Chapter 19
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, missing?” Raf demanded, staring down on the Mayfair streetscape that was visible from his window.
“Miss Finch went to bed last night, early, and then we presumed she was sleeping in, but when she hadn’t appeared by lunch time, I went to check. Her bedroom was empty. We’ve searched the house…”
Raf was already reaching for his jacket, stalking towards the hotel door.
“There was a woman here last night. Miss Finch seemed a little unsettled. Perhaps I was wrong, though. Perhaps she decided to go somewhere with her friend?”
A sense of ice ran through him. “Did you see the woman?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Describe her.”
He listened as the young woman detailed Marcia, including what she’d been wearing in this very hotel room.
A grim line formed on his lips, and ice turned to a blade of fear.
He’d told Marcia about the babies—finally—as a courtesy, and because it wasn’t the kind of news one could reasonably break over the phone, he’d invited her to his suite.
He’d made it clear from the outset that it was for a conversation, and nothing else, and he’d kept things as short and businesslike as he could.
It was clear she’d had other ideas though, her fingers clipping to his shirt and unfastening a button before he could react, and then, when he stepped back, he’d seen a hint of the Marcia she’d become, in the end.
The version of Marcia he’d turned her into, by never meeting her needs. He’d been so selfish, and it had ruined her.
But had she taken her anger and lashed Elodie with it? Hurt her? God, kidnapped her?
“Have Raul check the security tapes. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
He disconnected the call and began calling Elodie. She didn’t answer, so by the time he arrived at his house—which at some point he’d started to think of as theirs—worry had turned into something else entirely. Raul met him at the door.
“She took a cab,” he said, as if he innately understood the direction of Raf’s thoughts.
“On her own?”
“Ten minutes after Marcia left,” Raul agreed.
Raf closed his eyes on a wave of something like relief. “I should have known Marcia would come here,” he said. “Damn it, I should have prevented that.”
Sympathy showed on Raul’s features but Raf didn’t notice.
He was too busy trying to focus, to ignore the burning sensation in his lungs, the growing sense of ache that he might have lost Elodie for good.
Having her around the corner from him had been a strange kind of balm, a connection, even when there’d been none. And now?
“I presume she’s gone home, sir?” Raul suggested gently, doing the thinking for Raf, whose brain had turned to mush.
“Home?” he frowned deeply. He hated that she had a home that didn’t include him. He hated that she had a home she would go to, rather than be here. He hated not living with her. He hated everything about where they currently were.
“To her parents’,” Raul supplied. “Shall I take you there?”
Of course she’d gone home. Where else would someone like Elodie turn, after coming face to face with the nexus of evil that was Marcia, than her parents’?
Her calm, good, loving parents. And for a moment, warmth burst through him, because if he couldn’t be her home, her safe place, he was glad they could be.
“Yes,” he said, with a sharp nod. And then, “no.” He frowned.
She’d run away, after seeing Marcia. He could chase her, talk to her, explain, but to what end?
If she wanted to move back in with them, was he really going to prevent that?
He couldn’t be what she needed, and he’d been unable to protect her from Marcia.
There were the babies to consider, though, he reminded himself, clutching at straws out of a desperate need to see Elodie.
He could go and at least ensure she wasn’t overexerting herself.
“Yes,” he said, more decisively. “Let’s leave, subito.”
She wasn’t surprised he’d come. If anything, she was surprised it was mid-afternoon before his sleek black car with the heavily tinted windows pulled up outside her parents’ house. Both were still at work, so she was alone when he knocked on the door. She could easily have ignored it.
There was no point in being childish though, and besides, she knew Raf well enough to know he’d just stand there banging away until someone came and let him in.
Doing her best to calm her emotions, she padded through the narrow corridor of her parents’ home and pulled the door inwards, hating that her body immediately responded to his, her blood gushing in her veins, stomach filling with butterflies.
“Elodie.” Her name was a sigh on his lips, and his eyes bore into hers, as if probing her, reading her, as though she were a book written in his native tongue.
Her knees felt weak, but in the best possible way, and her whole body was tingling, willing her to push forward and wrap her arms around him. To tell him she didn’t care what happened in the future, she just wanted to exist in the present—to exist right by his side.
