Chapter Twelve
JOY’S FATHER TOOK the news really well.
“I thought there was more to this marriage than you were letting on,” Paul said in his creaky voice. “Your mother and I always expected you to be curious about your birth parents, sweetheart. You didn’t have to hide this from me. I completely understand.”
That made her feel weepy enough to want to hug him through the screen, especially when she confessed her meeting with Otto had not gone as well as she’d hoped.
After some consoling words, Paul said, “What about your husband? Please tell me you’re still happy with your marriage?”
“I am.” She blinked with shock at how true that was. Her life here with Axel was more fulfilling than she could have anticipated.
She went on to describe the dance company and the performance she was hoping to be picked for, the language classes she had signed up for and her upcoming getaway to Sicily with Axel, for business and sunshine.
A friendly journalist came by the next afternoon, bringing a photographer who took candid photos of her and Axel lounging around the penthouse and standing at the rail of the terrace.
Joy wore off-white trousers with a torso-hugging, long-sleeved lace top in the same color.
Axel wore a black suit with a black shirt and a black tie.
“You make a striking couple,” the journalist said. “How did you meet?”
Joy let Axel take the lead. He was using this opportunity to announce he’d fully broken away from Otto and had opened a competing firm, confirming what was already floating through the headlines.
When Axel casually mentioned he had met Joy after learning she was Otto’s daughter, the woman’s eyes popped in realization she was being given a scoop.
“I only learned my birth father’s identity very recently.” Joy didn’t mention Lorena’s name but filled in a few blanks about her adoption into her American family, adding that she had wanted to meet Otto, but that they didn’t have a meaningful relationship.
“Is my research correct? Were you performing as an exotic dancer prior to your marriage?” The journalist was giving Joy a chance to deny it.
“I was.”
“Plug the company you’re with now,” Axel prompted her.
“I’m still in the audition process,” Joy demurred. “But Axel is right. The choreographer deserves a mention for the production she’s putting together.” Joy offered up the dates and venue for the expected performance.
“Does your marriage have anything to do with you leaving Vorstoben?” the woman asked Axel. “By that, I mean the timing of your broken engagement to Mira Braun? She left the company, too. There seems to be some conflict between her and her father?” she probed.
“I can’t speak for Mira,” Axel said firmly. “Otto was aware for years that my plan was to run my own firm. I would prefer we hadn’t come to legal action, but I’m confident the courts will side with me in our dispute.”
The article came out the next day while they were on the ground in Sicily.
A small media storm ensued, but Axel was busy closing a deal on a massive resort complex that had ground to a halt due to various issues.
That evening, they attended a mixer of executives and their spouses, and even though people seemed aware of the article and Joy’s former job, everyone was more excited that their project had been saved than interested in gossiping about her.
When they returned to Berlin, Joy felt lighter than she had in years.
Her family was thriving and looking forward to being together in California.
Her financial troubles were gone. She no longer felt she had to hide her work at Martini’s, and she was making new friends among her fellow dancers while doing what she loved.
The only thing she loved more than dancing every day was coming home to her husband.
They had fallen into a routine of discussing their plans for the day in the hot tub, parting after breakfast, then coming together again in the evening.
Often, they went out again because they had engagements, but Joy was no longer afraid of those.
She was seeing familiar faces and had been invited onto a charity board for performing arts that interested her.
She was on top of the world and told her brother that when he called one evening.
“I’m still trying to get used to this,” David said with concern. “It doesn’t feel like you, Joy. I thought you wanted to be a nurse? What if you need something to fall back on?”
A wave of exasperated affection washed over her. David was caring and protective, but he didn’t have a clue who she was at heart. Not the way Axel understood her.
“I’m dancing. I’m happy,” she insisted. “You’ll see when we come to California.”
That trip was another month away, but she was looking forward to it. She and Axel would touch down in Chicago long enough to collect Paul before flying him to California themselves so Joy could help him get settled in his new home while meeting Carrie and David’s newest addition.
“How’s your brother?” Axel asked idly when they were undressing for bed.
“Good, but he asked me why I gave up the nurse training. You knew the day you met me that I was only pursuing it for Dad. That it wasn’t my real passion.
