Instinctively, I shook my head. The cotton wool was working because Angela didn’t pry. But if Jill was here or Fritha, they’d push and pull until the details shook out and then the pain would come with it. I couldn’t allow that.
But maybe just one of them. Maybe I could manage that. So I looked up from the tablecloth to her sympathetic frown. “I’m going to tell it to you, and then I’m going to sleep.”
She nodded, but I could see from her expression that she was girding herself, which was just as well because I didn’t soften anything. I started at The Rocks Spa and detailed my ‘bad thing’, my breakdown with Nicholas, the kitten comfort, the phone call from the matron confirming my inexcusable sadism, nearly killing the kitten and why that upset me—why I couldn’t bear to handle babies, having sex with Nicholas, facing extortion, being horrified and intimidated, and then Nicholas’s ‘bad thing’ when Marcus died. Italy with Fritha and then Nicholas. My declaration of love and then his realization that I was a sadist.
That’s when she cut over me, “But you’re not!”
“I hurt the boy.”
“But he was a masochist,” she said, as if the explanation was so simple that an idiot should understand it. “That’s what they want.”
“Then why did the matron at the spa contact me to say I don’t belong there, and that the boy said he didn’t want to ‘interact’ with me again. I obviously went too far.”
“Did you?” she demanded, and something about her feisty tone—so unlike Angela, woke me a little from my cotton wool. This wasn’t like her, demanding details.
“I hurt him.” I shook my head. “I hit him with a crop.”
“Fritha went to a BDSM party once. She told me it was just silly slapping.”
I shook my head. “I hit Roy a lot harder than that.”
Angela frowned, then she straightened in her chair. “I want to meet this matron and hear it from her.”
“Pardon?” My cotton wool was evaporating like soap bubbles in the sun. “I’m not going—”
Angela stood abruptly. “Yes we are. Let’s get you dressed.”
Bolshie determination was the last thing I’d expected from her, but she didn’t relent until I’d washed my hair, made an appointment with the matron, dressed in something respectable and put makeup on.
My eyes looked hollow but apart from that I was presentable. Angela insisted on driving the Bentley and I didn’t care about that either. I just followed along docilely until we were in the matron’s office and she was sitting stiffly behind her desk.
Surprisingly, Angela did the talking. “Louella is upset,” she said carefully, “because of the feedback she received regarding Roy,” she glanced at me for confirmation on the name and I nodded.
“Not his real name,” the matron hastily cut in.
“So if you could elaborate on that,” Angela went on, “and of course I have a vested interest in keeping Louella’s affairs private, so it goes without saying that I will keep any information to myself.”
The matron tilted her elegant head to the side, inspecting me carefully before she turned to Angela and said, “Roy told us she vomited. He heard her, and that’s inexcusable.”
“Pardon?” Angela said.
“Obvious distaste,” the matron went on, “signals an inability to adapt to the lifestyle. It shames the submissive, which as you can imagine, is not what they come here for.”
I straightened in my plush seat. “You wouldn’t let me come back because I didn’t enjoy being a sadist.”
“Correct.”
Angela turned to me with a brimming smile. “You’re not a sadist.”
The matron arched an eyebrow. “We prefer the term Dom, but you’re correct, not a Dom’s bootlace, I’m afraid. Some nice slapping, but barely enough to register with Roy. He’s used to far more pain than that.”
“Seriously?” I could barely believe that. It had seemed terrible to me. “All those muffled grunts.”
“Theatre,” she replied succinctly. “Doms like to feel as if their punishments are registering.”
Angela shook her head. “So it’s like actresses in pornography with their extravagant moaning.”
For a split second a smile twitched across the matron’s lips, then it was gone and she said, “I wouldn’t know.”
We made our goodbyes and left, with Angela chattering on the way home about how I’d done nothing wrong and that Nicholas—
That’s where I stopped her. “Please don’t contact him,” I said firmly, feeling the cotton wool shed even more. “And if you wouldn’t mind keeping all this to yourself for now. I don’t want Jill or Fritha intruding, or most especially match-making.”
