Pride After Her Fall

by Lucy Ellis

*

  Nash took the steps by threes, coming out of the darkness into the bright light spilling down the front of the bungalow. He was impatient to get back to Lorelei.

  This afternoon they’d driven back to the bungalow around dusk. Nash had never felt less like a boys’ night, but he knew he’d been fairly difficult to pin down, given he was spending all his time with Lorelei, and there were ends to tie up and other people involved in this. He had responsibilities.

  ‘Two hours, tops,’ he’d told her, ‘and then I take you out to dinner.’

  She had smiled softly, a little sad, he knew, because of what he’d told her last night. He had his reasons, and it had not been easy, but she needed to understand racing came first.

  He found the bungalow empty and for a strange moment his insides hollowed out.

  She was gone….

  This was how it would feel next week, and the week after that, and after that.

  He made a frustrated sound, slamming the door. He was behaving like a green kid. There was no reason why he couldn’t keep seeing her on a casual basis. A few nights here and there when he was in town, perhaps flying her out when he was working. He was capable of cleaning this up, keeping everything locked down.

  Then he noticed the doors onto the deck were wide open. He relaxed. This at least was familiar. She was outside—probably on the beach. Then he spotted it: a piece of white paper weighted under a rock at the top of the steps leading down to the beach. There was another one on the bottom step. He hesitated, then smiled to himself.

  He had found four paper signals when he caught sight of her on the shore. He stood at the edge of the clearing. She was clearly waiting for him, because the moment she saw him she lifted her sheer kaftan.

  He stopped dead.

  She was wearing one of those tiny bikinis the boutique had interpreted as adequate beachwear. Adequate, Nash countered, if the beach was private and no other man was going to see her in it.

  She reached behind her and untied the strap of the top.

  A sudden surge of instinct had him doing a quick scan of their surroundings, aware his might not be the only pair of eyes on this little show. There was nothing but the private beach, the rustle of the wind in the palms and tropical undergrowth and the murmur of the water on the shore.

  Lorelei was peeling off the bikini bottoms, utterly unselfconscious. He watched as she lifted her arms above her head, moving with lithe grace as she stretched sinuously, seeming to be enjoying the warm breeze moving over her skin. There was a full moon and at this angle she looked to be reaching for it with both hands.

  She spun around, her head sank back and she began to dance.

  Nash swore his heart stopped. He knew her body—he’d explored every inch of her firm, tanned flesh—but in this moment he almost didn’t recognise her. Because he saw something more—the instinctive sensuality that was a part of her, her incredible naturalness and her acceptance not only of her body but of the cards life had dealt her.

  Why had he not seen this before? The answer was there. He’d been blind.

  His desire for her was suddenly a living flame inside him.

  He strode down the beach towards her.

  She continued to turn and glide, and when he was mere feet from her she slipped away with a soft laugh, running nimbly down to the surf.

  Nash didn’t hesitate. He stripped off his shoes, shirt, trousers, boxers and strode down to plunge recklessly into the cool draw of the ocean. The water was inky, but the moonlight cast enough light for him to see Lorelei, still now, as gentle waves broke at her hips.

  She laughed as he caught her around the waist, dragged her down into the water with him.

  A wave smacked against his back and he caught her mouth with his and tasted salt and woman. His woman. Lorelei.

  She licked her way into his mouth, winding those slim arms around his neck, her slick body riding against his in the water. Her long legs wound around his, and he lifted her, his sex nudging hers. She was wet and hot and welcoming, and he was surprised the water around them didn’t sizzle with the heat they were generating between them.

  She was like some pagan priestess, initiating him into this rite, uninhibited and demanding as a great goddess should be, taking and offering in equal measure.

  He rode deep into her body, the sway of the tide pulling them this way and that, making achieving a rhythm almost impossible. Yet the ocean held their bodies aloft and his climax eventually pulled him into a vortex of perfect symmetry with her. Lorelei pulsed around him, and if he was a fanciful man—which he was not—he would have said it was like flying.

