He trembled and bit his lip like he was holding in all the things he wanted to say.
Determination spurred her on. “And you make me feel again. I feel things for you I haven’t felt in years. Or for anyone. Do you know how terrifying that is for me?” she said, laying her heart bare. She was heading to the airport in ten minutes, jetting away from him once again. What did she have to lose? She’d already lost once, so rolling the dice on this truth of her heart was a chance she should take.
His eyes squeezed shut, his expression pained. Then he opened them and met her gaze.
“Yes,” he admitted. “I know. And I want all that, too.”
She inhaled deeply and cupped his cheeks. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
She was dying to know the answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Because it revealed everything, that was why. Because it showed all his cards. It told her his full and true heart, as pathetic as it was.
Slumping against the door, he dragged a hand through his hair.
And stopped.
Stopped keeping it all inside.
Stopped biting his tongue.
“Why didn’t I tell you I learned French for you?” He tossed out the question like an attorney cross-examining. “Why didn’t I admit I spent six years studying a language because I was in love with you?”
He’d wanted to hide it, to keep it from her. It wasn’t hard to pretend you didn’t understand. But those words, those things she said…he was only human. How could he hide his reaction?
She pressed her hand to her chest. “You learned French for me? Even though I know English?”
“You make it sound foolish.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m just processing. It’s big. That’s a big thing. How did you do it?”
“I started freshman year of college. It was my father’s idea. He even wrote me a note about it,” he said, softly, so his voice wouldn’t break. “He knew me better than anyone. He knew you were all I wanted. He wanted me to be with you. I still have the note,” he said, reaching into his back pocket, opening his wallet and taking out the worn, threadbare sheet of lined paper with the last words.
Annalise covered her mouth. Her bright eyes glistened with the threat of tears. “Your father wanted you to learn a language?”
He nodded and swallowed thickly. “He was practical, and he was romantic. He knew I wanted to be with you. He wanted me to have the means to, including the ability to speak the language and get a job. So I could live and work and be in France with you.” He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “I took classes in college. I used to think I was doing it for him. And maybe in some ways, that was how it started. A way to feel connected to the man who was gone. But I didn’t let myself believe that for too long.”
“It wasn’t for him?” she asked softly.
He shook his head. “No. His note might have been the reason I started, but you were the reason I never stopped. I wanted to be with you.”
“I wanted it just as much. You have to know that,” she said, her bright green eyes wide open and honest, not shying away.
He glanced at his watch, trying to avoid this deeper dive. “Your car is here in five minutes.”
“I know, but this is important.”
“So is not missing your flight.” He grabbed her suitcase, let the door fall closed behind them, and headed with her to the elevator banks. He pushed the button and then met her curious gaze. God, this was hard. Putting himself out there. He waited for her to go next.
“I knew you were taking classes, but I had no idea you’d become fluent. After we lost touch, why did you keep learning?” she asked as they stepped inside the car.
Ah hell. What did he stand to lose now? She was getting on a plane, leaving again. She might as well know. The elevator doors slid closed, and he fixed her with a serious stare. “Because I never got over you. I never stopped loving you. Even when we fell apart, I wanted to find my way back to you.”
There it was.
His heart. Served up. Given to her once again.
Her lips parted. She stepped closer. “I wanted that, too,” she said, placing a hand on his chest as the car chugged downward. “Don’t you know that?”
But that was the thing. He didn’t know. “No. How would I have known? We didn’t talk.”
“I thought about you all the time. I saved up every cent I earned from my job at a café. My airfare money, I called it. I was setting it all aside to see you again. I had enough for a few trips.”
“You did that?” he asked, surprised.
She nodded. “Yes. The year we tried to stay together and then through the rest of university. I wanted the same thing, Michael. I wanted to find a way back to you.”
His heart beat faster. Knowing she’d wanted the same thing even then thrilled him. “What happened then?”
“We’d drifted apart, and my sister needed money for her bakery, and I gave it to her. To help her. We weren’t together then, and if I wasn’t going to use it to see you, I wanted it to go to something that mattered,” she said, then returned to her questions, tugging at his shirt collar. “But I want to know more about your secret language skills.”
The car cranked its way to the lobby. Closer to good-bye. He’d kept such a tight lid on his emotions since Marseilles, squeezing them in, stuffing them into an airtight box, denying he felt a thing for her. He was tired of it. He was in love with her. He wanted her to know the full scope of his love, how far and deep it went. How it consumed him. Drove him. Carried him through the days and nights. The last time he saw her, he lost her. He might not have had a chance with her then, but he had a chance with her now. He wanted her to know.
The doors opened, and he walked through the lobby and out to the crowded avenue, thick with morning traffic and the din of horns and screech of tires. He peered down the street. Her car wasn’t here yet. He turned to her. My God, she was beautiful, and she was here, and he wanted her to know who she was to him.
Everything.
“Please tell me,” she implored, her tone both gentle and full of need. It did him in. It unleashed his hidden truths.