“But he’s been so kind, helping Lizzie find her feet when Sieu left. Gisel is staying with her currently.”
“Gisel is gay,” I cut in.
“Oh,” Angela said, then she shrugged. “Well, I’m sure she won’t take advantage of Lizzie’s vulnerable condition.”
“Nicholas won’t let her,” I said softly. I knew that for sure.
Angela kept her eyes on the road as she drove, but after a few minutes of silence she said, “It’s not fair that he doesn’t know the truth.”
I shook my head. “Seriously, that argument was the tip of the iceberg of incompatibilities. The only place where we’re compatible is in bed.”
“That’s a start,” Angela said firmly. “I built a relationship on that with Jack. So can you.”
I shook my head. “Did Jack ever suspect you of evil doing?”
After a minute, Angela smirked, “Well, he did think I was sleeping with Tug Dunne.”
We both laughed at that. The television talk show host was touted as a notorious ‘womanizer’ because that fed his image, but I’d known he was gay since we worked on a charity dinner together five years ago. Luckily I’d been able to warn Angela that his creepy flirting was all pretense, so she’d accepted his invitation to attend the glittering ARIA awards which had rocketed her profile—and her career—into best-seller status.
Which reminded me, “I’m sorry. I haven’t asked how your album is selling.”
“Really well.” She dimpled. “And I’ve been writing new songs for a children’s album with Charley and Daisy…” Jack’s nieces whom he adopted when his sister died. “Rosie—you remember my agent—she’s organized to get me onto US television to promote it, so after the wedding we’re taking the girls to Disneyland and I’ll do the promo. Then we come home and hunker down waiting for this one.” She rubbed her belly and put her hand back onto the steering wheel.
“Jack is a lovely man,” I said sincerely, remembering how protective he’d been of Angela when they’d visited me—the day Marcus had gone into surgery. “He’s clearly good father material.”
As Nicholas would no doubt be. Only I didn’t have a maternal bone in my body.
“I didn’t think so at first,” she said. “I thought he was only interested in sex.” She shook her head. “So many assumptions. Assumptions are bad,” she said and shot me a pointed glance.
“So…about the bridesmaid dress,” I said to distract her, and she let me move the conversation on. Within twenty-four hours we’d found the perfect dress and I’d helped her settle details of the catering items and decorations she was having shipped to Gillabindi where the wedding would be held.
It was the closest town to Jack’s family property Daven Downs and Angela had fallen in love with the little outback settlement when she’d moved there, so they were shipping us all in to stay. Jack had bought several properties in town that were currently being renovated for guests, and which he’d then add to his rental portfolio.
I’d been looking forward to the fireworks of Angela’s dragon of a Mumbai-born mother confronting Jack’s landed gentry parents who were initially unhappy about their son marrying an Indian girl—albeit that Angela had been born in Australia.
Jack, apparently, didn’t care for their opinion, and had told them categorically that if they w
anted access to Charley and Daisy and their newest grandchild they needed to ‘play nice’.
Weddings had a way of shaking things up, however, so I was quite prepared to play peacemaker if Angela required it. Because, frankly, there was little else in my life to involve me.
As each day passed, I grew more apathetic about the fact that Nicholas hadn’t contacted me and neither had I contacted him. The ‘scandal’ of my affair was a storm in a teacup. Sharona stirred trouble on a few of my committees and was told point-blank to shut up. It had been an open secret that she wanted Marcus, and it appeared that most of my associates thought she was inventing drama out of sour grapes.
I was not called on to confirm or deny rumors, so I ignored it and it went away. Betty was patient with me, probably imagining that my withdrawal was grief, and I was kind with her, because I sometimes caught her in the laundry wiping her eyes.
