Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
FOR THREE FULL DAYS, they barely surfaced to so much as draw breath.
It was a whirlwind of pleasure, sensual exploration, eating as required, sleeping in bursts, more pleasure.
Days turned into nights unnoticed, time no longer seemed to matter.
They ate breakfast at midnight and drank champagne in the small hours of the morning; they left the guest bedroom only when absolutely required.
Somewhere in the back of Kate’s mind, she wondered about Roman’s commitments. His work, his life outside of work, his plans before she’d come into his life, but she didn’t dare ask, lest she inadvertently remind him of something he couldn’t avoid, that would bring an end to this.
On the fourth day after making love for the first time, as the sun began its journey towards the horizon, Roman stepped out of bed.
Kate stared at him, tongue-tied as always at his beauty.
His body was the work of a sculptor. She’d known that, even before she’d seen him naked.
When he’d scooped her up in that alley and held her close, she’d felt muscles bunch and power radiate from every step he took.
But it was nothing compared to the sight of him like this, all bronzed sinew and flesh, hard abdominal wall, biceps that looked like they could lift ten of her, not just one, thick, strong neck with those powerful corded tendons on either side.
But it was his face that stole her breath even now.
She wondered if she’d ever be able to get her fill of looking at him?
Even if she had a lifetime, which she knew she didn’t, it wouldn’t be enough.
Every shift of his features cast him in a new light, and right now, he was looking at her as though there was a whole gallery of images in his own mind.
“Come with me,” he said, voice soft, tone unreadable. “I want to show you something.”
She moved to the edge of the bed and put her hand in his, ignoring the way arrows spiked through her bloodstream, the way something shifted inside her at the intimacy of holding his hand.
After everything they’d done to each other, all the exploration and pleasuring and experiencing, just having him wrap her hand in his made her insides tremble and quake.
In the living room, he dropped her hand and even though there was no one there to see, and Roman wasn’t watching her, she pretended it didn’t feel like a desertion, leaving an empty, hollowed out feeling in her chest.
He moved to the multimedia player, gloriously naked. As was Kate, she realised belatedly, reaching down and grabbing one of the cashmere throws and wrapping it around her shoulders.
“This,” he said, turning to face her, frowning slightly, as though confused. “Is Grace.”
A moment later, a beautiful, soulful voice filled the room, singing a bluesy song Kate didn’t recognise.
“She was a singer?”
He nodded once. “She was always musical. It was her way of escaping. Whenever it got too much, she’d lose herself in songs, blocking her ears and holding onto the melodies that ran through her mind. She started writing her own stuff when she was a teenager.”
“It’s beautiful,” Kate said, surprised to hear her voice wobble with emotion. Because Grace’s singing was beautiful, but it was also ethereal and haunted. Was she only reading that into it because she knew about her addiction? Or was it the quality of her sound alone?
“She got signed to a record label when she was seventeen. We were so happy for her.” We. Him and Tia. He cleared his throat. “We had no idea it was the beginning of the end for her.”
“How?” Kate asked, simply, moving towards him and slipping an arm out of the blanket so she could wrap it around his waist.
“They loved her. Everyone loved her, and she loved being loved.”
Kate closed her eyes, feeling an affinity for his sister. She could understand how seductive that must have been.
“Before long, she couldn’t bear the thought of losing their approval. She got caught up in that world, seduced by it. She went on tour, supporting a much bigger vocalist, got introduced to drugs, and then, addicted to them.”
Kate stroked his back, but it did nothing to ease the pain she felt seeping from his pores. “It’s not your fault.”
“Easy to say, but I should have done more.”
“Addiction is a personal battle.”
“I tried to get her into rehab but she was adamant that she didn’t need it. I wanted to believe that.”
“Of course you did.”
“The truth is, I was too focused on my own things. My business, my investments. I told myself she was okay, and she wasn’t.”
There were a thousand platitudes Kate wanted to offer, but they wouldn’t help. Guilt and grief often went hand in hand. She understood that this was a part of his process, a part of what he needed to feel to honour Grace’s memory.
“She pushed us away, Tia and me. She stopped coming to our dinners, stopped answering our calls. I think she was ashamed, or hiding. Or, I don’t know.
I tried to keep in touch, but towards the end, she just dropped off the side of the earth.
