“Do you want me to say yes only to please you?” he asked, in that cool, quiet voice.
My heart was beating so loudly, I wondered that they didn’t hear it.
“You agreed, Daniel. You agreed years ago when,” she paused and sadness flared across her features, “when we first got together. You promised that one day we would have kids. It’s important, isn’t it? That you agreed? I know you never wanted them. You don’t think I don’t know that? You do not want kids, you do not want marriage, but you want me, don’t you? And I need this.”
My eyes swiveled in my frozen face just in time to see Sinclair deflate. His features softened and his eyes took on that electric glow that I had once thought was reserved only for me. Wordlessly, he breached the space between them and took Elena into his arms, one hand locked firmly on her neck as he tucked it into his shoulder. Almost immediately, she let out a gusty sigh and wilted into his arms.
I stared at their embrace for a long moment, cataloguing the way she fit to him like a tailored suit, how beautifully and tenderly they clutched each other. When I finally wrenched my gaze away from my worst nightmare, my eyes over corrected and flew to the opposite wall of the room where a portrait picture of Éclair hung over the mantle. In it, Elena sat in a rigid chair with Sinclair standing behind her, one hand on her shoulder. It was the kind of painting I expected to find in a royal museum and the sight of it punched me right between the eyes.
I may have murmured something as I peeled myself off the couch and zombie-walked down the hallway to my bedroom for the night, but I couldn’t be sure and either way, they didn’t notice me leave. I closed the door softly behind me and felt my way towards the bed in the pitch dark. I flopped on top of the many-pillowed bed and stared into the darkness as if it was a prophet, sent to deliver answers. When none proved to be forthcoming, I turned on my side, clutched my knees to my chest, and cried and cried and cried.
Chapter Sixteen.
The next morning, after finally falling into a tear-soaked coma, I woke up before the crack of dawn in order to escape the apartment without having to face either my sister or her boyfriend.
Her boyfriend. That was how I was going to refer to Sinclair as from now on. Not my Frenchman, not my friend, not even Sinclair but as Daniel, Elena’s boyfriend. If I could force myself to think of him as this other person, as I might have known him had I met him properly, I might have a chance in hell of getting over him. I imagined meeting him for the first time at a family dinner and found it easy to believe I would have found him haughty and remote, condescending and one-dimensional. His beauty would have imprinted itself on my psyche – it simply couldn’t be helped – but I wondered if the chemistry between us would have remained caged and hidden behind the bars of acceptable social norms.
As of this morning, I was turning over a new leaf. It didn’t erase the sins I had already committed but it would keep Elena happy, my family intact and Sinclair firmly imbedded in the kind of lifestyle he coveted. As I straightened the bed and vainly tried to smooth the wrinkles from my slept-in clothes, I considered moving back to Paris. Christopher had found me there but by now, he might have moved on.
My thoughts were still spinning with possibilities as I tiptoed out of the bedroom and into the living room. I was just peeling open the front door when the overhead light flicked on, freezing me like a thief in the spotlight.
To my surprise, when I turned around it wasn’t Sinclair who stood there, silently contemplating me, but Elena.
She wore beautiful black silk pajamas with white piping and a matching facemask pushed back her softly tousled curls. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes and she wrung her hands in an unusual display of nervousness.
“Morning,” I said into the awkward silence.
She blinke
d. “You look like you are getting ready to do the walk of shame. If you have to leave right now, at least borrow a jacket.”
My spine straightened painfully under her casual censure. “I’m fine like this, Elena, but thank you.”
“You look like a siren. Do you want men propositioning you on the street?” she snapped.
You look like a siren. It took monumental effort not to collapse into tears right there on my sister’s living room floor.
“Fine, if you don’t mind then I would love to borrow a jacket.”
Elena nodded curtly and went to the closet to pull out a long Burberry trench coat, the same one she had been wearing the night of my welcome home party. I let her help me into it and tried to breath through my mouth to avoid the aroma of her Chanel Number 5 perfume. She lingered over the collar, turning it up against my throat and smoothing my wayward hair around my cheeks.
“You are very beautiful,” she said, almost as if it pained her.
“We have good genes.”
To my utter surprise and dismay, Elena’s lower lip curled into a pout and wobbled.
“Daniel doesn’t want to be with me anymore,” she whispered so quietly that I was almost sure I had imagined it.
“Scusi?” I asked, my muddled brain devolving back to Italian.
Her dark eyes shone like polished graphite. “He doesn’t love me anymore.”
My heart hiccoughed in my chest but I fought down my own feelings with a Herculean effort and gently took hold of her limp hand in order to lead her to the couch.
“First of all, where is he now?” I asked.
“Work. He went in around four thirty this morning. To get away from me.” She sniffed wetly and tugged her knees to her chest like a little girl in need of comfort.