bed and dropped her head into her hands. “Trust fund. You have a trust fund.”
Of course that was what she keyed in on.
“I never lied to you, Kate.” Spoken aloud, it sounded just as empty as it had when he’d thought it in his head the night before.
She look up at him, eyes blazing, and fuck. Apparently, it sounded even worse than that.
And then she laughed, the sound ugly and wrong and bordering on hysterical. “No,” she choked out amidst it all. “No, of course you didn’t. Stupid me just made assumptions about you being a normal guy. Stupid me suggested you’d been staying in as terrible of a hostel as I was.”
“I should have corrected you.”
“Damn right you should have. Crap.” She buried a hand in her hair and tugged. It looked painful—made him want to cross the room to her and stop her, or soothe the ache with his touch. “Shit, you must think I’m such an idiot.”
“No. Not at all.” He went so far as to reach out, but she recoiled, standing and stepping back, putting as much space between their bodies as the room could afford.
It was a slap in the face. One he deserved, but one that took him by surprise. It hurt even more when she wrapped her arms around herself.
Her expression was lost. “You lied to me. I trusted you, and you lied to me. After everything I let you do, after everything I told you last night . . .”
“I wanted to tell you . . .” His excuses and his plans seems so pathetic now.
She shook her head. “With that kind of money, you can have anything, do anything you want. Stay at the nicest place in the city. And yet you’re here.”
“I thought you’d be more comfortable—”
“What? Someplace cheap?”
This was all spinning out of his control so fast. “Someplace . . .” The word stuck in his throat. “Normal.”
Because that was what he’d been stealing here, what he’d been squirrelling away in this pocket of time. The chance to be normal. To have a normal life instead of having to be . . . him.
It had been exactly the wrong thing to say.
“Normal.” The corner of her lips twitched downward. “Ordinary, right?”
She was the furthest possible thing from ordinary. “No!” He planted his feet, raked his hand through his hair. “You’re twisting everything I say.”
“Because you lied.” She said it so quietly. “I asked you who you were, so many times, and you lied.”
“Not about the things that mattered.”
Something in her eyes broke. “But they were things that mattered to me.”
And what could he say to that?
He wasn’t sorry. She never would have touched him had she known, and he wouldn’t give up what they’d had for all the money in the world. Even with how much this hurt right now. He wouldn’t give it up.
“Tell me how to fix this.”
Shaking her head, she looked away. “I don’t think you can.” She swiped a hand under her eyes and turned, picking her purse up off the floor.
Reaching for her suitcase.
Everything in him screamed. She wasn’t really leaving. Not without giving him some kind of a chance to make this right. “What are you doing?”
“Packing.”
“And where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know. Back to the hostel. A different hostel. I don’t care.”
“No. No way.”
“I’m sorry, but you don’t get to tell me what to do.”
His throat ached. “You’re really going to throw this all away? Just like that?”
She twisted to look over her shoulder at him. “Throw what away? This was never going to last.” And there was something bitter there. “Even if—even if you hadn’t . . . It was a fling. I live in New York and you live here. Even if I were in your league—”
“Don’t you ever say that.” He steamrolled right over her. She could say a lot of things, but she could not say that.
“Please,” she scoffed. She looked away again, but not before he saw the redness in her eyes. “I’m this naïve, broke art student, and you’re . . .”
The word came out before he could stop it. “Lost.” With her, he’d felt found for the first time in months. In years. “You weren’t wrong, that day in Montmartre. When you asked me what I was running away from. I may have more resources—”
“And more experience, and all these . . .” She waved her hand, flustered. “. . . moves. Your pickup crap.”
“My pickup crap never worked on you.”
She shook her head. “It worked so much better than you ever would have imagined. I just pretended it didn’t because—”
He gave her a beat before asking, “What?”
“Because I knew you were going to break my heart.”
God.
“Kate . . .”
“No.” She grabbed the couple of things she’d spread out on her nightstand and shoved them into one of the pockets on her bag. “It doesn’t matter.”
Two could play at that game. “It matters to me.”