  He eventually carried her out of the water and up to the beach, where he wrapped her in a towel and took her inside. She was shivering and laughing as he dumped them both under the shower, with warm water cascading down. He washed her hair and then rubbed some of the lemon-scented liquid into his own.

  She leaned against him as he rinsed her off, and he was struck all over again by how delicate she was. That feeling of possession he’d been nurturing this week roared into life. He didn’t want to let her go.

  It was never supposed to have been more than a few days out of time—a last indulgence before the weeks of intensive training that lay ahead. He couldn’t have known she would get under his skin. Women came and went. Yet as he tumbled her into their bed he knew part of Lorelei would always stay with him.

  His chest felt tight, but he knew he would get past this. He had life lessons to draw on in how to master his own emotions and make them serve him. Painful lessons, learned by a small boy too young to really understand what was happening in his life, always looking for someone to cling to, always being punished for it. The constant cycle of confusion.

  There was nothing confusing about the life he had grown up to lead. Everything was compartmentalised. Everything had its place.

  Including this. Including Lorelei.

  Tomorrow he would be flying back to Monaco and straight into the press conference, a show race for Eagle in Lyon, and then training. He wasn’t ready. He had been doing too much thinking about this beguiling woman in his arms and not enough about the job.

  The irony was, if he was given another week he’d spend it all with her.

  But he’d never put a woman before the job.

  Like his parents, he knew how to be ruthless to achieve his ends.

  *

  Lorelei was dreaming. In her dream she was walking down a long corridor. There were doors on either side of her, stretching as far as she could see.

  As she passed they would open.

  There was her mother. She was young—as Lorelei recalled her in her earliest years—holding out a doll with long golden curls that bore a marked resemblance to the child she had been before she cut off her hair. Another door opened on her father, Raymond, as she had last seen him, rigid in a suit, his back to her. Finally there was Grandmaman, holding out money in one hand and a tiny miniature of the villa in the other.

  Lorelei could feel the constriction growing in her body. She was moving faster. Hands were coming out to snatch at her skirt, her ankles, demanding things of her until she thought she would go crazy. And then she heard a deep, certain voice saying her name. ‘Lorelei.’ She stepped into his arms and the walls of the dream fell away. She was held poised in midair in the strongest pair of arms imaginable.

  ‘Nash.’ She clung to him and knew she was home, would always be safe.

  He wouldn’t let go. Which meant she could let go…

  Lorelei gasped, coming awake in a bath of perspiration. Nash was leaning over her in the dark. He gently stroked the hair back from her eyes.

  ‘Go to sleep. His voice was deep and sleep roughened. ‘It was just a nightmare.’

  ‘Oui,’ she murmured croakily, and closed her eyes.

  For a long while she lay awake, with Nash’s arm pinning her, his body curved around hers like a bulwark against uncertainty.

  She felt a little triste. It could have been because
of the fast-fading dream but was probably because they were going back to Monaco tomorrow.

  But it wasn’t the villa or her debts that filled her horizon, it was the man beside her, who appeared not to be sleeping either, although his chest rose and fell steadily.

  She burrowed in a little closer.

  I’ve fallen in love with this man, she thought, framing it like a statement and waiting to feel the panic it should open up inside her.

  All those fears of dependency, of being left behind, of not being loved back.

  None came.

  She curved her body trustingly into his and closed her eyes. She was back in the ocean with him, certain of this one thing: this has been as close to flying as I’ve ever come.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘LORELEI, we need to talk.’

  According to the flight screen they were twenty minutes out of Nice.

  Lorelei removed her ear buds and looked up. Nash had been hooked into a laptop for the better part of an hour, which was why they hadn’t been sitting together.

  Or at least she told herself that was why, but she had been telling herself a great many things since boarding his plane. If he was being a little distant this morning she assumed he was thinking about what he was flying back into. She certainly was.

