Chapter Nine #2
“I asked the chef to prepare us a selection of his favorite things.”
“Oh, that sounds lovely.”
“I know that you and your mother moved to Italy from New York.”
“Yes. We did.”
“I never asked you what it was like to grow up there.”
She rested her chin on the back of her hands, looking at him thoughtfully. “No. You didn’t. But then, I never asked you about anything before I met you either. Or really anything that you were experiencing after we met.”
“True.”
“Well, I went back to New York. Because in many ways it always felt like my home. But also on a slightly pettier note, I wanted to know what it was like to live there when I was part of the other half. We grew up in a studio apartment. It was tiny, and my mom did her best to keep it clean. She worked on the Upper East Side. Sometimes in the summer I would ride the subway with her. And spend most of the day outside on the playgrounds there. Sometimes I would wander around the Met by myself. Or the natural history museum. Air-conditioned. Nice. During the school year I would get myself to school. And usually I would cook dinner so that she would have something when she got home. She didn’t ask me to do that.
But I wanted to. It was us against the world. ”
“And then my father put out a ridiculous ad for a housekeeper after he and my mother had a fight.”
“What?”
“Did you not know that? It came about because of a fight that they had. My mother was constantly chasing cleaners away by nitpicking their work. And my father said the only way that we would be able to get someone new is by finding them outside the country. And that once he did, my mother was not permitted to engage with the new cleaner. He also said that he would have to pay more than handsomely for them to keep the job. That is how that job posting ended up being the way it was. So generous that of course your mother would never turn it down.”
“He fell in love with her at first sight,” Heather said, looking down at her hands.
Romeo was about to respond to that when the waiter came in with a charcuterie, an array of meat and cheese. A glass of wine for him, and sparkling water for Heather.
“Did he?” Romeo asked. And he found he wasn’t as angry as he used to be.
“Yes. He wanted to give her everything. That was why he offered to send me to the private school. He wanted…he wanted her to notice him the way that he did her. But he wanted to be careful because he was her boss. My mother worked for a lot of rich men. She didn’t have relationships with them.
And she didn’t trust them just because they were rich and men.
She knew better than that. It wasn’t like it was a pattern with her or anything like that. ”
“I don’t really know what I thought. It feels…salacious on the surface.”
“Yes. It does. But it wasn’t.”
He nodded slowly. “I did see that. In the fullness of time. That what they had was real. It didn’t ease anything, though, because it only made me feel all that much more protective of my mother.”
“Why wouldn’t it? It’s a tangle.”
“It was never your fault, though.”
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”
He very nearly laughed.
Their main courses came out after that—perfectly seared steaks and buttered vegetables. And he was gratified to see that Heather was enjoying the food. When she had first come to tell him about the pregnancy she had looked pale and unwell.
Now she seemed much better.
Taking care of her was…satisfying.
He had always felt a strange sort of possessiveness over her. It had been, initially, that she was the woman he hated more than anyone else in all the world.
But now she was his. In a different way.
It made him want to do things differently. Behave differently.
To treat her differently.
“What was it like growing up in your house?”
“I told you. Contentious.”
“You said war zone.”
He nodded slowly. “They were not a good match. All they did was make each other miserable. My father was rich. My mother was beautiful, and volatile. He didn’t know what he was getting into, but they married each other.
Based on my math, I assume it’s because she was pregnant with me.
I was the reason. And therefore, I’m responsible. ”
“For what?”
“For keeping her happy. At least as happy as she can be, because all of her misery is because of me.”
Heather tilted her head to the side. “That isn’t true. It’s not a fair perspective. You didn’t choose to be born, but she chose to have you.”
“She couldn’t have seen ahead to the consequences.”
“Perhaps not. But that doesn’t negate her part in it. I could’ve easily felt that way about my mom. She raised me without any help at all. It was really hard, but she never made me feel like I was a burden. We were family.”
“Family, to me, has always meant something different. It has always been something…to do. A challenge.”
“I don’t want that to be the case for our child.”
