Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
LUCIEN
“Back already?” comes a voice behind me at around eleven that evening, when I’m on my way back from the dock. I turn and discover Ted Winwood walking the manicured and silent grounds with large sweeps of his flashlight.
“Yep.” I decide not to mention that my heart wasn’t in tonight’s sail around the bay. I hope to take Tamsyn out in the boat sometime soon, because I know she’d love it. Going by myself tonight didn’t scratch the same itch. Worse, one of my greatest pleasures only served to magnify my loneliness. I should have just gone for a jog and called it a night. “What did I miss around here?”
“All quiet.” Winwood’s flashlight catches a flash of movement near the ground. He stiffens and quickly focuses in on the spot, illuminating a disgruntled-looking raccoon scuttling for cover under the nearest bush. Both of us breathe a sigh of relief. “We did get a report from our eyes on the hotel at around twenty-one-thirty. There are satellite trucks there. No idea if they’ve talked to Mrs. Winter.”
“Shit.” This is the kind of news I don’t need, especially tonight, when my morale is already in the gutter. “I’ll mention it to my PR team and see what they can find out. Right now, I’m headed to the pool. Try to keep us safe around here. And let’s pray nothing else blows up for the rest of the night.”
“Will do,” Winwood says, continuing on his way.
I head down the path toward the pool, eyeballing the cottage on the way. Tamsyn’s got the shutters drawn and the lights out except for the blue flicker of the TV. She’s probably watching a movie. I feel a hard pang in my gut. I wish I were there with her right now, snuggling on the sofa and maybe copping a feel or two under the blanket. And I would be. If I didn’t keep shooting myself in the foot every ten minutes. I keep replaying the whole argument, wondering when things went south on me and my dictatorial switch got flipped on. And then I kept making it worse by?—
The sound of approaching flip-flops pulls me out of my sullen thoughts. I glance around to discover Roman’s final approach from the pool. He’s got wet hair and swim trunks and a towel slung over his shoulder.
He takes one look at my face and smirks. “Blown it with Tamsyn already?”
“Evidently,” I say, scowling. “Where’s the harem?”
“I gave them the night off. And that’s rich, considering I’m not the only one around here with more than one woman in my life.”
“Fuck you,” I say mildly, my attention reverting to the cottage.
“You want me to go get her for you? Put you out of your misery, Romeo?”
I admit, the idea has some appeal. But desperate as I feel now, things haven’t sunk low enough for me to rely on this clown for any sort of a romantic intervention. “I’ll get it figured out.” I hesitate, remind myself of the advice that I just gave myself, then decide to mention it anyway. “She says I’m controlling.”
A snicker. “So she sees right through to your black soul. And…?”
My morale drops another fifty notches or so. Still, I plow ahead. “And that I’m suffocating her.”
“Are you?”
Let’s just say that a strong denial eludes me. And that I hoped for a bit more outrage on my behalf. “I’m trying to keep her safe and close.”
That kills his residual amusement. “You don’t think she’s in physical danger, do you?”
I think that over. I really don’t. Ravenna is the most controlled person I know. Her mask slips are few and far between. While she does show the occasional flares of rage, they pass quickly. I’ve never known her to be violent. Even so, I can’t shake this generalized feeling of dread. “Let’s just say I didn’t like the way Ravenna looked at her the other night when I kicked her out.”
“Speaking of, how goes the divorce?”
My entire body clenches at this additional sore subject. “I talked to my lawyer earlier. He’s reached out to her a couple of times, but it’s been radio silence.”
Roman shrugs. “She can’t hide forever.”
“Here’s hoping.”
He gives me a bracing clap on the back. “I’m off to take a shower. Get your shit together. I like Tamsyn. She seems good for you.”
“You’re not wrong.” I shoot another involuntary glance at the cottage. The flickering blue light is gone from around the window, which means that she’s probably going to bed. I devoutly hope that she’s as lonely for me as I am for her right now. “See you.”
“Later,” Roman says.
I continue down the stone path around to the pool, which is another one of my sanctuaries. There’s always been something soothing about the potted flowers and swaying grasses. The scents of lavender and chlorine. The green market umbrellas, rattan furniture and strategic illumination inside the gently lapping blue water. It’s like my own little slice of a Tahitian night. Maybe if I swim a couple hundred laps, I’ll wear myself out enough to fall asleep sometime tonight.
Here’s hoping.
I grab my goggles and a towel from the storage basket off in one corner, select a lounge chair near the deep end, toss my towel onto it and quickly ditch my shirt and shoes. A bounce or two on the diving board and I dive in, slicing cleanly into the water with barely a splash, the way I’ve done millions of times before. Then I quickly find my stroke, freestyling it down to the other end and flip-turning it to come back.