David was genuinely baffled that I would walk away from what he views as a solid profession.
It made me realize how different I am from him.
From all of them. They love me. I know that.
And I love them, but I always felt this sense of being a bit of an oddity.
Even my mother was very practical, working at City Hall because they had a decent pension.
She encouraged my dance as a hobby while I was growing up, but it wasn’t something she thought I should pursue as a living.
They were concerned that I chose performing arts at college.
When I gave it up for Todd, I think they were a little relieved.
No one asked how I really felt about it. ”
“That’s probably why you did give it up. You were trying to fit into their expectations.”
“I really was,” she said with dawning understanding. “I always had this lingering fear they’d reject me if I didn’t stay between the lines. On the surface, Todd was cookie-cutter husband material. That’s why I tried so hard to make it work with him.”
“And when you realized he wouldn’t make you happy, that their way didn’t make you happy, you took up dancing for money, trying to show them that you could support them on your own terms.”
“I wasn’t that passive-aggressive about it. Not consciously, anyway.” But he wasn’t wrong. “I was trying to keep my dream alive in whatever way I could make it happen.”
“Then I played on that to force this marriage on you, but I don’t regret it. Not as much as I should.” He took her hands and pulled them behind his back so she came up against him. “I see how much it means to you. It’s where you feel you truly belong, isn’t it?”
She nodded, growing emotional because he saw her so much more clearly than her family ever had.
I love him, she thought as she tightened her arms around him.
As his arms enfolded her, she knew she would remember this as the moment she fell. It wasn’t even a fall. It was a sense of coming to rest. Because Axel might be demanding and remote and ferocious, but he always took such care with her.
His hands moved over her, and as so often happened with him, she felt pulled into him as though magnetized. This was where belonged, she thought, closing her eyes against the press of heat behind them.
She tilted back her head, and they kissed, long and slow and with such a deep tenderness, her heart ached in the best possible way.
His hands moved lazily over her. They were still capable of frantic lovemaking, but neither of them was in a hurry tonight.
This was a coming together that went beyond their bodies.
For whatever reason, he was making her feel cherished, and she was drinking it up, wanting to give him all of herself.
Not just her body, but the heart that felt cradled by his palm when he cupped her breast. The soul that condensed on the air when she gasped in pleasure.
I love you, she thought, as she licked beneath his ear and breathed his name toward the ceiling.
When she reached between them to caress his erection, he swore and said with quiet urgency, “I need to be inside you.”
His hands went under her butt, and she hopped, grasping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. As he carried her to the bed and came down on her, she felt his erection against the tender folds that were aching to envelop him.
“You’re shaking,” he said.
“I want you so much,” she said helplessly, feeling hot and wet and so aroused, she thought she would combust. “I don’t know how to…” Express it. Reveal it. Make him feel it.
“Me, too.”
Then they were tumbling across the bed, stripping off clothes until finally he pressed inside her.
They both calmed. Now his kiss turned languorous.
He shifted so his weight was on one elbow, and he could send tingling pleasure through her with the lazy stroke of his hand.
His knee crooked, and he secured their hips tighter, so they were locked like one of those brain-teaser puzzles she had never figured out how to unravel.
Who would want to? This was how they were meant to be. It was where she wanted to be. This is home.
I love you, she thought as he shifted over her and began to move in slow, powerful thrusts.
I love you, she thought as the glorious tension built and sunlight filled her veins.
I love you, was the only thought in her mind as the pleasure coalesced into a pinpoint of utter perfection, then expanding in waves of ecstasy.
His hand clamped on her shoulder, and his sweating body shook. A broken shout left him, and she lifted her hips for his final, rocking thrusts.
It was seismic. Cataclysmic. For a long, timeless moment, they were melded into one, caught in pure, shared ecstasy.
Joy wanted to stay in this liminal space of blissful unity forever, but physical reality crept in. Their hearts were pounding, their skin tacky enough to sting as he made the monumental effort to roll off her. Her body was weak, her mouth dry from panting.
But she was still in the glorious and dazed state of harmony. The words left her before she’d thought them through.
“I love you.”