The Darkest of Shadows

by Lisse Smith

  “Isn’t this just a beautiful picture of domestic bliss and happiness?” I said as I walked over to Lawrence. He made room for me on the lounger, so that I could slide in beside him.

  “Are we?” Lawrence asked in serious query.

  “We are.” I grinned at him and placed a soft kiss on his lips. “Don’t suppose that anyone ordered any room service?” I asked innocently.

  “Well, we thought about it,” Charlie shot over his shoulder. “But we weren’t exactly sure which meal we should be ordering. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner.” He shrugged. “You looked set to sleep through them all.”

  “I seriously considered it,” I replied with an answering grin. “But I got hungry.”

  Lawrence picked up the phone beside him and ordered a quick selection of food sent up. I hoped they were quick; there had to be some benefit from booking the penthouse.

  “How are you feeling?” Lawrence asked.

  “Much better,” I assured him. He looked stressed, and I was worried that I was the one causing that strain in his face. I reached up and traced the darkness under one eye. “After I eat, we need to talk,” I told him, and he nodded in response.

  “Has anyone seen my phone?” I glanced around but couldn’t find my purse, and then both Lawrence and Nicholas’s phones appeared before me. I laughed. “Just one will do, thanks.” I grabbed Lawrence’s, because I knew he would have the number stored in the phone, and I wasn’t sure I remembered it off the top of my head.

  “Who are you calling?” Lawrence asked curiously.

  “I’m finding a babysitter, so that we can have the night off,” I told him and it was his turn to laugh.

  “I like that idea,” he admitted.

  “I don’t,” Nicholas said from the other lounger. “Remember, I lived here for nearly five years, Lilly; I don’t need a tour guide.”

  “Yes, but how long ago was that?” I asked him. “Things change fast in this city, and I don’t think that the places you patronized back then would be quite as appropriate for the billionaire Nicholas Janis who sits before me today.”

  He didn’t comment, so I was pretty sure he got my point. I found the number and pressed the button to connect the call.

  “Lawrence. I thought you were still unavailable.” Patrick’s voice echoed down the line.

  “Hi, Patrick,” I greeted him. “It’s Lilly.”

  “Oh, sorry, Lilly.” Patrick apologized. “Are you guys back at the office?” He paused. “Is everything OK? We just got a message from Allan that said you were both unavailable, and that was nearly a week ago.”

  “We’re fine, Patrick.” It was kind of nice that he was worried. “We’re actually here.”

  “Here?” Patrick sounded confused and mildly cautious. “Define here.”

  “Here, as in sitting in the penthouse of the Intercontinental in Sydney.”

  “No fucking way!” he gasped. “What the hell are you doing in Sydney?” he asked, then abruptly his manner changed. “Is something wrong? Am I in trouble?”

  “No, nothing like that,” I calmed him. “My dad died, and I had to come back for the funeral.”

  “Oh, sorry,” he stammered. “Sorry, Lilly, I didn’t know.”

  “That’s OK. I’m OK now.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “Funny that you should ask.” I laughed down the line. “I’m in need of a babysitter,” I told him and waited for the expected question.

  “Ah, who exactly am I supposed to be babysitting?” he asked. “And why?”

  “Lawrence and I need some time alone,” I said. “But I don’t want Nicholas to go running around the city by himself. He’ll get into trouble, and I kind of like him whole and healthy.”

  “You brought Nicholas?” Patrick asked in surprise.

  “Yep.”

  “Awesome.” He sounded genuinely thrilled. “So you want me to take him out and show him how we do it down here in Aussie land.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’ll be there to pick him up at six,” he said; then, just before I was about to hang up, he added, “Oh, and Lilly, tell him to dress down a bit. I don’t want to get mugged on Oxford street because he’s wearing ten-thousand-dollar shoes.” I hung up on him.