She died, high on a concoction of shit, alone in some alley in the meatpacking district. ”
Kate held him tighter, closer. “Why? Why there?”
“She’d been at some industry party, then left. I don’t know why. To score? To go home? She didn’t make it.”
Kate closed her eyes on a wave of sadness for the waste and futility of that. “I’m so sorry.”
He nodded his head once. Grace’s music continued to swirl around them, beautiful and wistful.
“School kids found her the next morning. She was freezing cold, had been dead for hours. I’ll never forget what it was like to get that call.”
And then, sympathy was usurped by unfettered rage. Not at Grace, who had obviously struggled with addiction, but that anyone, anywhere, could hurt Roman like that. No wonder he had as many protective barriers in place as she did.
“She had so much potential,” he said. “She should still be here.”
What could Kate say to that, except, “Yes, she should.” And then she stepped onto the tips of her toes and kissed him, knowing that for whatever reason, she’d been given a gift that could take his pain away—and she was more than willing to wield it.
The sun had dipped down right to the horizon when Garrett called. Roman, in the process of uncorking a bottle of wine, hooked the phone between his ear and shoulder as he spoke, eyes on Kate across the room.
He had no idea why he’d put on Grace’s album, only it had felt strange to think of Kate leaving his life and not having ‘met’ Grace.
Not having heard her sing, and understood her pain.
It was such a huge part of him, and for reasons he didn’t think important to analyse, that made him want Kate to understand that.
“Does it suit for me to come and have a quick talk to Kate now?”
Roman immediately tensed. “What’s happened?”
He poured two glasses of wine and carried one across to Kate, who was scrolling her phone on the sofa, wearing a pair of tracksuit pants that fit her like a glove and made his body tighten instinctively.
Garrett was giving an update on Kate’s visa application and the search for her father, but Roman was momentarily deafened by the sight of a flight website open on Kate’s browser.
As though she were booking tickets back to Australia?
“Garrett,” Roman cut him off. “You don’t need to go through it twice. Kate and I are in the apartment. Come and see us and explain it then.”
He disconnected the call, stalked over to grab his own wine glass, mainly to buy himself a little extra time. What did it matter to him if she went home? In fact, it was probably better, in many ways. If Kate was on the other side of the globe, he couldn’t possibly weaken and contact her.
He stood up a little straighter, took a sip of his wine.
He wasn’t even thinking of that, though, was he?
They’d set the boundaries of this—two weeks—and it made sense.
He’d never pursued a woman after a relationship had ended, and he didn’t intend to start now.
Not even for Kate would he break that rule.
“Garrett’s on his way up. He wants to run a few things by you.”
Her eyes lifted to his, surprise obvious. “About what?”
“Your visa,” he paused. “Your father.”
Kate’s face was a horrifying train of emotion and, even more horrifyingly, he wanted to crouch down and comfort her, and wipe it all away. Her surprise and fear and hope and confusion, the hurt that darkened her beautiful eyes. He sipped his wine instead.
“Has he found him?”
“He didn’t say.”
“How did you not ask, Roman?”
He clenched his jaw, her question fair. But the lift doors opened at that moment and Garrett stepped just inside the apartment, his gaze sweeping from Roman to Kate and resting there in a way that made Roman’s insides clench.
He looked at Kate and saw her as an outsider must, with her pale blonde hair loose and fluffed about her un-made-up face, so naturally beautiful with her huge eyes and pale pink lips, and the clothes that hugged her body, showing her lithe, slim figure.
He moved towards her instinctively, well aware that he was somehow staking his claim, and that he didn’t need to.
Garrett was one of the few people Roman had let into his life; he trusted him implicitly.
“Good evening,” Garrett said, to Kate, nodding at Roman. “How are you?”
She nodded. “You have news?”
Her impatience was understandable. “Not yet. I have a few leads. I need a swab of your DNA.”
“My DNA?”
“It should help sort the wheat from the chaff. You good with that?”
She looked to Roman, as though wanting his advice, and then, changed her mind. “Yes, of course,” she said to Garrett. Asserting her independence, reminding them both that she was able to manage this without him.
“Great.” Garrett dug into his coat pocket and removed a plastic ziplock bag with a medical insignia on it. “If you just wipe this inside your cheek, five good touches on either side, and pop it in here.”