“Annalise, I wanted to find my way back to you. I learned French so I could be with you. If I had to be with you in France, I needed to know the language. I wanted to be able to be with you wherever you were.”
She nodded, listening. Waiting for him to say more.
He gripped her shoulder. “I know how to say I love you and I’ve always loved you, and I want you, and you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, and I don’t know how to stop loving you. I know how to say a million other things like”—he switched to French—“you came back into my life now, and it’s the same you, the same girl I fell in love with eighteen years ago, but better. You’re strong, and yet more fragile. You’re tough, but terribly vulnerable. And I want to take care of you and love you. Because,” he said, placing a hand on her cheek, with her red hair blowing in the breeze, framed by the concrete strip of Park Avenue and the morning traffic lurching and cruising behind them.
Her tongue darted out, and she licked her lips, anticipation evident in the set of her jaw, the look in her eyes.
He swallowed, saying the last of his piece. “Because I’ve been in love with you forever. I’ve been in love with you for eighteen years. And nearly half of those years, you were married to someone else.”
She pressed her teeth into her bottom lip, her shoulders rising and falling.
“And it’s driving me insane,” he said. “I hold the words inside. But every time I’m with you I want to mark you with the truth of how I feel for you. That I love you, I’m in love with you, and I’ve never ever stopped.”
His admission echoed down the avenue, ringing across the entire city. His confession. His whole entire heart.
Trying desperately to read her reaction, to find out if this was a one-way path again, he searched her face. In her worried eyes, he saw fear and uncertainty. He wanted to kic
k himself. Perhaps he should have waited. Held back until they were on solid ground, far enough along that he knew she loved him, too.
“Michael,” she whispered, and her voice sounded feathery, like it came from another part of her.
Her car pulled up. The driver cut the engine.
“You need to go,” he said, tipping his chin toward the black vehicle.
She wrapped a hand around his bicep. It felt too good. He couldn’t be tricked by the feel of her. “I want to reciprocate. I want to say the same things back to you. But I can’t say that yet. I can’t tell you I’ve been in love with you all through the years and ever since we were young. I can only tell you I feel so much for you now.”
His head understood. But his heart wanted all of her, all the time. Even though he knew that was hardly fair.
“Look, I didn’t say this for you to reciprocate. I said it to be honest. Because it was eating me up. And I want you to know—I love you, and that’s just a fact of my existence.” He waved at the car and shot her a rueful look. “And you need to go. And that’s a fact of yours.”
She placed her fingers on his cheeks and held his face in her hands and kissed him. “I will miss you so much.”
That was all for now, and it had to be enough.
Seconds later, he lifted her suitcase into the trunk and walked in the other direction, not looking back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Four months ago
When he heard the siren, Sanders cursed and banged a fist against the steering wheel. With a frustrated motion, he flicked on his blinker and pulled to the shoulder of the highway.
A yawn erupted from his mouth. He was so tired from the drive. So damn exhausted, so many hours spent trying to finish up these last few runs to make the money he needed. Fucking college loans. Goddamn bills. Too many doctor’s appointments for his bad back. They all added up to the need for more greenbacks, so he’d taken on more runs like this one. He’d barely slept on this quick trip to California, and he’d just wanted to get home to Vegas sooner after visiting his sister in the Golden State. As he cut the engine, he peered in his rearview mirror to see the cop open the door of his state trooper sedan and walk toward him.
He should have relied on the tried and true tricks for a long drive.
Gum. Coffee. Loud music.
Any or all of those stay-awake aids. Maybe even tried one of those damn apps his sons were always telling him to use to avoid the speed traps. But smartphones were agony, and he’d always followed the speed limit.
Until now.
Because he wanted to get home to sleep in his own bed next to his wife. So he’d gunned the engine.
He lowered the window. Boots crunched over the gravel on the side of the road.
“Afternoon,” the officer said, his voice cool, his eyes obscured behind aviator shades. “License and registration, please.”
“Hey, there. Sorry about that, sir. I was going a little too fast,” Sanders said, opting for patent honesty, hoping it might do the trick.
“Yeah, I’d say,” the officer remarked, humorless. The young man studied him from behind his sunglasses, then whipped them off. Sanders felt naked and exposed, and he blinked several times, unsure of why he was under such scrutiny. The trooper scrubbed a hand over his chin as Sanders reached for his wallet in the center console. It slipped from his fingers, and he gripped it more steadily, shaking his head. Damn, he needed to get some sleep.
He fished in his wallet, and handed the cop his ID.
The cop raised his chin. His mouth curved up, and his eyes narrowed as he glanced from the ID to Sanders, then back again.
“Funny thing, Mr. Foxton,” the cop began in a drawl. He clucked his tongue and tapped his finger to the ID. “Your eyes don’t look so bloodshot in this photo.”
He sat bolt upright. “Come again?”
The cop cocked his head. “You been drinking? Smoking, maybe? You look like you might be enjoying some substances.”
