45. Roman
Iwalked in the direction Meg pointed, and as I entered the bedroom I couldn’t help but wince. It was as if a tornado had whipped through the area and left nothing untouched. Imagine my surprise at the state of my perfect Isabel’s room.
“Hey Roman, spin around my dude,” Meg yelled. “You’re in the wrong room. That’s mine. Isabel’s is the one opposite.”
Not that it would have made a difference in my feelings for Isabel, but some relief washed over me. And the second I entered her room I could feel the familiar musky floral aroma calming my restless mind.
I didn’t know what to look at first, but I was eagerly absorbing what I could. It was a small room, eclectic, neat, cozy, with an old quilt on her double bed.
It was all a very far cry from the luxury she’d have at Belmont Manor. Even so, it was impossible to ignore the warmth and comfort the nymph surrounded herself with here.
“If you wanna perv over her underwear, it’s in the second drawer of her dresser,” Meg yelled again. “But don’t touch anything, because she’ll know.”
Countless books were neatly stacked against one wall, and Isabel’s love for the classics was on full display. A poster of the Monet I had in my office was next to the window. It wasn’t one of Monet’s better-known works, so if one wanted to go down the rabbit hole, the fact that we had the same rare Monet was something to ponder too.
There was a collage of pictures above the head of her bed, and I immediately became engrossed, as if all this could give me some deeper insight into her mind.
There were pictures of Isabel from a young age, with a beautiful woman she was the spitting image of. That had to be her mother. And the woman certainly appeared to be enveloped in a halo of serenity, or maybe it was simply that I knew she’d been a nun in a former life.
One thing was clear, Isabel and her mom shared an unbreakable bond. It was sweepingly obvious even in the smallest of images. I wouldn’t dare to draw a comparison between their fondness for each other and the relationship I had with my father. Isabel and I came from two very different worlds.
Her pillow still held the small indent from her having slept on it last night, and I instinctively picked it up and inhaled her smell. God, I was so fucking smitten it was laughable. It was then that my eye inadvertently glimpsed a stack of what looked like bills on a small vanity table. I saw the words FINAL NOTICE and my pulse spiked.
That sounded like trouble for Isabel, and curiosity got the better of me. What kind of debt could Isabel possibly get into? One glance at her lifestyle gave no indication that she was in any way a reckless spender.
Taking a closer look, I realized the notices were her mom’s medical bills, which Isabel was still paying years later. My heart ached for her.
I warred between asking her if she’d let me help her and simply paying the bills and dealing with her reaction later. My honey badger didn’t take kindly to unsolicited charity, but surely she’d see this as an unfair burden being lifted from her life.
Outside, the gate squeaked open, and I carefully took a peek out the bedroom window. It was Isabel, ensconced in a cloud of despair, looking ashen, reminiscent of yesterday when she left the library. Guilt settled in my chest.
How the fuck had I allowed this to happen again?
Meg whispered loudly through the crack in the door. “She’s here. Keep cool until I talk to her, okay?”
I was already taking pictures of the bills with my phone, in a rush now before Isabel arrived. “Sure,” I said, ignoring my racing heart. Whatever happened in the next twenty minutes, at the very least I wanted these bills taken care of.
I stacked them neatly back in place and texted the pictures to Kayla. She’d know what I wanted done.
When I heard Isabel scramble up the stairs outside the apartment, I froze. And what happened next gave me no reason to expect any of this to go well. Isabel’s voice was low but lethal as she stormed through the front door. Absolutely enraged.
“There’s a black Range Rover parked two houses down. Meg, tell me that’s not him.”Her words scorched the air. “Because God knows if that’s him, I’m calling the cops.”
“Isabel, calm down,” Meg interrupted. “Let’s talk.”
“Where the hell is he!?”
That was probably the first hint that this was not going according to plan. And the second hint was Isabel slamming open her bedroom door and her gaze crashing into mine.
My first impulse was to rake her into my arms and explain the entire situation before she could get another word in. But for some reason I was completely awestruck by this seething vision of wrath, those emerald eyes searing hell into my soul.