I remembered Nicholas then, saying he wasn’t good with tears. Neither was I, but at least now I forced myself to deal with them instead of turning and walking away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The day of the wedding dawned clear and bright in Gillabindi, and I woke to the distinctive laughter of native Kookaburras in the gum trees outside my room. The air in the outback had a distinctive dry quality to it, and combined with the oily-sweet eucalypt scent, it reminded me of our childhoods in Dakaroo—so different to the artificial scent of the city.
We’d agreed on bridal party breakfast, so after a quick shower, I dressed in a blue silk suit and met Jill and Finn on the porch of the pretty cottage we were staying in. They’d obviously risen earlier and were finishing cups of coffee.
“Ready to go?” Jill asked.
I looked around. “Where’s Fritha. I thought she arrived last night?” They’d told me she was staying in the room next to mine. “And who’s she bringing? Is it Angela’s cousin Kamal?” I’d met the boy once, and thanked him for rescuing Fritha when she’d been slapped by that horrible drunk. But apparently Fritha had already thanked him with a weekend of sex, so all I’d done was make him blush.
Jill shrugged again. “Not sure.”
I was wondering if there was any man she hadn’t had sex with, when she came around the corner of the house…with Nicholas on her arm.
And the world stopped. I caught my breath because he looked even more beautiful than I’d remembered and my heart forgot to beat as I waited for his gaze to meet mine.
Fritha said, “Here she is!” and pointed at me.
A second later Nicholas saw me and then everything else was gone. There were noises, conversations, but the only real part was Nicholas walking up the front stairs of the cottage in jeans and a stylish wool jacket, the color of his eyes. He stopped in front of me.
One of his hands came out to touch my arm tentatively, and then slide down to my hand. The shiver of his skin on mine almost distracted me from twining my fingers with his, but I wasn’t letting him go. “You’re here,” I said, completely unable to settle my breathing which had gone choppy.
Then he cupped my cheek with his other hand and leant in slowly. There was movement around us but I just closed my eyes, and when his lips touched mine I trembled with the pent-up emotion that stung my eyes. Before I could stop it, I was crying and he pulled me into his arms and kept kissing me, sweetly and softly, as if I really was the delicate treasure he’d always told me I was.
When I finally pulled away, we were alone on the verandah and he led me to a porch swing where we sat with his arm around my shoulders and my damp cheek resting on his soft jacket.
I opened my mouth but he pressed a finger to my lips.
“You don’t get to talk,” he said, “until I apologize.”
I pressed my lips together, knowing he could say anything and I’d want him. I’d been broken, and inside his arms I was whole. I could come up with a million reasons we shouldn’t be together, but none of them were more important than that.
“So…the first thing is, I let you go. And that was crazy.” He stroked my hair off my forehead and then kissed it. “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Nothing can make me stop loving you. Nothing. And secondly, you’re not a sadist. Just so you know. I’ve met sadist. You’re not it. I just…”
I pulled back to look at him, and he struggled to meet my gaze.
“…I was so overwhelmed, telling you about my past, thinking you’d judge me or my family. That maybe you’d think it was nasty and that you didn’t want anything to do with me. Or worse—I’d been rough with you the night before, and I wondered if you thought I might turn out like my father.”
I took his hands in mine, and waited for my turn to speak, but it was hard.
“So I was still thinking about me when you told me about that one thing you did—a one-time thing,” he reiterated. “Which was nothing like what my father did over and over. And I couldn’t think.”
He pressed his lips together and I waited for him to go on.
“I was so…blindsided by it, that I didn’t see it as an aberration. I didn’t ask you why it happened. I just…” He shook his head. “I let you go, and then when I realized what I’d done, I was so angry with myself.” He looked at me then, his gaze begging for understanding. “After all that struggle to get you to believe in me, in us, to just let you walk out like that. I started wondering if…maybe I didn’t deserve you.”
“I’m sorry.” I couldn’t wait any longer. “I should have explained, but I was so disgusted with myself, with my marriage, I was convinced that you’d be disgusted too, and that nothing I could say would make any difference.”