But then she remembered Marcia, and the complexity of their situation, and forced herself to be strong, in the face of a raging current of desire.
She knew he’d been with other women, after their one night stand.
She had no reason to think that wasn’t true now, and that one of those women wasn’t his ex.
She clung to that, and the miserable anger that surged inside of her at the very idea of him moving on so quickly, when she was so utterly heartbroken.
“Mind if I come in?”
It was such an uncharacteristically uncertain question from someone like Raf that she moved aside out of surprise, rather than welcome.
It didn’t matter, though. He stepped into the corridor, instantly making it feel smaller than it was, and reached behind him to shut the door.
Entrapping them. She moved deeper into the house purely out of a need for more space, leading him to the sitting room in which he’d met her parents.
“I don’t know what she said to you,” he started, voice deep. “But I’m sorry if it was upsetting.”
Elodie tried to brace herself, to be strong, to appear unaffected, but when she spoke, her words trembled. “I didn’t particularly like her.”
It brought a tight smile to his lips. “That makes two of us.”
Elodie’s eyes lifted to his and hovered there, uncertainty making her nervous.
“I felt it was time to tell her about the pregnancy, and that it was better to do so face to face. That is the only reason I saw her.”
Elodie turned away from him, so he didn’t see the relief that washed over her face.
Of course it was possible he was making that up, and yet, somehow, she just knew he wasn’t.
It was just like Raf to act out of what he thought to be the right thing.
Because at his heart, he was a decent, good man—he just couldn’t love her.
“We were together a long time,” he continued, from closer though, near enough that Elodie’s body was rioting with desperate, familiar needs. “I can’t ignore how my actions have hurt her—even when her own actions are unforgivable. I felt I owed it to her, to hear this news from me.”
“Yes,” Elodie said, not turning to face him, because she wasn’t sure she could trust herself.
“Elodie, what did she say to you?” He sounded so grim, she spun around, swallowing over a lump in her throat.
“Nothing that matters. If I didn’t like her, it was clearly mutual. She also clearly didn’t like me being in the house.”
He frowned. “Is that why you left?”
She dug her fingernails into her palms to stop from putting a hand on his arm, just to feel his warmth through his suit.
“I left because I needed to get away.”
His frown deepened. “From Marcia?”
Her stomach knotted. “From your world. It’s too much. I just needed a break.”
She felt as though he were running through a thousand options of what to say. To fight with her, to bring her home.
Carefully, finally, he asked, “Is your plan to stay here for long?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead.” Only she knew she couldn’t go back. Not without Raf, and they would never live together again.
He nodded slowly, his eyes shifting to look at the room. To really look at it. “I’ll organize a security detail to come out here.”
“Raf, come on. That’s so not necessary.”
A muscle jerked at the base of his jaw. “It’s my job to protect you.”
She flinched, hating to be reminded of the sense of duty that drove him—duty rather than love. Responsibility rather than passion.
“I don’t need protecting out here. I’ve lived in this village almost my whole life. Mrs Jenkins next door would bash anyone who tried to hurt me with her croquet mallet.”
He didn’t react with amusement. “They’ll sit out the front, in a discreet car. You won’t know they’re here, but if you need them, help is at hand.”
“Raf—,”
“Elodie, I’m doing my best here. I’m trying to give you the space you need even when I feel like throwing you over my shoulder and carrying you all the way back to London. No, to Italy. Cristo, in Italy, didn’t everything make sense? Wasn’t this easier there?”
She froze, because of what he was saying, but how he said it—like a man who had been pushed to the brink.
Like a man who was suffering. And maybe he was.
Raf liked control, he liked predictability, and Elodie had removed both from his life.
In Italy, there’d been the illusion of those things, but it had all been an illusion. They’d been pretending.
“Italy wasn’t real,” she whispered.
“How can you say that?”
“We were playacting. Ignoring our real world and responsibilities, getting caught up in the idea of becoming parents.”
“We are becoming parents,” he groaned, moving towards her then, lifting one hand as if to press it to her stomach before jamming it into his pocket instead.
“Italy was a fantasy,” she said, because she needed to hear and accept that.