About Last Night

Tears filled her eyes and spilled over. Nev interlaced his fingers with hers and raised her arms over her head. The rings he’d given her bit into the soft skin between her fingers. They weren’t lies but promises, however silently made. He wanted to keep her. She wanted to let h

im. They both wanted for the wrong reasons.

Joined at hands, chest, hips, she could feel his heartbeat, fast and steady, the power he held in check, the banked desire as he waited. She raised her knees, seating him deeper, and wrapped her legs around him.

Still, he didn’t move. He kissed behind her ear, her shoulder. He kissed her cheekbone and found it wet.

“You’re crying, love.”

“It’s okay. It’s perfect, actually. You’re perfect. I’m just a little … overwhelmed. Happy. Terrified.”

“Shall I stop?”

“Absolutely not.”

She felt him smile in the dark. “I wish I could see you,” he said.

“You know what I look like.”

“I do. My beautiful Mary Catherine.”

He kissed her again, long, lingering, his mouth making confessions, his fingers gripping hers tight.

Finally, finally he began to move, and then she couldn’t have talked, couldn’t have stopped for anything. Each time he pulled out, she went a little crazy with the need to have him back inside her. She strained against him, digging her heels in, chasing him with her hips. Frenzied.

He soon gave in to her urgency, moving faster, pushing harder until they were crashing into each other. Nev let go of her hands to bury his palms underneath her, seeking to bring her closer, to make them one.

They lost themselves and fell apart, each safe in the other’s arms. For now.

Chapter Sixteen

Loud as gunshots against the marble floor, Evita’s heels announced her arrival long before she came into view. Nev had been giving Cath a tour of the house, but they’d only made it through one wing—much of it empty rooms full of painfully beautiful furniture under drop cloths—when his mother showed up and asked if she could “steal Neville away for just a moment.”

He dropped a kiss on Cath’s lips. “You can find your way round, can’t you, love?”

She nodded and watched them go, noticing for the first time the similarity in the way they moved. They had the same confidence. Mother and son. Who would’ve guessed?

When they were really gone, she did a slow scan of her surroundings and sighed. She could not, in fact, find her way around. She got lost in hotels, malls, even parking lots. There was no point in her trying to rediscover the main rooms of the house. Better to wander aimlessly and hope to stumble upon them eventually. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do.

Besides, she could use the break from Nev. She’d fallen asleep in his arms and woken up in mourning. Having made the decision to break off their relationship, every second she spent with him felt like an ending, and the morbid voice in her head kept up a steady stream of doomsaying. You’ll never share a bed with him again. Never feel the bristle of his early-morning stubble against your neck. Never watch him button up his shirt. Never.

Part of her wanted to leave immediately, just to bring the torture to an end. But a larger part wanted to stay so she could keep saying good-bye, if only in her head. Good-bye to everything she loved about him, from the way he kissed to the way he bent over to put on his socks. Every gesture and movement and habit. Every noble, wonderful piece of him.

Two hours in his company, and she was emotionally tapped out. She needed some time away to recharge.

The house was a welcome distraction. It went on and on. Handsome enough, if you liked manors, but in her current frame of mind it provoked irreverent questions. Had there been any marble left in Italy by the time they wrapped up construction on this old pile? Had the man who carved all the gorgeous teak woodwork labored in some dimly lit garret before expiring of consumption? What must it cost to heat the place?

She knew that a lot of prominent English families had been forced to sell their ancestral homes because they couldn’t afford the upkeep. The Chamberlains seemed to be holding their own, but if it had been up to Cath, she’d probably convert Leyton into hard cash and buy a nice flat in the city.

Not a respectable position for someone who made her living appreciating old, beautiful things, but then she’d never been a big fan of ostentatious displays of wealth.

She stumbled on the library eventually, where she found the least frightening member of Nev’s immediate family hiding out with a book and a pot of tea. If the parlor was an Austen novel, Richard’s library was Jane Eyre, all dark wood, leather spines, and velvet curtains. And hanging on the far wall, an arresting portrait of a young woman in an elaborate hat.

“Holy shit,” Cath said without thinking. “Is that a Gainsborough?”

“It is.” Richard’s tone registered pleasant surprise.

“Wow. It’s … wow.” She knew she ought to say good morning and all that polite happy-crappy, but she couldn’t tear her eyes off the painting. The eighteenth-century master had captured a relaxed quality in the woman’s posture, a lively kindness in her large brown eyes that suggested she’d be fun to hang out with, despite her fussy dress.