  Charlie and Frost had rooms next to the penthouse, and Nicholas had the second bedroom adjoining ours, which he wouldn’t be using now that Patrick was taking him out and about. Lawrence told both Charlie and Frost to have the night off, something that Frost wasn’t too thrilled about at first, but once Lawrence assured him that he and I would not be stepping foot outside the door, he was more willing to go along with the plan. They both decided to follow along with Patrick, which made me happier, because I was sure that Frost would keep them all out of trouble.

  Patrick was perfectly punctual and burst into the room in a haze of excitement. He gave me a hug and shook hands with Lawrence, a friendly greeting that showed how much had changed now that he wasn’t fighting for me.

  Charlie and Frost were ready to go, but it took a little while longer before Patrick was happy with how Nicholas looked. Apparently Nicholas had been so appalled by the clothes he was forced to wear that first thing this morning he had gone out shopping and was now in possession of a much healthier array of stylish clothes, none of which Patrick was terribly pleased with. It took a wardrobe change before he deemed him suitably underdressed to grace the nightclubs of inner Sydney.

  “We’re going to the Ivy bar,” Patrick announced happily, as he ushered them all out the door. “And Nicholas is going to get us onto the top floor.” I must have looked like I wasn’t following that statement, because he grinned and added, “It’s all about how much money you have Lilly. The more money you have, the higher you climb in life. Same with the Ivy bar—the more money, the higher the floor. Tonight, Nicholas is going to get us onto the top floor.”

  “But I thought you were slumming it?” I asked in confusion.

  Patrick laughed. “Nicholas’s underdressed will still shit all over everyone else,” he assured me.

  “OK. Well, have fun then.” I caught a glimpse of Nicholas through the door and laughed. He looked bored already.

  Nineteen

  It was quiet when they all left; the space which moments ago had been filled with life and vibrancy was now devoid of warmth.

  I grabbed Lawrence’s hand and pulled him after me into the bedroom. I shut the doors behind him so that it was just us, just the two of us in this one room, no interruptions, no excuses, no barriers.

  I plucked his phone out of his pocket and turned it to silent.

  “I think it’s time we talked,” I told him, as I crossed the room and crawled over the bed to sit cross-legged in the middle of it. “Really talked.”

  He was wearing a pair of jeans, a recent addition from when we were in Newcastle, and one of his business shirts, but he had rolled the sleeves up and left the top few buttons open. He hadn’t bothered with shoes or socks. He looked the most casual I had ever seen him.

  “OK.” He watched me closely, then walked across the room and sat down on the end of the bed, facing me.

  “I love you, Lawrence.” I wanted to say it, had wanted to say it for a while. “But it scares the shit out of me.”

  “I know.”

  “I wanted you to know that before I said anything else,” I told him. “My story is long, and it’s complicated, and I’m complicated and scary and frightened and probably a little bit crazy, too. But I’m not confused about that part. I do love you, and I need you to know that whatever happens, that won’t change.”

  “I love you too, Lilly.” His voice was serious, his expression calm and measured.

  “I know I’ve told you little bits and pieces about my past,” I started. “I’ve never actually told this to anyone, so I’m not exactly sure where to start, how to start, but I’ll try and make some sense out of it.” I took a deep breath.

  I counted in my head; it was easy. “Five years, seven months,
twelve days ago, I killed my husband and my eighteen-month-old son.”

  He was silent, neither condemning or accepting. “How?” he finally asked.

  “Christmas Day.” I shuddered. “I hate Christmas.”

  “I remember.”

  “We had been at Dad’s house for Christmas dinner,” I told him. “Rowan, that’s my son. He had been teething the few days before that, so he hadn’t been sleeping, and he was off his food and just not very happy. He was unsettled that night, and we were going to stay at Dad’s house, but Rowan just wouldn’t sleep, and I knew that a drive would help him, so I decided to go back home. It was only half an hour to where we lived, not far. Harry, my husband, he and Duncan had been drinking, and so had Reed and I, but I’d only had one, not enough that I thought I couldn’t drive. Everyone told me not to go, that we should stay, that it was late and I was tired. I didn’t realize how tired I was, but all I could think was that it would be easier at home.” Tears had started to fall as I was speaking, and I couldn’t stop them. “I hadn’t slept much the last few nights because of Rowan, and then Harry fell asleep when we were driving home, and Rowan too. It was so quiet and peaceful. I remember noticing how quiet, because we had just been with Reed and the boys, and they were so loud, and then the car was so quiet and everyone was asleep.”

