Hush Money (The Winter Trilogy #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

TAMSYN

She’s alive.

I stand at the top of the magnificent, curved staircase and shake my head as I stare at the unfolding scene in the elegant and softly lit foyer below. It’s the only thing I can manage. Suffocating shock prevents me from doing anything else.

This cannot be happening.

Not ten minutes ago, Lucien and I were enjoying each other in the shower of his master bathroom here at his Great Neck estate, Ackerley, unwinding after our long flight back to New York from Barcelona. He was buried deep inside me, our slick bodies arching against each other as the pleasure overtook us. He showed me a new side that I’ve never seen before, not that I know him well. We only met by chance two weeks ago, at the departures lane at LaGuardia. But he started opening up to me now that we’re on his home turf. He was so tender in that shower. He told me how happy he was that I’d decided to spend the rest of the summer here with him following our unexpected and scorching-hot time together on a Mediterranean cruise. We made each other come and he made my heart ache. Then we got out and threw on our fluffy white robes. He went down to the kitchen to grab the late supper his chef made for us before all the staff left for the evening, and I was supposed to meet him there. I was thinking about drying my hair. Then I heard a strange commotion and came to the railing to see what it was about.

And now this .

Lucien stands down there with Daniel, his estate manager, who is soaking wet from the storm outside. And in between them? A tall and beautiful woman with long, dark hair and a bloody gash on her forehead. She’s also drenched, shivering with a blanket around her shoulders and a blank stare haunting her lovely face.

The woman is Ravenna. Lucien’s wife. Back from her presumed death in a boating accident two years ago.

But it can’t be, I think, still frozen with shock.

There’s no way for me to get my head around this whiplash reversal of fortune. Ghosts don’t exist. People don’t just come back from the dead. Nor do people slip into time warps and get spat back out two years later as though nothing ever happened.

But they do. Lucien just confirmed it. It’s Ravenna, he told me. She’s back.

Lucien’s wife is alive. Ravenna is alive . Which means that he’s not a widower after all, but a married man who’s just been reunited with the love of his life.

And me?

My stomach lurches. I cling to the stair rail, determined not to keel over as my stark new reality sets in. I’ve been demoted. I’m nothing to him now. But I always knew, in my na?ve little heart, that my time with a rich, sophisticated and grieving man like Lucien Winter would never last once our cruise across the sea ended. Could never last.

I just never thought it would end like this .

“Oh my God,” I say, my hand at my throat. My voice barely works. “Oh my God.”

No one is listening anyway.

“Let’s get her to the bench,” Lucien tells Daniel. They tighten their grips on her arms and shuffle her a few steps sideways. “Easy. Careful.”

They press Ravenna into her seat and settle on either side of her while she continues to stare out at the invisible thing that only she can see.

“Ravenna?” Lucien takes his wife’s shoulders and hunkers down in her face, giving her a little shake. “Ravenna? Say something. I know you’re in there.”

“I think she’s in shock, Lucien,” Daniel says gently.

“Ravenna?” Lucien shakes her again, harder this time. “ Ravenna? ”

Daniel tries again. “Lucien…”

“I’m talking to my wife,” Lucien barks at him. “I don’t need your input right now.”

Daniel drops his gaze, holds his hands up and eases back.

I don’t blame him. The wild light in Lucien’s eyes is something I’ve never seen before. It scares me a little. He looks unhinged. Another lightning flash highlights all the hard planes and ridges of his handsome face, and Daniel clearly wants no part of him when he’s like this. Neither do I, to be honest.

But what did we expect? Lucien always suspected that Ravenna was somewhere out there in the world, still alive. He told me so. Now that she’s back, he surely wants her all the way back. Not some shell of her former self.

The knowledge knifes me through the heart and all the way down to my gut. Because ten minutes ago, I thought that I didn’t belong here at Ackerley because Lucien and I come from different worlds. He’s rich. He’s older, sophisticated and well traveled. I’m none of those things. But I came here anyway, thinking that maybe something could work between us. We’re so intense together. Something about us just works in and out of bed, despite the odds.

But now I’m staring at the real reason why Lucien will never belong to me. The woman he’s loved since way before I came on the scene. The reason I never had a chance.

My spinning thoughts veer off in a new direction. I should hide, shouldn’t I? Better yet, I should get dressed, grab my little suitcase and leave. The last thing this poor woman needs after her ordeal is to emerge from her shock, look around and realize that her husband’s new lover has installed herself in her house.

Yes. That’s it. I should leave. I’ll grab my stuff and call an Uber to take me to—hell if I know. Anywhere but here. Some local hotel for the night, I suppose. I’ll figure the rest out tomorrow. Good. I have a plan. Galvanized, I turn to disappear into the shadows and dart back down the hallway?—

“Her teeth are chattering,” Lucien says. “Run and get another blanket, Daniel.”

“You got it,” Daniel says, getting up.

“No, wait,” Lucien says before Daniel can go anywhere. “Tell me again. Where did you find her?”

Curiosity immediately gets the best of me and glues my feet to the spot.

Daniel clears his throat. Hesitates. “Like I said, she was down by the seawall. I found her when I went down to the dock to make sure the boats were secure.”