“Neither do I.”
“Did you always want children?”
He shook his head slowly. “To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought about it. In my experience, loving another person is exhausting.”
“Your mother?”
“It’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Maybe. But it’s not untrue.”
There was nothing more shocking than feeling like maybe the one person who had ever understood this was Heather.
And she had always been there. Yet they had never spoken. Not about this. Not about anything.
They finished their meal, and got back in the car, headed back to the hotel.
As they walked through the lobby, and to the elevator, he looked down at her, and she looked up at him. The expression on her face was soft. Different than any other way she had ever looked at him before. There was understanding there.
Intimacy.
And that had certainly never passed between them before.
The elevator carried them to their floor, and they walked down the hall, to the suite.
He let them both in, and closed the door behind them.
She looked at him, with determination. Her eyes glittering as she stepped toward him, pressed her hands to his chest and stretched up on her toes to kiss him.
The kiss was soft, tentative at first, but began to increase, deepen.
She tilted her head to the side and parted her lips, sliding her tongue against his.
A shiver went through his body.
They’d had each other hard. They’d had each other mean. This was something else entirely.
There had been very little kissing. Consuming, yes, but no kissing.
He captured the back of her head with his hand, her hair like silk as it slid through his fingers, as he kissed her deeper, longer.
As he wrapped his arm around her and held her hard against his body.
She whimpered. Her fingers curling around the collar of his jacket as she clung to him.
As she deepened the kiss, and it went on and on.
The dress was beautiful. The dress existed so that he could take it off of her.
And this time, he would enjoy her. This time, it wouldn’t be fast and hard.
This time, he would take his time.
He lowered the zipper on the dress slowly, watching as it fell away from her body, as it pooled on the floor at her feet.
She was wearing black heels, a black pair of lace panties and a see-through bra. Beautiful.
The way that her red hair contrasted with the dark lace, her pale skin, sent his libido into overdrive.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, remembering what she had said about giving her compliments. How many things had he said to her that were sharp? Like a cruel sword digging into her skin. He had caused so much pain.
He wanted to erase it now.
“Incredible,” he said.
He closed the distance between them, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck, her shoulder. “Perfect.”
She shivered in his arms, and he unhooked her bra, casting it onto the ground, exposing her glorious flesh, and reveling in the sight.
He kissed her collarbone, down to the plump curve of her breasts, down to her tight, pink nipple, which he drew into his mouth, sucking hard.
“Gorgeous,” he said again.
He left praise all over her skin with each kiss, each scrape of his teeth over her delicate skin.
He was not a man who had relationships. He had been preoccupied all of his life with his feelings for her.
Such a huge part of himself had always been consumed by the toxicity of what existed between himself and Heather.
He had lovers. But there had never been intensity.
He had never spent the night in bed with a woman.
He had never lost himself entirely in a kiss, in an orgasm, in a moment.
With her, he was entirely enraptured.
Entirely lost.
“Take me to bed,” she whispered against his mouth, and so he picked her up, and carried her across the living area, back toward that blue canopy bed that had so taken her when they had first arrived.
He thought about everything he had put in their contract. Everything about punishments and domination. But this wasn’t the moment for that.
This was the moment to lavish her.
And he had never wanted anything more. Then to make her feel good in that moment.
To undo some of the hurt that he had caused.
He had never done that before. Had never tried to heal anything in himself that was wounded. Had never tried to fix a hurt he’d caused.
Had never tried to take back something that he had said.
He was a man who held grudges. He had done so all of his life.
But he had never tried to repair anything. And each kiss over her skin was an attempt to repair a crack that he had put there.
“Now I want you naked,” she said.
She scooted up the bed, resting her elbows against the pillows there. She looked at him, direct and strong. He moved away from her, and began to loosen his tie, unbuttoned his shirt.
“Completely naked. No more of this half-dressed nonsense.”
He shrugged off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, cast it down to the floor.
And she looked at him, her eyes hungry as he removed every last article of clothing.