BorntobeWild

by Lynne Connolly

  He looked almost normal. Dark hair, straight as rain, cheekbones sharp enough to cut paper on, a powerful, imposing build and the charisma he could never hide. He wasn’t trying now. He waited for her to acknowledge his presence, patient, as if he could stand there all day. His pose was easy, relaxed but the impression left her when she met his eyes.

  Stark desire lived there. More, she saw want and need and her first thought was of how brave he was to expose himself like that. Because nobody could mistake his expression. If she rejected him they’d witness his response and his retreat. He’d go if she told him to.

  How could she? She’d missed him so very much and she had to talk to him.

  “You take over, Gil. You can do it.”

  “I know I can.”

  She’d spent the last two weeks training him and watching him work, ever since she’d realized the perfect replacement manager was right under her nose, already working as the assistant in the store. Gil was more than ready but she hadn’t wanted to leave. Then she’d have to fill in her time. She couldn’t design, could only spend a certain amount of time in the other shops, now well run, and then what? Spend her days as she spent her nights, worrying, crying, being a complete fucking mess?

  Riku had forced her into making realizations she’d been dodging ever since they’d reconnected. The separation had forced them into her.

  Her thoughts scattered, all the things she’d planned to say disappeared. Would he want to sleep at the apartment? It did belong to him, after all.

  “Do you want to go back?”

  He nodded. “Let’s go home.”

  He waited while she collected her jacket and purse from the back office. She stayed there long enough to gather her stuff and take a few deep but shaky breaths. Like high noon on Main Street in all those old westerns. This was the day of reckoning. She couldn’t tell from his expression what he wanted, what he’d decided but she must have been as easy to read as a baby. He’d shocked her so much with his sudden appearance.

  She left the office and went to him.

  “You’ve got the bridge, Gil.” She tried to smile at her new manager and he rewarded her with a wide beam, probably delighted she was leaving the store to him at last. “I don’t know if I’ll come back today.”

  “Take your time.”

  When she moved past Riku he touched the small of her back to guide her as he’d always done. It scared her how much that gesture meant to her. She moved forward a little faster but so did he, fast enough to open the door before she could get to it. The familiar jangle didn’t do anything to soothe her nerves but at least in the fresh air she could get her breath.

  “I have a cab waiting outside. I’m getting better at this incognito shit but I’m not that good,” he grumbled as he tapped on the window. The driver must have known where to go, because as soon as they were in he took off, weaving through the traffic to reach the lane he wanted then swinging around the corner.

  He kept his mouth clamped shut as they turned onto Seventh and the driver began to snake his way through the traffic in the direction of Tribeca. Nobody could call New York traffic light, whatever the time of day but at this time, 3:00 p.m., it wasn’t too bad. Cyn always used the subway to get to work or the bus. She had to admit the location was much more convenient than her previous apartment.

  The occasional scent of him on a towel or a pillow in the living room haunted her. If she closed her eyes she could pretend he was just out of sight but there. She’d gone through the books, found some well-loved ones, some hardly breached, looked at the programs set to record on the TV, mostly music-related but a few cop dramas.

  All reminders of Riku, the man she loved but couldn’t approach until he came to her. She didn’t know how.

  “How are your ribs?” he said abruptly.

  “Fine.” The bruises had gone and only the occasional twinge reminded her of the sharp pain that had haunted her every movement a month before. Working in the store hadn’t proved so bad after all, if she never moved too quickly. “I saw the doctor last week and I have a final X-ray due in a few days.”

  “Glad to hear it.” His gaze strayed to her side, as if he could see through her coat and sweater to the site of the damage. He shook his head and went back to gazing out the window. New York usually took her mind of her worries. She’d sat for hours staring out the windows in the apartment, letting her mind wander in speculation about the people behind the windows opposite, or walking in the street. Respite for the fear and guilt that dogged her every waking thought and her sleeping ones too. Once she’d been deathly afraid of depression but this time it hadn’t come to envelop her in its dark, smothering blanket. No sign. Just sadness, grief and worry that she’d blown it for real. Anxiety to get this done, to make the necessary decisions they needed to go on with their lives, one way or another.

  Nobody who lived here should drive, she thought savagely as the lights changed on them for the second time. The third time they got through and she saw a couple of people hanging around the entrance to the apartment. “There they are.”

  “Are they here day and night?” He sounded calm but she knew better. That tone of voice, the coolness, indicated his efforts at control.

  “More or less. I go out the back way. There aren’t so many now but I still take care.”

  “Not today.” The car stopped and after paying the driver he got out of his side and rounded the hood to open her door. “Let the bastards see whatever they want. I won’t go creeping about like I have no right to be here.”

  He waited. Given little choice she exited the car. He grasped her hand, warm, firm, just as it always was and she wanted to cry. The urge came on her sudden, fast and ugly and she didn’t know if she could hold it together.

  Riku waited for her. That gave the reporters time to approach them. “Go away, guys,” he said. “Just leave.”

  The two, one man, one woman, made enough noise for six people but Riku ignored them. He stepped in front of her so they couldn’t see her. “All right now?”