Sanders’s jaw tightened, and he shook his head, fear prickling along his skin. “No, sir.” He’d never done that, never would. But when the cop’s eyes roamed the car, spotting his bag on the backseat, the man arched an eyebrow. “What have you got in there?”
“Just my stuff.”
“What were you up to? Where have you been?”
“Visiting my sister. In California.”
“Mind if I have a look?”
“What are you looking for, may I ask?” His voice was etched with worry.
“Whatever you’re on,” the cop said smugly.
Sanders held up his hands. “I’m not on anything. I swear.”
Doubtful eyes stared back at him. “You were swerving in the lanes like you’re drunk or high. Your eyes are bloodshot.”
“I’m just tired. Been driving a lot. Trying to get home and sleep in my own bed.”
“If you’re just tired, you won’t mind if I have a look around.”
Oh shit. His stomach plummeted. “Go ahead,” he said, trying to sound like he wasn’t terrified.
Five minutes later, the cop gave him a sharp, knowing stare. “You want to start talking about what you’re transporting across state lines?”
For more than eighteen years, Sanders had been making these runs. He’d been fucking flawless. He hadn’t asked questions. He hadn’t wanted to know. He’d simply taken the packages and brought them to the addresses he’d been given.
He’d never been pulled over, never gotten questioned. And now, four months from retirement, he was nabbed.
This was just his luck.
For the first time, he felt the cold grip of fear that the authorities would find out all he’d done.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The grocery store. The piano shop. His house.
That was what the private detective had said Luke Carlton’s daily life consisted of. The day Michael returned from New York, he shoved aside all thoughts of Annalise.
Narrowing his focus on the investigation, he conducted some recon of his own.
He pulled into the parking lot at Luke’s regular grocery store on his usual evening to shop. Maybe it was an act of desperation. But hell, this guy was slippery. And Michael didn’t like slippery. He wanted the man to be caught. Put behind bars. Locked the fuck up.
Maybe he could find a clue. The detail that would tip the cards in the favor of justice. He sat in his car and waited, like he was the private eye.
And hell, if this job didn’t suck.
But Luke was clockwork, and at six p.m., he walked through the front doors of the store. Michael got out of his car and kept a decent pace behind him, clenching his fists.
How could that man—that Royal Sinner—have such an ordinary, average life?
Luke pushed a cart through the aisles, buying bananas, a whole chicken, some cereal, toilet paper, potato chips, orange juice, and a can of white beans.
Each aisle Luke wandered down, Michael was tempted to confront the fucker. To grab him by the collar of his short-sleeve button-down shirt, slam him against the canned peas, and ask him what the fuck he had done eighteen years ago. How he’d gotten away with it. How he was still getting away with everything, including buying bananas.
Michael hated bananas.
But somewhere between the bathroom supplies and the salty snacks, he slowed his pursuit and tamped down the treacherous ball of anger inside him. Talking to Luke, confronting Luke, spitting on the man’s face—none of that would help solve the crime. Those would only serve to mess with the investigation. To tip him off.
Michael turned around, marched to his car, and yanked open the door. Once inside, he dropped his head to the steering wheel and cursed up a blue streak.
When he looked up, Luke was depositing grocery bags in the trunk of his car a few rows over. Shrugging, Michael decided to follow him when he left. Keeping a reasonable distance, he drove behind him for a few miles on a long stretch of road, stopping at traffic lights, never going above the speed limit. Luke tur
ned into a strip mall, and Michael followed, too, watching as the man parked and headed into a piano shop.
The bastard probably needed more “London Bridge is Falling Down” sheet music.
Michael loathed him for that, too.
For his boring fucking life.
* * *
Work consumed him. The next few days roared by in a sea of trouble, triage, and shit storms. He’d been called to one of the financial firms that employed them for private security to deal with some threats against the building. Then he and Ryan tackled an issue with one of their banks involving an attempted robbery of an armed vehicle. Bad mojo was going around daily, and Michael was tense, poised for the next shoe to drop. It was like one of those weeks of celebrity deaths, where bad things happen in threes.
The next one would come any second…
And it happened on a Thursday night.
Michael and Ryan were working late at the office when the call came, Michael at his desk, Ryan poring over paperwork on the couch.
Michael answered the office line on speaker. “Michael Sloan here.”
“Hey, Mr. Sloan. We had more gang trouble at White Box.” It was their on-the-ground guy at the club.
He groaned as Ryan looked up from the contracts.
“What happened?”
“Actually, it all worked out,” the man said, and Michael breathed more easily as his guy recounted what went down. “Some dude from the Royal Sinners tried to solicit one of the dancers.”
“But that happens all the time at a club,” Michael pointed out, as Ryan nodded silently, following along.
“True. But he wasn’t just trying to get her to go home with him. He wanted her to be part of a prostitution ring.”
“Jesus,” Michael said, seething.
“But don’t worry. We handled it. Threw the guy out.”
“Good,” Ryan chimed in.
Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4) Page 17