  He was a famous man, about to reignite that fame, and there were consequences for her. She would be foolish to discount them.

  But when she looked at him everything fell away, leaving only what she felt for him: a tremulous sort of tenderness mingled with a longing to have this in her life.

  He dropped into the seat beside her, stretching out his long legs, but there was nothing casual about the expression on his face.

  ‘You look ominous,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Do I?’ He looked at her, his eyes cool. ‘I’m going into lockdown tomorrow. That’s going to have ramifications on my personal life.’

  His personal life? She guessed that meant her. She moistened her lips.

  ‘I see.’

  Did she see? Lorelei curled the fingers of one hand around her music device instead of around his hand.

  Why, all of a sudden, couldn’t she reach for his hand?

  Yesterday she wouldn’t even have thought about it. She wouldn’t have had to. Whenever he was beside her he held her hand.

  ‘I gather it will limit the time we can spend together?’ Her voice held none of the turmoil suddenly swirling in her belly.

  ‘I’ll be training intensively and then I hit the circuit.’ Nash spoke matter-of-factly. ‘This hasn’t happened at a propitious time. I wish it could be different, but it can’t.’

  Lorelei had never thought about what it would be like to jump from a plane without a parachute. She imagined the landing would feel something like this.

  There were so many things she could say. I don’t understand. Please explain yourself more clearly. Don’t do this. Please don’t do this….

  But he was doing it. She looked into his hard eyes and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he would do this to her.

  ‘I don’t want you to feel tied to me in any way.’

  Lorelei tried to sit up but every bone in her body felt broken. Still, she had to get up. She couldn’t just sit here, stunned.

  ‘It wouldn’t be fair to you.’

  From a long way away she was hearing an echo from the past. It was her father, explaining why she couldn’t live with him any more, that she was to go to her grandmother. She’d been thirteen years old. She hadn’t understood then. She had cried until she threw up.

  But she understood now. She was a grown woman. She had lived in the world, had been swept away by feelings that fed her soul, and he had enjoyed some recreational sex.

  ‘How good of you to explain it all to me,’ she said, her voice more throaty than usual. ‘I suppose there is a reason we didn’t have this conversation several days ago?’

  He was watching her stone-faced. ‘Things have changed. Several days ago I didn’t know we would need to.’

  ‘I see—and what has changed for you?’

  ‘I didn’t realise we’d be going any further than Mauritius.’

  She knew he was right. She hadn’t thought beyond Mauritius, either. She’d just assumed everything would fall into place.

  ‘Lorelei, I know you’ve invested some emotions in our time together,’ he said almost carefully. ‘When we flew out I made some assumptions.’

  ‘Ah, oui.’ She clutched her music device and in that moment wished it were a weapon. ‘All the men I was supposed to have fleeced.’ The words stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  ‘Assumptions about myself,’ he growled.

  For the first time she looked at him properly. He didn’t look like a man feeding her a line. He looked like Nash. Tense, brooding, not wanting to hurt her, but tearing her apart all the same.

  After all, Lorelei, it’s not his fault he’s not in love with you. You made that little bed all on your own.

  But he had been there with her. All the way.

  ‘You’re an extraordinary woman, Lorelei, and you deserve a lot better than a man like me.’

  And just like that it was over.

  ‘Apparently I do,’ she said woodenly, hearing her voice as if it were coming from a long way off. ‘I really don’t know what to say.’

  For the first time since he’d sat down beside her Nash looked unsure, as if they had taken a wrong turn somewhere and he was looking for the best way to circumvent the route.

  ‘I don’t necessarily want to end it, Lorelei. All I am saying is there are difficulties involved. I’ll be gone for long periods and my focus will be on the job.’

  All the cold inside her chest pushed its way up into her mind. She welcomed it.

  ‘I’m saying I wouldn’t want you to feel committed to me.’

  Lorelei blinked. Her eyes were the only part of her face she could move.