It’s soothing. Refreshing. Too bad it doesn’t clear my head.
A couple more laps and my thoughts zero in on my big issue for the night: how did I fuck up so badly? My inner voice told me not to summon Dr. Sharma. Warned me that Tamsyn wouldn’t appreciate my trying to finagle a nearby job for her. But I plowed ahead and did it anyway, like the dumbass that I clearly am.
I blame my fierce need to keep her safe. Which is now locked in a death battle with her fierce need for independence.
Another flip turn and my brain flashes back to seeing her with the baby earlier. That was a surprise, wasn’t it? More surprising? The primal reaction inside me: Yes. Now. That. Need .
I didn’t see that coming. Nor can I un-see it now that it’s planted itself in the middle of my brain.
I’ve been stumbling along from moment to moment, with no real plan other than to get rid of Ravenna and not let Tamsyn go. But now I’ve seen a different glimpse of the future. A possible future. A life here at Ackerley with Tamsyn and our kids at the center of it. A baby in the nursery to start. Actually, fucking Tamsyn with the intention of making a baby to start.
My gut contracts with longing; I’m positive I’ve never had such a powerful, visceral reaction to anything in my life. Tamsyn with a baby belly. Yes . A baby in the nursery. Kids laughing in the treehouse and splashing in the pool with me. Holidays and travel, and even the bland day-to-day of school runs and homework with Tamsyn’s smiling sunshine glowing brightly over it all. YES.
Another brain flash, this one back to her putting the signet ring on my hand. My imagination is only too eager to put a flowing white veil on her head and swap out my dad’s ring for a wedding band. I see her glowing happiness and feel my own, right here and now in the pool.
The images are all so vivid, wonderful and unsettling (since when do I long for this kind of daddy domesticity?) that I misjudge the distance to the wall and careen into it, nearly breaking a wrist and catching a mouthful of water that almost makes me hack up a lung. Nothing like a reminder of my current situation. So, okay. That’s my signal to call it a night. I have no idea how long I’ve been out here, but it’s been a while. Time for me to get out before I get a cramp and drown myself, thereby making all these pressing issues irrelevant.
I catch my breath, swim back to my starting point, pull my goggles off and wipe the streaming water from my eyes. A towel appears in my face, startling me. I look up, and that’s when I get the shock of a lifetime. It’s not Tamsyn, as I’d foolishly hoped, or Roman or even Winwood.
It’s Ravenna .
Staring down at me as the breeze blows a few strands of that dark hair across her still face. The forehead bandage is gone, leaving her healing wound, still an angry red, plainly visible. She’s back to calm and composed, wearing an ethereal white dress that skims her shoulders and is thin enough to reveal the points of her dark nipples.
Her calmness scares the shit out of me. So do her glittering eyes. But my fear is nothing compared to my sudden, blinding rage. This fucking bitch has crept up on me and disturbed my peace for the last time. I swear it. Swear it.
I ignore the towel and heave myself out of the pool, determined to remain calm and not show her how shaken I am by her sudden appearance when I’ve got security patrolling the grounds to keep her out and far away from Tamsyn. I’d be less surprised and more prepared to find myself confronted with a couple of snarling T. rexes. How the fuck did she get here? The side road? No. There are so many cameras back there. Maybe she just climbed over the fence and kept to the shadows along the main drive. Maybe she flew in on her broomstick. Doesn’t matter now. I’ll get it figured out later.
Right now I need to keep my wits about me and focus on getting her the fuck out of here as soon as possible.
My teeth are gritted. I unclench my jaw and force myself to stay quiet and steady. “What are you doing here, Ravenna?”
“I live here.” Her appreciative gaze skims over me as I snatch the towel from her. I roughly run it over my head and body before tossing it back on the lounger, sliding on my shoes and pulling on my T-shirt. When I emerge, I discover that her attention is glued to my crotch, which is not excited to see her. “You look amazing.”
“Why are you here, Ravenna?” There’s no keeping the gravel of anger out of my voice at this point. I don’t even try. “What do you want?”
Her sultriest smile answers me. “I want you to fuck me hard on the lounge chair.”
Well, she’s nothing if not predictable. “That’s not happening.”
A tinge of sadness enters her expression. That and something else. Something I can’t analyze but dislike on sight. “I know. You’re not ready yet. She’s gotten into your head.” There’s a heavy pause. “That’s why I had to take matters into my own hands.”
I stiffen, cocking my head to make sure I heard her correctly. “Excuse me?”
She comes closer, that filmy white dress rippling around her. “What did you expect, Lucien? For me to sit quietly at the hotel and sign the paperwork your lawyer sent over? For me to take your hush money and go away like a good little girl so you can live my life with some other woman? Don’t you know me better than that?”
