Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
NICHOLAS
I’m usually calm until someone riles me, but my temper spikes tend to fade quickly.
Not today.
My blood is at boiling point, but my anger is directed inward as much as it is toward Victoria. The old friend of Mum’s, whom Christian dragged me to see, turned out to be a dead end as far as the key was concerned, but leaving had proved impossible. Faced with a captive audience, she’d lurched into several stories from the past, some involving Mum, others having nothing at all to do with her. She was clearly lonely, her husband having died over a decade earlier, and even I wasn’t heartless enough to cut her off when it was possible she hadn’t spoken to a soul in days.
Irritatingly, her house was in a dead spot, meaning I had no signal to message Victoria and tell her I was running late. By the time we’d managed to escape, it was past four o’clock, and I knew a text wouldn’t cut it, hence I’d waited until I got back to Oakleigh.
Big mistake.
When I couldn’t find my wife, for a moment, I’d panicked. What had happened to Elizabeth is still fresh in my mind, and losing Victoria to a similar fate would be much, much worse. I like her, whereas with Elizabeth… I didn’t dislike her. Far from it. I had no feelings about her at all, which, at the time, I’d put down to me being me.
Victoria has shown me I can feel. Maybe not deeply, but it’s more than I ever thought possible.
Once I took a breath, I called her assigned bodyguard, and he told me where they were. I’d looked up the building and the company who owned it but was still none the wiser why Victoria would have gone there.
The question running around my mind, though, is why she didn’t tell me she had an appointment, who it was with, and what it was for. Ironic, I know, because I didn’t tell her where I was going, but logic isn’t in charge. Possession is.
She’s my fucking wife. I demand to know who she’s spending her time with.
At a quarter to seven, a car pulls up at the front of the house, and Victoria gets out. She doesn’t look up at the top floor, where my burning gaze tracks her inside until she disappears from view. It’s a further five minutes before the door to our apartment opens and she enters. I promised myself I’d stay calm when I saw her. The second my eyes land on hers, I break that promise.
“Where the fucking hell have you been?”
There’s a slight stiffening to her shoulders, but that’s the only reaction she gives—until she shuts the door. Then she lets me have it.
“Don’t turn this around on me. You’re the one who bailed, Nicholas.” She tosses a distressed leather folder on the table to her right. “I heard you disappeared off somewhere with Christian. It’s fine. You chose who you’d rather spend time with, and it wasn’t me. But if you thought I’d sit around here, painting my fucking nails while you were galivanting off to God knows where, you are in for a bitter dose of reality.” Laying her handbag on top of the folder, she shrugs out of a smart suit jacket and casts it at a nearby chair.
“You’re my wife. You owe me an explanation.”
She snorts, folding her arms across her chest. Her tits lift with the action, and I can’t help dropping my eyes and drinking in the sight of her erect nipples through the white blouse.
“Eyes up here.” She waits for me to slowly drag my gaze north. “You’re my husband. You owe me an explanation.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath. We’re getting nowhere fast. This is the Victoria I’ve always known; the combative one, the argumentative one, the fucking stubborn one.
The perfect one.
My brain is not in charge when I close the space between us, grab her face, and smash my lips to hers. This is how we communicate best. Talking can come later. I’m starved for her. It doesn’t matter how many times I taste her lips, breathe in the floral scent of her skin, or feel her perfect body beneath my hands. It’s not enough.
It’s never fucking enough.
Victoria’s teeth sinking into my lip snaps my head back. She bit me. She fucking bit me. I dab a finger to my bottom lip, and it comes away red.
“Jesus Christ, Victoria. What the fuck?”
“You won’t find the answer to our problems by sticking your tongue down my throat. Tell me where you went and why you were late. Then I’ll tell you where I went and what I was doing, and we can move on from there.”
I snag a tissue from a box on the coffee table and dab it to my lip. “You’re lucky you’re not over my knee for this.”
She bows her head, and her shoulders begin to vibrate. At first, I think she’s crying, but she’s not. She’s fucking laughing.
“What’s amused you?”
“You have.” She flops onto the couch and kicks off her shoes. “You’re ten years older than me. You’re supposed to be the mature one, yet here I am, negotiating peace.”
“It’s really mature to fucking bite me.”
“Want me to lick it better?” She grins, and my anger vanishes faster than darkness at the flick of a light switch.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Come here, then.” She pats the space beside her, and I can’t sit down fast enough.
Gently cupping my chin, she turns me to face her. Leaning in, her tongue sweeps over my lip, mopping up the blood she caused. The groan that rumbles through my chest echoes in my ears. It’s almost impossible not to press her into the couch, tear the clothes from her body, and drive myself home.
Because that’s what she’s becoming to me: home.
I don’t, though. I let her explore my face with her fingertips and brush her thumb along my bottom lip.
“I’m waiting.”
A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “Fine, I’ll go first. This time.”
“You’re giving in? Are you sick?” She places her palm on my forehead.
I wrap my fingers around her wrist and tug her hand away, pausing to kiss her palm. “A few weeks ago, before Elizabeth…”
I leave the thought hanging, not because I find it hard to say “died.” I don’t, but I know Victoria’s pain at losing her sister is still raw and will be for some time to come.
