CHAPTER NINE
SAINTWOKEAT four in the morning to find the bed beside him empty. The sheets were cool. He lurched up in bed.
“Fliss?”
She wasn’t in the bathroom. The door was open, the room dark.
He shrugged on his robe and padded downstairs, finding her in a pool of lamplight, kneeling at the coffee table. A cup of tea was steaming near her elbow. On the table in front of her were three cards face up on a square of black velvet.
“Do you always do this during the witching hour?”
“My body is still on London time. I couldn’t sleep.” She sipped her tea. “I decided to see what I could see.”
“And what do you see?” He started to lower into the chair opposite her.
“That’s Granny’s spot.” She pointed at the cup of milky brown tea on the side table, also releasing a wisp of steam.
“Excuse me, Granny,” he said to the empty chair, nonplussed, and moved to sit behind Fliss so he could peer over her shoulder. Three cards were laid in a row. The image in the middle was right side up, but the ones on the outside were upside down.
“The Empress is abundance.” Fliss touched the card on the left. “And love. Venus.” She pointed to a symbol. “She’s reversed because the abundance I’m enjoying is yours, not mine. And because my love is flowing out.” She nodded at the empty chair. “Not back to me.”
Saint was skeptical of all of this, but he couldn’t be dismissive. Her profile was too solemn. She’d been through a lot in the last thirty-six hours or so. If she needed to pretend her grandmother was here so she didn’t feel so alone, who was he to judge?
He gave her silky hair a pet and left his hand on her shoulder.
“What about your pregnancy? Venus is the goddess of fertility, isn’t she?” He leaned forward to lift the Empress onto its top edge. “Aren’t babies usually upside down inside the womb? Maybe that’s what it means.”
She twisted a glare of mock horror at him and whispered, “Don’t touch my cards.” She delicately took it to lay it down again. “But thank you. I like that interpretation.”
“What’s the stick?” He pointed to the one in the middle, labeled Ace of Wands.
“That’s your fault.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a new idea that is starting to take root in my mind. You said I should focus on lingerie, and I can’t stop thinking about that. It’s really hard—”
“The stick?”
“Lingerie.” She slid him another admonishing look.
“But you can see from the way that fist is clutching that very sturdy branch, I thought the interpretation was going in a different direction.”
“And you can see that the cards never lie. You see what you want to see.”
Saint wanted to see her smile. She hadn’t since before dinner, but at least her tone had lightened.
“For the record, my lingerie remark was not serious when I made it.” He gathered her hair as he spoke so he was holding the thick rope of it in his stacked fists. He carefully dragged her head back to see her face. “But I wholeheartedly support your shift in focus. In fact, I’ll volunteer to be your beta tester.”
“You want to wear one of my G-strings to see if it’s comfortable?”
“You’re a brat sometimes, aren’t you?”
“I’m not the one barging in on a reading, pulling hair and making jokes about your penis.”
“I never joke about my penis.” He released her hair.
“Stick with me, kid,” she murmured, straightening the Ace of Wands.
He chuckled and caged her with his knees, massaging her shoulders. “What’s with the naked woman and the watering cans?”
“The Star follows the Tower in the Major Arcana. I had the Tower when I realized I was pregnant, so it makes sense that the Star has turned up.” She touched the card so it was perfectly aligned with the others. “It’s a symbol of hope, like a wishing star or a guiding star. She’s watering the seeds that she’s planted, but she’s naked so she’s vulnerable, which we always are when we hope.”
“But it’s upside down.”
“I know,” Fliss said pensively. “Reversed means a lack of faith or a likely disappointment. Granny always points out that star spelled backwards is rats.” She tapped the word on the bottom of the card.
“Is she really here? Because there goes my plan to seduce you on the couch.” He looked to the empty chair and the untouched cup of tea. “Come back to bed. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
She only picked up her tea to sip. “That was a really difficult dinner, Saint.”
He knew. That was why he’d been genuinely alarmed to find the bed empty and so relieved to find her here. His parents had stayed and they hadn’t said anything that was outright antagonistic or insulting, but they hadn’t welcomed her with open arms. Aside from his mother asking about her due date, they’d barely acknowledged the baby.
“And this Belmont Stakes thing? I don’t know anything about horses!”
“Is that the reason you couldn’t sleep?” he asked.
“It’s a house party for a week,” she said. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
“I forgot about it, or I would have. Mom actually has a horse in the race this year. That’s not an expression—she really does. So we can’t refuse to go.” The timing was terrible, though, with his project still in such early stages of getting off the ground. “It’s an excellent chance for me to introduce you to everyone, though.”
“Who is ‘everyone’?”
“Mom’s horsey friends.” And the Hampton circle along with his father’s cronies and the board members who would be sucking lemons over the sleight of hand Saint had pulled by failing to mention Fliss when he had accepted their backing. “Don’t worry. It’s a week away.”
“I looked it up, Saint,” she said. “I need outfits. I need hats. Your mother was already looking at me like I was an embarrassment.”