Yeah. I do. I knew better than to expect swift acquiescence, but hope springs eternal. “I know you’re clever enough to take the smart option.”
“No, Lucien. I’ll do anything to get you back. I told you that. I’m sorry it’s come to this, but this is your own fault.”
Dread crawls over my cooling skin with prickling feet. “Come to what ?”
No answer. Just a fleeting flash of triumph.
My dread mushrooms into stark terror. “ Come to what? ” I repeat, murder in my heart as I take an aggressive step toward her, determined to get the information out of her or die trying. But that’s when I get the answer, and she doesn’t have to say a word. It’s right there in the air all around me.
The sudden acrid smell of heavy smoke.
My heart slams to a stop. I glance in the direction of the cottage several hundred feet away, desperate to be wrong. But the flickering orange flames rising on the other side of the trees are enough to convince me that I’m not. They’re enough to make my soul leave my body, because they’ve already eaten half the cottage. “Jesus Christ.”
“Poor Lucien,” comes her jeering voice behind me. “Your silly little girlfriend left a candle burning, didn’t she?”
Rage briefly overcomes my terror as I turn back to this triumphant demon with flashing eyes and an abyss where a human heart should be. The bellow is already surging up and out of me.
“I will kill you for this.”
Ravenna tips her head back and laughs, the sound joyous against the crackling flames and welcome shriek of sirens in the distance.
I turn my back on her and take off at a dead sprint, determined to either save Tamsyn or die in the flames with her. I cannot exist in a world where her light is extinguished. Will not . But when I hit the driveway, two things converge to keep me away from the cottage: the force field of heat and shrapnel coming from the exploding windows and the people—random employees plus Roman and Winwood—determined to keep me away.
“No, Lucien. No! ” Roman hooks me around the waist. “You’re not going in there!”
This slows me down at a moment when I have no seconds to spare. I roar with frustration and impatience. Roman has no idea what he’s dealing with tonight. He’s my brother, yeah, but anyone who comes between me and Tamsyn right now is a mortal enemy. Someone to eradicate. I aim a vicious swing at him, connecting with his jaw. He drops hard, yelping with pain and clearing the way for me. I take off again. Winwood darts in and tries to get hands on me, but I dodge him and make it the rest of the way, ducking my head, barreling through the stinging air and kicking the cottage door open because instinct tells me that touching the doorknob will burn my hand off.
Heat surges past me, nearly knocking me off my feet in its eagerness to get to the all that fresh air behind me.
God.
I grimace. One of my arms automatically comes up in a futile attempt to protect my head as I assess the scene and try to get my bearings. I know I’m in the little foyer, but I don’t recognize anything about what I’m seeing. It’s like I’ve been inserted into the final scene of some sci-fi movie, yanked through a portal to a hostile planet in the last few seconds before it self-destructs.
A bright ring of fire greets me, an obscene inside halo running up the curtains and rippling across the ceiling in every shade of orange that the human eye can conceive. Choking black smoke immediately swoops in and drops me to my knees, giving me the necessary reminder that I need to belly-crawl. So that’s what I do, down the hall to the first bedroom, the largest bedroom, the hardwood floors cool and welcome against my limbs.
I cough the whole time, my lungs raw and burning, my eyes irritated. I turn when I see an opening into the bedroom, rising up to a crouch because the air is clearer back here and I’ll need to get her off the bed?—
“Tamsyn? Tamsyn! ”
I fumble around on the giant bed, cursing myself because I didn’t think to click on the lights when I came in. She’s got the shades drawn, and there’s not enough moonlight filtering in for me to see what I need to see. I feel pillows neatly propped…the duvet…a book. No Tamsyn. Is she on the other side? The fire does its part just then, flickering higher down the hallway and providing enough additional illumination for me to see that she’s not anywhere on the bed. Nor is she on the floor on either side of the bed. I dash to the bathroom. She’s not there, either.
“Tamsyn?” An incoherent shout of despair rises from the bottom of my soul as I think about repeating this procedure in the other three bedrooms. “ Tamsyn? Where the fuck are you?”
The sofa.
I don’t know where I get the sudden clarity in that moment of wild panic, but I cling to it as I hit the floor again, praying I’m right. Because it’s hotter in the hallway now, and the fire is getting a nice taste of the fresh ceilings and walls outside of the living room. If I’m wrong, I doubt I’ll have the chance to come this way again and finish searching the other bedrooms. If I’m wrong, this whole hallway will be a tunnel of flames in thirty more seconds, and Tamsyn and I are both dead.
But I don’t think I’m wrong. I think she went to sleep on the sofa because she didn’t want to spend the night alone in that lonely bed without me.