  “Oh, Lilly.” Lawrence gripped my hand in his.

  I swallowed painfully. “I fell asleep. They told me not to go, they said it was stupid, but I didn’t listen. I was warned. It was my choice to leave, my decision to put them all in danger.” My gaze met his, and I waited for the horror to show on his face, but it didn’t. “The car ran off the road and hit a tree. The passenger side caught the full impact and both Harry and Rowan were killed instantly.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” Lawrence said the same words that everyone else had been telling me for the last five years, but strangely, him saying them had a much greater impact on me.

  “My choice,” I reminded him. “If I’d listened, if I’d stopped to think about what I was doing rather than just wanting the easy option, then they’d all still be alive.” I shrugged. “My decision, my act, my fault.”

  He moved up the bed so that he leaned against the bed head; then he pulled me into his arms.

  “I woke up in the hospital the next day. I had a broken collarbone, three broken ribs, and a severe concussion. I was five months pregnant,” I added sadly. “Four days later, I miscarried a baby girl. Her name was Charlotte.”

  His arms tightened around me, and he kissed the top of my head while I sobbed quietly in his arms.

  “A week later I buried my husband, my son, and my baby daughter.”

  He held me while I cried. We lay there for a long time; neither of us spoke, the pain for me was too great to do anything but cry. I had never spoken the story aloud, and I found that although it hurt—it hurt an enormous amount—it also felt like a weight had been lifted from me by voicing it all aloud.

  “I wanted to go with them,” I continued later. “I loved them so much. Harry was the love of my life. He was the kindest, most gentle man that I knew, and he loved me so much. But he left me behind. He and Rowan left me, they took my baby girl, and they all left me. All I had was the pain.

  “My doctor gave me drugs, but all they did was make me worse. I couldn’t function, I couldn’t think or reason, I was like a walking zombie. I guess that’s when everyone decided I was crazy. They sent me to a shrink and then to a support group.” I sighed at the memory. “I had to listen to other people talk about their loss and their depression and how much they hurt. I didn’t want to talk to them, I didn’t want to talk to my shrink, all I wanted was to join my family—or to forget they ever existed.”

  “Did you ever try and join them?” Lawrence asked quietly.

  “Did I ever try to kill myself?” I knew what he was asking. “No. Because I believed that I deserved the pain I was feeling. I had killed my family, and I couldn’t kill myself, because that would be cutting my sentence short.” I paused. “But then one of the women in the support group, she did. Her daughter died of cancer, and she couldn’t cope. She threw herself off a cliff. She ended her pain, but she didn’t cause the cancer, so it was her right to be allowed to cease to feel anything anymore.”

  “Do you still believe that?”

  “I’m not sure what I believe now,” I admitted. “You have confused the way I feel about a lot of things.”

  “In a good way?”

  “Possibly.” I honestly wasn’t sure. “When I couldn’t take away the pain, I decided that the only thing that I could do was to forget that life ever existed. I shut away the Lilly who had been married and had children and I became someone different. I had no past, and I had no future. I knew no one, I cared for no one, and I would never, ever, ever love anyone again, because of one thing I was absolutely sure: I could not survive the death of someone I loved again.”

  “That’s when you left Australia?”

  “I packed up everything, left no forwarding details, and moved to England. My family couldn’t understand. They thought I was crazy, more crazy than normal. They tried to get me to go back to my shrink, they wanted to send me to a home, to a crazy people’s home.” I shuddered at the memory. “But I wasn’t crazy. I was just scared and doing the only thing I could to get through each day.”