“I told you, she’s vain about her age. She’ll come around.”
“I always hoped my baby would have a grandmother like I did,” she admitted softly.
His gaze flickered to that upside-down Star of disappointment.
“I would give that to you if I could, Fliss.” He leaned forward to cup the front of her throat and press a kiss to the top of her hair. “I want to give you everything you need. I really do.” When it came to his parents, a sense of failure, of being robbed was so visceral, it was bitter on his tongue.
He did what he always did when emotions reared their head.
“Let’s talk to a Realtor tomorrow to find a space for your design work.”
“I’d rather use one of the spare bedrooms. I only need a table for my sewing machine, and I’d rather not go out every day and have to worry about being photographed.” She began gathering up her cards, then paused. “Do you want me to do a reading for you?”
“God, no.” Saint cleared his throat. “I mean, no, thank you.”
“Chicken. What are you afraid I’ll see?” She was finally smiling as she folded the velvet around the cards and secured the package with a white ribbon.
Too much.The answer slithered through his mind, too slippery to catch and examine, but it was true.
They flew by helicopter, landing in a private airfield where they were collected by a chauffeur who greeted Saint with warm familiarity and a welcoming smile for Fliss.
His mother was less effusive when they arrived at the end of a secluded driveway in a cobbled courtyard surrounding a fountain before a massive stone mansion with wings off either side. It was topped with gingerbread detailing and a tile roof.
Norma greeted them with perfunctory cheek kisses and directed their luggage to “the junior suite.”
“I’ll leave you to show Felicity around. The florist finally arrived, and they brought the wrong color lilies so I have that disaster on my hands.” She stalked away.
“Oh no,” Saint said faintly in her wake.
“She just wants her party to go well,” Fliss murmured, but if the wrong lilies were a disaster, what did that make her?
During that awful dinner last week, she’d been politely interrogated on her life, from her upbringing to her education right up to her aspiration to pursue fashion design. At no point had she felt that Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery had warmed to her.
As Saint showed her around, Fliss’s apprehension grew. His penthouse was gorgeous and worth millions, but this was only one of his parents’ residences. His father stayed in their Fifth Avenue apartment while Norma spent most of her time at their twenty-two-acre estate in Bedford Corners. They called this mansion their “cottage.”
It had been built for entertaining. The main floor was open and welcoming with a great room containing a massive fireplace, a number of smaller conversation areas and a formal dining room with seating for sixteen. Every room had windows and doors onto the back garden where a huge patio was surrounded by flowering shrubs and June blooms.
Saint pointed out the games room and home movie theatre—it easily sat twenty.
“The fitness room and sauna are below our suite in the other wing. I’ll show you on the way to our room.” He walked her outside past the enormous kidney-shaped pool. “I wanted us to have the pool house, but that’s the beauty salon this week. If you chip a nail or want your hair done, just come here. Do you play tennis?” He nodded to the court that was tucked into the trees at the end of a short path.
“Never.” She was still craning her neck back at the pool house, which was a genuine cottage with a chimney, a porch, hanging baskets and rickrack detailing.
They stepped onto a boardwalk that wound through grassy sand dunes, then descended onto the longest, emptiest beach Fliss had ever seen. The ocean stretched out in a gray-blue rippling blanket for about a thousand miles.
“Is that England I see over there?” she joked, pointing randomly.
“That’s West Africa.” Saint took hold of her shoulders and angled her so she was looking almost straight up the beach. “Northeast is that way, but Canada’s elbow is in the way.”
“Oh, Canada,” she groused. “Can’t you see I’m homesick?”
“Are you?” His arms came around her, drawing her back into his strong frame. “I thought you were settling in.”
“I am,” she fibbed because he could be so sweet sometimes, holding her like this. She draped her arms over his as they watched the waves rolling onto the sand.
At least she had her studio in the penthouse to make her feel at home. It was so much her dream workspace she nearly cried with joy every time she entered it. But the time she spent in there was less about pursuing her dream and more about escaping the reality of this new, foreign life she’d been thrust into.
Her other escape was, of course, this. His arms. The feel of him nuzzling into her neck and thickening against her backside sent tingles showering from her scalp into her breasts. Tendrils of warmth wound into her pelvis whenever he so much as glanced at her. None of her worries could impact her when they spent their nights—and mornings and stolen midday moments—kissing and fondling and pleasuring each other into oblivion.
They cushioned the culture shock of what she was going through, but none of it changed the fact that she felt as though she’d won an all-expenses-paid vacation and was enjoying a holiday fling.
How could she settle into a life that wasn’t real?
“Why don’t I show you where we’ll be sleeping?” Saint suggested throatily.
“You’re losing your touch,” she teased, reaching back to comb her fingers into his silky hair. “I’m surprised you haven’t shown me already.”