My crawling is slower now, my coughing harder, my vision more narrowed. If I open my lids too wide, the smoke gets to my eyes and the blinding heat and bright flames make them feel as though they’re sizzling. I’m fine with my burning arms and legs, but I need my eyes to find Tamsyn. I keep going, willing myself to do it despite my growing exhaustion. The sofa is just ahead… Five more feet… Keep going…keep going…
I come around the sofa, and there she is, head resting on a throw pillow, blanket thrown over her body. Asleep facing me. Deathly pale, but the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I laugh and sob, sagging with relief at this welcome bit of luck.
“Tamsyn?” I reach up to shake her. “Tamsyn?”
She doesn’t move. I shake her again, harder. Her head lolls, dropping off the pillow. More panic surges
“Tamsyn? Fuck! You’re not dead. You’re not dead. Do you hear me?” I don’t know if she’s dead, but now is not the time to find out for sure, and I refuse to believe it anyway. “You’re not dead. You’re not . You hear me? Fuck you, Tamsyn, wake up! Don’t you do this! I need you! You know I need you!”
I stand, hike her up into my arms and turn to go?—
A flash of white outside the living room window catches my attention and snaps me out of my rising despair. It’s Ravenna again. Evidently she needed to come in for a closer look at her handiwork. The flames catch her silent euphoria and those vivid green eyes at their most serpentine. Our gazes connect for a poisonous second. She looks as though she wants to break into a dance and twirl the skirt of that white dress in time to our destruction. That’s the moment I swear to myself— swear it—that if I live through this, I will guarantee that she never commits another destructive act on earth.
There’s a new distraction as a beam falls, temporarily blocking my view of her. I blink against the sudden shower of sparks, and she’s gone again as though she was only ever a figment of the ugliest parts of my imagination.
I clutch Tamsyn closer, holding my breath as best I can and ignoring the way my skin now feels as though it’s bubbling. Then I duck and dart back through the flames—they’re almost close enough now to reach down and lick me from the ceiling—toward the front door. This fucking cottage has turned into Ravenna’s perfect minion. It wants to collapse on us, and it wants to do it now . Once again, I force myself to ignore the pain…to keep going… One more step… I see the door… I see the main house looming in the background… I see a crowd of people gesturing me on and the flashing red of emergency lights…
Suddenly, I’m outside, drunk on fresh night air and the coolness of the light breeze against my flesh. But there’s precious little relief, and I refuse to believe that I just rescued a corpse. I. Fucking. Refuse. I put a little more distance between us and the dying cottage before sinking to my knees and lowering Tamsyn to the ground.
“You’re not dead!” I shout at her, stretching her out and tipping her head back so I can give her mouth-to-mouth. “ You’re not dead! ” Hands come out of nowhere, trying to push me back. I swing an arm, determined to kill anyone who tries to keep me from her. “She needs mouth-to-mouth! Let me help her! Let me help?—”
More hands. A lot of hands. Strong hands. The next thing I know, I’m being dragged backward, away from her, and someone’s right in my face and shaking me by my shoulders.
It’s Roman.
“Don’t make me hit you,” he says, blocking me when I cock my fist. “The EMTs are here. Let them help her.”
“She needs mouth-to-mouth! She needs?—”
“They’ve got her, Lucien,” Roman says calmly, pointing. “Look. They’ve got her.”
I shove him away so I can see for myself. And there she is, the middle of a circle of men and women moving with brisk efficiency to give her chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth. They swarm back and forth, passing equipment and calling medical jargon to each other. Someone produces an oxygen mask, but she’s not moving.
Why isn’t she moving?
“ Tamsyn, don’t you fucking die on me! ”
The EMTs pause what they’re doing and stare down at her.
The sight of their inaction unhinges me. “Don’t you stop, you fuckers! She’s not dead! Don’t you?—”
She coughs suddenly, batting away a hand when it tries to replace the oxygen mask over her face. I freeze, choked by the image of her turning her head in my direction, opening her eyes and frowning at me. “What’s wrong?” she croaks, her voice barely audible. “Why are you making a fuss?”
A cheer rises up from the crowd. The EMT replaces her oxygen mask. Tamsyn reaches an arm out for me. I make it to all fours for my crawl this time, getting firmly in the way as I stretch out next to her, rest my head on her chest and listen to her beating heart with the kind of joyous relief I was just positive I’d never feel again this side of the grave. She strokes my hair. And all is right with my world. For three seconds.
Until I remember that Ravenna is still out there.
That monster I married is still out there.
I push away from Tamsyn, lever up on my elbows and ignore the EMT now trying to offer me my own oxygen mask. My attention now is all for the uniformed cop standing nearby. “Catch Ravenna! Don’t let her get away!”