“What are you doing in my room, Roman! In my house!?” she snapped, her voice breaking. “What the fuck are you doing here!?”
“My sweet, let me explain,” I said, my tone reasonable yet firm, the subtlety of that balance apparently lost on her. Instead, it simply enraged her more.
“Call me your sweet one more fucking time, and I swear to God....” She spun around on her heels and marched back to the living room, and I followed.
“Isabel!” I called after her, but of course it fell on deaf ears. The only thing now was to piece together a strategy to calm her down. I didn’t blame her for acting out like this, not one bit, but a little reasonableness would be great right about now.
Meg dawdled on the couch like it was a ringside seat at a boxing match, sipping on her second cocktail. As if waiting for the first drop of blood to spatter outside the ring. Ignoring my pleading gaze all the while.
“I’m calling the cops!” Isabel seethed. She grabbed her black bag from the couch and started rummaging through it, presumably looking for her phone. “Then you can explain to them what a first-rate asshole you are, stalking his employee to the library and screwing her brains out before sending in that viper freak to call me a trespasser and fire me because I don’t want to bend to your ridiculous will.”
“What’s that about the library?” Meg asked. “You had angry sex? Kinda forgot to tell me about that part, Isabel.”
But the nymph conveniently ignored Meg, her anger still directed at me. “And then you have the balls to break into my home.”
Meg tilted her head. “He didn’t exactly break in. I invited him in for a drink and a chat.”
Isabel shot her a scathing look. “Next thing you’re going to tell me I’m the one who’s wrong here, Meg.”
“No, I’m not,” Meg said. “But maybe hear him out? I mean—”
“Like hell I will,” Isabel snapped, emptying her bag on the couch and frantically scratching through the wreckage. “Where is my goddamn phone!?”
“Isabel,” I said evenly. “Stop.”
She abandoned her search and looked up to meet my gaze, gritting her teeth and barely holding back her fury.
I closed the gap between us, gently circling her wrist. But she resisted, and it took everything in me not to simply wrap her in my arms.
“Listen to me, please,” I said softly. “Just give me a minute to explain.” My fingers slipped from her wrist to her hand. Slowly her resistance turned defenseless and I lifted her chin. “Mrs. Sheldon wasn’t talking about me. That picture with Celeste is my brother Byron.”
And with that, anger made way for confusion, and I detected a sprinkle of suspicion in her eyes. As if I was making this up. But she finally relented to the possibility. “You have a brother?” she ventured, those four words falling from her lips with so much hope.
Meg chimed in from the sidelines. “Yeah, and apparently he is the antichrist. And that tool is also the one who put Henry in the coma, if you can believe that.”
As Isabel took in this surprising new information, her gaze never left mine. The strain gradually bled from her fingers, and her eyes were ablaze with a thousand questions.
But before I could inhale my next breath a little easier, her eyes became steel again, her mouth pouting bitterly. She yanked her hand from my grip, “Yet you still had that viper fire me, calling me a trespasser because I ended this...whatever this thing was! I mean who does that? One minute I’m your everything and next you send that weasel to get rid of me like a bothersome fly.”
“I did not send him.” My voice was rough with tension, and the words came out harsher than I meant them to be, but none of that fazed her one little bit. She was now furiously throwing the spilled items back in her bag.
“Just leave, Roman. Seriously. I’m done. I’m done crying over you, and over this ridiculous affair. And I’m done getting the short end of the stick every time you have an overwhelming heir-to-the-empire moment that leaves me picking up the pieces of my heart all scattered to the wind.”
Heir-to-the-empire moment… The nymph wasn’t wasting time sparing my feelings. And then I did what I’d wanted to do ever since she walked through the door, I pulled her close to me and wrapped my arms around her, leaving her no room to escape.
My mouth grazed her temple, and her breath shivered against my throat. “No, we’re not done,” I murmured in her ear. “We’ll never be done. And you know that.”
She made one last half-hearted attempt to pull away, but I wouldn’t let her go. We stood there for what felt like an eternity, until I felt her body sinking into mine, her resentment slowly slipping away.