Lucien doesn’t bother hiding his impatience. “But what was she doing ?”

Helpless shrug from Daniel. “She wasn’t really doing anything. She was just, I don’t know, drifting.”

“ Drifting? ” Lucien says.

“Drifting. Wandering. Roaming. Whatever you want to call it.” Daniel roughly swipes his blond hair back and uses a sleeve to wipe his wet face. “I ran straight to her. I could tell she wasn’t right. I called her name. She didn’t answer.”

“And then?” Lucien demands.

Daniel frowns, his gaze drifting out of focus. “And then…she just sort of sagged. I picked her up as best I could and brought her to the house. You know the rest.”

Lucien grunts something indistinct.

Daniel looks stricken as a new thought hits him. “I hope I didn’t make things worse. I couldn’t take a chance of her wandering off again.”

“It’s okay.” Lucien reaches across Ravenna to give Daniel a squeeze on the shoulder. “You did the right thing. I’m grateful. And she already had the gash on her head?”

Daniel nods.

“But how did she hurt her head?” Lucien says.

Another helpless shrug from Daniel. “No idea. If I had to guess, I’d say she slipped on the rocks.”

Lucien winces. “Yeah, that makes sense. But how did she get here? You didn’t see a car or?—”

Ravenna moans, the sound jarring all of us. Her head lolls. The next thing I know, she sags against Lucien and starts to tumble off the bench.

Luckily, Lucien’s reflexes are quick. He catches her and eases her the rest of the way to the floor, concern etched in every hard line of his face. “She’s hurt. This is no time for me to debrief anything. She probably has a concussion.”

This reminder of a pressing medical issue finally kicks me into gear.

What am I doing? There’s an injured woman down there, one with every sign of shock, possible hypothermia and a bleeding head injury. I am an RN, which makes me the most qualified person on the premises. True, I’m newly minted, having graduated and passed my boards just a few weeks ago. But I’ve done all my rotations in the ER and the ICU, and I’m not going to stand here lurking in the shadows while a woman needs my help. Even if that woman is my lover’s wife, who probably wouldn’t appreciate the fact that I’ve been fucking her husband with abandon for the last couple of weeks. Hell, the fact that she’s Lucien’s wife should make me more eager to help her. If I care about Lucien—and I do—then I need to realize that none of this is about me.

It’s about him being reunited with the love of his life. Which is a good thing.

I lean over the railing and call down to them, startling the men and myself with my sudden air of authority. “We need to call 911. Do you have your phone, Daniel?”

Daniel quickly produces his phone from his back pocket. “I do,” he says, but frowns when he punches the button. “Shit. There’s no service. The storm must have knocked it out. But we’ve got the house phone.” He hurries to the nearest side table, but scowls when he listens to the receiver. “Nothing,” he says, setting it down again.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ve got my first-aid kit in my luggage. That’ll get us started. And I’ll grab another blanket to see if we can warm her up. I’ll be right back.”

I take off for the master bedroom at a dead run and quickly find my limited medical supplies. I also throw on jeans, a sweater and my shoes and grab my phone. I decide that Lucien also needs his clothes and shoes, so I find them. Then I snatch the fluffy cashmere throw from the end of Lucien’s bed and race downstairs.

By now, Lucien’s got Ravenna stretched out on the floor and is dabbing her forehead with a washcloth. I crouch down beside him, covering her with a blanket and thrusting his clothes and shoes at him.

“Here,” I say. “Get dressed.”

He nods and takes his things, looking as overwhelmed as I feel.

“Tamsyn,” he says as our gazes connect, but now is not the time. And there’s nothing to say, anyway.

“Don’t,” I say, directing my attention to my patient so I won’t have to see the turbulence in his eyes. It’s far too painful. “Let me look at her.”

He lingers for a beat or two. I’m afraid he’s going to argue, but he walks off without comment, leaving me to my work. Thank God.

It’s the weirdest moment of my life as I assess Lucien’s wife. She’s got inky-black brows and a heavy fringe of lashes. A perfect nose. Perfect bone structure. Perfectly kissable red lips without a drop of lipstick on them. I know I’m supposed to be fully in nurse mode, but she’s absolutely angelic, and I’d have to be dead not to notice.

Luckily, my professionalism makes a belated appearance, and I notice all those things about her while also noticing that the laceration on her forehead is deep enough to require a few stitches. Her pulse is strong. Her blood pressure is in the normal range. The blanket seems to be warming her up a bit.

But it’s her semiconscious state and head injury that I’m most concerned about. “I don’t see my penlight,” I say, rummaging through my little bag with increasing urgency. “I need to check her pupils.”

“Use my flashlight,” Daniel says, passing me his phone.

“Thanks.”

I lift her lids one by one and take a look. It’s no surprise to discover that Ravenna has spectacular eyes, a vivid green color that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen on a human being before. She’s also got sluggish pupils.

“Well?” Lucien says as I hand the phone back to Daniel.

“We need to get her to the hospital,” I say grimly. “She needs a CT scan to make sure she’s not bleeding into her brain. If we can’t get an ambulance here, we’ll have to take her ourselves. Let’s go.”