  He’d seen the tear glimmering on her cheek, the one she hadn’t stopped. After two deep breaths, she was ready. “Okay, fine. Let’s go.”

  Retaining his clasp on her hand, he strode forward, the reporters buzzing around him like irritating wasps. Just before the main door he stopped and faced them, used his free hand to drag something from under his T-shirt.

  The necklace, the one he’d bought that day, so long ago, it seemed to her now. Flashes went off. Why, in broad daylight, she had no idea. Neither did she care. “My wife designed this,” he said. “She’s a talented designer. That, guys, is your only quote.”

  Urging her forward, they got inside and the concierge snapped the electronic locks closed. “Have they been trouble?” Riku asked him on their way past.

  The man shrugged. “Liven up the day sometimes. I never talk to them apart from telling them to go away.”

  “I know. I’d have heard if you hadn’t.”

  So he would. Through the media. He’d been watching. Probably as avidly as she watched him, although he’d played it cool and the press, probably seeing her as the weaker partner, had homed in on her instead. Riku had gone to work, returned to his Chicago apartment, left for work the next morning. No nightclubs, the occasional dinner out, usually with one or more members of the band. Circumspect but if he’d wanted to mess around he could have done so. She didn’t think he had, not for a moment, which was odd, considering his reputation before she’d reentered his life.

  The elevator arrived and the doors slid smoothly open.

  They entered the small space and stood as far apart as they could. Too close to him would hurt, since she couldn’t hold him. Didn’t have the right to kiss him anymore.

  “I’ve never taken it off,” he said.

  Slowly she lifted her gaze to his. “What did you say?”

  “I’ve worn this necklace since you walked out on me.”

  “I told you. I didn’t walk out on you, I gave us
both some space.”

  “I know. That’s the only reason I stayed away. You needed space and time. You panicked.”

  He paused, slid his card through the slot. The door slid open without a sound and he stood back for her to go inside. It closed on them with the finality of a resolution chord.

  Cyn covered the resultant awkward pause by dumping her jacket and purse on the nearest chair and crossing the floor in the direction of the kitchen. “Tea or coffee?”

  She never got as far as putting the kettle on the hob.

  “Cyn.” He’d followed her, stood in the doorway. “Never mind that. Come and talk. Let’s talk, really talk.”

  She wanted him to hold her hand again. “Okay.” She followed him to the living room and took the blue sofa in the conversation arrangement. Ignoring the green one opposite, he sat next to her but it was a big couch with plenty of room for three, much less two. They didn’t touch.

  “You killed me that day but you were right about some things. We needed time apart.” He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and stared at the picture outside the huge windows. “I love this city. Grew up here. I never tell it so. Take it for granted. Maybe I did that to you.” He swung his gaze around to her. “Did I?”

  “Never.” Not in all the time they’d known each other, although the institute had rushed them both into their careers, into working. They’d still found time to spend together.

  He pushed a hand through his hair, ruffling the espresso-dark strands. “I made so many mistakes, Cyn. I should have come home when you didn’t join me in Paris but my tutors were pushing me to work harder, practice more. I was on the cusp, they said. That was when I realized my mother had got to them. Probably awarded a scholarship or something to give them an incentive to force me over the last hurdle. She wanted first class, you see. Typical. By then I knew I’d never make it. My heart wasn’t in it either. I’m not sure it would have been had I made the grade. I wanted something different.”

  He turned his head and his dark gaze bored into her, compelling her to hear him, to really listen. “Do you know how obscene those words—good and solid—can be?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, no.” Was he talking to keep them busy, to steady them both? If so she had to admire his tactics because they were working. Her reason returned, all the things she’d thought about, the factors that kept her awake nights. Along with a bed far too big for one person.

  “No, you wouldn’t because you were brilliant. Even I recognized that. Do you remember what we talked about before I left? That you were headed for the great opera houses of the world and maybe I should have become an accompanist so I could be with you? I was half-serious. Thinking about it, anyway. I knew by then I’d never make it to the top of the classical world. I thought it was a lack of ambition but I’ve met artists who do it without trying, without considering it. It’s a job. It gets them where they want to be. It was never that for me.

  “I failed, Cyn. I had to face that. Zazz taught me about self-pity and how destructive it is, because he’s never let himself go there. The rest you know.” He huffed a laugh. “The rest of the world knows, or it thinks it does.” He moved, lifted his hand, then put it on the seat next to him. Had he meant to reach for her?

  “So you see,” he said, “I’ve been thinking. I knew my first mistake. I should have contacted you back then. I still believed you were in Germany but when I called the institute they told me you’d left. They had no idea what you were doing. Just not music. I called people we knew and they didn’t know either. Before I came to New York I spotted your picture in a magazine. Remember the article?”

  She did. It wasn’t as if she featured in a lot of magazines but she’d had a spot in an airline publication, when she’d entered a contest to design a new logo. She hadn’t won but the contest has still brought her to people’s attention and she’d made the most of the opportunity by wearing her own jewelry. It had worked, more then she realized, if Riku had seen her there. “I remember.”