He shook his head. “When I’m with you, I feel like I just stepped out of the shower. You make me feel clean and strong and…invincible. Yes, I was horrified, but that’s just because I can’t imagine you and ‘disgust’ in the same sentence. I still can’t.”
We gazed at each other and inside my mind I heard Angela saying Tell him the truth about Roy, so I did. It was faltering and difficult, but I got it out, all the way through to the matron’s explanation of why I wasn’t welcome to return.
“So that’s why you changed clothes?”
“I was covered in sweat and I’d vomited.”
“Oh, honey.” He pulled me into his arms and held me tight. “I am such an idiot. I should have kissed you weeks before I did. I could have kissed you at Jill’s wedding. You might have taken your angst out on me in bed, and morals be damned.”
I hiccupped a laugh, horrified and yet amused at the same time. I pulled back to say, “You’d let me whip your butt?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Honey, you and my butt in the same sentence sounds like heaven to me. Whip away.”
“You know I’m not very strong.”
“Counting on it, actually.”
“I love you.”
He kissed the end of my nose. “And I am certifiable about you. Can we please get this wedding out of the way and plan ours?”
My breath stuttered in my chest. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
He sucked in a very deep breath, then got off the porch swing and onto one knee in front of me, pulling a box from his jacket pocket. Then he looked me in the eye. “Louella Knight,” he said formally, and opened the box to display the largest pink diamond I had ever seen. “Will you marry me?”
I sat blinking at the ring. It was at least one carat, set in platinum. I knew for a fact that pink argyle diamonds were fifty times the prices of regular diamonds. The ring had to be worth over two million dollars.
He watched me patiently, and at last said, “This baby has been burning a hole in my pocket since I took it to Florence. Please say yes so I can put it on your finger.”
“Yes.” I looked into his eyes. I wanted to marry him, but while he was retrieving it from the box and slipping it onto my finger, I said, “You’re a bodyguard.”
“Actually,” he said, turning my hand over to kiss my palm. “I own Shadow Secure. But yes, I work in it too.”
“The san
ctuary?”
He nodded.
“You own that house?” I felt like the breath wouldn’t stay in my lungs.
“And a few others.” He let that sink in before he added, “My father was wealthy.”
He must have seen the shock on my face, because his expression grew wry.
“It’s not just working class men who beat their wives.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say, but I was realizing I’d stereotyped his situation. In the end I said, “I’m so sorry you had a bad childhood.”
“You did too,” he said, and kissed me softly, then he said, “But I cut out when I could—took off for Europe when my mother killed herself, determined to have nothing to do with him or his money. He died a few years later, so I took great pleasure in using my inheritance to create Shadow Secure.”
“And that’s why your staff work as self-defense trainers at the women’s shelters.”
He nodded. “We’re looking to expand into third world countries, but I need someone who knows about charities to help me coordinate it.” He gazed at me expectantly.
“You want to employ me?” I was having trouble hiding a smile.
“Maybe. I’ll be working on the business, not in it from now on.” His thumbs started rubbing on the sensitive tissue of my palms and I felt myself melting. “Do I get to boss you around if I employ you?”
I softened my voice, “Only in the bedroom.”
He sat on the swing beside me and kissed me so comprehensively I could barely breathe. Then when it was over he said, “You won’t remember this, but in the first week I was with you—thinking I should pull myself off the job because I couldn’t stop looking at your legs— you cut off a wealthy land developer who was asking you out. In fact, you were so blunt it was almost rude.”
“The SparkleJuice Foundation lunch. I remember it.” Although I couldn’t remember the developer’s name. Robert? Ronald? I knew he’d just divorced his fourth wife. And I didn’t consider it rude. Simply…clear.
“So…he wasn’t ugly,” Nicholas went on wryly. “And he wasn’t poor. The only reason I could imagine you’d do that was because you didn’t want to be some rich guy’s trophy wife.”
Husband Heel (Husband #3) Page 27