She snorted, clambering over the bed to avoid touching him on her way to the bathroom. The second she stepped away, he headed over to her bag and started taking things out again. She came back, her toiletry and makeup bags in her hands, and glared at him.
“I’m not letting this go without a fight,” he promised. “After everything. All the places we went, and the . . .” His gaze drifted to their bed. The one where she’d let him strip her bare. Let him taste her and touch her and put himself inside her. He squeezed his hands into fists. “After everything we’ve done together.” His heart dropped another inch. “After I posed for you.”
He’d shown her his fucking soul, and now it was all worth nothing to her? Because he’d told a couple of little half truths?
She paused, breathing slower, and for a brief instant, he let himself harbor a hope. She surveyed the tiny space where they’d touched and kissed, and dammit, made love.
And then she gave him the most watery, awful smile. “Maybe it’s better this way.”
“Better?”
She stepped around him, placing her things into her bag. Swallowing hard, she grabbed his hands, and it felt so fucking good just to have her touch him. Right up until she took the shirt he had balled up in his fist and pried his fingers away.
She repacked it, along with the other items he’d removed. “If this had gone on—if I’d left feeling the way I felt yesterday . . .” Her voice cracked, and just the sound of it had his own eyes burning. “I would have held a torch for you forever. I always would have wondered.”
He would never, ever stop wondering.
“And now?” He barely dared ask.
She zipped her bag, and it sounded like the end of the world. “Now I can go home knowing it was never meant to be.”
He took a step back. She was done. Really, truly done, and he didn’t have any more illusions about changing her mind. Besides, it wasn’t right. He’d told her, that first night she’d let him make her come: Anything she didn’t want to happen—he would never force it. That hadn’t just been about sex.
It was her choice. He could respect that. He had to respect that.
She raised the hand
le of her suitcase and turned toward the door.
Oh, goddammit. Fuck decorum and fuck respect. “You know,” he said, stopping her. “The only reason I didn’t tell you the truth right off the bat.” It was a weakness, admitting this. It rankled, but who cared? He’d already given her everything else. “It wasn’t to deceive you, or to seduce you.”
She paused.
It was his only chance.
“You were beautiful, and smart, and you saw right through my bullshit.” He took a deep breath. “And I thought—I thought you saw something more than just that superficial stuff. Like you wanted to see more than that. And I wanted it. I wanted it so fucking bad, though I didn’t know it at the time. The idea that a girl might like me not because of my name, or who my parents are, or because I’ve got some money.” Because of all the things that had been beyond his control. His lungs felt hollow in his ribs. “I wanted you to like me for who I was.”
“Oh, Rylan.” Her gaze met his. “I would have liked you for who you were regardless.” The corner of her lip wobbled. “But you were the one who wouldn’t show me who that was.”
He had to look away.
When he turned to her again, her eyes were glassy and her cheeks splotched, but her shoulders were back. She lifted her chin.
“You told me—” She cut herself off and started again. “This morning, you said you thought I already knew what I wanted. I just had to stop worrying about what I should do and go for it. You’re right. You were right about me.” She shook her head. “I hope you figure out what you want, Rylan. I hope you can be honest about it, at least to yourself, when you do.” She shot him a shaky smile. “Because I’m not the only one you’ve been lying to this week.”
With that, she let go of the handle of her suitcase and came over to him. She put two hands on his shoulders, but he knew what this was.
The kiss when it came was hard and angry and sad. It tasted like good-bye.
“Don’t go,” he said, sounding broken to his own ears. “If you want me to leave, I will, but stay. Take the room.” It’s yours anyway.
With a wistful little smile, she said, “I like to pay my own way.”
And that was it.
She made it all the way to the door before he gave in and stopped her one last time. It was fucking masochistic, dragging it out like this, but he couldn’t let this one thing go unsaid. “I never lied about how amazing you are.” There was more, too, about how he hoped she pursued her art and her dreams, because she was so damn good. She made the world a more beautiful place.
Seven Nights To Surrender Page 23