  “When I got to New York I came to find you. I didn’t say that, even to myself but I had the address of your store by then. I arrived that day to see if I had the courage to go in. You drew me, Cyn. You always do. Always have. I didn’t mean to crash into you quite as obviously as I did though.”

  He smiled and glory be she found the muscles to smile back. “I couldn’t believe it. There you were. It was like yesterday. Stupid.”

  “The same for me. Not the stupid part. I knew right then I’d made a huge mistake back in Paris.”

  “Leaving the conservatory?” she said with a smile.

  “Letting you go. I did, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.” No prevarication, she promised herself. “I thought you’d moved on. So if I turned up at a gig and you let me in out of pity I’d have been a hanger-on. Like I was that first night. Hated that. It reminded me of what I might have been if I’d got back in touch with you when you were first famous, before the stores were successful, before I’d sold my first design. A hanger-on. An extra. Someone who didn’t really matter.”

  “Never that, Cyn. If I’d realized—” he shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

  She nodded. No more doing favors for other people, to please them or to spite them. She needed to know one more thing. “Did you call your mother?”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw and she heard the faint rasp of day-old beard. She ached to touch it, let it abrade her palm, feel him in every way possible but she couldn’t. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. It depended on what he said now. “I called her. We’re friends, or rather, we’re cordial acquaintances. Both of us will be happy with that, I think. Keep our distance but keep in contact.”

  What he said sounded sensible. “You haven’t asked me about the financier she set up for me.”

  He fixed her with a penetrating gaze. “That’s your business. I won’t interfere. I won’t even comment unless you want me to.”

  “It didn’t work out,” she told him baldly. “He wanted more than I was prepared to give him. The other deal he put me in contact with did. And another. The Rowan Group want me to design exclusive pieces for them to go in their flagship hotels worldwide.”

  “Jesus!” No stopping him now. He surged across the space between them, taking her in his arms for a bear hug. “I’m so proud of you. You created your own path, did what you had to do to be happy. You could have taken the gig and by now you’d be feted, adored and a star.”

  “And miserable,” she said.

  “Cyn, oh, Cyn, I need you. I can’t think past that. It wakes me in the night, beats me around the head all day.”

  Need? He’d never said what she’d wanted to hear. Only now, after she’d met his parents did she understand. Arm’s-length upbringing didn’t make for easy admission of emotions, especially ones that might make him vulnerable to people who wanted to control him. She understood because before his death her father had done it to her, withholding his touch and his affection. Either he didn’t know how or he’d chosen to train her that way. She didn’t know. “Riku, we can’t. We have to approach this like rational adults—”

  “No, no we don’t. Why? I know I need you, I don’t want to end this.”

  “Why not? To teach your mother a lesson? That’s why you did it, isn’t it? Proposed to me so dramatically and so publicly in the middle of the restaurant.” One she did not intend to enter ever again. She’d remember that fraught atmosphere to her dying day.

  “It might have started like that.” He chopped his hand on the cushions, the reverberations reaching her as if he touched her. “No, that’s not true. Maybe the details, sure but nothing else. I didn’t want to let you go. Not again, and I thought marrying you would mean you couldn’t run away so easily.”

  She closed her eyes but tears still seeped from under the lids.

  He touched her, cupping her cheeks, kissing her lips oh so gently. “Don’t, Cyn. Don’t cry over me. Over us.”

  Then they were kissing for real
, touching hungrily, after they’d starved themselves for a month. She slid her hands under his T-shirt, stroked the heat of his chest. He banded his arms around her, dragged her close, his erection hard against her skin. He tilted his head, slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her with a voraciousness that told her everything about how much he’d missed her.

  Cyn responded, as frantic as Riku, tasting the elusive flavor she’d missed so much, longed for every minute since she’d gotten on the New York-bound plane in Las Vegas.

  He tore his lips away from hers. “You are amazing, the most wonderful, resourceful woman in the world. And I love you.”

  Silence dropped like a stone plummeting into water but she didn’t feel uncomfortable now. “I love you too.” So fucking easy. Why hadn’t she said it before?

  No words required as he took her mouth like a man starving. “Come to bed with me. Please, Cyn. Fuck!” He released her as if she were a hot potato and she frowned, puzzled. He’d changed his mind now? “Your ribs—I must have hurt you.”

  “No.” She got to her feet. “That idea of yours, to go to bed?” One by one she unfastened the buttons on her shirt. Six of them and one on each cuff. Then she let the garment slide away, to drop on the floor. “Look, Ma, no bruises.” She put on the fake American accent that had always made him laugh. It didn’t fail her now.

  He stood and took her hand, leading her upstairs to the bedroom that should rightfully be theirs.

  He undressed her, laid her down and watched her as he removed his own clothes. He liked to look at her and she liked to have him look. She lay on the silky violet bedcover, a deep, vivid color that suited her better than the one there when she moved in. She watched the way his gaze travelled from her now-unmarked side to her breasts, peaked in invitation, and her pussy, freshly waxed, leaving the small tuft of curls that proclaimed her womanhood and drew attention to it.

  He still had his hair removed too. Surprised to see bare balls and groin, she blinked. “You don’t have to put stage costumes on for a while.”