“Xan found a key hidden in a snow globe in my mother’s old office, and we’ve been trying to find out what it might fit. Christian tracked down an old friend of Mum’s from years back and he thought she might have some insight. I got dragged along for the ride. He promised we’d be back by three, and we would have been, too. Except Jean—that’s her name—she wouldn’t stop talking. I tried to message you to let you know I’d be late, but I couldn’t get a signal. By the time we escaped, it was past four. I thought it’d be better if I explained in person where I went.”
“Did she know what the key fit?”
I shake my head. “No, something we discovered in the first minute, but it seemed unkind to just walk out. From the way she acted, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were the first people she’d spoken to in weeks.”
“That’s so sad.”
“Yeah. I was thinking maybe… oh I don’t know, I could set up a care package for her. Someone to call in once a week to check she has what she needs and stop for a cup of tea or something.”
Victoria beams. “I think that’s a lovely idea. I bet your mum would approve.”
“Yeah.” My voice husks, and from the empathetic look on her face, she thinks it’s grief, but I stopped grieving for my mother and sister a long time ago. The scars left by Mum’s decision to end her life rather than stay and raise her kids still run deep, but the grief has long since faded. I open my mouth to tell her that her pain will fade, too, but I stop myself. Everyone deals with grief differently. Presuming how she’ll feel a year, two years, a decade from now is a dumb move. Elizabeth’s death could be something she struggles with forever.
“Your turn. Where were you?”
Her whole face lights up as she sits up straight. I ache to pull her close to me again. She’s turning into something of an obsession of mine, and I’m not mad about it.
“A few months ago, I set up a company: Montague Interiors. I’ve spent most of my time getting the website how I want it rather than seeking out clients before it was ready. A few days before Beth died”—she winces, then gathers herself—“Eloise’s dad gave me a contact; a man called Anthony Davidson. Then… well, everything happened, and I didn’t get chance to follow up.”
This is the first I’ve heard of it, but I keep my thoughts to myself and let her continue. I do lock away the name Anthony Davidson, though. I’ll research him at the first opportunity.
“After you failed to show, I decided to call him and set up a meeting. I expected it to be sometime next week at the earliest, but he said he had a thirty-minute slot today. That’s when I asked Andrew to drive me.”
“Andrew should have fucking called me and told me where you were going.”
“Oh, stop. Andrew is my bodyguard, not your spy. In fact, if you’ve added spying to his list of duties, I’m firing him and hiring my own bodyguard.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” I growl. “Don’t make me implant a tracker in you like Xan did to Imogen.”
Her jaw drops. “He did what? ”
I’m surprised Imogen hasn’t told her what he did. I hitch up my right shoulder. “De Vils are possessive bastards. It’s in our DNA. He wanted to keep her safe and to know where she was at all times. So, he had his doctor inject her with a tracker.”
“That’s… fucked up.”
“No. It’s love. His version of it, anyway.”
“If you even think about putting a tracker in me, I’ll use your toothbrush to clean the toilet and start leaving Lego pieces on your side of the bed. And that’s just for starters.”
I throw back my head and laugh. Pulling her onto my lap, I steal a quick kiss. “Tell me about the meeting. I want to know everything.”
Her eyes sparkle, the light in them dazzling. “Oh, Nicholas, it was amazing. He’s recently bought an old house not that far from here, and he wants me to renovate it. Not me, personally. I mean, he wants me to design the interior and manage the project.” She grips my upper arms and squeezes. “Do you know what this means? If I pull this off, he’ll recommend me to his friends and business partners. For a new company like mine, where I don’t have testimonials yet, this could be huge.”
Until today, I had no idea Victoria had aspirations to work, let alone run her own company. Although my reasoning for taking her on honeymoon was to allow us to get to know one another, all I really discovered was she’s partial to pistachio ice cream and doesn’t like mushrooms. We were too busy fucking to talk.
“I have contacts I can introduce you to.”
She shakes her head so violently, it’s at risk of separating from her neck. “No. Absolutely not. I appreciate the offer, but I want to do this on my own.”
“You’ll accept help from your friend’s dad but not from me. Your husband.”
“That’s different. Eloise’s dad simply opened one door. I had to present my business plan in a way that made Anthony think I was capable of taking on this job. If I let you open some doors, you’ll probably threaten to murder those sitting behind them in their sleep if they don’t hire me.”
I chuckle. She’s not far off the mark. “Okay, I hear you, but promise me something.”
She wrinkles her nose, and it’s so bloody cute. How have I never noticed how adorable she is before now? Was I blind? On drugs? A fucking moron?
“Depends. I’m not promising anything until I know what it is.”
I flick the end of her nose. “You’ll make a fine businesswoman with that attitude. I want you to promise me that if there is anything I can do to help, you’ll come to me. In return, I promise not to bulldoze in and take over. Deal?”
She considers it for a moment, head tilted to one side, then thrusts out a hand. “Deal.”
Grinning, I take it. I might have promised not to stick my nose in where it’s not wanted, but I never promised not to check out every single person she’ll come into contact with and thoroughly vet them.
This woman right here is one I don’t plan on losing. Ever.