“The maid needed time to unpack your six suitcases.” He was also teasing, but all Fliss could think was that they weren’t her cases. They might’ve been rose pink where his were black, but they’d been purchased by him and contained clothing he had bought. She’d approved the outfits after being coached on the robust itinerary of appearances and events and the expected dress code for each. One whole case was dedicated to lotions and cosmetics and hair products.
Hand in hand, they climbed the steps back onto the boardwalk. The house came into view in all its dramatic glory, wings reaching out like arms to cradle the glimmering pool.
“This is really beautiful.” She paused, absorbing that this property, along with all those other ones she hadn’t yet seen, would be his one day.
“I prefer my beach house in California.”
She swallowed a semi-hysterical laugh and let him lead her back to the house, then up some stairs to a massive suite decorated in powder blue and silvery white. Fliss took a moment to wander the sitting room with its small dining nook, then peeked onto the balcony with its view of the ocean. The sumptuous bathroom held a claw-footed tub and a shower that could have doubled as a parking garage. The bed was as big as the pool.
Saint came toward her from checking that both doors to the hall were locked, toeing off his shoes along the way, releasing the buttons at his throat as he did.
Her mouth went dry, always. He was so deliberate yet casual in his sexuality.
“This is the junior suite?” she said with a weak smile.
“The main one has separate bedrooms. Not something we’ll ever need, hmm?” He used the back of one crooked finger to caress the edge of her jaw.
Fliss had known he was rich, but this was...impossible. They were impossible.
“What’s wrong?” He tilted her chin up and frowned as he searched her gaze.
She was drowning. Suffocating.
“Nothing,” she lied, offering her lips.
Because, when he covered them, she melted into that different reality where she belonged right here, pressed up against him so tightly she imagined she could feel his chest hairs through the fabric of their shirts.
She was growing bolder, learning what he liked, and slid her hand to the front of his trousers to squeeze him.
Saint grunted and backed her toward the bed, tugging at her clothing as he did.
Moments later, they were naked on the sheets, covers thrown back, kissing passionately. “Be inside me,” she urged, finding the bold, aroused length that brushed her inner thigh. She guided him to her center. “I need to feel you.”
“Careful,” he murmured, caressing her briefly before taking control and sliding the damp tip of his erection against her sensitive inner lips. “You’re not ready yet. Why the rush? We have two hours before we’re expected to make an appearance.”
“I know, but...” Everything would change in a few hours. The gossip sites had cottoned on to their relationship. They’d been photographed going out to dinner and shopping, but now they would be scrutinized up close by his peers—she would.
“Let me make it good for you.” He began running his hands over her body as though learning her anew, until every skin cell was awakened to his touch. Then he followed with the lazy graze of his lips. Damp kisses made flames of yearning lick through her so she was aching with need by the time he tipped her thighs back and settled his mouth against her most sensitive flesh.
When she was quivering with tension and on the point of breaking, he rose over her. Now he surged into her the way she needed. She had the taste of herself on her tongue as he sealed his lips to hers in a ravishing kiss. The first ripples of climax had her moaning into his mouth, twisting in the agony of supreme pleasure. He held her in that state with his superior strength and the slow, powerful plunge of his sex into hers.
This was where she needed to be, encased in the electric excitement of raw lovemaking, connected to him in a way that transcended the physical.
Now she only needed to touch his shoulder and he knew what she wanted. He rolled onto his back, and she sat up to ride the rhythm he set. She pinched his nipple and played her fingers over where they joined, knowing he liked it.
Saint’s lips peeled back, baring his teeth as he fought to hold on to his control. His cheeks were flushed dark with lust. His fingertips would leave bruises where he gripped her hips, matching the ones fading from last night or the time before that.
When the intensity grew too much for her and she closed her eyes and let her head fall back, succumbing to her thunderous orgasm, he arched beneath her, lifting her off the bed as he shouted with his own release.
Fliss slumped weakly upon him in the aftermath, loving the descent almost as much as the pinnacle. She liked feeling his heart pounding against her breast and hearing the rattle of his breath and knowing she’d done that to him. She liked the twitch of him still inside her, slowly relaxing. She liked the lazy way his hands petted her back in such a tender way.
“See?” he murmured. “We even have time for a nap.”
She carefully extricated herself from him and drew the sheet up so it fell between them, forming a small barrier because she had realized what was really bothering her.
People were going to look at her and see not just that she lacked an Ivy League education and wasn’t rich and famous and couldn’t tell a thoroughbred from a pack mule. She could stand that. She didn’t care about them enough to care what they thought of her.
But they would see that this was all she had with Saint. Sex. They hadn’t known each other long enough to even form something that could be called a true friendship, let alone the warmer connection of real lovers.
Actually, it wasn’t even that other people would guess how little she meant to him. It was her. She was realizing that even though he was considerate and generous and gave her such high-voltage orgasms they could power a small country, he didn’t really care about her. Not any more than he would about Willow or a stray kitten they found on the beach. He would look after her and be kind to her, but he wouldn’t give her his heart.
And that hurt.
Because there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it.