  ‘You really are a complete bastard, aren’t you?’

  Those intense blue eyes flashed up, hard as agate, but his voice was soft as he acknowledged heavily, ‘Yeah.’

  What more was there to say?

  She didn’t know how to fight for this. How did you fight for something that had to be given freely? She didn’t understand him. She’d thought she did. She had seen in him from the very first such solidity. He had seemed impervious to the turmoil in her life, a strong hand she could hold as she righted herself.

  So she had opened up her heart to him, had thought she understood him, but it was clear she knew nothing at all.

  Anger and rage and sorrow all rolled through her in an almighty wave and she thought if it crashed now the emotions would drag her under.

  She had to be strong. Stronger than him.

  ‘What happened to you? Who did this to you?’

  He actually flinched as she said the words. He stood up, those big shoulders that held up the world suddenly a little heavier, his expression almost remote.

  ‘I’ve got a job to do, Lorelei, and relationships have never been my strong suit.’

  No, me neither….

  She actually felt too stunned to fully process what had happened. It was only when they landed on the tarmac and she spotted the limo that confusion set in.

  What was she supposed to do? Was he taking her back to town? To the villa? Oh, Dieu, she couldn’t get into the villa. She gulped a deep, sustaining breath. She needed to calm down. She needed to stop standing around waiting for him to call the shots.

  Taxi. She needed a taxi.

  Nash said, almost formally, ‘The car is for you. It will take you into town. I’ll take the Veyron.’

  For a moment she considered refusing, but what was the point?

  ‘Ainsi soit-il.’ So be it.

  ‘The car will take you back to my apartment. You can stay there until you get back on your feet.’

  He had to be kidding.

  As if anticipating her reaction, he said, ‘You need a roof over your head.’

 
‘I do not think that is your concern any longer, Mr Blue.’ Her voice was croaky, as if she’d been yelling for a very long time.

  ‘Let me do this for you,’ he said quietly.

  The bastard.

  She stepped up to him, looked him in the eye. ‘Why on earth didn’t you just leave me on the doorstep that morning after? If all you wanted was a one-night stand you could have left it there. I didn’t ask for you to take me to Mauritius. But I damn well deserve better than being dumped fifteen minutes after we land.’

  It was good to say it, and to say it with some control, but she knew she wasn’t just raging at Nash. She was raging at her dear, feckless father, who had rescued her from her absent mother’s apartment in New York all those years ago, only to neglect her and dump her on his mother, who for all her good intentions had been a difficult and sometimes ferocious taskmaster.

  She deserved to be loved and accepted for who she was, not what others expected her to be.

  Nash looked her in the eye and said, ‘Yeah, you do.’

  It was that resigned acceptance of her anger and his role in her pain that left her with nowhere to go. He was behaving as if it was all inevitable.

  As if he didn’t have a choice.

  But he did. Couldn’t he see that? Surely he could see that?

  She’d fought like a tiger to regain full mobility after her accident, she’d stood by Raymond through his trial and all the scathing publicity, and she’d struggled like a fish in a net to hold on to the villa these past months.

  But she couldn’t make this man fight for her.

  Turning away, she said softly, ‘Nash, do you have any feelings for me at all?’

  ‘Lorelei, of course I do.’ He jaw was so rigid it was a wonder he could speak.

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘Bon,’ she said forcefully, and pushed past him. ‘In that case I don’t ever want to see you again.’

  She stepped into the limo.

  ‘Take her wherever she wants to go,’ she heard him say to the driver.

  In the car Lorelei blocked the oncoming truckload of pain by opening her cell and regrouping.

  She checked her client list for next week and sent off a text to Gina’s mother to bump up her appointment for this afternoon. Work, rules and structure. She had never needed it so much as right now. She sent a text to her solicitor, asking for an appointment, which gave her a vague feeling of asserting a little control over events. Finally she scrolled through her address book, turning over in her mind which one of her friends she could ask for a bed.