  “What happened?”

  That had been a horrible few weeks for me. “I was lucky in the end that my doctor agreed with me and not them,” I told him. “He warned them against forcing me into a home and suggested that we give this a go, and as long as I promised to keep in touch with Reed, then they would let me try it my way for a while. So I flew as far away as I could. I got a job with Patrick at Cartright & Nagel and found that I could manage. I spoke to Reed every day, and I think that helped us both. She finally got used to the idea of me being away, and I eventually learned to function among the rest of society.”

  “I imagine it wouldn’t have been easy,” Lawrence admitted. “That was a huge leap. You have such strength and courage, it sometimes astounds me.”

  “It wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done, but neither was it the hardest,” I told him. “I wasn’t comfortable around people for a long while, but they eventually got used to me. Some were more persistent than others, but they gradually accepted that I wanted to be left alone, that I didn’t want to know about their lives, and they would never know about mine. I didn’t date. I didn’t do work functions, unless Patrick made me, which was never a fun experience. I approached everything with a transient attitude, short term, temporary, nothing was concrete for me. I had to be able to walk away. It couldn’t be real. I convinced myself that everything was just a game, and it wasn’t me. I kept everyone at a distance, most especially men.”

  “All except Patrick,” Lawrence corrected.

  “Originally him, too,” I corrected. “I accepted the job because I knew that Patrick was married. It was only a few months later that I found out he was getting a divorce. I would never have taken the job if I had known that. The fact that we did end up sleeping together wasn’t technically an accident, but it definitely wasn’t planned from the outset.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not exactly sure, but I think at some point my body recognized that I needed to touch another human,” I admitted. “I didn’t care for him, no more than as a friend, which I told him right from the start. But I was so careful in everything that I did that I never touched people, not emotionally, not physically, and after three years I needed to be touched.”

  Lawrence was silent for a moment. “Do you know that it has been proven that a young baby will die if it isn’t held enough in the first few months of its life?” he said, with sadness in his voice. “Everyone needs to be touched, Lilly. Don’t be ashamed of that.”

  “I trusted Patrick.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “He deserves better than what I could offer him. That’s what I told him
when we talked in London. Patrick loves with everything on the surface, no secrets, no barriers, but I couldn’t offer him that, and he couldn’t understand why. Love to him is simple. I’m not simple, and a relationship between us would never have worked.”

  “Something I’m immensely grateful for.” Lawrence kissed the side of my neck.

  “I never wanted my relationship with Patrick to be out in the open,” I explained. “It wasn’t something that I was ashamed of, but I knew that other people wouldn’t understand, and they would read more into the situation than actually existed.”

  “That first time I met you, were you sleeping with Patrick then?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “That didn’t happen till a few weeks later.”

  “But you were sleeping with him at the Awards night?”

  “Yeah.” Then I asked my own question. “Did you buy Cartright & Nagel just to get me in your bed?”

  Lawrence’s arms tightened around me. “Part of it, definitely, but I never would have followed through with it if the business deal hadn’t been worth it.”

  “Did you really expect me to say yes?”

  “Honestly?” he answered. “Yes. You have to remember the sort of women I was used to dealing with. No one said no to me, Lilly,” he reminded me. “Any other woman would have jumped at the chance to share my bed.”

  “But not me.” I laughed quietly. “That must have been a shock to you.”

  “You have no idea how much my ego deflated that day,” he huffed.

  “Do you understand why I acted to way I did?”

  “I do now, but only because I understand you, I know you. Back then I assumed too much. I knew a little about you, but not enough to predict how you would react.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Why did you finally accept?” he asked.

  “Because you gave me a way to escape Patrick,” I explained. “I had already made the decision to leave, I was going to move away, but I found that I really didn’t want to. I liked London, and I didn’t want to relocate, and then you found me in the park and made me an offer that sounded perfect. A trial. If I didn’t like it, or you, then I walked away. Surprisingly, I found myself agreeing.”